Do you hear it, too? Specificity and universality

I came across a clever device recently when reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. This was quite a popular book when it came out and is now a Broadway show, but for those of you don't know, it is a sort of mystery book written from the point of view of a highly functioning autistic boy named Christopher.

One of the enjoyable things about the story is that it gets filtered through the perceptions of the narrator, which are highly unusual and fascinating to the non-autistic reader. It shouldn't really work, because the narrator tends toward the literal, admits he doesn't understand metaphors, and can't interpret emotional cues from other people--all things that make it hard to succeed at good storytelling. But on the other hand, Christopher loves specificity, feels emotions intensely, and loves a good mystery--and these are the things that make the book come alive.

Another thing that makes it work is that Christopher tends to assume that you (the reader) experience thing just like he does--and when he does this it serves not only to highlight the way in which Christopher might experience things differently from his audience, but also to transmit that experience more vividly than would be possible by simply "explaining" it. Here's the example that caught my attention. Christopher has just discovered the corpse of a neighbor's dog and is highly distraught:

"I rolled back onto the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground again and made the noise that Father calls groaning. I make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world. It is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear and you tune it halfway between two stations so that all you get is white noise and then you turn the volume right up so that this is all you can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else."
--pp7-8. Mark Haddon. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Vintage Contemporaries: New York, NY; 2003.

Snipped from the Guardian.

Christopher's comparison is to an experience he assumes he has in common with the reader: "It is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear..." etc. From this, we discover that Christopher finds multiple stimuli disarming and prefers focusing on one, constant noise or activity.We also learn that his groaning is not merely an expression of distress, but also a soothing mechanism. This discovery is all the more compelling for that fact that many of his audience probably feel just the opposite--the sound of radio static turned up full volume might actually cause some to go crazy, for example--and for Christopher's age (he is taking pre-college math courses), rolling on the ground and groaning is not generally how most would find comfort, at least not in public.

The fact that Christopher doesn't know that his reactions are unusual gives the universe of the narrative all the more power--it dramatizes his emotional limits and the limits of his perceptions, while paradoxically, admitting us more fully into his inner life. For example, even though we might not relate specifically to radio static as an emotional outlet, the way he speaks about it makes it feel familiar--he listens to it "so that this [noise] is all you can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else." We've all sought this kind of refuge in some context--absorbing ourselves in a task or distraction to avoid some larger discomfort. With this device, suddenly something very specific to one boy becomes universal.

Original expressions for ordinary expressions

One of the things I most like to observe in my favorite writers is how they come up with fresh, original ways to describe everyday facial expressions, etc. Although dialogue should be able to hold its own, it can be difficult to add life to an interaction between characters without some equally vivid sketches of their movements, gestures, and mannerisms as they speak. Sometimes these cues are just as essential to the subtext as the words spoken. Here is the first installment of a few good ones I've noticed here and there!

1. An unusual verb--most people would go for "drains" or "he went pale":

"Blood evacuates Lorca's ears and cheeks." 

--p 36, Marie-Helene Bertino. 2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas. New York, NY: Random House; 2014. 

2. A vivid simile:

"...Ruelle's face seals over like the visor of a knight clanging down." 

--p428 (Kindle edition), All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

3. A portrait of a grandfather morning his daughter: both an unusual gesture (biting a knuckle vs the overdone bitten lip) and an easily visualized simile:

"Grandpa looks at the pictures and blinks and puts a knuckle between his teeth. For maybe thirty seconds he doesn't answer. He looks like he's standing outside an elevator waiting for the doors to open."  

--p165, The River Nemunas. In: Anthony Doerr. Memory Wall. New York, NY: Scribner; 2010. 

On coming to the end of War and Peace

With the holidays over the last couple of weeks, I took an "accidental hiatus" from the blog--sorry about that. I was also working really hard on finishing the goal I set myself this January--to read War and Peace. And guys--I totally did it! Just landed on page 1215 this past Sunday, in fact.

Reading Tolstoy--and especially War and Peace--is mind-boggling, both for the sweeping, epic nature of the tale, as well as for how Tolstoy's omniscient (all-seeing) narration isn't afraid to zoom in and out of historical scenes at a head-spinning pace. According to the introduction of my edition (see source below), Tolstoy had a couple of big aims in this novel--one was to cross-examine conventional ideas about history and historical analysis, but the other was to tell the truth of history "to scale"--at the level of the average human being living it--so to speak. 

As a final tribute to the novel, I'm including one of my favorite parts of the book--where one of the main characters, Andrei Bolkonsky, a military adjutant, is in the middle of a losing battle, and despite this, bravely takes up the Russian standard and charges the enemy French. Within 4 paragraphs, Tolstoy brings Andrei from his role as a soldier in a batallion, moving through the "fog of war" in the blur of collective activity, to his role as an individual, a human, and finally, a moral being, who is forced to contemplate a larger reality beyond battle and beyond himself--God. It's quite beautiful and moving, and according the introduction of the edition I read (see the source below), part of Tolstoy's effort to capture the truth of the experience. Here you go--in pictures, because I wasn't up to typing the whole section up, sorry (you can blow it up and zoom in to read--the res should be high enough).

Pages from: War and Peace. eds. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, NY: Vintage Classics; 2008. Vol. 1, Part 2, VIII, pp180-181.

Do the Time Warp now: Raise the Red Lantern

I'd always heard about Raise the Red Lantern (a novella by Chinese writer Su Tong), but then my husband brought it home and said, "You have to read this." And I'm glad I did. It's one of those stories that leaves a strong impression long after you read it--partly because of the story, partly because of the imagery, and partly because of its use of time (and space). I'm gonna focus on time for now.

Maybe it was or maybe it wasn't...

It reading other stories of Su Tong's and researching his authorial style, I've learned that he's well known for his technique of introducing uncertainty to past events--primarily, he's used it to cast doubt on the Chinese government's narrative of the Cultural Revolution and the events preceding it. In other words, he resists the black-and-white nature of traditional storytelling. For example, take the opening lines of another of his stories, Nineteen Thirty-Four Escapes:

"Perhaps my father was a mute fetus. His profound reticence left my family shrouded in a murky gray fog for fully half a century."

This makes for a shocker of a first sentence (a keeper for fantastic opening lines!), and sets up the murkiness of the narrative that follows--one that not only questions the past, but tells it in a non-linear fashion, moving fluidly in between earlier and later events, and even into the present.

Do the Time Warp

Rocky Horror Picture Show "Time Warp" scene;
snipped from RockyMusic.org

However, in my humble opinion, Su Tong uses his techniques to even greater effect in Raise the Red Lantern (RTRL). With stories like Nineteen Thirty-Four Escapes, his signature "time warps" feel more in-your-face, for lack of a better word. Additionally, they tend to blur the edges of events and narratives, whereas in RTRL, the time warps blend the characters themselves, which makes for an incredibly eerie telling that feels of a piece with the story.

RTRL opens when the orphaned Lotus arrives at the house of Master Chen to become his Fourth Mistress. She soon becomes embroiled in domestic politics with Chen's first three concubines, and also discovers a deserted well near her rooms, known as the Well of Death. The well's history is closely guarded and she's warned not to go near it, but Lotus gradually discovers that it's tied to the death of past Chen family concubines.

The ghosts of past, present, and future

One day, Lotus hears Third Mistress Coral singing near the well. It's a haunting Chinese opera aria, sung from the point of a young girl contemplating suicide. Lotus has already had several run-ins with the well, where she has experienced apparitions, so she decides to ask Coral about it:

"Lotus walked to the side of the abandoned well, bent over, and looked down into it; then suddenly she laughed and said, 'Ghosts, there really are ghosts in here! Do you know who died in this well?'

Coral remained seated at the stone table. She said, 'Who else could it be? One of them was you, and one of them was me.'" (p73, paras 3&4)

It's a subtle manipulation but it's really fine and so, so eerie. Simultaneously, it feels like Coral is speaking from the present (perhaps joking or experiencing a mental break), the past (impersonating a ghost or channeling a spirit), and the future (having a vision of their possible fates).

There are many similar episodes in the story where echoes of the past, present, and future collide, but this is my favorite. I love a good ghostly shiver, but it's even more alarming in light of Su Tong's characteristic theme of recurrence and the idea that individuals are powerless before the past.

Wisteria Tunnel at Japan's Kawachi Fuji Garden;
snipped from sun-surfer.com 

Now you see it, now you don't

In RTRL, this becomes an existential crisis, too, in which not only time, but identity--and maybe even reality--is interchangeable. Take this scene in which Lotus again approaches the well:

"Lotus picked a wisteria leaf off the ground, examined it carefully, and threw it into the well. She watched the leaf float like some sort of ornament on the dark blue surface of the stagnant water, obscuring part of her reflection; she actually could not see her eyes. Lotus walked all the way around the well, but could not find any angle from which to see her entire reflection; she thought it very strange." (p53, para 2)

Lotus has started to conflate herself with the image in the well, and now that image doesn't even have eyes--it's horrific.

Ceci, n'est pas une pipe

If you don't get the joke, click here! Warning: you
probably won't laugh. It's a dumb joke.

At times, Lotus' self-identification also moves beyond humanity or even logic, producing unsettling responses like the following, in which her comments on a flower arrangement point to a crisis of reality:

"Lotus took a few steps forward and said, 'Flowers are not flowers and people are not people; flowers are people and people are flowers; don't you understand such a simple principle?'" (p28, last para)

This is not a technique you can just whip up, because it has to flow seamlessly with and belong to the sense of the story, but it's interesting to read, and opens up possibilities for how to write--what opportunities could you create if you didn't take the timeline of your story for granted? In RTLR, it's magical.

Quotes from: Su, Tong. "Raise the Red Lantern." In: Raise the Red Lantern. Translated by: Duke, Michael S. HarperCollins Publishers Inc.: New York, NY; 2004.

To wit: epigrams

I was away, briefly, so I'm kind of rushed this week and missed my regular posting day--sorry about that. In the meantime, here's a quick salute to the art of epigram writing in stories, because I happen to be reading Jincy Willett's wonderful collection, Jenny and the Jaws of Life.

I attended a writing lecture with Canadian writer Douglas Glover at the Center for Fiction a couple years ago, and he talked about the importance of epigram to stories and how often you find them in good writing. I had never noticed this before, but now I find them everywhere. According to Glover, they function as a sort of shot in the arm to the theme of the story--they help raise questions, introduce paradoxes, and heighten irony, and besides that, they are delightful to read and bump up the quality of the writing.

Jenny and the Jaws of Life is full of fantastic examples, but here are a few of my favorites....

From "Melinda Falling":  "Mother was a good woman with execrable taste."

Also from "Melinda Falling":  "It had often struck me that while we view the pairing of lovers with benign speculation, even envy, there is nothing so baffling, so grotesque, as another man's choice of wife, or a woman's of a husband."

From "My Father, at the Wheel":  "This is a very old story, the one about daughters and fathers. It ends in marriage, and the promise of renewal. So it must be a comedy."

When I look at these examples, it also strikes me that they serve to poke fun at the narrator, whose distance, biases, and judging function become all the more apparent in quips like these. Maybe that's part of the epigram's appeal--it's both witty and unwitting, in the sense that it reveals as much about a narrator's own flaws and disappointments as about how the narrator wants to present him or herself.

Quotes: Sorry, no page numbers again, since this if from my Kindle version, but I've included the short story titles for your reference.

Story nips and tucks

Speaking of cutting, did you know
scissors have terminology? Check out
All About Scissors.

I've always wished for more writers to publish their story drafts, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is, and posting a marked-up excerpt of Still Life With Tampon, a story of mine in Story Chord. This draft was pared down and improved by Story Chord guest editor, Erika Swyler--thanks, Erika, for letting me share your changes! I was delighted with how many smart trims she made, including cutting several filler words and phrases that didn't add much value, and removing some lines of dialog that dragged the pace and were a little over-explainy. And um, spoiler alert--this comes from one of the final scenes, so if you would like to read the entire thing and then compare, do that first!

*  *  *  *  *

"But I've been painting feathers."

Your mother laughs, as if satisfied by this information. "Well, there you are, Dawn. You can't go around painting other people's Muses. No wonder you've been so miserable--you've gotten your signals crossed."

This silences you. Perhaps all of this isn't so crazy. You've long sensed that you've been thrown off by your mother's path, but it never occurred to you that you'd been dragging her behind you, like a trail of toilet paper, into your canvases.

"But still," you say. "How can a tampon--a used tampon--"

"Sweetheart." Your mother hasn't used this term in ages, and her voice is at once patient and firm. "We cannot judge what we're given to work with. It's only for us to follow the path we've been given."

"If it's as simple as that, then how come you never told me about all of this?"

"Because it's not simple. A Muse only comes when you're in your darkest hour and you least want it and then you have no choice."

And with that, she stands up again. The click of her heels, like her voice, is measured and resolved.

*  *  *  *  *  

We-we on our hands

Going back to Jeffrey Eugenides’ Virgin Suicides, this is the first work I’ve ever read written in the first person plural—that’s plural, folks. As in we.

You’d think that writing from the we point of view would get really boring or annoying, but it doesn’t in this book. I think a lot of it is the amazingly vivid writing—see Scarecrowed into using more verbs—and a lot of it is the fact that even though the story is about the we (which happens to be a group of middle-aged men reflecting back on their teens), most of the book has to do with the object of their teenage affections (the 5 daughters of the Lisbon family from their childhood suburb). So there’s as much writing about the girls and their glimpsed lives as about the we.

I think it also works because so much of the book is about voyeurism, and about the adolescent pain of being on the outside looking in—it’s also about responsibility and guilt and longing to which no one individual alone wants to admit. To end things off, here’s the final few lines of the book, to get a feel for it (no spoiler here, since you know from the get-go that the girls are suicides):

It didn’t matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us, up in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together. (pp248-249)

Quote from: Jeffrey Eugenides. The Virgin Suicides. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing; 2002. (paperback edition)

Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See

Full disclosure: I have the pleasure of knowing Juliann Garey, but that in no way prepared me for how good her book, Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See would be (also, an amazing title!).

I’m including it here on my blog as a great example of how to do flashback and weaving timelines—both things can make you want to bonk your head against the wall repeatedly, so it’s risky to write, but Juliann is so smart about how she does it. First, she can do vivid, economic writing—it delivers the emotional punch and leaves you wanting more, whether the scene is in the present, the past, or the long-dead past. I never felt like the backstory clashed with the frontstory for attention.

Second, she opens in the right place—which is, of all places, an electroshock therapy or ECT center. The main character, Greyson, who has bipolar disorder type 1, is finally getting some life-changing treatment—but at a cost. Each of 12 chapters represents one 30-second shock to the brain and the memories that are thereby lost—up until the final chapter, Aftershocks, in which Greyson reconnects to the world without his past. It’s a great point of attack—I think the usual and expected approach would have been to show the journey of the amnesiac mental patient searching for his memories and putting together all the pieces. The fact that she worked it in the opposite direction not only made it a more high-stakes “chase”, but didn’t privilege the destination over the journey, the present over the past. 

Oh, yeah, and you should definitely read it—you can find it here.

Scarecrowed into using more verbs

So I'm going back to Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, because I think it's a really exciting study in strong verb usage and brilliantly selected words. I picked a couple of my favorite paragraphs below, but the whole book is, in one word, vivid.

A quick summary If you haven’t read the novel—it’s written from the point of view of teenage boys who are obsessed by the 5 beautiful daughters of the Lisbon family who all commit suicide by the end of the book.(Note: This isn't a spoiler since the opening of the book tells you all this info upfront!)

Here’s my first paragraph (verbs bolded, except for auxiliaries):

It felt as though the house could keep disgorging debris forever, a tidal wave of unmatched slippers and dresses scarecrowed on hangers, and after sifting through it all we would still know nothing. (p229, ¶2)

Isn’t the use of “scarecrowed” brilliant? Not only is the word choice nice and active, but it makes the dresses come alive in the closet. Also notice “disgorging”, and even though it’s not a verb, “tidal wave.”

Here’s another paragraph (verbs bolded, adjectives with verb-like qualities italicized):

After the meal Peter Sissen asked to go to the bathroom, and because Therese and Mary were both in the downstairs one, giggling and whispering, he had to use the girls’, upstairs. He came back to us with stories of bedrooms filled with crumpled panties, of stuffed animals hugged to death by the passion of the girls, a crucifix draped with a brassiere, of gauzy chambers of canopied beds, and of the effluvia of so many young girls becoming women together in the same cramped space. (p9, ¶1)

Even though action isn’t even really the focal point of the second sentence, can't you just feel the space and the room's claustrophobia? It's like magic.

Quotes from: Jeffrey Eugenides. The Virgin Suicides. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing; 2002. (paperback edition)

Picture: Promo photo for the movie version of the The Virgin Suicides, written and directed by Sophia Coppola in 1999. Note the bra on the crucifix in background!