I was listening first to Blur, then Shostakovitch, then Beethoven, then John Coltrane when this snuck up on me. It was a long drive.
Ba'al with a Battleaxe
Beowulf's pride battened down the hatches in the hall. Grendel's bride, bedded by a stranger, lay in the shadow of Babel's wall. O, Abraham, the gall of Ba'al with a battleaxe, stiffening to the smash! of shared and sculpted brethren. The goblets emptied, the seeds are spilt. Bash!
Though I’ve never paid significant attention to film critics, Roger Ebert has written a fairly stunning column on overcoming personal limitations through the art of writing: I think I’m musing my mind - Roger Ebert’s Journal. I clipped the following quotes on the art and practice of writing for later reference:
When I am writing my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be.
There is no such thing as waiting for inspiration. … The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before.
There is nothing you don’t "get" because there is nothing to get. You are the writer. What you write is what is written. It is exactly right because it is exactly what you wrote. … There is no objective goal, no objective right or wrong. Only the process. Your mind will set itself down in words. Do not criticize. Do not look back at every sentence. Just write. You have no idea where you are headed. Your words will lead you. This above all: Nothing is ever completed until it is started. Start. Don’t look back. If at the end it doesn’t meet your hopes, start again. Now you know more about your hopes.
It’s becoming quite common that I conceive a comment for Chris Lott’s blog but end up writing a full post.
Last night I finished Hades in James Joyce’s Ulyssess, and padded on with determination, but also growing frustration. My frustration was born of several reasons, one of which was my tendency to hound-like sniff out every detail and idea, especially the foreign ones. This would send me panting to and from Our Wise Pack Leader Annotated U, sometimes satisfied and sometimes not.
This repetitive snuffling itself was frustrating because it interrupted the path of my reading by taking me just off the trail over and over. But there was a paradoxical frustration as well, for I wanted to interrupt myself, I wanted to go off the trail, to investigate, interpret, speculate, and link motifs, events, and themes from character to character and section to section. And while this is very possible, on a first read through it is difficult to distinguish exactly where a trail might take me, if the pungent scent I was following was directly related to the novel or merely an incidental and superficial facet of a multitudinous, crystalline (yet not necessarily isometric) work of art. For example, inclusion of (and then annotations on) popular stage librettos of the time.
More frustrating were the times I would have my nose so close to the ground that I would end up butting my head into the fact that a lot of the characters are “real” or quasi-”real” characters in Joyce’s circle, and therefore have definite, verifiable properties which can refute one’s assumptions or speculations. The very structure and storyline, too, is based on a direct, definite source in The Odyssey. Some call it a “footprint”, but really it’s more like a blueprint.
In many cases, then, I can therefore only speculate so far before Our Wise Pack Leader pops my leash and sets me back on the “right” course. In fact the literary and historical richness of the work implies a surprising amount of formalist direction and authorial limitation on a novel so many consider(ed) “avant garde”.
Disclaimer: I may recant all of this when I am done with the novel, for I it is a long walk and I am delirious with asphyxiation, dehydration, and the myriad of wonderful and noxious smells that pepper the trail. Yet all may be made well by an offering of a biscuit.
Revised 11/06/08 in Phoenix, AZ.
A Fog of Fuzz
A fog of fuzz, two magpies black and whites aloof, in gray, against a bearded veil of rain their forked feet peck and kiss the ashen leaves that stuff the iron drain. And gutters flood the graveled road, frame a fog of fur the magpies cluck at; pull out a red steam worm. We break through the storm from opposite directions meeting for tea, to pick and scrape at words. And how can I describe this to you like it was, like it is my lover's love for you.
Mirrors on the Inside
Must have been some miles through cringing and crunches on a winter sidewalk this guy comes in and orders coffee black bits of ice hanging stuck in his silver beard, his breath still warm enough to fog in his glasses completely. I noticed. He nodded. “They're mirrors on the inside,” he says, “but I can see my whole face twice in them. Imagine, seeing your self up close each time you come in where people are, every flaw, every scar, every unshaven needle of hair. All the time. It'll drive a man to kill, if he doesn't find a way out. “But if I take these glasses off I'll trip over the chair just sitting down, straitjacket and entangle myself just getting this damn coat off. I'd even miss my mouth when I mean to sip the mug, and then sue you for making the coffee too hot." I smile, he grins. Then blows his heat up refills himself with fog, and explains, "So I keep them on, I try to ignore myself, and stare at the glass itself, the gray ghost wrapper that I control. It fades away again and again."
Going back through Adam Sexton’s Master Class in Fiction Writing (MCIFW) I continue my long review of the book by posting this summary and commentary on Chapter 2 Characterization: Sense and Sensibility.
Sexton begins ch 2 by bridging the storyline path to the topic of characterization by asserting that proper storyline conflicts provide and allow for deeper characterization. “…character drives plot, and vice versa.” But it is true that while storyline provides structure and interest, characters make it meaningful; in fact, many stories that we are familiar with are memorable as much through their characters as by their plot.
The literary case study for this topic is Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Sexton first notes a few aspects of it’s storyline: though the novel relies on exposition (initiating the story with it–a risk, perhaps), Austen follows exposition with specific scenes (involving dialogue, not much description or action). Sense and Sensibility also employs rather passive protagonists, a curiosity which Sexton urges modern writers to resist.
Though there are many characters in this novel Austen brings them in “relatively gradually”, and rarely has multiple characters active in the same scene. “Storytelling”, Sexton writes, “is by definition undemocratic.” Not all characters should receive (nor deserve) equal time on the page. Concern with the protagonist consumes most of the characterization. “Tertiary, or third-level, characters are not especially distinguishable from the furniture, nor should they be. Tertiary characters do exactly what’s expected of them…and no more.” Though these characters are what E.M. Forster would call “flat”–they are consistent and predictable. This is not a criticism, Sexton tells us. In order to preserve character arc with our protagonist, and to continue the storyline in a manner that maintains interest and coherence. Writers need flat characters to do what they do, then get out of the way.
Continuing Forster’s description of “flat” characters we can see that secondary characters are “round”. Forster writes:
“The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way.”
We must beware of “blandly heroic” heroes (flat) or surprisingly heroic characters “with absolutely no prior indication that they were capable of doing so (falsely round).” Surprise then convince.
Primary characters must be round to be effective. They’re probably imperfect–in fact some of the best protagonists are protagonists because they are deeply flawed–but they are convincingly so, and it may be due to their overcoming, working around, or giving into these imperfections as they respond to the conflicts of the storyline that they surprise the reader. In addition to being round, however, “the fourth dimension of characterization is motivation. Writers would do well to understand the (usually several) factors that motivate their primary characters, and while the writer should avoid articulating these explicitly, the motivations should be apparent to the reader through a mixture of scenes and exposition.
Sexton recommends that writers create a “dossier” for each character that are hoped to be three-dimensional. This is an activity recommended by many writing instructors, and is mirrored in Step 3 of Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake method. I paraphrase Sexton’s question points as follows:
Probably the best, most incisive part of this chapter is Sexton’s four ways of characterizing (with my comments):
Sexton continues that one can characterize by contrast, matching or obversing one character from another, e.g. how different characters respond the the same conflict or situation.
The final matter of characterization is metamorphoses. How do the primary characters grow or change in response to the conflicts? (From studying Shakespeare I would add, If they don’t what are the consequences of that failure to grow or change?) Character change in response to conflict can deliver reader satisfaction at the denouement; the story’s conflicts and outcomes become meaningful.
“Crisis reveals character.”
I’ve been drafting an alternate ending for A Mason’s Grip. This ending is considerably longer, which troubles me, but it is a draft, and I post it only to act as a tightly bound string to constrict and swell my thinking finger.
A Mason's Grip
We have signs that we two know and no one else can recognize. The Odyssey, Book XIIIThis paper is torn in two: My two mason’s hands grip the larger scrap which still retains my name. Your half is between bent fingers torn bit by bit until there is nothing to hold onto, nothing to fear but your perforated palms.This paper which joined our hands let scatter, the white flakes of ash breathed throughout the darkening park, and eaten by the wind, who stomachs a nightmare yell, comes back with claws at my throat, begging me to choose: to chase the scraps, or cherish what remains within my reach; neither path is guaranteed. I coagulate in indecision as empty-handed you grow bored, turn, and walk the tv on.
Some mornings I can’t bring myself to work on the project at hand, but rather than wasting that time on inconsequential tasks I can at least write on writing. In this instance I’ll post a few summaries and comments on Adam Sexton’s Master Class in Fiction Writing (MCIFW).
The introduction posits that writing is like any craft or skill; not only can it be taught, it must be taught. The question “how?” is answered with some of the best examples in the English language, ones which demonstrate the standard battery of writing skills:
Sexton suggests that one visit an art museum with a painter (as opposed to a historian or critic) and note how s/he looks at paintings for information and experience, learning from a wide variety of styles and techniques.
Chapter 1, “Story Structure: ‘Araby’” looks at the short story as defined by some of the most gifted writers in the English language. Whereas Lou Reed says, “But you can’t be Shakespeare and you can’t be Joyce / So what is left instead?” (Magic and Loss: The Summation) Sexton suggests that being gifted goes a long way, but otherwise you can write a story that looks like a story. While stories often feature a protagonist and an antagonist the good ones always focus on the main character’s needs.
And so we examine James Joyce’s short story “Araby” as a model for the structure of a short story, one in which the protagonist’s conflict may “be relatively trivial, as long as he needs it sincerely, needs it badly“(5). As an element of the short story’s structure, it is this that draws the reader into the story. Without stating it, Sexton implies that a story that does not intrigue and satisfy a reader is a story that has failed. I think Ray Bradbury would agree with this sentiment–regardless of what your story is saying it must be constructed in a way that is compelling.
Rather than examining what the work stands for or signifies, Sexton turns us to look at the structure: the consciously chosen title, how the opening scene draws us in and convinces us of the world being portrayed by delivering not to our intellect through exposition but to our senses through drama, and “unbalances us” before delivering the story in a mixture of the dramatic and the expository. The conflict in “Araby” is the boy’s crush on the girl, and his promise that “If I go… I will bring you something”. But as literary critics know this can be expanded to mean far more than the surface provides (religious conflict, maturation, etc) via subtext.
Sexton points out that the activating incident in “Araby” comes quickly, convincing the reader to keep reading, and that development occurs as “forces of antagonism” build not only tension but reader-involvement and commitment to our protagonist. And while in some stories the climax comes with finality (”Reader, I married him.”–Jane Eyre) or an explosive mano e mano, “Araby”’s climax is simply a resolution, even if that resolution is failure. The consequences of that resolution lies in the denouement, the “unraveling”–the part where the write can say, definitively, “The End”. “Araby”, Sexton suggests, is weak in this final feature.
This was one of those thrilling middle-of-the-night scribbles which I spent some time on this morning.
A Mason's Grip
We have signs that we two know and no one else can recognize. The Odyssey, Book XIIIThis paper is lacerated in two: My two mason's hands grip the larger scrap which still retains my name. Your half is between bent fingers torn bit by bit until there is nothing to hold onto, nothing to fear but your perforated palms knuckles, cuticles, and fingertips flicking off the shreds like a farewell bid. The white flakes of ash breathed throughout the darkening park to be buried in the wind.
A vibrantly executed column by Llewyllyn Hinkes in The Morning News (Programming in English, or Translate :: ParseLib :: English) (thanks to Mark Crane) is worth the read if you’re into poetry or programming or language or both.
Of course, when Hinkes writes “nobody’s reading C++ debugging output on a lark” I daresay nobody’s reading poetry on a lark, either (presuming anybody’s reading poetry at all anymore — the 2006 Poetry in America study found that only 23% of adults who self-identified as literary readers acknowledged reading poetry regularly. An earlier NEA study, Reading at Risk, suggests that only 47% of US adults read at least 1 work literature, and 12% read at least 1 poem in 2002.).
More as a curiosity than a revelation, the column points to the possibility of computer-generated poetry as well, which reminds me of the Martian Report episode by Howard Rheingold wherein he visits a science fiction writing teletype. This prompted me to wonder how much we can learn about the nature of poetry–particularly it’s meaningful/less-ness–by studying random or instructed poetics produced in machin-generated “texts”.
P.S. I’m happy to say the Ashbery stanza didn’t quite fool me. It was too good at the end to be generated!
