When first contemplating what to do for my open genre assignment, my mind jumped to a creative project I'd already started: writing parodies of Billy Joel songs about the books we've read in class (After all, one of his songs is titled "The Stranger"). I decided, however, that I wouldn't really have time to record all the songs, and I really wanted to do a parody to go with Song of Solomon, so those will have to wait until winter break. It's one of those "I'll finish it eventually" projects.
Instead, I opted for something more interactive: a choose-your-own-adventure story! I did one for Creative Writing last year, featuring a damaged spaceship and potentially hostile encounters with aliens. It was a lot of fun to write. So why not make another?
I chose to make a choosable-path (the proper, non-trademarked word for choose-your-own-adventure) version of The Stranger because Meursault has very little choice in his actions, and even when he does, his choices have little impact on the future. "I realized in that moment you could either shoot or not shoot." "To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing." etc.
In order to keep the length down, I only transformed part 1 of Camus' novel. But there are plenty of choices to make even in just part 1. Do you go to the funeral or not? Do you cry? Do you tell Marie you love her? Do you write the letter for Raymond?
The best part of writing the alternative plot developments was figuring out how many ways there are for Meursault to accidentally kill other characters. Every good choosable-path adventure has tons of ways to end the story. The one I did for Creative Writing had only one "correct" (optimal) ending, but five ways to abandon your responsibilities, six ways to get your companions killed, and five ways to wind up dead yourself. Hey, it's all fun and games until nobody gets hurt.
One big change from my previous interactive story was that this time around, instead of printing out a bunch of pages and an index to flip through, I formatted the story as a set of hyperlinked slides in a Google Docs presentation. It ends up working very nicely as a way to make choosable-path stories available digitally (and has a much better user interface than a paper version...).
Anyway, the interactive version of The Stranger is available on this blog for your enjoyment! So without further ado, click on the tab at the top of this page that says "CYOA" and see if you have what it takes to fight the Absurd and win!
(Probably not)
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Song of Solomon, Literary Criticism, Essays, Blog Posts, and the Problem of Continuous Thinking (Part 2)
Literary criticism. Ugh.
For a long time I thought that teen vampire romance novels were the most vacuous genre of writing ever invented. Then I discovered academic literary criticism.
When I read a piece of "Lit Crit," my default expectation is that I'm going to disagree with what the author is trying to argue. Sometimes I come to accept the interpretation presented as somewhat valid. Most of the time I don't. In fact, my rate of disliking literary criticism is higher than my rate of disliking literature.
I blame it on being a writer myself. When I write, I know exactly what I want to say and what I want the reader to get out of it. Sure, the reader's personal experience might make them have different reactions to some things than I would, but the message of the book, character motivations, and symbolism (or lack thereof) of plot points and imagery should not radically change. Certain readers may be more attracted to certain types of characters than others (see Part 1). The reader can also certainly decide whether or not the writing succeeds in delivering its message or soliciting the reactions and sympathy the writer intended, but anyone who argues that Gregor Samsa subconsciously turns into a bug so he doesn't have to go to work or that Meursault's murder of the Arab is a "symptom of his homosexual sadomasochistic fantasies" (Ben Stolzfus' description of Julian L. Stamm's analysis) is off their rocker.
In short, I think the "Death of the Author" is a load of crap.
Anyway, my default reaction to literary criticism is to disregard it. I don't oppose the criticism part--I love to criticize books, if you haven't noticed yet--and the literary part is kind of unavoidable. The problem, frankly, is the format. The essay format. The college thesis format. It forces the writer to be like Hugh Whitbread (a pompous ass, in case you've forgotten) and write as if their interpretation is the only right interpretation and is a completely logical and loophole-less interpretation. There's no room for equivocation or taking into account other peoples' ideas, opinions, and feelings.
If you do that in kindergarten, someone will tell on you.
Argumentative essays are always the hardest for me to write because I always feel like I'm turning into one of the aforementioned critics and throwing the rest of the literary community from the train. I distrust literary criticism for the same reason I trust psychology less than neuroscience (Psychologists treat theories like toothbrushes--no self-respecting person would ever use anyone else's [apologies to anyone who is considering studying psychology or whose parents are psychologists--I have nothing against the people, it's just that the system is messed up]). Literary criticism just seems generally unscientific. Rather than forming a theory around the facts, a lot of times it feels like the author is cherrypicking facts to support their theory. Sometimes the authors cite previous works, but it's usually just a tidbit or two from each that they use to spin a whole new interpretation out of. Maybe they could... uh... ask the original author of the book about some things? At least if the author is still living? Or if they're dead, just go with the interpretation the original author wrote about their own book?
End rant. If anyone wants to challenge me in the comments, go ahead. I'll try to be open-minded about your responses, unlike most literary critics.
...which leads us into Part 3, which is about writing my own lit crit essay. I probably could have done this all as one big post, but I didn't want it to look intimidating.
For a long time I thought that teen vampire romance novels were the most vacuous genre of writing ever invented. Then I discovered academic literary criticism.
When I read a piece of "Lit Crit," my default expectation is that I'm going to disagree with what the author is trying to argue. Sometimes I come to accept the interpretation presented as somewhat valid. Most of the time I don't. In fact, my rate of disliking literary criticism is higher than my rate of disliking literature.
I blame it on being a writer myself. When I write, I know exactly what I want to say and what I want the reader to get out of it. Sure, the reader's personal experience might make them have different reactions to some things than I would, but the message of the book, character motivations, and symbolism (or lack thereof) of plot points and imagery should not radically change. Certain readers may be more attracted to certain types of characters than others (see Part 1). The reader can also certainly decide whether or not the writing succeeds in delivering its message or soliciting the reactions and sympathy the writer intended, but anyone who argues that Gregor Samsa subconsciously turns into a bug so he doesn't have to go to work or that Meursault's murder of the Arab is a "symptom of his homosexual sadomasochistic fantasies" (Ben Stolzfus' description of Julian L. Stamm's analysis) is off their rocker.
In short, I think the "Death of the Author" is a load of crap.
Anyway, my default reaction to literary criticism is to disregard it. I don't oppose the criticism part--I love to criticize books, if you haven't noticed yet--and the literary part is kind of unavoidable. The problem, frankly, is the format. The essay format. The college thesis format. It forces the writer to be like Hugh Whitbread (a pompous ass, in case you've forgotten) and write as if their interpretation is the only right interpretation and is a completely logical and loophole-less interpretation. There's no room for equivocation or taking into account other peoples' ideas, opinions, and feelings.
If you do that in kindergarten, someone will tell on you.
Argumentative essays are always the hardest for me to write because I always feel like I'm turning into one of the aforementioned critics and throwing the rest of the literary community from the train. I distrust literary criticism for the same reason I trust psychology less than neuroscience (Psychologists treat theories like toothbrushes--no self-respecting person would ever use anyone else's [apologies to anyone who is considering studying psychology or whose parents are psychologists--I have nothing against the people, it's just that the system is messed up]). Literary criticism just seems generally unscientific. Rather than forming a theory around the facts, a lot of times it feels like the author is cherrypicking facts to support their theory. Sometimes the authors cite previous works, but it's usually just a tidbit or two from each that they use to spin a whole new interpretation out of. Maybe they could... uh... ask the original author of the book about some things? At least if the author is still living? Or if they're dead, just go with the interpretation the original author wrote about their own book?
End rant. If anyone wants to challenge me in the comments, go ahead. I'll try to be open-minded about your responses, unlike most literary critics.
...which leads us into Part 3, which is about writing my own lit crit essay. I probably could have done this all as one big post, but I didn't want it to look intimidating.
Song of Solomon, Literary Criticism, Essays, Blog Posts, and the Problem of Continuous Thinking (Part 1)
I haven't updated my blog in a while. It's not that I don't write posts; it's that I never finish or publish them. I've got a couple sitting in my drafts folder that stop halfway through. What killed these poor posts at a young and tender age? Was it lack of time? Did my internet connection suddenly die?
No.
They just went obsolete before they were finished.
Song of Solomon is a rather difficult book to write blog posts about, since everything keeps changing. I come back from class discussion with a great idea to write about, and I start typing, and decide I need a bit more time to think things over, so I read the next chapter and BAM! I find out that all the assumptions I made when writing my blog post were wrong, or possibly wrong.
For example, my post-in-progress about Macon Dead. I started that post early in the book, before the part where Milkman hits his dad. In those first few chapters, I saw Macon Dead as a pretty sympathetic character, and was writing to defend him from the slanderous accusations of him being similar to Mr. Rochester. Sure, they've both got "crazy" wives, but Macon didn't show any signs of outright sadism like Rochester. He was just emotionally drained and too concerned with his business. The way I saw it was that Macon was driven to do the less-than-perfect things he did (ignoring/oppressing his wife, criticizing his son, evicting old ladies, being greedy) because he was convinced that was the only way to survive in society and bring up his children. In my initial interpretation of Macon, he sought to regain the things his father had lost (land, wealth, comfortable life, etc) and ensure that no one could take advantage of him and take those things away (like they did to his father). In order to survive in a white-dominated world, he felt the need to "act white" and distance himself from Pilate and the kind of life she represents (free and loving, but down in the dirt as far as the upper class is concerned). His criticism of Milkman and his forbidding him from visiting Pilate were representative of his attempts to bring up his son to be able to keep the Dead family's precarious social standing among whites. That's what made him a sympathetic character--unlike Rochester, who is acting entirely in his own self-interest, Macon just has a perhaps deranged way of taking care of his family. He's doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons. Maybe I just take the sympathetic view of him because I like bold, determined, somewhat deranged, self-emotionally-repressed characters.
The scene where Macon tells Milkman about the relationship between Ruth and Dr. Foster, however, made me less sympathetic to Macon. Sob story? Sure. But it made him start to seem like Rochester. I liked him better before he blamed everything on having a crazy wife. So much for the "Macon is a sympathetic character while Rochester isn't" argument. Thus died a blog post.
It got worse. Once Ruth's version of the events was thrown into the mix, and once Macon started obsessing over Pilate's "inheritance," I couldn't really sympathize with him. That doesn't mean I like Ruth, either--I was disgusted by the nursing part, more so by the 'in bed with the dead' part. When she finally got to tell her story, my thoughts were:
"Okay. Somebody's lying. Either Macon is imagining things or trying to make his son hate his wife, or Ruth is trying to cover up her past and turn her son against her husband. Gee, ain't this a great family?"
I would prefer if it turned out that Ruth is trying to cover up her past, because then Macon isn't a whiny wife-blaming jerk like Rochester. Unfortunately, with his blatant greediness in regards to the bag of gold, it seems like he'd be likely to slander his wife and make a lackey out of his son. Still, I think Song of Solomon is too complex a book to have a clear-cut villain like that, especially if it's supposed to be about father/son relationships.
Song of Solomon has thus dug itself into that hole where there really aren't any particularly likable characters. Macon might be lying. Ruth might be lying. Milkman has a Meursault attitude with a Samsa lifestyle and not much interesting about him. Pilate is cool, but also weird and off-putting, and since I originally sided with Macon I'm still a bit against her. Hagar is a vengeful, heartbroken nutcase (if I haven't mentioned this in a previous blog post, I'm not a big fan of romantically motivated characters). Magdalene called Lena is unfairly critical of Milkman. First Corinthians can't make up her mind (again, romantically motivated character). Guitar is probably the most likable character even though he's terrorist-ish. Technically he's a murderer and not a terrorist, since he's not trying to enact political change--and strangely, he might be more likable if he were a terrorist. Then he'd seem like a rebel who is trying to change things for the better (albeit through nasty means--once again, wrong things for right reasons) and not someone with wacko (Waco?) theories about racial population balancing.
Okay, fine. Maybe Rev. Cooper is likable. And hopefully Milkman will turn into more of a protagonist and less of a camera as we go deeper into Part II.
But back on the subject of things going obsolete before they're done, look for the next post...
No.
They just went obsolete before they were finished.
Song of Solomon is a rather difficult book to write blog posts about, since everything keeps changing. I come back from class discussion with a great idea to write about, and I start typing, and decide I need a bit more time to think things over, so I read the next chapter and BAM! I find out that all the assumptions I made when writing my blog post were wrong, or possibly wrong.
For example, my post-in-progress about Macon Dead. I started that post early in the book, before the part where Milkman hits his dad. In those first few chapters, I saw Macon Dead as a pretty sympathetic character, and was writing to defend him from the slanderous accusations of him being similar to Mr. Rochester. Sure, they've both got "crazy" wives, but Macon didn't show any signs of outright sadism like Rochester. He was just emotionally drained and too concerned with his business. The way I saw it was that Macon was driven to do the less-than-perfect things he did (ignoring/oppressing his wife, criticizing his son, evicting old ladies, being greedy) because he was convinced that was the only way to survive in society and bring up his children. In my initial interpretation of Macon, he sought to regain the things his father had lost (land, wealth, comfortable life, etc) and ensure that no one could take advantage of him and take those things away (like they did to his father). In order to survive in a white-dominated world, he felt the need to "act white" and distance himself from Pilate and the kind of life she represents (free and loving, but down in the dirt as far as the upper class is concerned). His criticism of Milkman and his forbidding him from visiting Pilate were representative of his attempts to bring up his son to be able to keep the Dead family's precarious social standing among whites. That's what made him a sympathetic character--unlike Rochester, who is acting entirely in his own self-interest, Macon just has a perhaps deranged way of taking care of his family. He's doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons. Maybe I just take the sympathetic view of him because I like bold, determined, somewhat deranged, self-emotionally-repressed characters.
The scene where Macon tells Milkman about the relationship between Ruth and Dr. Foster, however, made me less sympathetic to Macon. Sob story? Sure. But it made him start to seem like Rochester. I liked him better before he blamed everything on having a crazy wife. So much for the "Macon is a sympathetic character while Rochester isn't" argument. Thus died a blog post.
It got worse. Once Ruth's version of the events was thrown into the mix, and once Macon started obsessing over Pilate's "inheritance," I couldn't really sympathize with him. That doesn't mean I like Ruth, either--I was disgusted by the nursing part, more so by the 'in bed with the dead' part. When she finally got to tell her story, my thoughts were:
"Okay. Somebody's lying. Either Macon is imagining things or trying to make his son hate his wife, or Ruth is trying to cover up her past and turn her son against her husband. Gee, ain't this a great family?"
I would prefer if it turned out that Ruth is trying to cover up her past, because then Macon isn't a whiny wife-blaming jerk like Rochester. Unfortunately, with his blatant greediness in regards to the bag of gold, it seems like he'd be likely to slander his wife and make a lackey out of his son. Still, I think Song of Solomon is too complex a book to have a clear-cut villain like that, especially if it's supposed to be about father/son relationships.
Song of Solomon has thus dug itself into that hole where there really aren't any particularly likable characters. Macon might be lying. Ruth might be lying. Milkman has a Meursault attitude with a Samsa lifestyle and not much interesting about him. Pilate is cool, but also weird and off-putting, and since I originally sided with Macon I'm still a bit against her. Hagar is a vengeful, heartbroken nutcase (if I haven't mentioned this in a previous blog post, I'm not a big fan of romantically motivated characters). Magdalene called Lena is unfairly critical of Milkman. First Corinthians can't make up her mind (again, romantically motivated character). Guitar is probably the most likable character even though he's terrorist-ish. Technically he's a murderer and not a terrorist, since he's not trying to enact political change--and strangely, he might be more likable if he were a terrorist. Then he'd seem like a rebel who is trying to change things for the better (albeit through nasty means--once again, wrong things for right reasons) and not someone with wacko (Waco?) theories about racial population balancing.
Okay, fine. Maybe Rev. Cooper is likable. And hopefully Milkman will turn into more of a protagonist and less of a camera as we go deeper into Part II.
But back on the subject of things going obsolete before they're done, look for the next post...
Sunday, November 17, 2013
The mountain bird
Early on in part 2 of Wide Sargasso Sea (p. 64 in the edition I have), Rochester hears a "mountain bird" whistling and asks Antoinette what kind it is. Antoinette gives no answer, and "whistling bird that lives in the mountains in the Caribbean" is not enough information to make a sure identification. On page 152, we finally learn that this bird is a solitaire (a type of thrush). This is enough for us to presume that Rochester is talking about a Rufous-throated Solitaire (Myadestes genibarbis), which is native to the Caribbean and is referred to as the Siffleur Montagne (Mountain Whistler) by the locals. For those of you who want to get a better sense of what noise Rochester is describing in these passages, I found a video on IBC with one of these birds singing:
http://ibc.lynxeds.com/video/rufous-throated-solitaire-myadestes-genibarbis/individual-singing-dawn-0
Brought to you by your local ornithological fanatic.
http://ibc.lynxeds.com/video/rufous-throated-solitaire-myadestes-genibarbis/individual-singing-dawn-0
Brought to you by your local ornithological fanatic.
Friday, November 15, 2013
Passing the antagonist buck
In class we discussed how Rochester told his story to make himself more sympathetic… but no matter what he does I can't feel sympathetic to him (see previous post). Instead, his only way of potentially making me think for a moment that he is the protagonist of the story is by making the rest of the characters even less sympathetic, a method that might be called "assholier than thou."
To start off with, Rochester is paranoid. He thinks everyone else is in on some joke or big secret or he's the victim of a massive conspiracy. He gives us plenty of details to support this: Daniel Cosway's letter and conversation, everyone laughing weirdly, and his wife trying to poison him. Plus, there's the obeah woman on the side and he's been reading too many books about zombies.
This shouldn't make us sympathetic to him, though. Lots of antagonists are victims to torment and torture before they die. Just take a look at Disney villains. Scar could easily make it seem like that little brat Simba was conniving with two natives and a bunch of his closest advisors to overthrow him. Frollo could tell his story in such a way that Esmerelda is actually some sort of demon temptress trying to lead him to hell with the help of her gruesome sidekick and traitorous love interest. Even Maleficent is wronged: everyone else ostracized her and didn't invite her to the party!
What Rochester does to try and elicit our sympathy is to portray the Caribbean as a wild, uncivilized place full of wild, uncivilized people. But most of all, he extends this prescribed barbarianism to his wife. From Rochester's perspective, Antoinette is always acting weird. She throws rocks, kisses subhumans, speaks patois, and goes by the diminutive of her mother's name. When there is dialogue, her sentences seem choppy, almost pidgin, because pieces of the conversation are omitted or narrated. The only positive description of Antoinette we get from Rochester is that she is beautiful and he lusts after her… which seems to be the one type of involvement he's willing to have with the Caribbean and its people (Amelie).
So he's a jerk. But he's managing to prevent me from developing sympathy towards the other characters, a real feat for a narrator who I automatically distrust.
To start off with, Rochester is paranoid. He thinks everyone else is in on some joke or big secret or he's the victim of a massive conspiracy. He gives us plenty of details to support this: Daniel Cosway's letter and conversation, everyone laughing weirdly, and his wife trying to poison him. Plus, there's the obeah woman on the side and he's been reading too many books about zombies.
This shouldn't make us sympathetic to him, though. Lots of antagonists are victims to torment and torture before they die. Just take a look at Disney villains. Scar could easily make it seem like that little brat Simba was conniving with two natives and a bunch of his closest advisors to overthrow him. Frollo could tell his story in such a way that Esmerelda is actually some sort of demon temptress trying to lead him to hell with the help of her gruesome sidekick and traitorous love interest. Even Maleficent is wronged: everyone else ostracized her and didn't invite her to the party!
What Rochester does to try and elicit our sympathy is to portray the Caribbean as a wild, uncivilized place full of wild, uncivilized people. But most of all, he extends this prescribed barbarianism to his wife. From Rochester's perspective, Antoinette is always acting weird. She throws rocks, kisses subhumans, speaks patois, and goes by the diminutive of her mother's name. When there is dialogue, her sentences seem choppy, almost pidgin, because pieces of the conversation are omitted or narrated. The only positive description of Antoinette we get from Rochester is that she is beautiful and he lusts after her… which seems to be the one type of involvement he's willing to have with the Caribbean and its people (Amelie).
So he's a jerk. But he's managing to prevent me from developing sympathy towards the other characters, a real feat for a narrator who I automatically distrust.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Hating Hating the Narrator
In an earlier post, I wrote about whether or not a character had to be likable, and came to the conclusion that a jerk could still be a good narrator if they were understandable.
Well, maybe I was wrong, because I can't stand Rochester.
Having not read Jane Eyre, my only previous exposure to the character is from Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, in which he's portrayed (perhaps satirically) the way a Bronte fangirl would see him: hunky, heroic, brooding, etc, battling evil alongside the protagonist even as his house burns to the ground. I was expecting him to be a pretty cool guy, though perhaps not completely understanding of the culture of the Caribbean.
Instead of being a funny action-rom-com leading man, Rochester comes across as (to quote Peter Walsh) an intolerable ass. He's in the Caribbean for no apparent reason other than to complain about the food, the people, the language, the names of towns, the colors of the landscape, and his wife's eyes. His disdain for (or at least discomfort with) the natural landscape might be what puts me off the most. If he was paying more attention to the hummingbirds and quail-doves than to his wife, I'd find it perfectly understandable, but he just constantly mentions how everything is wild and uncivilized without showing genuine interest in the wildness.
It's true that I can understand why Rochester acts this way: he's been raised in poo-poo-proper English society and has convinced himself that England has the most beautiful weather in the world, English people are the most civilized in the world, and English cooking is the most refined and properly flavored in the world. Unfortunately, this delusion doesn't do anything interesting to the story. It's not unusual enough to add an interesting twist to the story like Jake's attempts at full internalization of emotion did. He's just one of those guys who goes on YouTube and dislikes every video that doesn't show cats.
I wasn't such a big fan of Antoinette's choppy narration with all of the quotes 'like this' instead of using normal quotation marks, but Rochester makes me wish she had continued to tell the story.
End rant.
Well, maybe I was wrong, because I can't stand Rochester.
Having not read Jane Eyre, my only previous exposure to the character is from Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, in which he's portrayed (perhaps satirically) the way a Bronte fangirl would see him: hunky, heroic, brooding, etc, battling evil alongside the protagonist even as his house burns to the ground. I was expecting him to be a pretty cool guy, though perhaps not completely understanding of the culture of the Caribbean.
Instead of being a funny action-rom-com leading man, Rochester comes across as (to quote Peter Walsh) an intolerable ass. He's in the Caribbean for no apparent reason other than to complain about the food, the people, the language, the names of towns, the colors of the landscape, and his wife's eyes. His disdain for (or at least discomfort with) the natural landscape might be what puts me off the most. If he was paying more attention to the hummingbirds and quail-doves than to his wife, I'd find it perfectly understandable, but he just constantly mentions how everything is wild and uncivilized without showing genuine interest in the wildness.
It's true that I can understand why Rochester acts this way: he's been raised in poo-poo-proper English society and has convinced himself that England has the most beautiful weather in the world, English people are the most civilized in the world, and English cooking is the most refined and properly flavored in the world. Unfortunately, this delusion doesn't do anything interesting to the story. It's not unusual enough to add an interesting twist to the story like Jake's attempts at full internalization of emotion did. He's just one of those guys who goes on YouTube and dislikes every video that doesn't show cats.
I wasn't such a big fan of Antoinette's choppy narration with all of the quotes 'like this' instead of using normal quotation marks, but Rochester makes me wish she had continued to tell the story.
End rant.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Being Transformed into a Monstrous Vermin
Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis is on track to be my favorite book we have read this year by far. Though I hesitate to call it "science fiction," the book fits well into the category of speculative fiction and has more in common with "social science fiction" than fantasy. Social science fiction tends to disregard technical and physical practicality of the situations involved and place emphasis on the reaction of modern society to impressive (or simply ubiquitous) new technologies. Examples you may have heard of include Feed, Minority Report, We'll Remember it for you Wholesale (the basis for the movie Total Recall), and Gattaca. Many dystopias could also be classified as social science fiction.
As a work of social science fiction, The Metamorphosis certainly makes no attempt to explain how its situation came to be (Gregor must have... uh... metamophosed during the night) and jumps right into exploring how people would treat a monstrous vermin even if they suspected it was one of their family members. However, it goes about it in a style that reminds me of an author of a less serious form of speculative fiction.
Helpless protagonist, ridiculous situations, deadpan narration. Remind you of anything? Anything involving petunias, towels, mice, horrendous poetry, and pan-galactic gargleblasters?
The fact that Kafka's writing reminds me of Douglas Adams only makes me like it even more. Granted, Kafka is slightly more serious in how he goes about the story, but a number of thematic elements are common between the two authors' writing.
Like Gregor Samsa, Arthur Dent is a guy with an unimpressive job (works at local radio station) who wakes up one day facing a horrible calamity (destruction of the earth) but focuses on a more local issue (his house being bulldozed to make way for a bypass). Dent realizes a bit more than Samsa that the things around him make little sense, but his goals are still largely unreasonable considering his situation (trying to continue a normal human lifestyle when human life is nearly extinct).
Dent's humanity isn't necessarily degraded in HHGTTG, but he is certainly a fish out of water (insect out of proportion?) in the weird galactic setting dominated by dolphins and mice. Instead of not being human making him somehow lesser than those around him, it's the fact that he is a human, a species that merits no more description than "mostly harmless."
The other modern work of speculative fiction The Metamorphosis brings to mind is the movie District 9 directed by Neill Blomkamp, at least in the sense that it includes the premise of "guy gets turned into a giant insect/insectoid alien and is promptly ostracized by society." My guess, though, is that at no point in the book will Gregor Samsa don a mech suit and battle the minions of a xenophobic security firm.
As a work of social science fiction, The Metamorphosis certainly makes no attempt to explain how its situation came to be (Gregor must have... uh... metamophosed during the night) and jumps right into exploring how people would treat a monstrous vermin even if they suspected it was one of their family members. However, it goes about it in a style that reminds me of an author of a less serious form of speculative fiction.
Helpless protagonist, ridiculous situations, deadpan narration. Remind you of anything? Anything involving petunias, towels, mice, horrendous poetry, and pan-galactic gargleblasters?
The fact that Kafka's writing reminds me of Douglas Adams only makes me like it even more. Granted, Kafka is slightly more serious in how he goes about the story, but a number of thematic elements are common between the two authors' writing.
Like Gregor Samsa, Arthur Dent is a guy with an unimpressive job (works at local radio station) who wakes up one day facing a horrible calamity (destruction of the earth) but focuses on a more local issue (his house being bulldozed to make way for a bypass). Dent realizes a bit more than Samsa that the things around him make little sense, but his goals are still largely unreasonable considering his situation (trying to continue a normal human lifestyle when human life is nearly extinct).
Dent's humanity isn't necessarily degraded in HHGTTG, but he is certainly a fish out of water (insect out of proportion?) in the weird galactic setting dominated by dolphins and mice. Instead of not being human making him somehow lesser than those around him, it's the fact that he is a human, a species that merits no more description than "mostly harmless."
The other modern work of speculative fiction The Metamorphosis brings to mind is the movie District 9 directed by Neill Blomkamp, at least in the sense that it includes the premise of "guy gets turned into a giant insect/insectoid alien and is promptly ostracized by society." My guess, though, is that at no point in the book will Gregor Samsa don a mech suit and battle the minions of a xenophobic security firm.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Them Hipsters, part deux...
...in which I take back some of what I said about the characters in The Sun Also Rises. Not all of it, not most of it, but some of it.
Pedro and Cohn:
After reading the last few chapters of TSAR, I find a few of the characters less repulsive than before. As mentioned in the previous post, Cohn gained back some decency by avoiding Brett and (possibly) reuniting with Frances. His immaturity and naivete were passed on to Pedro Romero, who was pretty sure that Brett was the love of his life and would make a great spouse if she would just become an "honest woman" and grow her hair out. Maybe Pedro took some of Cohn's irrationality.
Brett:
She solves her Pedro problem. She shows signs of considering how her lifestyle affects others (aka deciding "not to be a bitch"). She actually seems kind of caring when she tells Jake not to get drunk. Trouble is, her conversion is too sudden. An about-face at the end of the book can't make me like a character I've spent two hundred pages disliking.
Jake:
The last line of the book makes me hate Jake a lot less than I did when I wrote the previous post. It's entirely possible that this is just my dark interpretation of the wording, but by saying "isn't it pretty to think so?", Jake indicates that he at least realizes he can't be with Brett. This is a big flip from earlier in the book when it seemed like Jake wanted to get back together with Brett and she was the one resisting the idea (granted, she didn't want Jake to come with her to San Sebastian because she intended to be with Cohn)...
...which means that Jake has actually changed over the course of the story.
YES!!!
I like characters who change, even if the change is a transition from insanity (when defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results) to resignation. Jake's transformation is somewhat less abrupt than Brett's, since he starts to realize he has screwed up when Montoya stops smiling at him (there's Montoya again... my favorite character in the book). Still, he was kinda boring for much of the book, so his extant character arc is merely improves my opinion to something warmer than apathy.
And I still don't understand where everyone's money comes from.
Pedro and Cohn:
After reading the last few chapters of TSAR, I find a few of the characters less repulsive than before. As mentioned in the previous post, Cohn gained back some decency by avoiding Brett and (possibly) reuniting with Frances. His immaturity and naivete were passed on to Pedro Romero, who was pretty sure that Brett was the love of his life and would make a great spouse if she would just become an "honest woman" and grow her hair out. Maybe Pedro took some of Cohn's irrationality.
Brett:
She solves her Pedro problem. She shows signs of considering how her lifestyle affects others (aka deciding "not to be a bitch"). She actually seems kind of caring when she tells Jake not to get drunk. Trouble is, her conversion is too sudden. An about-face at the end of the book can't make me like a character I've spent two hundred pages disliking.
Jake:
The last line of the book makes me hate Jake a lot less than I did when I wrote the previous post. It's entirely possible that this is just my dark interpretation of the wording, but by saying "isn't it pretty to think so?", Jake indicates that he at least realizes he can't be with Brett. This is a big flip from earlier in the book when it seemed like Jake wanted to get back together with Brett and she was the one resisting the idea (granted, she didn't want Jake to come with her to San Sebastian because she intended to be with Cohn)...
...which means that Jake has actually changed over the course of the story.
YES!!!
I like characters who change, even if the change is a transition from insanity (when defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results) to resignation. Jake's transformation is somewhat less abrupt than Brett's, since he starts to realize he has screwed up when Montoya stops smiling at him (there's Montoya again... my favorite character in the book). Still, he was kinda boring for much of the book, so his extant character arc is merely improves my opinion to something warmer than apathy.
And I still don't understand where everyone's money comes from.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Them Hipsters...
...them bullfight-watching, pernod-drinking, expat hipsters.
Think about it. They're writers. They care so much about irony. Brett was androgynous before it was cool. Jake and the rest of his com(ex)patriates are hipsters. Except for Cohn. He's the opposite of a hipster. He's chivalrous and romantic after it was cool.
Actually, the main point of this post is not that the characters in The Sun Also Rises are hipsters. It's about likability. A week or so ago I read a column in the New York Times Book Review (available online here) about whether characters in a novel have to be likable in order to keep readers interested. This got me thinking about the characters in the novels we read in class and the characters I write in my own fiction.
Begin rant.
My standards for "likability" revolve more on understanding how a character thinks than whether or not they are a nice person. I don't mind characters who are selfish, violent, or crude if I think they aren't deranged. I liked reading about Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart even if he beats his wife, cuts people's heads off, and kills his adoptive son, because I could see how much his thought process was motivated by a paranoia towards "weakness". Victor Frankenstein might ignore the possible consequences of his work and cause the death of a sizable number of his friends and family, but it's because he feels the only point of his life is to make some scientific breakthrough (and later on, to exact revenge). I like characters who are rationally irrational.
I tend to like to read about the characters I write... otherwise I wouldn't write about them. I've created my fair share of understandable jerks. Murderous paranoid philosopher? That was fun to write. Guy who makes a living off of misleading people (and isn't a politician)? I churned out 50,000 words with him as the protagonist. One of my favorite characters in a long-running, constantly changing project I intend to finish eventually (oh, sometime in the next twenty years...) is a military commander so disillusioned with the world that he equates diplomacy with murder. I don't have to agree with his might-makes-right views to enjoy writing about him and respect/pity him for the way he sees the world.
When characters continually act irrationally irrational, though, I start to lose interest in their problems. I start wondering why they don't change their behavior. They get whiny. This was my issue with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, a book I will refrain from criticizing any further because that would take up several paragraphs of ranting. Let's just say that Sherman Alexie is grouped with Nathaniel Hawthorne and, to an extent, Virginia Woolf in the category of authors whose shorter works I enjoy and longer works I do not.
Protagonists seem irrationally irrational when their motivations are things I just don't consider serious enough. If the character is actually deluded, in the case of Okonkwo and Frankenstein, something minor like masculinity or scientific glory can work as a motivating force. If the character is presented as a semi-reasonable person, though, weak motivation makes them seem shallow.
So what's a weak motivation? Love.
Characters motivated primarily by romantic or sexual impulses typically seem shallow to me. Never Let Me Go was a major letdown because it ignored the topic of cloning ethics and went after human relationships instead. Katniss was getting a bit whiny by the time Mockingjay rolled around... yeah, whatever with the whole revolution thing and ending widespread government oppression, just get me my boyfriend alive and non-brainwashed. For those of you about to jump on me for dissing The Hunger Games, I will say that Suzanne Collins managed to pull the end of the series together in a way that was satisfyingly dark to keep me interested.
On a similar note, I think it is possible for an author to pull off an enjoyable book without having any particularly deep or "likeable" characters. I think Jurassic Park is a good example. If the plot itself is engaging enough, the author can be a bit more lax with developing your interest in the characters.
(I'll have to write a post sometime about exactly why I like Jurassic Park so much...)
The problem with The Sun Also Rises, then, is that I don't like most of the characters and I'm not terribly engaged by the plot. Mike is an annoying drunkard. Cohn acts like a middleschooler. Brett messes with other people's lives and then complains about how hard it is on her. Jake just sits there and occasionally tries to get reacquainted with the woman who already turned him down. Pedro Romero is okay, but he's minor enough that my appreciation of him being not a jerk is less powerful than my hope that he gets gored in the bull-fighting ring so that something exciting can happen with the plot. Bill Gorton provides comic relief, but like the rest of them he leads a pointless life and somehow buys copious amounts of alcohol despite being bankrupt.
What makes these characters tick? Why do they lead this ridiculous lifestyle? Are they really so disillusioned after World War I that they can't do something useful with their lives? Cohn, Brett, and Jake fall into the unfortunate category of motivated by love. Pedro would be more interesting if he was some sort of vehement bullfighting purist (wait... that's Montoya... hey, a character I like!). He's also motivate by love, to an extent. Love of bullfighting, love of Brett. Mike is motivated by drinking. Bill is motivated by... irony?
What annoys me most is that the characters don't show any signs of changing the way they live. Okay, Jake, so your life is a mixture of great (bullfights, and Brett) and sucky (that injury, and Brett). Seems like the root of your problems is Brett and her corresponding drama. It's been established that you can't be with Brett. So... can't you flee? Leave Brett far behind? Go do something more exciting than cruising the bars in Paris or watching a dude with a cape kill domesticated animals? Join a monastery or something. Cohn left. He finally realized the solution to the unsolvable problem was to get away from the problem. That made me respect Cohn to an extent, but he still acted immature before that. Brett could leave, too. Avoid Jake and Pedro and Cohn and possibly Mike. But no, they just keep on drinking and going to cafes (and drinking) and staying in hotels (and drinking) and going to festivals (and drinking) and getting into arguments and fights (caused in part by drinking).
Yes, Jake has his sympathetic moments. But the combination of pointless lifestyle and hopeless behavior prevent me from feeling like his story matters to me.
End rant.
Think about it. They're writers. They care so much about irony. Brett was androgynous before it was cool. Jake and the rest of his com(ex)patriates are hipsters. Except for Cohn. He's the opposite of a hipster. He's chivalrous and romantic after it was cool.
Actually, the main point of this post is not that the characters in The Sun Also Rises are hipsters. It's about likability. A week or so ago I read a column in the New York Times Book Review (available online here) about whether characters in a novel have to be likable in order to keep readers interested. This got me thinking about the characters in the novels we read in class and the characters I write in my own fiction.
Begin rant.
My standards for "likability" revolve more on understanding how a character thinks than whether or not they are a nice person. I don't mind characters who are selfish, violent, or crude if I think they aren't deranged. I liked reading about Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart even if he beats his wife, cuts people's heads off, and kills his adoptive son, because I could see how much his thought process was motivated by a paranoia towards "weakness". Victor Frankenstein might ignore the possible consequences of his work and cause the death of a sizable number of his friends and family, but it's because he feels the only point of his life is to make some scientific breakthrough (and later on, to exact revenge). I like characters who are rationally irrational.
I tend to like to read about the characters I write... otherwise I wouldn't write about them. I've created my fair share of understandable jerks. Murderous paranoid philosopher? That was fun to write. Guy who makes a living off of misleading people (and isn't a politician)? I churned out 50,000 words with him as the protagonist. One of my favorite characters in a long-running, constantly changing project I intend to finish eventually (oh, sometime in the next twenty years...) is a military commander so disillusioned with the world that he equates diplomacy with murder. I don't have to agree with his might-makes-right views to enjoy writing about him and respect/pity him for the way he sees the world.
When characters continually act irrationally irrational, though, I start to lose interest in their problems. I start wondering why they don't change their behavior. They get whiny. This was my issue with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, a book I will refrain from criticizing any further because that would take up several paragraphs of ranting. Let's just say that Sherman Alexie is grouped with Nathaniel Hawthorne and, to an extent, Virginia Woolf in the category of authors whose shorter works I enjoy and longer works I do not.
Protagonists seem irrationally irrational when their motivations are things I just don't consider serious enough. If the character is actually deluded, in the case of Okonkwo and Frankenstein, something minor like masculinity or scientific glory can work as a motivating force. If the character is presented as a semi-reasonable person, though, weak motivation makes them seem shallow.
So what's a weak motivation? Love.
Characters motivated primarily by romantic or sexual impulses typically seem shallow to me. Never Let Me Go was a major letdown because it ignored the topic of cloning ethics and went after human relationships instead. Katniss was getting a bit whiny by the time Mockingjay rolled around... yeah, whatever with the whole revolution thing and ending widespread government oppression, just get me my boyfriend alive and non-brainwashed. For those of you about to jump on me for dissing The Hunger Games, I will say that Suzanne Collins managed to pull the end of the series together in a way that was satisfyingly dark to keep me interested.
On a similar note, I think it is possible for an author to pull off an enjoyable book without having any particularly deep or "likeable" characters. I think Jurassic Park is a good example. If the plot itself is engaging enough, the author can be a bit more lax with developing your interest in the characters.
(I'll have to write a post sometime about exactly why I like Jurassic Park so much...)
The problem with The Sun Also Rises, then, is that I don't like most of the characters and I'm not terribly engaged by the plot. Mike is an annoying drunkard. Cohn acts like a middleschooler. Brett messes with other people's lives and then complains about how hard it is on her. Jake just sits there and occasionally tries to get reacquainted with the woman who already turned him down. Pedro Romero is okay, but he's minor enough that my appreciation of him being not a jerk is less powerful than my hope that he gets gored in the bull-fighting ring so that something exciting can happen with the plot. Bill Gorton provides comic relief, but like the rest of them he leads a pointless life and somehow buys copious amounts of alcohol despite being bankrupt.
What makes these characters tick? Why do they lead this ridiculous lifestyle? Are they really so disillusioned after World War I that they can't do something useful with their lives? Cohn, Brett, and Jake fall into the unfortunate category of motivated by love. Pedro would be more interesting if he was some sort of vehement bullfighting purist (wait... that's Montoya... hey, a character I like!). He's also motivate by love, to an extent. Love of bullfighting, love of Brett. Mike is motivated by drinking. Bill is motivated by... irony?
What annoys me most is that the characters don't show any signs of changing the way they live. Okay, Jake, so your life is a mixture of great (bullfights, and Brett) and sucky (that injury, and Brett). Seems like the root of your problems is Brett and her corresponding drama. It's been established that you can't be with Brett. So... can't you flee? Leave Brett far behind? Go do something more exciting than cruising the bars in Paris or watching a dude with a cape kill domesticated animals? Join a monastery or something. Cohn left. He finally realized the solution to the unsolvable problem was to get away from the problem. That made me respect Cohn to an extent, but he still acted immature before that. Brett could leave, too. Avoid Jake and Pedro and Cohn and possibly Mike. But no, they just keep on drinking and going to cafes (and drinking) and staying in hotels (and drinking) and going to festivals (and drinking) and getting into arguments and fights (caused in part by drinking).
Yes, Jake has his sympathetic moments. But the combination of pointless lifestyle and hopeless behavior prevent me from feeling like his story matters to me.
End rant.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Make it stop!
To tell the truth, I was thoroughly annoyed by Phillip Glass' music for The Hours.
What? You were expecting something positive out of me? Fine.
I went back and listened to the music on YouTube, and found it quite enjoyable. There's nothing objectively wrong with the notes themselves. The problems don't arise until you overlay the music with the film.
While watching the film, I was very much thinking about it in the context of Mrs. Dalloway due to the intentional parallels between the film and the book. Woolf constantly delves into the thoughts of her characters, which can't be shown nearly as well in a visual medium. The music at times seemed to be trying to replace the inner dialogues of the characters and completely failing because it is hardly as precise as words. Is it supposed to be ominous? It certainly seems ominous in the film, but without the visuals the music is rather relaxing.
Additionally, Mrs. Dalloway does not seem like the kind of world that would have background music. Clarissa is too attuned to the details of the city; her background music should be carts rattling, shoes clicking, people babbling, pigeons cooing at each other, and Big Ben gonging every once in a while.
Even the whole "the music should make the viewer aware of the passage of time" deal got on my nerves... probably not what was intended when it was written. Yes, the music made me aware of the passage of time. It made me aware of just how long some portions of the movie were. Like when there would be a bit of dialogue and then
MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC
some more dialogue. Instead of having awkward silences or dramatic pauses, the film ended up with moments like when you call customer services and the robot on the other end says "please hold," followed by
MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK
maybe with an advertisement every once in a while, until eventually your call is answered in the order it was received.
Most of all, the constant music made it seem like there was always something going on... when there really wasn't ever much going on. We already knew that Woolf was going to commit suicide 18 years after the events of her part of the film... because we read Mrs. Dalloway, we saw Richard's suicide coming a mile away... the only part with a plot that could surprise us was the 1950s section, and how did that turn out? She's going to kill herself, says the over-dramatic music--wait, no! Just kidding! Then voila, she shows up fifty years later to explain that she abandoned her family, and that's why Richard was hallucinating and suicidal.
Okay, okay. So I'm potentially more critical of movies than I am of books. But I think that's a general trend, since New York Times book reviewers seem to be generally positive while New York Times movie reviewers are not afraid to describe films as gratuitous, confusing, or based on a screenplay with more holes than Swiss cheese.
What? You were expecting something positive out of me? Fine.
I went back and listened to the music on YouTube, and found it quite enjoyable. There's nothing objectively wrong with the notes themselves. The problems don't arise until you overlay the music with the film.
While watching the film, I was very much thinking about it in the context of Mrs. Dalloway due to the intentional parallels between the film and the book. Woolf constantly delves into the thoughts of her characters, which can't be shown nearly as well in a visual medium. The music at times seemed to be trying to replace the inner dialogues of the characters and completely failing because it is hardly as precise as words. Is it supposed to be ominous? It certainly seems ominous in the film, but without the visuals the music is rather relaxing.
Additionally, Mrs. Dalloway does not seem like the kind of world that would have background music. Clarissa is too attuned to the details of the city; her background music should be carts rattling, shoes clicking, people babbling, pigeons cooing at each other, and Big Ben gonging every once in a while.
Even the whole "the music should make the viewer aware of the passage of time" deal got on my nerves... probably not what was intended when it was written. Yes, the music made me aware of the passage of time. It made me aware of just how long some portions of the movie were. Like when there would be a bit of dialogue and then
MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC
some more dialogue. Instead of having awkward silences or dramatic pauses, the film ended up with moments like when you call customer services and the robot on the other end says "please hold," followed by
MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK MUZAK
maybe with an advertisement every once in a while, until eventually your call is answered in the order it was received.
Most of all, the constant music made it seem like there was always something going on... when there really wasn't ever much going on. We already knew that Woolf was going to commit suicide 18 years after the events of her part of the film... because we read Mrs. Dalloway, we saw Richard's suicide coming a mile away... the only part with a plot that could surprise us was the 1950s section, and how did that turn out? She's going to kill herself, says the over-dramatic music--wait, no! Just kidding! Then voila, she shows up fifty years later to explain that she abandoned her family, and that's why Richard was hallucinating and suicidal.
Okay, okay. So I'm potentially more critical of movies than I am of books. But I think that's a general trend, since New York Times book reviewers seem to be generally positive while New York Times movie reviewers are not afraid to describe films as gratuitous, confusing, or based on a screenplay with more holes than Swiss cheese.
Monday, September 16, 2013
For there she was. Again.
Well, that's one heck of an ending.
The article I read for my panel presentation made a big deal over the fact that the title of the novel is Mrs. Dalloway rather than Clarissa, which supposedly signifies that Clarissa has thoroughly pigeonholed herself into the role of perfect hostess. Assuming that is true, what can we get out of the rather understated ending?
The last time Clarissa is referred to as Mrs. Dalloway is on page 179. From there until the end, she is Clarissa. Consider the last two sentences of the novel:
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.
"For there she was.", with "she" being Clarissa. Has Clarissa, by the end of the novel, broken free from the restraints of her Mrs. Dalloway occupation? Did something momentous occur while we were slogging through Peter and Sally's conversation?
No.
Sorry for getting your hopes up like that.
As far as I can tell, Clarissa is actually a fairly stagnant character. She defies the typical definition of a "2D" character, since her personality is developed in depth and she does question the way she acts; there's just no net change in her mindset. She contemplates death and other such serious matters for a moment, but turns back to her hostess job soon afterwards. She still thinks she was right to marry Richard. She presumably still hates Miss Kilman. She's still alive and appreciating city life.
The only possible change is that she is now more sure of herself than before: she cites her marriage to Richard as the source of her happiness and appreciation for life, which would seem to validate her role as Mrs. Dalloway.
So why is it that Clarissa shows up at the end? Has Clarissa supplanted Mrs. Dalloway?
No.
Sorry for getting your hopes up like that.
I have to finally conclude that calling her "Clarissa" is actually a minor point of style necessitated by the fact that Sally and Peter are the "brain characters" for the end of the book, and they are both on a first-name basis with Clarissa. "For there she was" indicates that Clarissa is there as far as Peter is concerned--and we know how accurate other characters are with their interpretations of Clarissa. The Clarissa on the last page is not a person or identity. Instead, it is a feeling Peter gets.
It's how other people see Clarissa, not how she sees herself, that gets the last word
The article I read for my panel presentation made a big deal over the fact that the title of the novel is Mrs. Dalloway rather than Clarissa, which supposedly signifies that Clarissa has thoroughly pigeonholed herself into the role of perfect hostess. Assuming that is true, what can we get out of the rather understated ending?
The last time Clarissa is referred to as Mrs. Dalloway is on page 179. From there until the end, she is Clarissa. Consider the last two sentences of the novel:
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.
"For there she was.", with "she" being Clarissa. Has Clarissa, by the end of the novel, broken free from the restraints of her Mrs. Dalloway occupation? Did something momentous occur while we were slogging through Peter and Sally's conversation?
No.
Sorry for getting your hopes up like that.
As far as I can tell, Clarissa is actually a fairly stagnant character. She defies the typical definition of a "2D" character, since her personality is developed in depth and she does question the way she acts; there's just no net change in her mindset. She contemplates death and other such serious matters for a moment, but turns back to her hostess job soon afterwards. She still thinks she was right to marry Richard. She presumably still hates Miss Kilman. She's still alive and appreciating city life.
The only possible change is that she is now more sure of herself than before: she cites her marriage to Richard as the source of her happiness and appreciation for life, which would seem to validate her role as Mrs. Dalloway.
So why is it that Clarissa shows up at the end? Has Clarissa supplanted Mrs. Dalloway?
No.
Sorry for getting your hopes up like that.
I have to finally conclude that calling her "Clarissa" is actually a minor point of style necessitated by the fact that Sally and Peter are the "brain characters" for the end of the book, and they are both on a first-name basis with Clarissa. "For there she was" indicates that Clarissa is there as far as Peter is concerned--and we know how accurate other characters are with their interpretations of Clarissa. The Clarissa on the last page is not a person or identity. Instead, it is a feeling Peter gets.
It's how other people see Clarissa, not how she sees herself, that gets the last word
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
The Highly Disorganized Post in which I Argue, Among Other Things, that Septimus is a Critique of the British Upper Class (to be Organized Later)
In Mrs. Dalloway, we are presented with two (intertwining?) stories following two characters: one who is conscious of their appearance, analyzes the world around them, and thinks their life is meaningful, and one who appears unfeeling towards the death of a close friend, finds their present constantly infiltrated by their past, feels threatened by a certain frequent visitor, and is unsure about their life.
The latter, of course, said she would buy the flowers herself.
When reading Mrs. Dalloway, perhaps the one passage that really jumped out at me was when Peter mentioned in his musings that Clarissa turned cold and reserved after her sister Sylvia was crushed by a falling tree.
...Syvlia?
Clarissa never mentioned a Sylvia.
For me, it was one of those moments where I stop reading and think, "Naholdonaminut. That completely changes how I view this character." I speculated that since Peter says that Clarissa changed after the event, it must have occurred during the time that Peter knew her--the time at Bourton that Clarissa has been obsessing over throughout her party preparations. It doesn't take much to remind her of Bourton in the first page of the book, so I presume it is not just something she's thinking about on this particular day. Yet in all of her reminiscing on the sea air and Peter and Richard and Hugh and Sally, not once does she mention someone named Sylvia who was crushed by a falling tree.
Hm...
As someone who enjoyed reading about Septimus and Rezia far more than reading about Clarissa, Peter Boring Walsh, and Hugh the Intolerable Ass (and all those other characters), I feel like they should have a purpose in the novel beyond just criticizing psychiatric medicine and making Mrs. Dalloway appreciate life. Instead, I am going to enter a conspiracy-theorist trance and say that Septimus' story is a criticism of the British upper class.
Yup.
To start off with, the novel takes place in London after World War I. The whole city is still recovering. But how much did it actually affect Clarissa? She mentions that she knows some people whose sons died in the war. But other than that, she's convinced that London is coming alive again. Clarissa's experience with WWI does not reflect what was reality for many families: young men (such as Septimus) enlisting in the nationalism-driven frenzy of war plans that revolved around taking the enemy capital before Christmas, and then getting gassed, mowed down by machine guns, blown up by shelling, or killed by any number of diseases going around. The other WWI experience we learn about (other than Septimus', of course) is that of Mr. Brewer, Septimus' employer. What did the Great War do to him?
"(...) took away his ablest young fellows, and eventually, so prying and insidious were the fingers of the European War, smashed a plaster cast of Ceres, ploughed a hole in the geranium beds, and utterly ruined the cook's nerves at Mr. Brewer's establishment at Muswell Hill." (84)
That description doesn't come from Mr. Brewer's thoughts--it's buried in a section of solid narration by Woolf. I can't see any way of interpreting the wording other than sarcastic. Prying and insidious can do a whole lot more than smash flowerbeds.
Septimus and Rezia, on the other hand, are the true face of postwar England. Septimus is mentally scarred from his experience on the battlefield; Rezia is a family member fretting over what to do with her injured loved one. Italy lost a higher percentage of its population than Britain did during WWI, so Rezia presumably faced war woes at home, though this is not depicted in the book.
Septimus and Rezia are still trying to heal the wounds of the war; Clarissa and the rest of the upper class seem to have already gotten over it. Compared to S&R, the stories of the other characters seem so... frivolous.
If you think I'm just saying this because I was bored to death by Peter Walsh ordering Bartlett pears and Hugh the Intolerable Ass acting like a jewelry connoisseur, please say so in the comments.
Clarissa saw her sister die, but doesn't seem to think about it any more. Has she forgotten how to feel? Is the "manliness" from the trenches (suppressing emotions) essentially the same thing that makes Clarissa the perfect hostess, the thing that defines the behavior of British high society? As I see it, Septimus the emotionally damaged war veteran is more sincere in his feelings and more in touch with reality than Clarissa and her fellow socialites are.
That's not to say that Woolf presents Clarissa as a superficial person. The upper-class characters are depicted with all the depth and complexity Woolf thinks is necessary in modern writing; it's just that their less significant struggles are elevated in their minds to the same level as Septimus' psychological "crime" and punishment.
...aaaand I've totally lost any sense of organization. Please excuse the mess.
The latter, of course, said she would buy the flowers herself.
When reading Mrs. Dalloway, perhaps the one passage that really jumped out at me was when Peter mentioned in his musings that Clarissa turned cold and reserved after her sister Sylvia was crushed by a falling tree.
...Syvlia?
Clarissa never mentioned a Sylvia.
For me, it was one of those moments where I stop reading and think, "Naholdonaminut. That completely changes how I view this character." I speculated that since Peter says that Clarissa changed after the event, it must have occurred during the time that Peter knew her--the time at Bourton that Clarissa has been obsessing over throughout her party preparations. It doesn't take much to remind her of Bourton in the first page of the book, so I presume it is not just something she's thinking about on this particular day. Yet in all of her reminiscing on the sea air and Peter and Richard and Hugh and Sally, not once does she mention someone named Sylvia who was crushed by a falling tree.
Hm...
As someone who enjoyed reading about Septimus and Rezia far more than reading about Clarissa, Peter Boring Walsh, and Hugh the Intolerable Ass (and all those other characters), I feel like they should have a purpose in the novel beyond just criticizing psychiatric medicine and making Mrs. Dalloway appreciate life. Instead, I am going to enter a conspiracy-theorist trance and say that Septimus' story is a criticism of the British upper class.
Yup.
To start off with, the novel takes place in London after World War I. The whole city is still recovering. But how much did it actually affect Clarissa? She mentions that she knows some people whose sons died in the war. But other than that, she's convinced that London is coming alive again. Clarissa's experience with WWI does not reflect what was reality for many families: young men (such as Septimus) enlisting in the nationalism-driven frenzy of war plans that revolved around taking the enemy capital before Christmas, and then getting gassed, mowed down by machine guns, blown up by shelling, or killed by any number of diseases going around. The other WWI experience we learn about (other than Septimus', of course) is that of Mr. Brewer, Septimus' employer. What did the Great War do to him?
"(...) took away his ablest young fellows, and eventually, so prying and insidious were the fingers of the European War, smashed a plaster cast of Ceres, ploughed a hole in the geranium beds, and utterly ruined the cook's nerves at Mr. Brewer's establishment at Muswell Hill." (84)
That description doesn't come from Mr. Brewer's thoughts--it's buried in a section of solid narration by Woolf. I can't see any way of interpreting the wording other than sarcastic. Prying and insidious can do a whole lot more than smash flowerbeds.
Septimus and Rezia, on the other hand, are the true face of postwar England. Septimus is mentally scarred from his experience on the battlefield; Rezia is a family member fretting over what to do with her injured loved one. Italy lost a higher percentage of its population than Britain did during WWI, so Rezia presumably faced war woes at home, though this is not depicted in the book.
Septimus and Rezia are still trying to heal the wounds of the war; Clarissa and the rest of the upper class seem to have already gotten over it. Compared to S&R, the stories of the other characters seem so... frivolous.
If you think I'm just saying this because I was bored to death by Peter Walsh ordering Bartlett pears and Hugh the Intolerable Ass acting like a jewelry connoisseur, please say so in the comments.
Clarissa saw her sister die, but doesn't seem to think about it any more. Has she forgotten how to feel? Is the "manliness" from the trenches (suppressing emotions) essentially the same thing that makes Clarissa the perfect hostess, the thing that defines the behavior of British high society? As I see it, Septimus the emotionally damaged war veteran is more sincere in his feelings and more in touch with reality than Clarissa and her fellow socialites are.
That's not to say that Woolf presents Clarissa as a superficial person. The upper-class characters are depicted with all the depth and complexity Woolf thinks is necessary in modern writing; it's just that their less significant struggles are elevated in their minds to the same level as Septimus' psychological "crime" and punishment.
...aaaand I've totally lost any sense of organization. Please excuse the mess.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Why Howie is not a birder (complete with photos!)
In which I infuse birding into my English class blog, just like I did in Nonfiction Writing.
One reason I had such a hard time tolerating The Mezzanine was that I kept having moments like when Howie reads the passage by Aurelius about the triviality and transience of human life and immediately declares the statement incorrect. I repeatedly disagreed with Howie/Baker on many of the issues he was trying to provide insight into. Why was I so opposed to so many of the opinions expressed in the novel?
Howie's insights just don't jive with my birding philosophy.
1. Small details
When you start birding, you think that identifying birds is all about noticing tiny little details in the field marks in order to differentiate species. This is partially true; this is the kind of thing that seems to fit in with the way Howie assesses the world. However, identifying birds based on detail is highly impractical. The more you bird, the more you recognize species not by their details, but by their overall impression. There's often no time to appreciate fine marks individually, or even a way to see said marks clearly. When a small, fast-moving bird bolts from a pond as you approach and heads straight into the sunset, there's no time (or viewing possibility) to consider things like:
"Eye ring, like an esteemed British gentleman with a monocle, or eye line, like the spectacles of a Princeton professor?"
"Texture of velvet and color of inexpensive fast-food chain chocolate shake, or wearing a tweed suit made of river-bottom silt?"
"Beak long and thin like needle-nose jeweler's pliers, or closer in appearance to a wedge doorstop?"
Instead, you have to judge the bird in a holistic way (like the college application process!) to determine whether it's a Spotted or Solitary Sandpiper.
2. Celebration of the man-made
Cities, manicured lawns, urban landscaping: just say no. The fact that something is aesthetically pleasing to the human eye typically means it is artificial and not aesthetically pleasing to the eye of a bird looking for some half-decent habitat.
3. Convenience
Howie loves convenience, and the ingenuity that must go into making things convenient. With birding, the less convenient it is, the more exciting the birds will be. For one thing, if a location is easily accessible and the habitat clearly visible, it is also highly disturbed and there will be fewer birds there. Large, isolated preserves are better. Secondly, finding a bird you've never seen before feels far more rewarding if you had to work to find it. I went to the Rio Grande Valley for spring break one year, and found a Green Jay eating from the birdfeeders at a nature center. It was a gorgeous bird, but I was so underwhelmed by how easily I had found it that I only took one photo, which later turned out to be blurry and badly lit.
On the other hand, when I was visiting Massachusetts to look at colleges, I took the time to head out to a wind-battered, snow-covered, bare-rock cape where I walked around for an hour looking out at ducks and grebes (1) from a quarter mile away, and it was exciting.
After not finding much and reaching the time when we were supposed to turn around and head back to the car, I found one of the species I hoped to see there in the first place:
That photo was taken through a spotting scope looking down from the location pictured below:
Those Harlequin Ducks were nowhere near as close as the Green Jay, and the climate in Cape Gloucester in March were far less comfortable than those of Harlingen in March, but the sighting was so much better because I had worked to get it.
I ended up taking about 50 photos of the Harlequin Ducks.
4. The clean backgroundtrick delusionHowie thinks that isolating an object magically transforms it into something worth looking at. When nature is concerned, there are two names for putting an animal in a situation in which it is easily observed and contemplated: taxidermy and zoos.
If I had to pick one category of birds that I have trouble identifying, it would be dead. I spent some time looking through the bird collection at the Natural History Survey over the summer, and kept misidentifying the feathered carcasses in the climate-controlled, alcohol-stenched room. When a bird is preserved past its expiration date, it is no longer easily recognizable. The overall size is wrong, the proportions are wrong, there are no behavioral field marks with which to identify it; all you have are the fine details that I typically don't use when identifying birds in the wild (see reason 1). This is how some birds end up with names that initially seem nonsensical: Orange-crowned Warbler, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Those species were named by ornithologists who, because they were holding dead birds in their hands, could base their identification of the species on "field marks" that aren't reliable in the field.
Zoos, on the other hand, at least have birds that are alive and look like they ought to. However, because they're on display and tend to be easy to see, birds in zoos don't count. They're pretty. You get good views of them. They make great photo subjects:
But in the end, they just aren't real enough. You know that the bird will be there (unless there's some cage-cleaning going on), and you know it's in a habitat that has been designed to provide a mixture of privacy and visibility. Birds in zoos can't go on your life list (2), and they're not as satisfying as those you see in the wild (see reason 3).
My main objection to the clean background trick, though, is that it goes against the first rule of nature photography: don't take a photo of an animal. Take a photo of an animal interacting with it's environment. If you isolate the bird from its surroundings, you may be able to examine the bird more closely, but it's not particularly exciting. As far as I'm concerned, birds (and objects) are more beautiful and interesting when they are doing what they are meant to do rather than preserved motionless against a serene background.
My preference for seeing things in their natural surroundings also extends to aircraft. When I was little, I would go to air museums and obsess over the numerous planes on display. For a few years now, though, I've been attending the EAA Airventure air show and fly-in in Oshkosh, WI. At that event, the majority of the aircraft are in flying condition, and you can watch them in the air rather than parked in a hangar. Air museums just aren't interesting any more, because though they may have unique and rare vehicles, they aren't doing anything. A simple flyby is a huge improvement over stationary display for any plane.
In the end, Howie was rather difficult for me to connect with not because of his writing style or meandering consciousness, but because he was usually talking about something I didn't care about (Late 80s corporate world) or expressing views I disagreed with. When I came across the passage regarding the Clean Background Trick, and Howie mentioned how it is used in museums, I did not think, "Hey, you're right, that's kinda cool." Instead I thought, "Hey, you're right, and I hate the way most things are displayed in museums." My constant opposition to Howie's way of viewing the world destroyed the only aspects of The Mezzanine that would have kept me reading: acknowledgement of the unique insights and amusement from the wacky writing. I wouldn't say I was offended by the book, but I was definitely having my Howie vs Aurelius moments:
"Wrong, wrong wrong! I thought. Destructive and unhelpful and misguided and completely untrue!" (120)
Maybe my anger would have been tempered if Howie had mused about pigeons for a while...
Footnote:
1. I love grebes! They're gorgeous, amusing to watch, and have some crazy adaptations for life in aquatic and coastal habitats (propeller feet, feathers that bend at right angles, etc). Plus, their babies are adorable.
2. A list of all bird species one has seen in the wild.
Answer to the identification challenge: Sandhill Cranes
All but two photos were taken by me. You can probably guess which two I wasn't behind the camera for.
One reason I had such a hard time tolerating The Mezzanine was that I kept having moments like when Howie reads the passage by Aurelius about the triviality and transience of human life and immediately declares the statement incorrect. I repeatedly disagreed with Howie/Baker on many of the issues he was trying to provide insight into. Why was I so opposed to so many of the opinions expressed in the novel?
Howie's insights just don't jive with my birding philosophy.
1. Small details
When you start birding, you think that identifying birds is all about noticing tiny little details in the field marks in order to differentiate species. This is partially true; this is the kind of thing that seems to fit in with the way Howie assesses the world. However, identifying birds based on detail is highly impractical. The more you bird, the more you recognize species not by their details, but by their overall impression. There's often no time to appreciate fine marks individually, or even a way to see said marks clearly. When a small, fast-moving bird bolts from a pond as you approach and heads straight into the sunset, there's no time (or viewing possibility) to consider things like:
"Eye ring, like an esteemed British gentleman with a monocle, or eye line, like the spectacles of a Princeton professor?"
"Texture of velvet and color of inexpensive fast-food chain chocolate shake, or wearing a tweed suit made of river-bottom silt?"
"Beak long and thin like needle-nose jeweler's pliers, or closer in appearance to a wedge doorstop?"
Instead, you have to judge the bird in a holistic way (like the college application process!) to determine whether it's a Spotted or Solitary Sandpiper.
 |
| You have two seconds to identify this pair of birds before they disappear behind the reeds. Hint: they aren't sandpipers. Sandpiper move too quickly, so I don't have any photos of them flying away. |
2. Celebration of the man-made
Cities, manicured lawns, urban landscaping: just say no. The fact that something is aesthetically pleasing to the human eye typically means it is artificial and not aesthetically pleasing to the eye of a bird looking for some half-decent habitat.
3. Convenience
Howie loves convenience, and the ingenuity that must go into making things convenient. With birding, the less convenient it is, the more exciting the birds will be. For one thing, if a location is easily accessible and the habitat clearly visible, it is also highly disturbed and there will be fewer birds there. Large, isolated preserves are better. Secondly, finding a bird you've never seen before feels far more rewarding if you had to work to find it. I went to the Rio Grande Valley for spring break one year, and found a Green Jay eating from the birdfeeders at a nature center. It was a gorgeous bird, but I was so underwhelmed by how easily I had found it that I only took one photo, which later turned out to be blurry and badly lit.
 |
| Meh. (Click on photos to enlarge) |
On the other hand, when I was visiting Massachusetts to look at colleges, I took the time to head out to a wind-battered, snow-covered, bare-rock cape where I walked around for an hour looking out at ducks and grebes (1) from a quarter mile away, and it was exciting.
 |
| Cold and wind and water add up to exciting birding. |
 |
| YESSSSSS! |
 |
| Now that's birding. |
I ended up taking about 50 photos of the Harlequin Ducks.
4. The clean background
If I had to pick one category of birds that I have trouble identifying, it would be dead. I spent some time looking through the bird collection at the Natural History Survey over the summer, and kept misidentifying the feathered carcasses in the climate-controlled, alcohol-stenched room. When a bird is preserved past its expiration date, it is no longer easily recognizable. The overall size is wrong, the proportions are wrong, there are no behavioral field marks with which to identify it; all you have are the fine details that I typically don't use when identifying birds in the wild (see reason 1). This is how some birds end up with names that initially seem nonsensical: Orange-crowned Warbler, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Those species were named by ornithologists who, because they were holding dead birds in their hands, could base their identification of the species on "field marks" that aren't reliable in the field.
 |
| These guys are ruby-crowned. You got a problem with that? |
 |
| Cute couple. |
My main objection to the clean background trick, though, is that it goes against the first rule of nature photography: don't take a photo of an animal. Take a photo of an animal interacting with it's environment. If you isolate the bird from its surroundings, you may be able to examine the bird more closely, but it's not particularly exciting. As far as I'm concerned, birds (and objects) are more beautiful and interesting when they are doing what they are meant to do rather than preserved motionless against a serene background.
 |
| Okay... interesting, maybe, but it looks like clipart. |
 |
| Better... |
 |
| Best. Dinnertime! |
 |
| Aero Vodochody L-39 Albatross with a clean background. |
 |
| There's a bit of an improvement. |
 |
| Different paint scheme, but these are still L-39s. I admit the blue sky is a sort of clean background, but the lighting and angles you get on the planes in flight are much more interesting than the one parked on the ground. When experiencing the flyby in real life, you also get the sound and movement to make it more impressive in the air. |
 |
| Planes interacting with each other... |
 |
| ...and planes interacting with their environment. This would still be an interesting photo if it were just the two aircraft apparently flying straight at each other while inverted. But when you include the rest of the scene, it's two aircraft apparently flying straight at each other inverted... while only 20 freaking feat off the ground near a national guard base and cutting a pair of ribbons held up by people standing on the runway. |
In the end, Howie was rather difficult for me to connect with not because of his writing style or meandering consciousness, but because he was usually talking about something I didn't care about (Late 80s corporate world) or expressing views I disagreed with. When I came across the passage regarding the Clean Background Trick, and Howie mentioned how it is used in museums, I did not think, "Hey, you're right, that's kinda cool." Instead I thought, "Hey, you're right, and I hate the way most things are displayed in museums." My constant opposition to Howie's way of viewing the world destroyed the only aspects of The Mezzanine that would have kept me reading: acknowledgement of the unique insights and amusement from the wacky writing. I wouldn't say I was offended by the book, but I was definitely having my Howie vs Aurelius moments:
"Wrong, wrong wrong! I thought. Destructive and unhelpful and misguided and completely untrue!" (120)
Maybe my anger would have been tempered if Howie had mused about pigeons for a while...
Footnote:
1. I love grebes! They're gorgeous, amusing to watch, and have some crazy adaptations for life in aquatic and coastal habitats (propeller feet, feathers that bend at right angles, etc). Plus, their babies are adorable.
2. A list of all bird species one has seen in the wild.
Answer to the identification challenge: Sandhill Cranes
All but two photos were taken by me. You can probably guess which two I wasn't behind the camera for.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
No, really, I don't hate books...
(Long introductory post!)
Actually, I do.
If you want to be nitpicky about it, I hate books. That doesn't mean I dislike all books, it just means I dislike more than one of them. It's more accurate than saying, "I hate a book." Plurals can be weird that way (1). Still, I've noticed that I seem to enjoy a disproportionately small percentage of the books I read. I can only remember one book I've ever read cover to cover multiple times: The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. Then again, I may have reread some of Brian Jacques' Redwall series back in middle school, but I now have so many qualms with those stories that I prefer not to admit to having liked them at any point in my life. (2)
Luckily, I have a theory about my aversion to the majority of the world of literature. For a long time, I told my teachers that I liked to read nonfiction and write fiction, not the other way around like the school work forced me to. I still adhere to that principle to some extent. The thing that gets me is that I write fiction, and my inner editor is particularly vindictive.
For those of you who don't spend a sizable amount of your internet time frequenting the NaNoWriMo website, your Inner Editor is the personification of negative perfectionism that looks at the sentence you wrote and says, "That sounds stupid," or interrupts you in the middle of outlining a large writing project and says "Your structure sucks," or thinks far too much about the plot holes in the fiction you are writing and disregards the concept of suspension of disbelief. Basically, it's there to prevent you from ever being content with your work. (3)
The problem is, my Inner Editor is so nasty that it won't stick to just the stuff I wrote. I am intensely critical of the things I read, but not when it comes to message and the overall aura of a piece of writing. Instead, I get hung up on small details in plot, continuity, and sentence structure (4). In the case of a piece of literary fiction that has no immediately apparent plot and is written in a style that would be unsuitable for a plot-based work, my chances of being able to enjoy the book and appreciate it for what it is are seriously limited.
There. I said it. I didn't enjoy The Mezzanine.
A Howie page-a-day calendar would have been fine. Howie in the form of a short story would have been fine. Howie writing poetry would have been fine (5). But when I pick up some writing of any sort of heft, I turn increasingly judgmental and approach the book with my own strict set of ideas about what components make an enjoyable novel.
This "enjoyable novel" outline is admittedly geared towards mass-market fiction.
It probably also didn't help my appreciation of the book that I disagreed with Howie on a number of points he brings up, but that's something to discuss in a different post.
In parting, I offer a video clip with Stephen King giving what my Inner Editor believes is the best writing advice of all time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqp7A0B7abc
Footnotes (because, after all, this is about The Mezzanine):
1. A sampling of my opinion on certain books...
Liked: The True Meaning of Smekday, The Diamond Age, Jurassic Park, Things Fall Apart, Leviathan
Meh Books (reasonably enjoyable, but either plagued by minor failings or not outstanding enough to warrant "liked"): Railsea, Dune, 1984, The Hunger Games, Airborn, Silverwing, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Frankenstein
Disliked: The Mezzanine, Never Let Me Go, Boy Meets Boy, The Scarlet Letter, Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, Pride and Prejudice, Redwall (retroactively), Micro, Beautiful Creatures (I did the reading equivalent of force-feeding myself in order to finish this book. It was purely for research purposes, not entertainment.)
Then there are books I reject outright... I don't judge them by their covers, but I definitely judge them by the inside book jacket. I won't list these.
2. The more I think about those books, the more I hate them. Everything was saccharine, simplistic, and, if you ponder it for too long, racist. Why are herbivorous and insectivorous mammals always kindhearted, wholesome individuals, while carnivores are predisposed to be evil (with the odd exception of badgers and otters)(this was only ever challenged in The Taggerung). Why are said wholesome mammals so clever and educated, while birds, amphibians, and reptiles are depicted as barbarian and stupid? And what's up with the fact that mammal paws can be used to weave tapestries, build complex structures, and wield medieval weapons with precision, but the feet of birds (which in nature are more dextrous than those of most mammals) are only of any use if they have sharp talons? Crows use tools in real life. Why are the birds in Mossflower such butterfingers?
I think my dislike of Redwall increased in proportion to my interest in ornithology.
3. Eventually you have to decapitate your Inner Editor, or at least rip its tongue out, so that you can ignore your work's failings long enough to publish it.
4. For example, I got really flustered about a portion of The Hunger Games in which the verb tense lingers in past even when the story is advancing in the present.
5. I have a much higher tolerance for artsy tomfoolery in short stories and poetry than in long fiction. If I didn't, I'd never be able to stand being editor of Unique.
6. Focus on conflict, don't be wordy, focus more on describing actions than appearances, don't add anything extraneous...
Maybe I'm just a territorial hypocrite when it comes to writing...
Actually, I do.
If you want to be nitpicky about it, I hate books. That doesn't mean I dislike all books, it just means I dislike more than one of them. It's more accurate than saying, "I hate a book." Plurals can be weird that way (1). Still, I've noticed that I seem to enjoy a disproportionately small percentage of the books I read. I can only remember one book I've ever read cover to cover multiple times: The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. Then again, I may have reread some of Brian Jacques' Redwall series back in middle school, but I now have so many qualms with those stories that I prefer not to admit to having liked them at any point in my life. (2)
Luckily, I have a theory about my aversion to the majority of the world of literature. For a long time, I told my teachers that I liked to read nonfiction and write fiction, not the other way around like the school work forced me to. I still adhere to that principle to some extent. The thing that gets me is that I write fiction, and my inner editor is particularly vindictive.
For those of you who don't spend a sizable amount of your internet time frequenting the NaNoWriMo website, your Inner Editor is the personification of negative perfectionism that looks at the sentence you wrote and says, "That sounds stupid," or interrupts you in the middle of outlining a large writing project and says "Your structure sucks," or thinks far too much about the plot holes in the fiction you are writing and disregards the concept of suspension of disbelief. Basically, it's there to prevent you from ever being content with your work. (3)
The problem is, my Inner Editor is so nasty that it won't stick to just the stuff I wrote. I am intensely critical of the things I read, but not when it comes to message and the overall aura of a piece of writing. Instead, I get hung up on small details in plot, continuity, and sentence structure (4). In the case of a piece of literary fiction that has no immediately apparent plot and is written in a style that would be unsuitable for a plot-based work, my chances of being able to enjoy the book and appreciate it for what it is are seriously limited.
There. I said it. I didn't enjoy The Mezzanine.
A Howie page-a-day calendar would have been fine. Howie in the form of a short story would have been fine. Howie writing poetry would have been fine (5). But when I pick up some writing of any sort of heft, I turn increasingly judgmental and approach the book with my own strict set of ideas about what components make an enjoyable novel.
This "enjoyable novel" outline is admittedly geared towards mass-market fiction.
Thus when I sat down to do my summer reading and the narrator promptly broke every rule of writing style I had ever learned (6), I was unable to take Howie seriously or appreciate his insights. My apologies to Mr. Mitchell with regards to not following the rules from the summer reading assignment sheet: "Don’t
worry about how this book is unlike
other novels you’ve
read; take it on its own terms, and be open to its beguiling and
distinctive effects." Sorry, it was an unconscious reflex.
In parting, I offer a video clip with Stephen King giving what my Inner Editor believes is the best writing advice of all time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqp7A0B7abc
Footnotes (because, after all, this is about The Mezzanine):
1. A sampling of my opinion on certain books...
Liked: The True Meaning of Smekday, The Diamond Age, Jurassic Park, Things Fall Apart, Leviathan
Meh Books (reasonably enjoyable, but either plagued by minor failings or not outstanding enough to warrant "liked"): Railsea, Dune, 1984, The Hunger Games, Airborn, Silverwing, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Frankenstein
Disliked: The Mezzanine, Never Let Me Go, Boy Meets Boy, The Scarlet Letter, Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, Pride and Prejudice, Redwall (retroactively), Micro, Beautiful Creatures (I did the reading equivalent of force-feeding myself in order to finish this book. It was purely for research purposes, not entertainment.)
Then there are books I reject outright... I don't judge them by their covers, but I definitely judge them by the inside book jacket. I won't list these.
2. The more I think about those books, the more I hate them. Everything was saccharine, simplistic, and, if you ponder it for too long, racist. Why are herbivorous and insectivorous mammals always kindhearted, wholesome individuals, while carnivores are predisposed to be evil (with the odd exception of badgers and otters)(this was only ever challenged in The Taggerung). Why are said wholesome mammals so clever and educated, while birds, amphibians, and reptiles are depicted as barbarian and stupid? And what's up with the fact that mammal paws can be used to weave tapestries, build complex structures, and wield medieval weapons with precision, but the feet of birds (which in nature are more dextrous than those of most mammals) are only of any use if they have sharp talons? Crows use tools in real life. Why are the birds in Mossflower such butterfingers?
I think my dislike of Redwall increased in proportion to my interest in ornithology.
3. Eventually you have to decapitate your Inner Editor, or at least rip its tongue out, so that you can ignore your work's failings long enough to publish it.
4. For example, I got really flustered about a portion of The Hunger Games in which the verb tense lingers in past even when the story is advancing in the present.
5. I have a much higher tolerance for artsy tomfoolery in short stories and poetry than in long fiction. If I didn't, I'd never be able to stand being editor of Unique.
6. Focus on conflict, don't be wordy, focus more on describing actions than appearances, don't add anything extraneous...
Maybe I'm just a territorial hypocrite when it comes to writing...
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