Category Archives: character

it is all just shopping

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Wanted to share this quote with you from Anne Enright‘s The Gathering:

“I love this undertaker.  He has that thing that young people got, sometime after I grew up.  He does not pretend.  He does not judge.  He talks about the caskets in a ‘whatever’ sort of way, like it is all just shopping–the real questions are elsewhere.”

What a lovely, original, and novelistic dichotomy Enright allows to emerge from the personality of this character.

And another reminder to ground myself in what’s important as I scurry around for those last few gifts.

 

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the signal

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In Ron Carlson‘s new novel, The Signal, a book that includes both clotheslines and abandoned places, each word counts, as each word should but often doesn’t in novels. The Signal packs a lot into its 184 pages: six days in the life of its main character Mack.

Its cover looks, as one of my children said, “like a book I wouldn’t read.” I’m not sure whether he meant it looks “sensational” or “like a guy’s book,” but I agree on both counts about the cover, not about what’s between it. In The Signal, it’s a toss-up whether the language or the story is the most alluring part of the novel.

“This was his life, riding out two hours from a ranch that itself was an hour from town and still knowing there were unknown hours ahead.”

“The tinted window went down and there was her face.”

The descriptions will give you goose bumps, and the dialogue is tight. Listen to this conversation between Mack and his father, whom he describes as “…his presence in the world was like order itself.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Are you going by your gut?”

“By something.”

“Do you think you can get a girl by showing her a bear?”

“No idea,” Mack said.

His father folded his arms and leaned on the doorframe. “Me neither. How many were there?”

Mack is also the narrator, and we’re right there in his point of view, a close third, yet without even a space break, Carlson zooms out seamlessly, giving us a little distance: “The two hikers stepped out into the high-atmosphere sunshine…”

Some will argue that there’s too much plot, but in my opinion The Signal offers a brilliant example of plot arising out of character: Mack’s choices drive the plot forward.

I’ll leave you with my favorite passage:

“The sun was weak light, and the chill was general headed for a real freeze. The watery yellow day wanted to break his heart. The season had foundered and each day was now a brave imitation of the day before. In September the year fell away and in the car you’d get a late baseball game on the radio as you drove to town sounding like it was coming from another planet, the static and the crowd noise and the announcers trying to fend off the fall shadows.”

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snooping

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DSC00053I discovered Snoop by Sam Gosling in a note by @piscivorous on Facebook. Its subtitle is What Your Stuff Says About You. I was interested in this book not only for what it could tell me about how to portray fictional characters but also for what it could tell me about me.

Chapter One begins with the story of John Steinbeck taking a shower in a hotel room before it had been cleaned. He named the former inhabitant Lonesome Harry:

“I could feel that recently departed guest in the bits and pieces of himself he had left behind.” from Travels With Charley

What was left: some laundry receipts, an unfinished letter in the trash, an empty bourbon bottle…

In a chapter entitled, “When Good Judgments Go Bad,” Gosling writes about extreme hoarding, which is defined as “the repetitive collection of excessive quantities of poorly useable items of little or no value with failure to discard these items over time.” I’ve written a story about this entitled, “Little Things,” which is almost finished.

Apparently the difference between pathological hoarding and ordinary collecting is that collectors enjoy their collections. Hoarders are disturbed by their booty. There’s an easy lesson there.

My favorite lines of all are about identity:

Identity is “the thread that ties the experiences of our past, present, and future into one narrative.”

“It is a story you tell about yourself to make sense out of what has happened in the past and kind of person you are now.”

I love this question that Gosling asks in the first chapter: “…what are the mechanisms by which personality reaches out and connects to the physical world?” His answer:

“identity claims“: (posters, awards, photos, bumper stickers). To assess their meaning, notice whether they are directed toward others or toward the self, whether they are in public or private spaces, and notice discrepancies between between public and private spaces, between front and back yards for example.

“feeling regulators“: stuff to help us manage our emotions and thoughts. My little notes on my desk: “Begin anywhere.” “I am a work in progress.” “Believe.” My pictures of the ocean…

DSC00216“behavioral residue“: A scavenger after peering into Cher’s garbage wrote: “It was like I had her whole world in my hands.” Apparently the incredibly telling aspect to trash is that it reflects “behavior that really happened.” In my trash in my study at this minute: wrapper from an IcyHot Sleeve for my elbow, zip lock bag with crumbs from my RyeKrisp snack yesterday, an empty tin from my Big Dipper Clarity candle, crumpled lists that have been accomplished.

To paraphrase a popular commercial: What’s in your trash? OR What’s in your character’s trash?

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the sweet in-between

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DSC00172Some of you may remember that on my first try with the Kindle, when I was reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, it did not go well, and I switched to the physical book itself. My second try, using the Kindle to read Infinite Jest while I was traveling, went great. I wondered if it was because I’d already held the real book in my hands.

I think it was more a matter of my getting used to the Kindle. A couple of weeks ago, right before Sheri Reynolds‘ most recent novel, The Sweet In-Between, came out in paperback, I wanted to read it. Right that second. Aha. Kindle. I was reading it in about three minutes.

And I totally loved it–even reading it on the Kindle–and was not ready for it to end when it did.

Now to write a post on it without having the actual book. You can see the first problem in the upper right-hand corner.

The second problem was no underlining. BUT the Kindle has a feature called clippings, and I was able to easily pull up all the passages I had marked. So here we go…

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borrowed a friend's book for this picture

The Sweet In-Between is written in the first person and narrated by 17-year-old Kendra, who goes by Kenny and who is in the middle of an identity crisis. Her sort-of step-brother’s girlfriend, Sneaky, describes her as follows:

“I mean you’re like a boy in all the good ways, and you’re kind of like a girl in all the good ways too.”

She describes herself here: “I feel funny, like I might not be who I always thought…”

Kenny is an endearing character, one, as Linda mentioned in the comments to the previous post, you want to fight for.

“Here’s the thing: There are holes that never go away, holes that never fill back up no matter what.”

If you’d like to read a book where the voice of the narrator comes shining through, this is the book for you. Here are a few examples:

“I love cutting grass. You can see exactly where you’ve been and where you need to go next. You can’t really hurry. You just move steady, one step at a time, and with that lawn mower handle vibrating in your hands, you know you’re alive.”

“It’s dark out, the moon still hanging around, a good time of day, before everybody wakes up and ruins it.”

“Even though I don’t have a camera to practice with, I like the idea of framing a thing for the world, picking a moment out of all the other moments, and click–there it is. (Or there it will be.)”

Nothing will ever replace real live books for me, but I’m happy to have the Kindle as a part of my library.

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yellow letters from a shoebox on a rainy pm

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IMG_2254So many things left unmentioned:

  • David Foster Wallace’s skilled use of the French language: “Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rolants” (719) and hilarious translations from English to French:  demi-maison (730) and from French to English: see Marathe below.
  • The way Tavis is described: “His smallness resembles the smallness of something that’s farther away from you than it wants to be, plus is receding.” And Stice “shielding his eyes with his hand and assuming a horizon-scan expression whenever Tavis heaves into view, seeming to recede even as he bears down.” (519)
  • That “…the key to the successful administration of a top-level junior tennis academy lies in cultivating a kind of reverse-Buddhism, a state of Total Worry.” (451)
  • Infinite Jestisms: to eliminate someone’s map, to give someone the fantods (also used by MT in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (thanks to Steven!)), “many wonders”
  • Scenes we’ll never forget: Erdedy waiting for the pot (17-27), Orin in the shower with the roaches, the videophone situation (144-151), Poutrincourt on achieving goals (680-681)

H o w e v e r, what I would like to do in this last post of the series is to say a la prochaine to some of the lovable, quirky, and flawed-as-we-all-are characters of Infinite Jest, in their own words, in the words of other characters or in the words of the narrator.

IMG_2089Steeply:

“…our whole system is founded on your individual’s freedom to pursue his own individual desires…Sunsets over the Pacific. Shoes that don’t cut off circulation. Frozen yogurt. A tall lemonade on a squeak-free porch swing.” (423)

IMG_2088Marathe:

“…should he exit and roll like no person’s business…” (752)

IMG_2092Lyle:

“An oiled guru sits in yogic full lotus in Spandex and tank top. He’s maybe forty. He’s in full lotus on top of the towel dispenser just above the shoulder-pull station in the weight room…” (127)

IMG_2090Erdedy:

“…at this precise time his telephone and his intercom to the front door’s buzzer sounded at the same time, both loud and tortured and so abrupt they sounded yanked through a very small hole into the great balloon of colored silence he sat in, waiting…” (27)

IMG_2089Kate Gompert:

“I don’t hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn’t want to play anymore.” (72)

“…and then it’s happening, too, the whole horrible time, it’s about to happen and also it’s happening, all at the same time.” (73)

IMG_2088Orin the punter:

“I miss commercials that were louder than the programs.” (599)

And referring to watching entertainment on disks, “But it’s not the same. The choice, see. It ruins it somehow. With television you were subjected to repetition.” (600)

IMG_2092the Moms:

“Avril made it clear that the very last thing she wanted was to have any of her children feel they had to justify or explain to her any sort of abruptly or even bizarrely sudden major decision they might happen to make…” (288)

And from Mario: “The Moms hangs up stuff like shirts and blazers neater and more wrinkle-free than anyone alive.” (768)

IMG_2089Himself:

“I drink this, sometimes, when I’m not actively working, to help me accept the same painful things it’s now time for me to tell you, son.” (160)

IMG_2090Mario:

“…cheerfully declining even to try to learn to really read, explaining he’d way rather listen and watch.” (188/189)

“Mario’d fallen in love with the first Madame Psychosis programs because he felt like he was listening to someone sad read out loud from yellow letters she’d taken out of a shoebox on a rainy P.M., stuff about heartbreak and people you loved dying and U.S. woe, stuff that was real. It is increasingly hard to find valid art that is about stuff that is real in this way.” (592)

IMG_2088Gately:

“He took zero in the way of shit and was a cheery but implacable exponent of the Don’t-Get-Mad-Get-Even school.” (55)

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Hal:

“I am not just a boy who plays tennis. I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I’m complex….” (11)

David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

[final in a series of 5 posts on finishing IJ]

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faces in the distemper

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IMG_2371When Mari Strachan was a little girl, she used to create pretend newspapers, carefully writing the stories in pencil, drawing a picture to go with them, and then sewing the pages together. She says, “I’ve always loved the physicality of books and paper and writing instruments…”

Now she is 64 years old, and has just published her first novel, The Earth Hums in B Flat.  Her first novel! Congratulations, Mari!

Mari Strachan is Welsh. She lives part of the time in Wales and part of the time in London. As early as she can remember, she has loved books and reading and words, so it makes sense that she grew up to be a librarian, a book reviewer, a researcher, a translator, a copy editor, and a web editor. And now an author.

In The Earth Hums In B Flat, the main character is 12 1/2-year-old, Gwenni Morgan. Strachan reveals Gwenni’s personality in the way Gwenni interacts with objects in the world around her.

For example, early in the novel, imaginative Gwenni sees faces in the distemper [a kind of paint] in the scullery:

“The green distemper on the walls is beginning to peel and flake, shaping faces with sly eyes and mouths tight with secrets. There are new faces there every day.” (page 6)

Gwenni is, in fact, surrounded by people with secrets. Strachan pulls this thread through the novel.

“They’re not watching me this morning. They’ve closed their eyes and grown long ears so that they can listen…” (page 43)

She uses the faces to show Gwenni’s emotions:

“You scared the faces in the distemper, Mam.” (page 92)

“Will the faces open their mouths to scream out our secrets as the new distemper washes over them like a wave and drowns them?” (page 93)

It’s Gwenni’s relationship with the world around her that makes her such a compelling character. For more on this novel, please check out my review in the summer issue of Contrary Magazine as well as this  interview with Mari Strachan at The View From Here Magazine, in which Strachan talks about where she writes, the difference between drafting and writing, and her favorite words.

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the writer’s notebook

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IMG_2027The Writer’s Notebook, with its title taken from the journals of Somerset Maugham, consists of 17 essays on the craft of writing. Some, but not all, are based on craft seminars given at the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. I did not read them in order, but read the ones first that I thought might help me with a story I was working on called “Hidden Tracks.”

I’ve been working on this story off and on for years. The language is dream-like and more complicated than my normal writing. So the first essay that jumped off the Table of Contents was “When to Keep it Simple” by Rick Bass. “Your ideas can so easily become tangled in your words….begin breaking apart the truths…What is the one thing, the main thought, the simplest thought?” So I went through the story, breaking down sentences and deleting. Keep it simple, I told myself.

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the front of my t-shirt from 2004

People who’ve read this story in workshops kept saying, Why would she do this? So the next essay I read was “Character Motivation” by Aimee Bender. “I don’t always know what a character wants. I know some things about the character, but to know what he or she wants feels like the final answer, why I’m writing in the first place.” When I began writing the story, I didn’t know where it was going, but after I wrote the ending, I knew. What I had neglected to do was then to go back and set up the beginning.

I also have to admit that this is a weird story, as in doesn’t exactly follow the rules of this world, also unusual for me. Readers complained they didn’t know how to read the story. So, I thought Kate Bernheimer’s essay, “Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tale,” might be useful. In a fairy tale, she wrote, “The day to day is collapsed with the wondrous.” The trick, it came to me while I was reading, was to somehow signal the reader that they were reading a sort of fairy tale where the rules would be different.

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the awesome back of my t-shirt from 2004

In “Performing Surgery Without Anesthesia,” Chris Offutt wrote, “I have one story with drafts that run back eighteen years–but it’s getting better.” Well, that certainly made me feel better about having such a hard time with my weird story.

I put off Susan Bell’s “Revisioning The Great Gatsby” because well, I loved The Great Gatsby, but what does that have to do with my writing in general or this story in particular. Wrong. Best essay of the bunch. Listen. “Although Gatsby needed to be enigmatic, his mysteriousness had to suggest something precise behind it, and Fitzgerald had to figure out what that was.”

This was the problem with my story. I was leaving it up to the reader to figure out something that I myself had not yet figured out. Which was precisely why the readers couldn’t figure it out. Well, I took my story, and I took a stand. I took hold of it, and we’ll see. I just sent it out to my writing group for yet another critique.

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I’ve found a book

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IMG_2033 At the beginning of The Northern Clemency, a novel by English writer Philip Hensher, Francis is nine. His father announces that he’s found a house. “‘I’ve found a book,’ Francis wanted to say to complete everyone’s happiness.”

Late in the novel, an older Francis is packing for a trip. As I do, he spends more time on choosing what books he will take than on choosing his clothes. He has, as you will see, also become a writer, and in more ways than one. This quote mentions many of the issues in recent posts, including favorite pens, whether or not we separate the books we’ve read from the books we haven’t, as well as a unique approach to the books we have yet to read.

“Most of the books on the shelves were old ones, favourites from his childhood…But others were fat books he’d read, had always meant to read, had been saying to himself so long he had read them that he believed they had actually been read. He packed The Idiot; he packed Dead Souls…Francis took out the half-finished bulk of his own book, eight inches thick, an A4 notebook with black binding and three green Pentel pens. He’d always used those Pentel pens; he liked the flow of the ink-soaked ball under pressure.IMG_2031

The book was the third novel Francis had written. He had sent the first out; he had sent the second out; he rather thought he would finish this one and put it back into his drawer.”

The Northern Clemency is about two English families who, shortly after the novel begins, live across the street from each other in a small neighborhood outside London. It was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

Each of its 597 pages is compelling because of Hensher’s ability to go deep into the ways families operate:

“Everyone did their best to be cheerful, talking around rather than to Sandra, and by the time they had finished [eating], they could look directly at her.”

“She [Jane] didn’t mind being told things more than once: it was a signal that everything was all right in the world.”

At least part of the reason he’s able to go deep into the lives of these families is that he goes deep into the life of each member of the families. Also, he takes his time with each moment in the story. Notice his attention to detail.

“She [Alice] sat in the warm pool of light cast by the green-shaded Tiffany lamp over the green-topped leather desk in the spare room. With her father’s fountain pen, on the heavy embossed Italian writing paper Francis had given her last Christmas, both saved for special occasions such as a letter to Sandra, she went on writing, perseveringly.”

Philip Hensher does not have a writing room, nor does he want one. He usually writes on the arm of a sofa, in a hardback A4 notebook, just as his character Francis does.

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the vagrants

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IMG_2064At the beginning of The Vagrants, the first novel by Yiyun Li, one at a time, each of the main characters comes into contact with one of the notices being posted all over the Chinese town of Muddy Waters announcing the execution and denunciation of a counterrevolutionary. The characters revolve around these notices like the spokes of a wheel.

The next layer involves each of the characters in scene with another character. Because we have met them all, we often recognize the character entering the scene before the character does who is already there. This technique involves the reader in the story. It connects us to the characters. We become a part of the inner circle. These interactions continue to occur to build the story, which gradually opens wider and wider.

By allowing us to see each character through the many different eyes of the other characters, readers come to know the characters in all  their strengths and weaknesses. We love them despite.

Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu, Tong, Nini, Bashi, Kai, the Huas–this is a character-rich novel. It is quiet and measured despite its political subject matter, and despite the evil forces at work in the world…

“The wheel of life, with its ruthless revolving, could be merciful at times.”

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details, details

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IMG_2027In the car yesterday, I was listening to the CD that came with The Writer’s Notebook. On it are two recordings. One was a discussion on character. On the panel were Ron Carlson, Dorothy Allison, and Dennis Johnson. There was no introduction; it just started. Some of it sounded familiar.

When I got home, I looked up my notes from the two summers I went to the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop. This recording was from the summer of 2005. I had actually been there.

What was sticking in my brain this time, though, was largely different from what I had taken notes on then. Ah, I thought, I’m in a different place now with my writing–hopefully a further-along place.

Which is an argument for rereading everything.  Who knows what you will notice the next time.

Which brings me to my point…This time, the main thing that stood out was Dorothy Allison saying, “I’m a watcher.”

Until I started writing, I was not a watcher or a noticer. Now I am. And that’s a good thing. Being a watcher helps me catch days. It helps make things stick. And character, as well as life, is all there in the details.

“She bought throw pillows, for example, and buying throw pillows is in my experience the single best indicator that a female human being is feeling pretty good.”  from Sight Hound by Pam Houston

“A pot simmering on the stove helps my father to believe we are still a family.”  from Fugitive Blue by Dani Shapiro

Details, details…

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