Guess I'll start us off again. I have to pose the obligatory disagreement with Baxter that Carver eschews insight and epiphany in his stories. Take "Viewfinder," since Baxter did. CB claims that the narrator doesn't get a view of things up on his roof, but he does. "It was okay up there on that roof. / I stood up there and looked around." The story is called "Viewfinder." The narrator has literally risen above his home, the symbol/agent of domesticity that keeps him trapped and incapable of action. "Instead of having an insight, the narrator acts out," says Baxter. What about the rocks, though? I'd argue that the narrator sees these rocks and realizes that they, symbols/agents of the destructive and ruinous tendencies of children, are what's wrong with his house (and, by extension, his life) -- that it's his kids' fault he's in this state (the photographer's kids are how come he's got hooks for hands!) -- and resolves -- to rid his house (i.e. his life) of this pox. Seems more than an acting out, to me. Seems like . . . insight.
I also wonder why CB thinks Cheever's story "succeeds, but just barely." How so? It's a pretty goddamn bold statement, if you ask me. Explain. Explain.
(More important than all this, though, is to note that line of dialogue that Carver gives to the photographer: "I don't know . . . I don't do action shots." BRILLIANCE! SHEER BRILLIANCE!)
It seems to me as if Baxter and Sparks are looking to get two different things from the stories they read. Both seem to have very strong feeling's one way or another about how they feel regarding the "point" of the piece. While I think it is safe to argue that most people would probably side with Sparks, I am sure there are those who would feel just as compelled to agree with Baxter. This is what makes studying writing so difficult, it is completely possible, and I feel acceptable, for one person to say a piece of fiction is brilliant, while another disagrees. This can be worrisome for those of us who are trying to find where we as writers fit in to this vast literary world. Also, I think that little actually falls into the "black and white" categories in terms of literary analyses. I am in agreement with Paul in regards to Baxter's comment on "Veiwfinder." Just because he does not find any meaning within the ending does not mean non is there. Are there any writers who write without some sort of meaning? Even if their purpose is to remain vague, then there is meaning behind that choice, is there not? Where I do agree with him is when stories try to hit you over the head with their meaning. I felt this mildly in "Extra" in which the theme, or epiphany of the main character, Granny Lin, follows up throughout the story. Over and over again we read about Granny's struggle with a world dominated by, and in a way being destroyed by, overabundance. I prefer to have this more subtle throughout and for it all to come together at the end for me, but there I go using "I," because that's all it is, opinion.
Also, I tried to keep in mind how the first sentence affected me in each of the stories selected for this reading. All three have very different beginnings, "Extra" starting in the middle of an action, "Araby" providing us with a setting and "Big 32" beginning with a catchy, non-traditional label (I am not sure what else to call it). I found myself most drawn to the "Extra" beginning, since questions were raised for me right away, but as I got use to the strange layout of "Big 32," I found that I was more intrigued as I continued into the story. I was wondering What other people thought about the beginning of "Big 32." I was actually a bit confused at first and because of that was taken out at the beginning, even though Sparks says that beginning in such an interesting way will actually captivate your reader's interest more so. Did it do this to you? I am just wondering if there is perhaps a fine line one must walk between being too out there yet creatively capturing your reader at the same time.
@lindsay, in regards to Big 32, I was a little confused when I first saw it and so I skimmed the rest of the story and when I read that first line I realized it was marked off by temperatures. Which pretty much got me interested, and I guess the technique was a bit of a gimmick but strangely enough, I didn't find it to be very strange. In fact it gave me a format I could easily latch on to. That I knew from the beginning the chronology would be in temperature and not time, actually made it easier for me to enter the story. It kind of gave me a guide line to help walk through this dissemination of information. And there was a weird comfort in that.
The story in a way takes the idea of beginning in the middle of the action to a whole new different height. The sense of heat gives you a feeling of intense motion and you're thrown into this story at the rate of boiling water.
Was it too much though? I don't think so. I did have some trouble with the readings in that there wasn't much on what makes the wrong thing wrong. I mean yeah the alarm clock beginning is boring, but really, what makes it not a good choice? I mean it's not, but I feel like there's good discussion to be had in looking at what makes a bad beginning or ending bad. I mean some of the qualities they were talking about in the essays in regards to characteristics of a good beginning ain't really guarantees that you're going to be making a good story. Even enticing the reader to turn the page or making them want to know what happens next. I don't know, that's just what's been mulling in my head since reading this stuff.
"The mass production of insight, in fiction and elsewhere, is a dubious phenomenon," (Baxter 60). This line really stood out for me, perhaps because it attacks something I try to do in my own writing, that is to try and work with epiphanic endings. Also the idea that epiphanies (or Carver's anti-epiphanies) are a relatively new device on the literary scene, seems to suggest that this is a fad, but it is hard to imagine a time when the Joycian ending is no longer a satisfying end to the story. Of course it is the mass production of such insight that is dangerous, when the writer chooses to end a story, as Joyce does in The Dead, but falls woefully short. So what are the ways that we end stories? All of us have read a story and then said "So what?" or "That's it?" but why does Carver get away with (and I feel he does) his ending to viewfinder, yet when I think about that story I can't see it ending any other way.
Parts of this story I loved, but there were several places that simply felt abstract to the point of being impenetrable. Lines like: "Liz unbound, like a flashlight beam coming through your finger skin, regardless." What does this mean? And why does the author continuously flip between "Harriet" and "H."?
A lot of this story feels very close to the author, and I'm wondering how far the reader is really allowed inside that world. Did anyone feel like they were being kept out of the loop? Locked out by assumptions or half-realized memories? Was this story successful?
I thought Big 32 was successful - the formal conceit allowed a lot of information to be gradually imparted to the reader, and because of this I didn't really feel like I was being kept out of the loop so much as slowly being allowed in by a very private person.
I did feel like it kept ending over and over, however (the 35 section for instance), and that the form forced the story to keep going all the way down to absolute zero and the sort of epiphanic/transformative ending. I was wondering what people thought of the ending here, and the way in which Dream Obits for Liz is seperate but obviously very related. Are we meant to see Dream Obits as the end of Big 32, or is it more like a footnote?
Although I didn't feel Sparks said anything that I haven't thought about at one time or another, I was really struck anew by the idea of first lines/last lines in that I have always found it difficult to push myself past the middle of a story. People say writers are afraid of the blank page, I find the blank page a breeze compared to the 'half page'...All the 'balls thrown up in the air' that then have to land in all the right places. Add to managing of that, the idea of the need for transcendence of some sort? "The best endings seem to be barely contained by the words in which they are expressed. They feel bigger than mere words..." I do look for that feeling of 'largeness' at the end of a story. I felt Extra got me there. Araby, too, though not as profoundly. Possibly because in Extra the sense is, this is the last love the narrator will have. In the Raising the Curtain essay, the idea that struck me as something I hadn't quite thought of is this one of 'balance,' keeping the reader 'off-balance' is to keep him interested...Hmmm!
I don’t think “Big 32” was successful. I, too, felt like I was kept out of a loop that was too personal for the author. I thought “H,” midway through the piece, could be someone else besides Harriet, but I’m not sure. I did enjoy the odd structure of the piece; it felt very particular to a story like this, where temperature is such a key texture.
I’ve had a tough time trying to come up with a question regarding our readings. I agree with Lindsey; ultimately, these handouts, these ruminations on beginnings, plot, and endings provide opinions of preference on what works for those story elements: sometimes, they’re in agreement, just worded differently, and sometimes they’re not. I like how Toby said that Carver’s “Viewfinder” ended in the only way he could imagine it. I think that’s a key thing to keep in mind; for all this talk about having endings which provide a “sense of the story opening up,” like Sparks recommends, there will be endings that demand a close-up, ending in action, versus zooming out (so to say). And a reader will come into it, feeling that a story ends in the right way or not. That’s just as subjective as the author’s thoughts on which ending works best (presuming a writer can conjure different versions that could work).
The most helpful thing I read from the handouts was from John Barth’s piece. I like how he described the beginning of a story as the “’ground situation’: a dramatically voltaged state of affairs preexisting the story’s present time.” (i.e. history) I like how he later said, regarding a story’s end: “If nothing of consequence about the ground situation has altered, no story has been told;”
In these readings we have gotten a few definitions of plot, "the incremental perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a complexified equilibrium," "...a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality," "...that series of events, arranged in a particular order, that brings about the desired final effect of a short story or novel." While all of these definitions make sense to me, there seem to be a number of works, short stories in particular, that resist these definitions or else function without plot. The Housewife, for example. My feelings about this piece aside, most of the class was satisfied by its effect and agrees that it is a story. But there is no perturbation, incremental or otherwise, no causality of the woman’s actions, no series of events—(the events of the story are continuous, unceasing. A habit.) Barth says, “If nothing of consequence about the ground situation has been altered, no story has been told.” But Housewife tells a story without altering the ground situation. The entire story, in fact, is the ground situation. How then, do we reconcile this exception and others like it? Can story exist without plot and still satisfy readers? Can we modify the definitions and guidelines we’ve received to incorporate pieces like this?
I like the notion in "What Happens Next?" that events should have both reason (cause) and consequence (effect). Laplante's criticism of causality seems to be really just a cricicism of reductive/bad/lazy (i.e. unsubtle) causality. What do people think about reason/consequence as two requisites for events in a filet-o-fiction?
Also, last night I had a dream that Charles Baxter was hanging out at a party at my uncle's house in Pt. Richmond and once everybody left I asked him about the Carver thing only I can't remember what he said to me.
I guess this kind of goes with what Ian is saying about stories existing without plots. Sparks asks, "Why should firsts and lasts matter more than everything in the middle?" I think that says a lot about seemingly plotless works. I guess as long as something early on sparks interests and something that satisfies readers at the end does it really matter how you get there? I think that in Big 32 the whole story is given away in the first section, "SOme things are worth your life and other things are not." The rest of the sections kind of just build that line...I think.
In Laplante's essay “Raising the Curtain: Beginning You Story” I was surprised by what she defined as the “Characteristics of a Good Opening”--specifically that your story must answer the questions: “Where does the piece take place? At what point in time? What's the physical terrain: A house? A boat on the open sea? Mountains? Suburbia? Whatever the physical setting of the piece, it should be apparent from the very first word.” (pg 368, Laplante) and that it should be apparent from the first word (or sentence)... I tried to recall any stories or novels that do this that I think are successful and couldn't come up with any—so I did a little research. I checked ten novels/short stories that I think are successful to see if they do what she describes within the first sentence. Only one of them did. That's 10% (granted it's a relatively small sample, but still). The one that did is more about place than about character. Two of my favorite first sentences from the sample:
“A beginning, an end: there seems to be neither.” (People Like That Are The Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk, Lorrie Moore)
“It was like so, but wasn't.” (Galatea, 2.2, Richard Powers)
I think it's often true that a good beginning introduces the characters and situations and sets the tone of the piece (yeah, no kidding), but I definitely disagree with Laplante about establishing setting within the first sentence.
In the story “Extra” Li establishes the protagonist and the later important steel lunch pail in her first sentence. We do not know where the story is taking place yet. Another thing that struck me about “Extra” is that it is almost two complete stories...one that ends (or has the potential to end) after Old Tang's death with “....Granny Lin almost weeps out of gratitude” and the other which begins with “Situated in a mountain resort in a western suburb of Beijing, Mei-Mei Academy takes pride in being among the first private schools in the country.” (page 11, Li) I was wondering if anyone thought that they could be separated into two stories or why she (Li) might have created this division in the middle?
I was taken by the aperture of the Yiyan Li piece. I like how the second paragraph elaborates and comments on the certificate described in the first paragraph; then ironizes—though seemingly undercutting the elaborations and comments made—and essentially reaffirms the speakers views. How does this opening affect the piece? I read the sardonic tone as rhetorical. How do we as writers incorporate or avoid rhetorical structures in our fiction?
John Cheever’s glib refusal of plot at the end of the LaPlante article rubbed me the wrong way. I understand what he means, but I personally feel that intuition shouldn’t be taken for granted, and that often what we ‘feel’ as ‘magic’ is a unconscious aptitude for understanding structure. That is not to say that I don’t write intuitively, but I feel that Cheever’s dismissal of plot should be taken lightly. Do you agree? How do you negotiate structure and plot and intuition?
I realized I lose my questions and train of thought (choo choo) if I read everyone's comments first. So let me get this out first before I get distracted. I would have to say for me, Big 32 was successful in terms of establishing a setting that made me wonder, "what happens next." It follows what Laplante describes as immersing the reader in the physical world of the piece, or at least starting with actions that I can become interested in. The title is also aware of planting this seed of curiosity as I wonder what will be the big 32. But as I kept reading and wondering where this story would take me, I began to feel less invested and interested in what happens. Wondering not why, but how is Monson creating conflict? The narrator against herself? To avoid losing control? Barth writes, "if nothing of consequence about the ground situation has been altered, no story has been told; the action has been all effort and no work." I feel in a sense this fails because it feels too much just like action. I need to feel the conflict before the narrator's epiphany. So even if it isn't important for me, at least I can understand what's at stake for the character.
Barth was beginning to speak to me on p. 130, when he wrote of beginning in medias res and "then interstitch[ing] our exposition retrospectively as we proceed." He goes on to say that the "dramaturgical beginning need not be and seldom is the chronological beginning" and that "dramatic effect, not linear chronology, is the regnant principle in the selection and arrangement of a story's action." All of which is a nice justification for writing one's story in whichever order one pleases.
This is all well and good, but then that begs the question (which Barth does not answer and which I am finding most pressing in my own writing right now): how exactly can one tell what is most dramatically effective? Is this where the writerly instinct or the intuitive sense of causality that Laplante discusses (280) kicks in? Just how far does that really get us when we're discussing craft? What happens when one (OK, me) revises so much that nothing feels instinctive anymore? I feel alternately frustrated (what do I do??) and freed (whatever I want!!) by the vacillating between formula and intuition found in these essays.
I might just be approaching Big 32 with too cynical an eye, but it seemed more gimmick-y to me than anything else. The structure was a neat little trick, but I didn't feel particularly compelled to read to the end once I had surmised that Liz, Harriet's love, had died in a car accident. The human aspect was lost on me; certainly a lot of fascinating details on Harriet's character and Liz's character and their relationship together were revealed to us, but the most interesting details (to me, at least) were revealed after the death had already been made known. In that sense, the tragedy was introduced before I began caring about the character, and I didn't have the inclination to go back and retroactively feel bad for her.
Extra was much more satisfying for me, in that regard. The gradual build-up of facts about Granny Lin and her emotions meant that by the time she lost everything, I knew her well-enough to care. Perhaps that's an argument for a more traditional story structure.
Oh, and Lindsey. Get a flashlight, a bright one, turn out the lights, and hold the flashlight to your fingers. Not your hand (too meaty,) but your fingers. The dark shadows are your phalanges.
To answer your question, Paul, in regards to the function of 'cause and effect' in good storytelling, while I do think consequence is an integral part of any plot, in creating an impactful and emotionally resonant conflict, I think the reasoning or the 'why' behind the act/action, i.e., why Johnny did x, y or z, isn't all that crucially fundamental on the written page. For me, it needn't be explicitly answered or even addressed. That is to say, I don't necessarily have to know or fully understand why Johnny hates his father and ends up blowing up the post office station, but i do have to know what happens to Johnny after the fact, both externally and internally. I agree with LaPlante when she says that the writer's job is not to solve the mystery of life, but to render it precisely (i.e., "don't try to oversimplify via pop psychology the complex bundles of thoughts and emotions that are human beings"--the WHY of it--instead depict the HOW. The sheer fact of our existence already presumes a reason/a priori causality, our actions, both big and small, it is more how we deal with their aftermath that counts. That's the real story. Some of the most successful stories (in my opinion) open in the middle of epic tragedies/actions (most times never even explain how we got here, to this dire turn of events) but rather unfold the particular hows of the tragedy--how everything falls apart and what consequences emerge from this unexpected complication. Then characters are forced to act/react out of their comfort zone. I like the definition that plot is "that series of events that causes your character to crack open in some way." This feels organic and intuitive, more true to life's whimsies and dark twists of fate, change is "not necessary, change can be refused, but to bring a character to that "opening up point" is, I guess, the point. I, for one, am tired of the constant "why did she do this or why would a character do this?" as if human nature itself could be summed up by a linear thread of events on a page, neatly explicated, given reason and meaning for their every act. I like the mystery that allows us to wonder WHY some things happen, why someone would act in a way that leaves us befuddled, at a loss, wanting to know more-- or maybe not. Maybe the character or situation completely turns us off in their refusal to act, to budge, to see the light, but in that refusal there's also truth. I have to echo Baxter's sentiments against the prefab epiphany that seems to be the popular trend in a lot of fiction (though, on a similar note, i'm equally pissed off by the non-endings, those rambling postmodern vignettes that just drift off into their own solipsistic voids), so I suppose there needs to be a clear link between action and consequence in a story--what's at stake? What is gained, what is lost? A good story will answer this, will show (tell) us the what and the how of it all; as to the why?--that's largely up to us to figure out.
-3,798 The exact temperature at which a blog starts to expand and morph into an abstract universe, full of donut like creatures, bouncing between sticky food venders. This is not a question but a fact. But I wonder... I wonder why we wonder so much? "When she was young Harriet would want to stay in the middle of the slide." (Big 32) Could the bottom of the slide be death? Is Harriet still stuck in the middle of her own slide? Tending to her road?
First, my apologies for this late post. I just got back to town, and my mother's internet connection, which is usually semi-crappy at best, was non-existent this weekend. What else to expect from the woman who refuses to get call waiting. Thanks again for all your posts. Many of my own concerns about the ideas expressed in these essays are already being posted, so I’m looking forward to our discussion. My question has to do with LaPlante’s statement on p.282 of “What Happens Next?” Regarding character-based plotting, she states, “if plot is what happens to characters…it stands to reason that somehow plot reflects character, and vice versa.” She uses Denis Johnson’s “Emergency” to illustrate her point, concluding, “And the bunnies would not have been squashed if he were not the type of person who would forget that they were there and let them roll around to the back of his shirt and be squashed.” I can certainly see how this might be true for this particular story, but for a majority of character-based stories? To me, this runs the risk of a story’s various elements matching up too neatly with one another (which might be my beef with “Extra”—it’s all a little too perfect, too pre-determined for my taste). I’m also hoping we’ll discuss (among everything else) the idea of endings, particularly with this idea of the epiphany. Many essays/books on craft hit on this idea, and while they may not necessarily emphasize this idea of “epiphany,” they agree that, by the end of the narrative, the character(s) either need to “change or not change” or “realize or fail to realize.” What do you all think about this? How conscious are you (if at all) of this seemingly pivotal narrative moment? Does your handling of plot lend itself toward achieving and dramatizing this moment?
I agree with LaPlante's argument about character and plot being interchangeable. But I don't think that Denis Johnson's "Emergency" is the clearest way to illustrate this point. Because: telling the reader he's "not the type of person who would forget..." dismisses the full emotional capability and impact of what his character can reveal. Being "..the type of person who would forget..." is a connection or assumption the reader already makes--i.e. characterization (more on that later)--however, if the bunny death moment had shown a major revelation thereby changing the emotional context of the narrative, this would show how character (his being a drug addict who makes poor choices) changes or relies on plot. Simply put, plot is created out of the choices that characters make while stressed or under great duress, and all the ways they choose to handle the impending tragedy. These choices alone, however, do not create character, chiefly because, depending on told or assumed qualities, a compelling character does not emerge. Human "traits" do not make the human. That's characterization. And because characterization is not character, characterization-driven plots are flat, unmemorable, or worse, lack credibility with their audience.
People are the choices they make under pressure, but more than that: true characters show introspection; they are ultimately changed by the choices they make while stressed to a point where the path is irreversable. These choices reveal who they are (character), not who they appear to be (characterization). These choices are usually more than simple shifts, but revelations or "epiphanies." To "change or not change" or "realize or fail to realize" are symptomatic of the ways those particular choices cause a deep shift, on a level that works with the narrative like good chemistry, not strategized projection.
For that reason, all stories are "character-based" (character-driven) because you can't change the character without changing the course of the story and vice-versa. That said, if you change the characterization of a character, they aren't credible. If all characters have the same or similar characterization, they become the same character, interchangeable and predictable. By managing the emotional charge of characters through the tension of their situation, the narrative can't help but move forward and show its capacity for core meaning.
Isaac and I are on the same boat...I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the sometimes-helpful, sometimes-contradicting information given to us in this weeks readings. My head is spinning after reading this blog...
How in the hell are we supposed to absorb, understand and apply all these wonderful nuggets of story-telling 411??!! It feels impossible to grasp all these rules on craft AND come up with a creative story to tell.
How are people beginning to organize these amazing techniques in a useful way? HELP!
An ending is merely a sort of concrete closure to which the reader is able to tether abstractions, moral questions, and transcendent meaning. Some endings are more or less totalized in their recognition of this purpose. These are, in general, the endings that Sparks lauds in her essay. On the other hand, some ends do the inverse, as in the “postmodern” ending of Bolye’s story. Both types of endings effectively ask questions of an attentive reader; both endings leave the reader looking back to the thematic and moral complications of the beginning and middle. For example, in Boyle’s ending, I wonder how assured the reader feels in the reversal of antagonist and protagonist?
Sometimes an ending brings a “closure” to event: in a traditional murder mystery the conflict of the murder is never fully mitigated--the death remains--however, we do discover the murderer. Other times, as in Joyce’s “The Dead,” the closure is more psychological or internal to character. The above instances are epiphanic.
And still other times, closure is simply a totalization or realization of structure. In Jane Austen’s novels, the marriage plots all fully define Austen’s structurally comic narratives. And yet, Austen’s “happy endings” leave the reader with all sorts of unsettling notions of tragedy, as well as questions about class, individuality, domestic society, and war.
Literary critic Georg Lukacs has a great article on “Abstract and Concrete Potentiality,” which I often think of in light of Coetzee’s /Foe/. The gist of Lukacs’s essay is that a story--it’s structure and theme--provides a kind of concrete potentiality which is realized by the end, meaning the end determines the question of what happened or “What comes next.” Until the end the reader, then, asking the question of “What comes next?” brings a set of abstract potentialities to the story. Coetzee’s novel /Foe/ has a brilliant ending chapter following the “ending” of the story, in which Lukacs’s abstract potentiality of the reader is manifest. For Coetzee, here, what is interesting in a novel is the abstraction that the ending produces, rather than its (necessary) structural or formative closure. In other words, Coetzee brings to attention the way in which *a story exceeds its ending*.
The Munro example near the end of the LaPlante reading on beginnings was especially interesting to me. Munro's "Wild Swans" is included in the "Beginning with Inaction" section simply because it is reported speech, "a lengthy lecture by the character Flo."
I guess I don't see how this qualifies as "inaction." In other words, the action/inaction split doesn't make sense to me, especially in this example. Speech isn't action? Thoughts (in the case of "Cathedral") aren't actions?
Had it all been cast as dialogue, with quotation marks, would that have made it action?
Suddenly, I understand. Ms. McCabe sets us straight: "What do I do? Whatever I want!"
And so the words fall on all genres, on nonfiction writers, on fiction writers, softly falling on poets. They fall on Isaac and Candace alike. The words lay thickly drifted on epiphanies, beginnings, middles and ends, not necessarily in that order. My soul swoons slowly as I look back over this blog and search for a question to ask.
As LaPlante quotes Carver, "At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing -- a sunset or an old shoe -- in absolute and simple amazement..."
In the beginning: Tricks? No tricks? What constitutes a trick? Is there no difference between tricks and "cheap tricks" as Carver suggests?
Guess I'll start us off again. I have to pose the obligatory disagreement with Baxter that Carver eschews insight and epiphany in his stories. Take "Viewfinder," since Baxter did. CB claims that the narrator doesn't get a view of things up on his roof, but he does. "It was okay up there on that roof. / I stood up there and looked around." The story is called "Viewfinder." The narrator has literally risen above his home, the symbol/agent of domesticity that keeps him trapped and incapable of action. "Instead of having an insight, the narrator acts out," says Baxter. What about the rocks, though? I'd argue that the narrator sees these rocks and realizes that they, symbols/agents of the destructive and ruinous tendencies of children, are what's wrong with his house (and, by extension, his life) -- that it's his kids' fault he's in this state (the photographer's kids are how come he's got hooks for hands!) -- and resolves -- to rid his house (i.e. his life) of this pox. Seems more than an acting out, to me. Seems like . . . insight.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder why CB thinks Cheever's story "succeeds, but just barely." How so? It's a pretty goddamn bold statement, if you ask me. Explain. Explain.
(More important than all this, though, is to note that line of dialogue that Carver gives to the photographer: "I don't know . . . I don't do action shots." BRILLIANCE! SHEER BRILLIANCE!)
It seems to me as if Baxter and Sparks are looking to get two different things from the stories they read. Both seem to have very strong feeling's one way or another about how they feel regarding the "point" of the piece. While I think it is safe to argue that most people would probably side with Sparks, I am sure there are those who would feel just as compelled to agree with Baxter. This is what makes studying writing so difficult, it is completely possible, and I feel acceptable, for one person to say a piece of fiction is brilliant, while another disagrees. This can be worrisome for those of us who are trying to find where we as writers fit in to this vast literary world. Also, I think that little actually falls into the "black and white" categories in terms of literary analyses. I am in agreement with Paul in regards to Baxter's comment on "Veiwfinder." Just because he does not find any meaning within the ending does not mean non is there. Are there any writers who write without some sort of meaning? Even if their purpose is to remain vague, then there is meaning behind that choice, is there not?
ReplyDeleteWhere I do agree with him is when stories try to hit you over the head with their meaning. I felt this mildly in "Extra" in which the theme, or epiphany of the main character, Granny Lin, follows up throughout the story. Over and over again we read about Granny's struggle with a world dominated by, and in a way being destroyed by, overabundance. I prefer to have this more subtle throughout and for it all to come together at the end for me, but there I go using "I," because that's all it is, opinion.
Also, I tried to keep in mind how the first sentence affected me in each of the stories selected for this reading. All three have very different beginnings, "Extra" starting in the middle of an action, "Araby" providing us with a setting and "Big 32" beginning with a catchy, non-traditional label (I am not sure what else to call it). I found myself most drawn to the "Extra" beginning, since questions were raised for me right away, but as I got use to the strange layout of "Big 32," I found that I was more intrigued as I continued into the story. I was wondering What other people thought about the beginning of "Big 32." I was actually a bit confused at first and because of that was taken out at the beginning, even though Sparks says that beginning in such an interesting way will actually captivate your reader's interest more so. Did it do this to you? I am just wondering if there is perhaps a fine line one must walk between being too out there yet creatively capturing your reader at the same time.
I actually found myself disagreeing pretty heavily with Spark’s views on the transcendental or revelatory nature of endings, and I absolutely think that the apparent absence of 'meaning' in a story's conclusion is a meaningful gesture as well. Spark gives the ending of T. C. Boyle’s ‘Killing Babies’ sort of a postmodern hand-wave: ‘In the end it feels he has nothing to say and believes there is nothing to say. Irony is an end in itself.’ While this is certainly a reasonable postmodernist reading of the piece, couldn’t there also be a bit more to it? Not only is it possible for an ostensibly meaningless closure to carry some kind of meaning in and of itself, I really think it runs deeper than ‘irony’ and all the snarky implications thereof. In ‘What Happens Next?’, Laplante argues against the urge to orient plots in a neat and linear manner toward simplistic summation and explanation, and I’m inclined to apply her reading to the Boyle story. Isn’t it just as chillingly suggestive and thought-provoking to conclude a tortured and complicated story with a blasé, amoral, and possibly irrelevant dismissal as it would be to wrap up all those threads in an anviliciously epiphanic little ball?
ReplyDelete@lindsay, in regards to Big 32, I was a little confused when I first saw it and so I skimmed the rest of the story and when I read that first line I realized it was marked off by temperatures. Which pretty much got me interested, and I guess the technique was a bit of a gimmick but strangely enough, I didn't find it to be very strange. In fact it gave me a format I could easily latch on to. That I knew from the beginning the chronology would be in temperature and not time, actually made it easier for me to enter the story. It kind of gave me a guide line to help walk through this dissemination of information. And there was a weird comfort in that.
ReplyDeleteThe story in a way takes the idea of beginning in the middle of the action to a whole new different height. The sense of heat gives you a feeling of intense motion and you're thrown into this story at the rate of boiling water.
Was it too much though? I don't think so. I did have some trouble with the readings in that there wasn't much on what makes the wrong thing wrong. I mean yeah the alarm clock beginning is boring, but really, what makes it not a good choice? I mean it's not, but I feel like there's good discussion to be had in looking at what makes a bad beginning or ending bad. I mean some of the qualities they were talking about in the essays in regards to characteristics of a good beginning ain't really guarantees that you're going to be making a good story. Even enticing the reader to turn the page or making them want to know what happens next. I don't know, that's just what's been mulling in my head since reading this stuff.
"The mass production of insight, in fiction and elsewhere, is a dubious phenomenon," (Baxter 60). This line really stood out for me, perhaps because it attacks something I try to do in my own writing, that is to try and work with epiphanic endings. Also the idea that epiphanies (or Carver's anti-epiphanies) are a relatively new device on the literary scene, seems to suggest that this is a fad, but it is hard to imagine a time when the Joycian ending is no longer a satisfying end to the story. Of course it is the mass production of such insight that is dangerous, when the writer chooses to end a story, as Joyce does in The Dead, but falls woefully short. So what are the ways that we end stories? All of us have read a story and then said "So what?" or "That's it?" but why does Carver get away with (and I feel he does) his ending to viewfinder, yet when I think about that story I can't see it ending any other way.
ReplyDeleteOh Big 32...
ReplyDeleteParts of this story I loved, but there were several places that simply felt abstract to the point of being impenetrable. Lines like: "Liz unbound, like a flashlight beam coming through your finger skin, regardless." What does this mean? And why does the author continuously flip between "Harriet" and "H."?
A lot of this story feels very close to the author, and I'm wondering how far the reader is really allowed inside that world. Did anyone feel like they were being kept out of the loop? Locked out by assumptions or half-realized memories? Was this story successful?
I thought Big 32 was successful - the formal conceit allowed a lot of information to be gradually imparted to the reader, and because of this I didn't really feel like I was being kept out of the loop so much as slowly being allowed in by a very private person.
ReplyDeleteI did feel like it kept ending over and over, however (the 35 section for instance), and that the form forced the story to keep going all the way down to absolute zero and the sort of epiphanic/transformative ending. I was wondering what people thought of the ending here, and the way in which Dream Obits for Liz is seperate but obviously very related. Are we meant to see Dream Obits as the end of Big 32, or is it more like a footnote?
Although I didn't feel Sparks said anything that I haven't thought about at one time or another, I was really struck anew by the idea of first lines/last lines in that I have always found it difficult to push myself past the middle of a story. People say writers are afraid of the blank page, I find the blank page a breeze compared to the 'half page'...All the 'balls thrown up in the air' that then have to land in all the right places. Add to managing of that, the idea of the need for transcendence of some sort? "The best endings seem to be barely contained by the words in which they are expressed. They feel bigger than mere words..." I do look for that feeling of 'largeness' at the end of a story. I felt Extra got me there. Araby, too, though not as profoundly. Possibly because in Extra the sense is, this is the last love the narrator will have. In the Raising the Curtain essay, the idea that struck me as something I hadn't quite thought of is this one of 'balance,' keeping the reader 'off-balance' is to keep him interested...Hmmm!
ReplyDeleteI don’t think “Big 32” was successful. I, too, felt like I was kept out of a loop that was too personal for the author. I thought “H,” midway through the piece, could be someone else besides Harriet, but I’m not sure. I did enjoy the odd structure of the piece; it felt very particular to a story like this, where temperature is such a key texture.
ReplyDeleteI’ve had a tough time trying to come up with a question regarding our readings. I agree with Lindsey; ultimately, these handouts, these ruminations on beginnings, plot, and endings provide opinions of preference on what works for those story elements: sometimes, they’re in agreement, just worded differently, and sometimes they’re not. I like how Toby said that Carver’s “Viewfinder” ended in the only way he could imagine it. I think that’s a key thing to keep in mind; for all this talk about having endings which provide a “sense of the story opening up,” like Sparks recommends, there will be endings that demand a close-up, ending in action, versus zooming out (so to say). And a reader will come into it, feeling that a story ends in the right way or not. That’s just as subjective as the author’s thoughts on which ending works best (presuming a writer can conjure different versions that could work).
The most helpful thing I read from the handouts was from John Barth’s piece. I like how he described the beginning of a story as the “’ground situation’: a dramatically voltaged state of affairs preexisting the story’s present time.” (i.e. history) I like how he later said, regarding a story’s end: “If nothing of consequence about the ground situation has altered, no story has been told;”
What are your thoughts on that?
In these readings we have gotten a few definitions of plot, "the incremental perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a complexified equilibrium," "...a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality," "...that series of events, arranged in a particular order, that brings about the desired final effect of a short story or novel." While all of these definitions make sense to me, there seem to be a number of works, short stories in particular, that resist these definitions or else function without plot. The Housewife, for example. My feelings about this piece aside, most of the class was satisfied by its effect and agrees that it is a story. But there is no perturbation, incremental or otherwise, no causality of the woman’s actions, no series of events—(the events of the story are continuous, unceasing. A habit.) Barth says, “If nothing of consequence about the ground situation has been altered, no story has been told.” But Housewife tells a story without altering the ground situation. The entire story, in fact, is the ground situation. How then, do we reconcile this exception and others like it? Can story exist without plot and still satisfy readers? Can we modify the definitions and guidelines we’ve received to incorporate pieces like this?
ReplyDeleteI like the notion in "What Happens Next?" that events should have both reason (cause) and consequence (effect). Laplante's criticism of causality seems to be really just a cricicism of reductive/bad/lazy (i.e. unsubtle) causality. What do people think about reason/consequence as two requisites for events in a filet-o-fiction?
ReplyDeleteAlso, last night I had a dream that Charles Baxter was hanging out at a party at my uncle's house in Pt. Richmond and once everybody left I asked him about the Carver thing only I can't remember what he said to me.
I guess this kind of goes with what Ian is saying about stories existing without plots. Sparks asks, "Why should firsts and lasts matter more than everything in the middle?" I think that says a lot about seemingly plotless works. I guess as long as something early on sparks interests and something that satisfies readers at the end does it really matter how you get there? I think that in Big 32 the whole story is given away in the first section, "SOme things are worth your life and other things are not." The rest of the sections kind of just build that line...I think.
ReplyDeleteIn Laplante's essay “Raising the Curtain: Beginning You Story” I was surprised by what she defined as the “Characteristics of a Good Opening”--specifically that your story must answer the questions: “Where does the piece take place? At what point in time? What's the physical terrain: A house? A boat on the open sea? Mountains? Suburbia? Whatever the physical setting of the piece, it should be apparent from the very first word.” (pg 368, Laplante) and that it should be apparent from the first word (or sentence)... I tried to recall any stories or novels that do this that I think are successful and couldn't come up with any—so I did a little research. I checked ten novels/short stories that I think are successful to see if they do what she describes within the first sentence. Only one of them did. That's 10% (granted it's a relatively small sample, but still). The one that did is more about place than about character. Two of my favorite first sentences from the sample:
ReplyDelete“A beginning, an end: there seems to be neither.” (People Like That Are The Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk, Lorrie Moore)
“It was like so, but wasn't.” (Galatea, 2.2, Richard Powers)
I think it's often true that a good beginning introduces the characters and situations and sets the tone of the piece (yeah, no kidding), but I definitely disagree with Laplante about establishing setting within the first sentence.
In the story “Extra” Li establishes the protagonist and the later important steel lunch pail in her first sentence. We do not know where the story is taking place yet. Another thing that struck me about “Extra” is that it is almost two complete stories...one that ends (or has the potential to end) after Old Tang's death with “....Granny Lin almost weeps out of gratitude” and the other which begins with “Situated in a mountain resort in a western suburb of Beijing, Mei-Mei Academy takes pride in being among the first private schools in the country.” (page 11, Li) I was wondering if anyone thought that they could be separated into two stories or why she (Li) might have created this division in the middle?
I was taken by the aperture of the Yiyan Li piece. I like how the second paragraph elaborates and comments on the certificate described in the first paragraph; then ironizes—though seemingly undercutting the elaborations and comments made—and essentially reaffirms the speakers views. How does this opening affect the piece? I read the sardonic tone as rhetorical. How do we as writers incorporate or avoid rhetorical structures in our fiction?
ReplyDeleteJohn Cheever’s glib refusal of plot at the end of the LaPlante article rubbed me the wrong way. I understand what he means, but I personally feel that intuition shouldn’t be taken for granted, and that often what we ‘feel’ as ‘magic’ is a unconscious aptitude for understanding structure. That is not to say that I don’t write intuitively, but I feel that Cheever’s dismissal of plot should be taken lightly. Do you agree? How do you negotiate structure and plot and intuition?
I realized I lose my questions and train of thought (choo choo) if I read everyone's comments first. So let me get this out first before I get distracted. I would have to say for me, Big 32 was successful in terms of establishing a setting that made me wonder, "what happens next." It follows what Laplante describes as immersing the reader in the physical world of the piece, or at least starting with actions that I can become interested in. The title is also aware of planting this seed of curiosity as I wonder what will be the big 32. But as I kept reading and wondering where this story would take me, I began to feel less invested and interested in what happens. Wondering not why, but how is Monson creating conflict? The narrator against herself? To avoid losing control? Barth writes, "if nothing of consequence about the ground situation has been altered, no story has been told; the action has been all effort and no work." I feel in a sense this fails because it feels too much just like action. I need to feel the conflict before the narrator's epiphany. So even if it isn't important for me, at least I can understand what's at stake for the character.
ReplyDeleteBarth was beginning to speak to me on p. 130, when he wrote of beginning in medias res and "then interstitch[ing] our exposition retrospectively as we proceed." He goes on to say that the "dramaturgical beginning need not be and seldom is the chronological beginning" and that "dramatic effect, not linear chronology, is the regnant principle in the selection and arrangement of a story's action." All of which is a nice justification for writing one's story in whichever order one pleases.
ReplyDeleteThis is all well and good, but then that begs the question (which Barth does not answer and which I am finding most pressing in my own writing right now): how exactly can one tell what is most dramatically effective? Is this where the writerly instinct or the intuitive sense of causality that Laplante discusses (280) kicks in? Just how far does that really get us when we're discussing craft? What happens when one (OK, me) revises so much that nothing feels instinctive anymore? I feel alternately frustrated (what do I do??) and freed (whatever I want!!) by the vacillating between formula and intuition found in these essays.
I might just be approaching Big 32 with too cynical an eye, but it seemed more gimmick-y to me than anything else. The structure was a neat little trick, but I didn't feel particularly compelled to read to the end once I had surmised that Liz, Harriet's love, had died in a car accident. The human aspect was lost on me; certainly a lot of fascinating details on Harriet's character and Liz's character and their relationship together were revealed to us, but the most interesting details (to me, at least) were revealed after the death had already been made known. In that sense, the tragedy was introduced before I began caring about the character, and I didn't have the inclination to go back and retroactively feel bad for her.
ReplyDeleteExtra was much more satisfying for me, in that regard. The gradual build-up of facts about Granny Lin and her emotions meant that by the time she lost everything, I knew her well-enough to care. Perhaps that's an argument for a more traditional story structure.
Oh, and Lindsey. Get a flashlight, a bright one, turn out the lights, and hold the flashlight to your fingers. Not your hand (too meaty,) but your fingers. The dark shadows are your phalanges.
To answer your question, Paul, in regards to the function of 'cause and effect' in good storytelling, while I do think consequence is an integral part of any plot, in creating an impactful and emotionally resonant conflict, I think the reasoning or the 'why' behind the act/action, i.e., why Johnny did x, y or z, isn't all that crucially fundamental on the written page. For me, it needn't be explicitly answered or even addressed. That is to say, I don't necessarily have to know or fully understand why Johnny hates his father and ends up blowing up the post office station, but i do have to know what happens to Johnny after the fact, both externally and internally. I agree with LaPlante when she says that the writer's job is not to solve the mystery of life, but to render it precisely (i.e., "don't try to oversimplify via pop psychology the complex bundles of thoughts and emotions that are human beings"--the WHY of it--instead depict the HOW. The sheer fact of our existence already presumes a reason/a priori causality, our actions, both big and small, it is more how we deal with their aftermath that counts. That's the real story. Some of the most successful stories (in my opinion) open in the middle of epic tragedies/actions (most times never even explain how we got here, to this dire turn of events) but rather unfold the particular hows of the tragedy--how everything falls apart and what consequences emerge from this unexpected complication. Then characters are forced to act/react out of their comfort zone. I like the definition that plot is "that series of events that causes your character to crack open in some way." This feels organic and intuitive, more true to life's whimsies and dark twists of fate, change is "not necessary, change can be refused, but to bring a character to that "opening up point" is, I guess, the point. I, for one, am tired of the constant "why did she do this or why would a character do this?" as if human nature itself could be summed up by a linear thread of events on a page, neatly explicated, given reason and meaning for their every act. I like the mystery that allows us to wonder WHY some things happen, why someone would act in a way that leaves us befuddled, at a loss, wanting to know more-- or maybe not. Maybe the character or situation completely turns us off in their refusal to act, to budge, to see the light, but in that refusal there's also truth. I have to echo Baxter's sentiments against the prefab epiphany that seems to be the popular trend in a lot of fiction (though, on a similar note, i'm equally pissed off by the non-endings, those rambling postmodern vignettes that just drift off into their own solipsistic voids), so I suppose there needs to be a clear link between action and consequence in a story--what's at stake? What is gained, what is lost? A good story will answer this, will show (tell) us the what and the how of it all; as to the why?--that's largely up to us to figure out.
ReplyDelete-3,798 The exact temperature at which a blog starts to expand and morph into an abstract universe, full of donut like creatures, bouncing between sticky food venders. This is not a question but a fact. But I wonder... I wonder why we wonder so much? "When she was young Harriet would want to stay in the middle of the slide." (Big 32) Could the bottom of the slide be death? Is Harriet still stuck in the middle of her own slide? Tending to her road?
ReplyDeleteFirst, my apologies for this late post. I just got back to town, and my mother's internet connection, which is usually semi-crappy at best, was non-existent this weekend. What else to expect from the woman who refuses to get call waiting.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for all your posts. Many of my own concerns about the ideas expressed in these essays are already being posted, so I’m looking forward to our discussion. My question has to do with LaPlante’s statement on p.282 of “What Happens Next?” Regarding character-based plotting, she states, “if plot is what happens to characters…it stands to reason that somehow plot reflects character, and vice versa.” She uses Denis Johnson’s “Emergency” to illustrate her point, concluding, “And the bunnies would not have been squashed if he were not the type of person who would forget that they were there and let them roll around to the back of his shirt and be squashed.” I can certainly see how this might be true for this particular story, but for a majority of character-based stories? To me, this runs the risk of a story’s various elements matching up too neatly with one another (which might be my beef with “Extra”—it’s all a little too perfect, too pre-determined for my taste).
I’m also hoping we’ll discuss (among everything else) the idea of endings, particularly with this idea of the epiphany. Many essays/books on craft hit on this idea, and while they may not necessarily emphasize this idea of “epiphany,” they agree that, by the end of the narrative, the character(s) either need to “change or not change” or “realize or fail to realize.” What do you all think about this? How conscious are you (if at all) of this seemingly pivotal narrative moment? Does your handling of plot lend itself toward achieving and dramatizing this moment?
I agree with LaPlante's argument about character and plot being interchangeable. But I don't think that Denis Johnson's "Emergency" is the clearest way to illustrate this point. Because: telling the reader he's "not the type of person who would forget..." dismisses the full emotional capability and impact of what his character can reveal. Being "..the type of person who would forget..." is a connection or assumption the reader already makes--i.e. characterization (more on that later)--however, if the bunny death moment had shown a major revelation thereby changing the emotional context of the narrative, this would show how character (his being a drug addict who makes poor choices) changes or relies on plot. Simply put, plot is created out of the choices that characters make while stressed or under great duress, and all the ways they choose to handle the impending tragedy. These choices alone, however, do not create character, chiefly because, depending on told or assumed qualities, a compelling character does not emerge. Human "traits" do not make the human. That's characterization. And because characterization is not character, characterization-driven plots are flat, unmemorable, or worse, lack credibility with their audience.
ReplyDeletePeople are the choices they make under pressure, but more than that: true characters show introspection; they are ultimately changed by the choices they make while stressed to a point where the path is irreversable. These choices reveal who they are (character), not who they appear to be (characterization). These choices are usually more than simple shifts, but revelations or "epiphanies." To "change or not change" or "realize or fail to realize" are symptomatic of the ways those particular choices cause a deep shift, on a level that works with the narrative like good chemistry, not strategized projection.
For that reason, all stories are "character-based" (character-driven) because you can't change the character without changing the course of the story and vice-versa. That said, if you change the characterization of a character, they aren't credible. If all characters have the same or similar characterization, they become the same character, interchangeable and predictable. By managing the emotional charge of characters through the tension of their situation, the narrative can't help but move forward and show its capacity for core meaning.
Isaac and I are on the same boat...I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the sometimes-helpful, sometimes-contradicting information given to us in this weeks readings. My head is spinning after reading this blog...
ReplyDeleteHow in the hell are we supposed to absorb, understand and apply all these wonderful nuggets of story-telling 411??!! It feels impossible to grasp all these rules on craft AND come up with a creative story to tell.
How are people beginning to organize these amazing techniques in a useful way? HELP!
Stories That Exceed Their Endings
ReplyDeleteAn ending is merely a sort of concrete closure to which the reader is able to tether abstractions, moral questions, and transcendent meaning. Some endings are more or less totalized in their recognition of this purpose. These are, in general, the endings that Sparks lauds in her essay. On the other hand, some ends do the inverse, as in the “postmodern” ending of Bolye’s story. Both types of endings effectively ask questions of an attentive reader; both endings leave the reader looking back to the thematic and moral complications of the beginning and middle. For example, in Boyle’s ending, I wonder how assured the reader feels in the reversal of antagonist and protagonist?
Sometimes an ending brings a “closure” to event: in a traditional murder mystery the conflict of the murder is never fully mitigated--the death remains--however, we do discover the murderer. Other times, as in Joyce’s “The Dead,” the closure is more psychological or internal to character. The above instances are epiphanic.
And still other times, closure is simply a totalization or realization of structure. In Jane Austen’s novels, the marriage plots all fully define Austen’s structurally comic narratives. And yet, Austen’s “happy endings” leave the reader with all sorts of unsettling notions of tragedy, as well as questions about class, individuality, domestic society, and war.
Literary critic Georg Lukacs has a great article on “Abstract and Concrete Potentiality,” which I often think of in light of Coetzee’s /Foe/. The gist of Lukacs’s essay is that a story--it’s structure and theme--provides a kind of concrete potentiality which is realized by the end, meaning the end determines the question of what happened or “What comes next.” Until the end the reader, then, asking the question of “What comes next?” brings a set of abstract potentialities to the story. Coetzee’s novel /Foe/ has a brilliant ending chapter following the “ending” of the story, in which Lukacs’s abstract potentiality of the reader is manifest. For Coetzee, here, what is interesting in a novel is the abstraction that the ending produces, rather than its (necessary) structural or formative closure. In other words, Coetzee brings to attention the way in which *a story exceeds its ending*.
The Munro example near the end of the LaPlante reading on beginnings was especially interesting to me. Munro's "Wild Swans" is included in the "Beginning with Inaction" section simply because it is reported speech, "a lengthy lecture by the character Flo."
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't see how this qualifies as "inaction." In other words, the action/inaction split doesn't make sense to me, especially in this example. Speech isn't action? Thoughts (in the case of "Cathedral") aren't actions?
Had it all been cast as dialogue, with quotation marks, would that have made it action?
Suddenly, I understand. Ms. McCabe sets us straight: "What do I do? Whatever I want!"
ReplyDeleteAnd so the words fall on all genres, on nonfiction writers, on fiction writers, softly falling on poets. They fall on Isaac and Candace alike. The words lay thickly drifted on epiphanies, beginnings, middles and ends, not necessarily in that order. My soul swoons slowly as I look back over this blog and search for a question to ask.
As LaPlante quotes Carver, "At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing -- a sunset or an old shoe -- in absolute and simple amazement..."
In the beginning: Tricks? No tricks? What constitutes a trick? Is there no difference between tricks and "cheap tricks" as Carver suggests?