The Voice of Reason

Okay: this is a post that I started a few weeks ago and never got around to finishing. Enjoy!

So I've been reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, despite the fact that I have many pressing assignments breathing down my neck. Thus far, it has been exactly my kind of read: philosophical yet simple, artistic yet base. A study in contradictions.

Still, I've read a number of books in this vein. I always enjoy them, but generally lack someone to share them with. I'm left reading myriad passages aloud to my patient mother, who does not love the prose, but the reader.

Not this time! When I first opened the book, which I ordered on Amazon.com (used), I was thrilled to find that its previous owner had written in it. Certainly I'm not the only nerd out there! At least one of you has to love finding traces of another reader. (Don't be shy!)

As you might have guessed, I immediately turned to pages 107, 123, 262, and 265. I don't know what I was expecting; maybe I thought that the pages were some kind of secret code, or that the list itself was something akin to that game that students used to play with textbooks in high school. You know...on page 23, it says: "Turn to page 34." And then on page 34, it says: "Flip to page 72." After much searching, there was usually some invariably disappointing message like, "Steve was here," or "I hate school!" Still, it's all about the journey, right?

Anyway, there wasn't anything special on those pages, aside from the occasional underline or check beside the text, both of which could be found throughout the text.

I continued reading, making note of check marks and underlining whenever I came across them, but not really thinking all that much about them. Then I came upon this page:

So at this point in the story, the narrator is describing one of the main characters and said character's inability to stay faithful to his wife. It is all couched in rather sympathetic terms, as though we the readers should feel sorry for Tomas in all of his debauched glory.

In response to this, my doppel-reader wrote, "What an ass!" in the margin. At first, I simply laughed because this reader, who I presume is female, wrote what most people were probably thinking. Not only that, I was able to share the text with someone else (an unknown someone else) without having to explain the first thing about the book. It was like finding a ready-made companion.

Now that's all well and good, but then I realized something: I actually hadn't been thinking that. Because this entire portion of the text (which moves from one character to another) was devoted to Tomas, I found myself actually sympathizing with him, as opposed to his wronged and miserable wife, Tereza. As much as I hate to admit it, I was entirely wrapped up in the artsy nature of the novel, and, as a result, willing to forgive all number of transgressions committed by the pathetically flawed main character.

Thank God for doppel-reader! Her cursive wit brought me out of the land of the novel and back into reality, where cheating is wrong and that's that. In real life, I would never have empathized with the narrator's flimsy defense of Tomas; but alone and buried in a world created by Milan Kundera, I found myself playing by his rules.

I don't believe that I have a tight conclusion for this piece. Instead, I'll simply say that I learned two things. First, a book is always better shared. And second? Well, the written word is more powerful than most people realize.

How Not To Include Politics in Your Music

This weekend, I had the good fortune of attending a Massive Attack concert at the Fox Theater. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the group, it is (according to Wikipedia) "a collaborative music duo from Bristol" as well as the "progenitor of the trip-hop genre."

Okay, so what the heck does that mean? Basically, these guys (and occasionally gals) sing awesome, haunting melodies to an electronic though elegant drumbeat. My personal favorites are "Paradise Circus" and "Atlas Air."

The concert itself was pretty fantastic. Despite the fact that I was about three rows from the back door and surrounded by couples that felt that their love was meant to be shared, I had no problem seeing the stage. Sound wasn't a problem, either. Actually, my head is still ringing.

Now I've been to a variety of concerts, and most of them (thankfully) focused on music-making, not politicizing. So for me, a seizure-inducing light show that contained statistics about WMDs was a new experience. For the most part, it was interesting; it even added a new dimension to the work that I'd previously associated with the treadmill.

But there was one track (complete with corresponding light show) that I just couldn't rationalize: "Better Things."

Like most musicians and superstars that have the luxury of a soap box, Massive Attack crushed the wooden crate with its weight. Their intentions were good. Really. During this song, which, for those of you who decided not to have a listen, discusses freedom, a small screen scrolled through numerous quotes that related to the subject. For the most part, they were well-matched. Take a gander at some of these:

"No one can be at peace unless he has his freedom." Malcolm X

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." Jean-Paul Sartre

"...If you're in favor of freedom of speech, then that means that you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for those you despise." Noam Chomsky

You get the picture.

Here I am, reading and considering each quote, when this one comes scrolling along:

"Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood." Augusto Pinochet

Hold it right there. Pinochet? Really? You mean, the Chilean fascist dictator who was responsible for the torture and/or death of thousands of his own people? According to the omniscient Wikipedia, 2,279 people "disappeared" for political reasons while he was in "office." Approximately 31, 947 were tortured under this regime--but that's not so bad, right? At least they lived.

So here's my question: why would Massive Attack choose to use this quote by Pinochet, a mass murderer and extortionist, when they could have easily substituted it with this nearly identical quote that is attributed to Thomas Jefferson?

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Oh, right. Jefferson is a dead white conservative male. In order to avoid citing someone so clearly evil, we instead turn to the immortal words of a fascist dictator. Ah, political correctness, thy name is irony. 

Oh, by the way-while researching, I found something interesting about the Noam Chomsky quote that I mentioned above. In context, it goes a little something like this:

"If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like. Stalin and Hitler, for example, were in favor of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise."

So, if I follow this correctly, Chomsky is suggesting that we practice what our mothers (hopefully) preached: The Golden Rule. If you want to be able to exercise your right to free speech, you must be willing to allow others to do so as well. But--and this is a pretty major caveat--your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Stalin and Hitler exercised their free speech to the detriment of others, which, to his credit, Chomsky condemns. Good for him.

In a sense, then, it could be theorized that Massive Attack used Pinochet's quote for the sake of upholding the noble Golden Rule that Chomsky cites in the latter half of his quote. Still, I'm going to have to say that I don't think they took the time to read the quote in context, seeing as the song ended just as these words flashed on the screen:

"Death solves all problems. No man, no problem." Joseph Stalin

And what makes me so sure that I'm right? This quote has been misattributed to our fearless leader. According to WikiQuote, the original source is a novel called Children of the Arbat by Anatoly Rybakov.

Something tells me these guys aren't big on research.

A Little Bit of Everything

So I just finished reading over the five types of writers as described by Betsy Lerner.

At first, I thought that I might fall under the heading of the ambivalent writer; after all, I have a lot of trouble settling down to write much of anything. For instance, I've been struggling to come up with a topic for my Understanding Writing as Process class. After three submissions, I've finally settled down on a topic. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if my research takes another turn. But who am I kidding? My head isn't filled with tons of ideas. I don't have this irrepressible urge to create. I live and breathe even when I don't write.

I do, however, drive myself to distraction worrying that I am not creative, and that this somehow makes me a lesser writer. I fret so much that I neglect the assignments that I do have the capacity to complete. I agonize over all of my papers, never sure whether or not I've actually fulfilled the assignment. By the time the deadline rolls around, I just have to hold one hand over my eyes as I turn over my work to the critical eye of a professor.

In all likelihood, I am more of a neurotic writer than anything else. Still, I had my own brush with the "wicked child" syndrome this afternoon. My first attempt at this post discussed an old friend of mine, an ambivalent writer whose flighty approach to literature drove me crazy. While it wasn't a Philip Roth style expose, it revealed too much for my taste. What if this ambivalent dreamer found the post? What on earth would he think? What would my other readers think of me if I spent several paragraphs pointing out all of the faults in a fellow writer?

So in true neurotic fashion, I deleted it. (If any of you read it before I had the chance to erase it, please strike it from your memory. It never happened.)

My point in all of these ramblings, and I do have one, is that none of us are all one kind of writer or another. As Lerner points out, we are all a mixture of the addict, the wicked child, the ambivalent one, the neurotic one, and, of course, the self-promoter. I think that the key is to ensure that each of these characteristics is proportional to all of the rest. The trouble really begins when we start to believe that we are all one thing or another.

Hunkering Down: So Much Easier Said Than Done

Speaking of hunkering down, I really should be working on a paper for another class. I've been putting it off for weeks now; each time I sit down to write, I decide that I'm not familiar enough with the essay at hand. I should really read it one more time, just for good measure. I'll start writing as soon as I take some more notes. Really.

Since this is technically schoolwork, I feel that it is a socially acceptable form of procrastination. Once I finish this, I'll go spend an hour at the gym, just to get the juices flowing. Then I'll get started on my paper in earnest. Of course, I'll want to to shower first, and then maybe fix a little something to eat. After dinner, maybe I'll brew some decaf coffee and do a little reading to set the mood.

I'll admit that this is not the most efficient set of pre-writing activities; but after reading Wendy Wasserstein's short essay, "Holidays at the Keyboard Inn," I decided that this must be how the professionals do it. I've read several articles recently that touch on the overdone topic of procrastination, and they all seem to come to a similar consensus: a little pressure never hurt anyone. In fact, a looming deadline has the potential to produce truly magnificent work. Then again, this romantic notion of waiting until the last moment and then creating a masterpiece can be problematic. It leaves little time for revision, which most of us non-genius types rely on for quality work.

Still, I think that Wasserstein makes a subtle point as she recounts her own bouts with procrastination. As an undergrad, I started writing my papers approximately a week in advance, give or take a few days. (There were some infamous exceptions which led to disastrous consequences.) Though I may not have penned my final draft until the day before the deadline, I took pages and pages of notes, read and re-read the material, and talked myself in circles in the weeks after the paper was assigned.

In this essay, Wasserstein takes for granted that her readers (who happen to be aspiring writers) are familiar with this dance. A non-writer might marvel at the composition of a full-length play over a weekend at the Holiday Inn, but a writer knows that the ideas, though not concrete, had been floating in her head for days, weeks, or possibly even months.

Now. I've gone to the gym, had my ritualistic mug of decaf, and completed a blog post. As soon as I check my e-mail, I'll start writing that paper...

Too good not to share..."Found in Translation"

As I was perusing the op-ed section of the New York Times in search of a suitable piece for the rhetorical analysis, I came across this gem! Granted, I haven't read any of Mr. Cunningham's works, so I have no idea if the application of his philosophy works in his fiction. (Frankly, this article has inspired me to make a quick trip to the Cobb County Library this afternoon...as if I don't have enough to read already!)

Here is the article in its entirety:

Found in Translation- Michael Cunningham

The idea of translation has baffled me for some time, primarily as a result of my own limited experiences with the Spanish language. In an effort to gain some fluency and better comprehension skills, I started watching some of my favorite television shows and movies in Spanish. Since my ears weren't quite skilled enough, I gave myself a bit of a crutch to lean on: Spanish subtitles. As I slowly learned to keep up, I was surprised to find that the words spoken in the voice overs were not the same as those scrolling across the bottom of the screen. I guess I really hadn't grasped the concept of translation; there is more than one way to express a similar sentiment, after all. My own translating skills were hindered by an irrepressible urge to translate word for word, rather than thought for thought, thus making it difficult for me to imagine any flexibility between meaning and phrasing.


Cunningham takes this concept, familiar to second language learners everywhere, and then suggests that we must engage in the act of translation to put our own thoughts into language. (Oh, the horror! I don't have a Caitlin-English dictionary...) If you are of the belief that language precedes thought, this is an especially sticky idea. But regardless of their philosophy, hasn't every writer suffered that same feeling of alienated bewilderment when faced with the daunting prospect of putting his or her spirit in ink? Even if you manage to find the "right" words, they don't always convey that something special, that je ne sais quoi. And if we as composers feel that our work is somehow foreign, then imagine the reader! (Which is, of course, what Cunningham suggests that we do.)

I could go on gushing over this piece for quite some time, but I'll spare you. After all, this text will conjure up your own metaphors and memories, just as Crime and Punishment was a completely different text for both Cunningham and "Helen."

Rules: Who needs them, anyway?

Unfortunately, I've recently noted that my literary education consists primarily of gaps. In an effort to remedy this painful situation, I started reading a collection of works by Dostoyevsky last week. Though I've only made a dent in Notes from Underground, I have successfully placed several excerpts and short stories in my repertoire.

I actually bought this modest collection several years ago. The impetus behind the purchase was a recent acquaintance; I'd met an upperclassmen in the Wind Ensemble who happened to be carrying a copy of the text in the inner pocket of his scholarly blazer.(Which, by the way, was complete with corduroy elbow patches.) He was quite honestly the epitome of the English major; he lived a dreamy existence in which he spent hours composing poetry and later reading it to his necessarily patient friends. I know it sounds cliche, but I was very impressed by the passion with which he discussed literature in general. I figured that if he liked Dostoyevsky enough to cart him across campus in his jacket pocket, the book had to be good.

The first story in the collection was "White Nights." (Incidentally, it was the inspiration for the recent quasi-indie film, Two Lovers. Who knew?) The initial description of the narrator's lonely walks through St. Petersburg, punctuated by his amiable conversations with houses, was captivating. After tearing through the first ten pages or so, I stopped short when I realized that the next forty pages were comprised almost entirely of dialogue.

This wasn't pithy dialogue, either. Entire pages went by with the narrator speaking to his new friend and secret love, Nastenka. Of course, she occasionally got to tell her own story in a nearly identical epic style. Imagine my shock when I realized that the great Dostoyevsky had habitually broken a cardinal rule espoused by creative writing teachers everywhere: never use dialogue as exposition! What is more, the interactions between the narrator and Nastenka practically screamed artifice. And to think of all the time that I spent worrying about the realism of my own attempts at dialogue.

I can think of at least a dozen books that I've closed forever because the characters were wooden mouthpieces, the structure was inconsistent, or the plot was ill-conceived. (Who publishes those things, anyway?!) Yet somehow, I couldn't put it down. I read the whole story in one sitting. (I'm notoriously restless.) Despite the fact that the story itself broke nearly every unwritten rule about writing, it was defiantly engaging. No, Dostoyevsky did not create a world that I could truly believe in. His characters were far too long-winded. He did, however, pen a story that stayed with me. On some basic level, one that is far more intangible than plot, characters, or dialogue, it resonated in my heart and mind.


So, to bring us back to Prose--I suppose that the only rule in writing is that there are no rules. Good writing is not based in any kind of formula, but rather a very loose set of guidelines that can be bent and twisted to suit our purposes.

Why do we read?

      I have a confession to make. When I first began reading Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer, I was enchanted. There is nothing so wonderful as seeing that someone else takes delight in the same things that you do. (A bit narcissistic,I'll grant you, but true.) I think C.S. Lewis put it best when he said, "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'" Not to cross that fine line between sentimentality and pure sap, but the first few chapters did indeed make me feel like I'd found a friend.

      But what do you make of a friend that recommends a book to you with all of her heart, and then proceeds to spoil the ending? Not just once, but time and again? It reminds me of the time that, having just seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at the theater, my older (nerdier) brother called me and, without mincing words, informed my cheery voicemail that "Snape kills Dumbledore."

      No harm was done, of course. Since I'd already read the books, I deemed his wry wit hilariously funny. But let's face it--I haven't read all of the books on Ms. Prose's "Books To Be Read Immediately" list. Nor had I read all of the books that she cited throughout her discourse on Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, Narration, etc. Let's take, for instance, Tolstoy's classic Anna Karenina. Sometime last year, I got an itch for Russian literature and managed to read 397 pages of this monster of a masterpiece. But, as fate would have it, I am easily distracted and found that I needed a break from Tolstoy's style. While 95% of the world may have known poor Anna's fate, I did not. Thanks to Francine Prose, I am no longer a part of that ignorant 5%. Thanks a lot.

      The plot of Heinrich von Kleist's The Marquise of O-- suffered a similar fate. While I understand that she revealed the startling nature and (let's be honest) pure genius of the plot for strictly pedagogical reasons, I object nonetheless. That would be like a teacher telling her class, prior to studying the novel, that Richard Parker of Life of Pi is actually a...oh, I just can't bring myself to be that cruel.

     All that being said, I think that Prose's dubious pedagogical style raises an important question. Why do we read? It is probably safe to say that as children, we read books that interested us. Books that possessed a certain mystery and excited the senses. As we grow older, we are encouraged to read the Classics. Ah, the Classics. I don't mean to suggest that they are not valuable, or even that they aren't entertaining. But as a whole, we know what to expect from them in terms of plot. By the time you are old enough to read and appreciate the great works of literature, someone somewhere along the line has probably spoiled the ending. Sitting in Modernism during the spring semester of my senior year, I was seized by the irrepressible desire to find the nearest Barnes & Noble and purchase a cheap, probably hastily written genre novel solely on the basis that its plot had not been revealed to me. No, Jim Butcher's Storm Front isn't exactly a front-runner for the future literary canon. But it is fresh, life-affirming and without pretensions.

     So. Do we read because, as Bill Watterson might suggest, it builds character? For a lesson in writing good fiction? For pleasure? In all likelihood, the motivation behind burying one's nose in books on a regular basis is a mixture of all three. Still, that doesn't mean that Francine Prose is off the hook.

    

God or the Devil: Which occupies the details?

     I'll admit that Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer is a challenging piece for me to comment on. In some weird amalgamation of objectivity and subjectivity, Prose crafts arguments that strike me as somewhat impenetrable. Despite the fact that she often backtracks and tells us (or her prior students) to disregard whatever rule she has just established, she is never wrong. In her discussion of Anton Chekhov's short stories, she often feels that she has led her students astray by making some broad generalization about storytelling, only to see Mr. Chekhov has done just the opposite with magnificent results. But was her advice really wrong?

     I'd venture to say no. First of all, I for one am no Anton Chekhov. The fact that he has gotten away with flagrant disobedience of the accepted rules of storytelling does not automatically guarantee that I will be half as successful in my own attempts. If I'm not mistaken, we discussed this idea in the second week of class with regard to grammar. Dickens crafted a splendid run-on stream of sentence fragments in the introduction of A Tale of Two Cities. Your typical composition teacher might advise against such an act because A) you are not Charles Dickens, and B) you might not be able to achieve clarity with such an artistic measure. That is not to say that one is right or wrong in the artistic (not grammatical) sense, but rather that one clearly works better for you.

     It is because of this extreme subjectivity that I generally find it easier to focus on one paragraph, one claim, or one offhand remark. In this case, a quotation on p. 196 caught my attention and refused to let it go. After recounting the anecdote about the "true-life stories" writing workshop, Prose ends the segment by quoting her friend as saying, "Trust me on this...God really is in the details." She goes on to suggest that "if God is in the details, we all must on some deep level believe that the truth is in there, too."

      The colloquial phrase "God is in the details" struck me as odd, though it took me a day or two to figure out why. Think what you will, but I have always heard a different version of the saying: "The Devil is in the details." Believing that I had simply misheard the expression, I looked it up online. According to Wikipedia, (all hail) the original phrase supposedly goes like this: "God is in the detail." Though I don't have a second source on this, I also read that this version is attributed to Flaubert: "The good God is in the detail."

     Ironically, the difference between these variations really is in the detail. Still, I think that it is a perfect demonstration of Prose's point. The original phrase, "God is in the detail," refers to a single detail, or perhaps the complexity inherent in a single object. (I.E.: The detail in that ancient Roman archway is truly magnificent.) Prose tells us that "[B]ad liars pile on the facts and figures, the corroborating evidence, the improbable digressions ending in blind alleys, while good...liars know that it's the single priceless detail that jumps out of the story..." God (and/or truth) then resides in that single tell-tale gesture, comment or revelation. He doesn't feel the need to convince us--it is up to us to notice that detail and take it to heart. My own version of the same colloquialism, "The Devil in the details," is equally apt. Since we are naturally less likely to believe him, the Devil (theoretically) would have to pull out the big guns in order to gain our trust.

      Following this logic, writers that rely on that single crucial detail are aware of the truth inherent in their work. They would love for you to believe it and to come along for the ride, but they won't (as Prose suggests) stoop to salesmanship.

Discussing Dialogue

      I tend to believe that, as a general rule, my feelings of incompetence with regard to the field of creative writing are spawned from an irrational fear of dialogue. One minute I'm breezing through exposition and character development, only to find myself at that place in a story that separates the boys from the men-- that moment when the characters that I have so lovingly crafted must stand up and speak for themselves. While I have no children, I can only imagine that this must be a small taste of what it is like to be a parent. For years you coddle your child, reading him carefully chosen books and playing Mozart non-stop in hopes of increasing the future capabilities of his sizable noggin. You give him everything he needs to be an intelligent, thoughtful human being, hoping that as he grows older, he will exemplify your better qualities, not the ones with which you have unintentionally endowed him. The dialogue that my characters inevitably spout suggests that perhaps I've been piping in the wrong tunes.

     Hollow, waxen, contrived. In essence, I can't imagine anyone actually speaking the way that I construct dialogue. Francine Prose cites a common piece of advice given to young writers as a means of improving dialogue, gently reminding us that our characters should not use dialogue as a means of exposition. While this isn't my problem, I don't feel relieved. Not unlike one who knows that he is ill, but has yet to receive the diagnosis, I simply want to know what I am doing wrong! One more negative test result only intensifies my frustration.

     The golden nugget of this chapter appears so quickly after its introduction that you might be in danger of overlooking it completely. Before Prose begins to quote from some of her favorite reading material, she mentions an intriguing (though morally questionable) activity that she once assigned to a class. Her students' task was to "eavesdrop on strangers and transcribe the results." Sketchy? Yes, but this girl is not necessarily above sleaze. Like Prose herself, I decided to spy on perfectly innocent strangers in a nearby Starbucks.

     This admittedly Nervous Nellie is pleased to report that her covert operation proceeded without complication. After several minutes of frantic typing, I quickly saved the document, tucked my laptop under my arm and scurried out the front door. Once I was safely nestled in my apartment, I re-opened the clandestine document. To my surprise, a brief reading told me all that I needed to know. In addition to exemplifying Prose's point that human speech, and thus written dialogue, is not and should not be one-dimensional, this adventurous exercise showed me several of the crucial aspects of good dialogue that I had routinely missed.

      First, spoken language has a certain cadence. If my previous attempts at dialogue sounded stiff, it was probably because I didn't stop to think about how the words would sound if someone were to read them aloud. I won't say that all speakers are poets, but everyone has a certain rhythm or pattern to their speech. Of course that pattern is subject to change, but the fact remains that it must be present in some form or another.

     Additionally, spoken language is not complete. It makes references to things that it may never clarify, seeing as the listener is presumably more familiar with the subject than the eavesdropper. This speaks to Prose's earlier warning concerning the presence of exposition within dialogue, but I want to point out that it can also pertain to more than content. All of my lovingly formed complete sentences made for very poor dialogue because of their structure. Most of us don't worry about run-on sentences or sentence fragments while we are speaking. Why should my characters be preoccupied with it?

     I'm sure that I have taxed your patience enough with this post, but I'll mention one more thing. Vocabulary. Obviously, it varies with a character's background, education, and audience. With a few exceptions, people generally use common words to express their meanings. While an omniscient narrator might be endowed with a broad and detailed lexicon, ordinary people tend to speak to the point. I didn't recognize many words from the GRE study guide in my subjects' speech. Conversely, I recorded more than my share of profanity. Though I may be reticent to jot down four letter words, the average person thinks nothing of uttering them.