I'm fascinated by Proulx's ability to compress so much into a short story. In twenty pages we get twenty years' worth of this relationship, multiple side-characters, etc. etc., and never does it feel rushed. It makes me wonder, and it should make YOU wonder the same, how a writer decides whether her story best befits a novel, a novella, or a short story. There's easily a novel's worth of information in Brokeback Mountain, so why tell it in twenty pages? It's hard for me (and should be for you, too) to imagine Proulx coming up with this situation and going, "Huh. Well, guess I'll have a seat at the old Smith-Corona and start typing, see what happens." She clearly set out to write this as a short story from the get-go. Right? Right. So is this just an arbitrary decision an author makes? "I'm going to start a novel today. It's going to be about X." (Not the drug. The variable.) Or else "I'm going to start a short story today. It's going to be about Y." The more I think about it, the more fascinated I get. And because also, think about this: If you can say it in a short story, why waste everyone's time with a whole novel? Right? I mean, sure, I'm kidding a little bit, but.
There's also, of course, the chance that Proulx is "making a statement" in Brokeback about the passing of time, how fleeting time is, how much happens in a lifetime and but how quickly it all seems to pass when we look back on it, but I think this is sort of an easy and reductive answer and doesn't really serve to further the discussion. So. So how do we decide what's a novel and what's a short story? Whimsy? How much word-stamina we happen to have at a given point in our lives? How much we think we can glean from a particular set of characters/circumstances? Shouldn't any good set of characters/circumstances give us enough material for a novel? Crazy.
I was very interested in the equation of writing with music in the Goodman essay — in poetry of course we tend to think about the aural qualities of the work quite a bit, often in musical terms, but I hadn’t previously extended the idea to prose. My question is, I suppose, how conscious people are of their own “style” of music in their fiction, and whether people make an effort at creating any particular music. We all want our work to sound good, of course, and have our natural voices and so forth, but do people adapt the style to the particular piece, or do our tendencies towards a preferred “music” inform which pieces we write?
As far as our own style of music, that just refers to the tone or voice that each author has that comes out in their writing. Word choice, syntax, grammatical choices such as the over or underuse of commas, themes, all of these go into a piece whether it be poetry or prose. I always know when I'm reading Carver, Gass, Bartholme or Marquez just by the way their sentences are contructed, how they read on the page and how they sound out loud. One of the greatest qualities of Gass' In the Heart of the Heart of the Country is its aural quality, it begs to be read out loud. Goodman says that a sentence is far more than information and I agree with this for a sentence can be beautiful in and of itself, in fact it is possible to write a beautiful story filled with incredible sentences and still write a terrible story, how weird is that. My question is, then, what is the balance we strive for as writers between relaying information and punching up the language and where/what point does writing suffer because of language?
I think that point is purely subjective, T-bone. A great example is DeLillo. I love his style, love love love it, though his critics (haters) say it gets in the way of his content, and of his characters having (let alone showing) emotion. Some people knock Cormac McCarthy for eschewing apostrophes and basically being slightly insane on the page. Those people, of course, are wrong, because Cormac McCarthy is mind-blowingly enjoyable to read, precisely because of his voice/style. Think of it: When was the last time we had our minds blown by a good story? Pff. Don't kid yourself. Like never. What about a well-written sentence or paragraph, though? Now we're talking. Now we're cooking with gass. If story is the skeleton of a piece of prose, and it is, then voice/style is the soul.
Can of worms here, but Rosemary G. pointed this article out to me recently, and it basically lambastes writers for being overly voice-y. DeLillo, McCarthy, and even Proulx are discussed. Boy does he knock Proulx. My feelings on the article aside (I sort of absolutely hated it) I think it's totally worth the read. It's long, but honestly. Totally germane.
Anyway, I think about rhythm/voice/"music" a lot when I'm writing (maybe more than I should), and it's something I definitely look for in an author, so I was really pleased to read Goodman's article. Even though I kind of felt like dude was in over his head and wasn't too great a writer himself, which made me trust him much less. Much less. (That was my problem with "Big 32," incidentally, that, all due respect, Monson didn't quite have the chops to justify his nontraditional structure. Gass can get away with this sort of thing, so can Barthelme, but not everyone can.) My personal opinion is that a novel should have at least some smidge of narrative to keep us turning the page, but I'm all for a lot of voice and little plot. The Moviegoer and my beloved Frank Bascombe novels are what I'd point to as examples. You do run the risk of losing readers who don't happen to vibe w/ your voice, of course.
Any thoughts on the Myers piece? is I guess my question.
I’ve always been something of an audiophile when it comes to reading prose and I really like what Paul said about story being the skeleton of a piece and voice/style being the soul. I don’t agree, however, that story is completely subordinate to style. Good stories do blow my mind. Hemingway is a great example. Sure, his writing is sober and tame compared with authors like DeLillo, but there is a rhythm and music to his writing. That being said, I’ve never read a Hemingway passage that has blown my mind. But the Old Man and the Sea, that blew my mind.
I think style need to be justified by the content of the story, which in my mind, makes story still the skeleton, and style something like intestines. We could have a magnificent, handsome intestine but without a good, sturdy, calcium-reinforced skeleton, what we’ve got is a gory mess of goo and blood on the floor. I think DeLillo’s style works so well because the story elements of his novels are congruous with the postmodern musings of his prose. White Noise and Cosmopolis, for example. McCarthy’s bleak, austere voice matches the violence, Blood Meridian, and hopeless predicaments, The Road, that characterize his novels. Vonnegut’s cynicism and dark humor are perfect for the social and political satire in novels like Slaughterhouse 5 and Mother Night. Maybe this pattern is hard to recognize because most authors don’t like to modify their styles to suit their stories and seem to prefer instead to select stories that suit their style. Vonnegut likes to experiment, and though I love the man dearly, he’s written a handful of books that fail in my opinion, largely because the style doesn’t match the voice. Deadeye Dick, for example. It had it’s moments, but Vonnegut’s prose didn’t really match the story, and his sardonic voice certainly did not make that piece of crap story any better.
I guess my question is what does everyone else think? Is story more important than style, is style more important, or do you see the two as inextricable?
Although there are many different translations of this line from Madame Bovary, this is the one I saw painted on a museum wall in Philadelphia recently (an exhibit of Maira Kalman's art): "...human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars..." For me, this complements the spirit of the Goodman piece. Could you look at a specific piece you've written recently and describe it in musical terms? Do the bears dance, or are the stars moved to pity? (Or whatever.) Re the Hempel story: as someone who has struggled with movement through time in short pieces, I thought her transitions were done with precision and great skill. But maybe this didn't work for everyone. My question: is the structure of the story essential to the telling?
I was interested in Weintraub’s John Gardner quote: “The action must get going almost immediately, and the writer must slip in exposition as he can, the only limit being that by the time we reach the peak of the Fichtean Curve there should be no more exposition to be presented.” It seems odd to state this (or anything) as a hard and fast rule, but it did make me think. I want to pay attention, is there a place in a story when exposition has to be finished with? I was struck, as well, by Weintraub’s statement that as writers we must “find the representative concrete particularity that stands for a larger way of life. We must trust our readers to infer the macrocosmic implications from that microscopic detail.” I realize this applies to Nonfiction as well.
I first read steinberg's "testing" last semester and what I remembered about the discussion is how this piece is formed and what the sentence structure was doing. The whole piece has urgency to it. It feels tense and rushed and builds and builds to a climactic ending. If you were to read it aloud it feels that way as well. The last part goes "deep down you're not trash, you're not trash, you're not trash, repeat after me, you are a mountain of stone." It's an example of the music Steinberg is creating, her style. The piece has what Goodman describes as "actual music: rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and balance." I kept thinking, what if she were to break up this part, and experiment with the rhythm. For example, "you're not trash. You're not trash. You're not trash. Repeat after me. You are a mountain of stone." It sounds blunt and harsh, less urgent and pleading, and a key example of how the "music" and meaning are trying to balance. The question I had with Steinberg's piece, which I had last semester and now is, if there isn't much action to give a backstory to what lead to the present, or even a clear direct picture as to what is happening, is there still need for more showing/telling? Goodman says when one hears poetry, "we better understand that often the sound is the meaning." This piece still feels like a poem to me for some reason, or at least sounds like one. Or is this just Steinberg's music, one I have to have an ear for?
Paul, pun or Freudian slip? "Now we're cooking with gass."
I've heard that the rhythm Allen Ginsberg employed in Howl was based on his own speaking cadence. Each line is a "breath," as in that's how many words he could get out in a single breath. That seems like a sensible goal to me, and it's what I usually strive for in my writing. After all, in the event I ever have to read it aloud, I certainly don't want to make an ass of myself standing at a podium before an audience and gasping for breath because of some interminable monologue.
On an unrelated note, let's all just take what I'm saying at face value and not try to read that last sentence aloud.
I have to agree with Ian that style by itself isn't enough to carry a story. Testing was cute, but it just didn't do it for me. I admit that after finishing the first page and finding no punctuation save commas, I immediately started flipping through to find the end of the piece. I can appreciate the sense of rhythm and urgency that Steinberg's writing provides, but at the end of the day, that's not enough to see me through to the end. I suppose it does fulfill Poe's explanation of a short story's purpose, though. The piece does seem singularly committed to conveying the breathless urgency of a Jewish mother chewing out her daughter and worrying about her son.
I wish I possessed the musical talent to write a story that has actual music, but sadly, my skills in that area are limited to Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The best I can hope for is to achieve a consistent and natural sense of rhythm.
Story/style, they go hand in hand for me, hard to divorce one from the other, they fit so perfectly, snuggled together (like Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist's shirts, aw). Seriously, after Goodman's piece on musicality, I paid rapt attention to Proulx's prose (try saying that twice), and was enraptured by her dead-on dialogue and descriptive passages, so particular to that time and place, to Ennis and Jack's flavorful and ornery characters, it all coalesced beautifully, became one lush landscape, and the adjectives/ verbs, etc., often echoed the physical/psychological action taking place. Sharp, really sharp. And I say this not being a big Proulx fan myself (her sentence construction often leaves me breathless, gasping, slow to catch up to her, only to find I'm already three miles behind, the odds stacking up against me).
I was also fascinated to see how she wielded time in the Brokeback piece--and i mean, epic staggering hold your breath Time--in all but twenty pages. An impressive feat, and i wonder if that's also somehow to do with the nature of language of the piece--how densely packed the long and winding descriptions are, and how truncated the declarative statements will cut right through some of those, like a steam plow, garnering a strangely hypnotic, if somewhat still askew, balance to the entire story.
The musical resonance to the Steinberg piece clearly stood out, like an incantation, or some crazy jazz riff, full of alliterations and consonance (as opposed to dissonance). But, BUT, she clearly borrowed (or shall we say, ripped off) from Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl." If anyone's ever read the latter, you'll know what i mean, and yes, clearly, Steinberg gave her own wry twist on it, but she was definitely influenced by her predecessor's unique voice.
I'm interested in Paul's earlier question-- how does a writer know when the project is a story, a novel, a novella? "Brokeback Mountain" is a good example of a story that could, arguably, be a novel--almost every character is intriguing enough to warrant more pages, and the landscape itself evolves as a character too-- I can see a writer spending pages and pages on that. To me, the story is the ultimate definition of the novelistic story, and the only reason I can see Proulx wanting this to be a story has to do with what Silber says (citing Poe) in her essay: "[The novelistic story] hops over years to stress the links in disparate elements. A stuffed story that refuses to be a novel is making some claim to the power of the singular effect." But what is this singular effect in "Brokeback Mountain?" While I doubt there's one answer, that story is so layered and complex that my attentions are divided among so many aspects of the narrative--sexuality, marriage, nature, etc. As a writer, I do feel torn about this-- I love the novelistic story, and the notion of this singular effect is what demands the form. And yet as a writer, I also want to say, screw the singular effect--let it be big, let it be sprawling, without the burden (?) of "[stressing] the links of disparate elements."
I actually think "Proper Library" is somewhat novelistic, in that its day-in-the-life quality is something the author, I assume, wants the reader to experience. To me, that story takes a while to get going, and is contradictory to the notion that something needs to "occasion" a story immediately, let the reader know why the story is being told in the first place. This story underplays that occasion, I think, and is instead fueled by its style, its musical prose, which I find both admirable and frustrating--the prose is this odd blend of vernacular and a self-conscious poetry. But the argument would be that sustaining an entire novel in such a style would be near impossible (like "testing"), unless perhaps the novel is clearly experimental. Wonder what people think about this.
Like Ian, I tend to see style as intestinal, the story itself skeletal. But a writer like Steinberg would completely disagree with this, and while I doubt she'd ID herself as an intestinal writer, she'd argue that her stories really are story-driven as much as voice-driven, which of course might require (for some) a re-consideration of what story means. Too often, I think such experiments are dismissed as that-- experiments--or worse, gimmicks.
As always, a lot of questions for the group to discuss here, and I'm especially interested to hear how you all consider this idea of style, of music in your prose. We don't always talk about this stuff in workshop, so I'm hoping now is our chance...
And who the heck is Tommy WestSide? Did our class just get even bigger?
I was really fascinated by the idea of a novelistic short story, particularly as someone who can't seem to write a short story and who prefers reading novels. The essay "Long Times in Short Stories..." really intrigued me when paired with "Brokeback Mountain." I took issue with Silber's idea that "a story that covers a long time span may have found one way to circumvent the accusation of the slightness and smallness that haunts contemporary American fiction" (What does that really mean? Who is making such accusations? Is she saying American authors are obsessed with moments and not with lives?). Brokeback Mountain doesn't seem like a slight or small story to me, although the lives the characters lead are incredibly circumscribed. "Condens(ing) lifetimes into shapes that can be seen in one viewing" is exactly what Proulx does in Brokeback Mountain, and to me it started to make sense that this story isn't a novel (although it so clearly could be!) because really, the one thing that defines Ennis' life is his relationship with Jack, which, in terms of time and physical space really takes up very little room, but in terms of import and impact is huge. I wonder if this is something that other novelistic short stories do-- distill what matters most in a character's entire life as an attempt to show that sometimes it is only one aspect of an entire life that is meaningful, that the smallness of the story is a structural attempt to show the slightness of the character's life? I see this as distinct from a short story that examines one moment or event in detail to show its meaning at that moment (the epiphany), but perhaps not how that event has import to the character's life beyond. In Araby, for example, we see that the events of the story have import at that moment at the end. What we don't see is how that epiphany will play out for the character beyond the scope of the story. Whereas, in Brokeback Mountain, we see exactly how the moment on Brokeback Mountain affects the rest of Ennis' life. I almost think my ability to see the impact is greater because the story is so small, so slight, so focused. If the story were a novel, I might not be able to hold all of it in my gaze and really see what matters most.
Since I have a musical background, can play an instrument and read sheet music, I found THE MUSIC OF PROSE easy to understand. I'm wondering if those of us without this background, those who aren't poets, found it more difficult to grasp?
Also, some of us have expressed we'd die without music in our lives. Does this make us more prone to insert these lyrical qualities into our prose?
Here's a question for the group, regarding Catherine Brady's "Showing & Telling: The Necessary Partnership" (she looks like such a nerd--both disgusts and turns me on): What do you think when she wrote on pg. 5, "When telling expands the terms of our understanding, creating complexity rather than diminishing it, it is always a justified and dramatic element of a story."
*Warning* The following blog post may be viewed as slightly rant-y:
Chris, it's funny to me that you found the following line in Weintraub's essay striking: "find the representative concrete particularity that stands for a larger way of life." I, too, was struck by this line, but perhaps for a different reason. I have no idea why Weintraub thinks this is a good way to describe using small details in your story to illustrate or illuminate a greater point. Isn't that more straightforward? I got stuck on that line for a minute trying to figure out what she meant, and then after I figured it out, trying to figure out why she had to convolute it that way. My big issue with Weintraub's essay, however, is (you guys are going to get sick of hearing me say this) her explanation of the novel "Hotel du Lac" as a good example of withholding information from the reader in order to build tension. She states that "Brookner's judicious doling out of the effects of this backstory on Edith's present life that gives the novel rising tension..." (page 6) and that it is not until page 117 of this 184 page novel that the backstory is revealed and she thinks that this is a good way to build tension. I'm of the opinion that intentional withholding of information from the reader should not be the only source of tension in your novel (or short story)...this to me is worse than a gimmick gone wrong.
"Proper Library" and "Brokeback Mountain" swell with the novelistic yeast, yet one feels very contained, leashed to a specific place and emotion, while the other feels like it's still raw in the middle, not fully cooked but spilling from the pan, relying possibility too much on repetition, on the words, forgetting about something deeper, some lost ingredient. Is the unsatisfying ending part of the overall taste? Is this meant to linger in our mouths? I haven't identified which story I feel fits my ideas/opinions but they may just be obvious. It may be a question of balance, and even a collaboration between the reader and the story, a balance that takes place in the moment of intake.
What does Silber mean when she writes of Munro's method, "She once said that the novel had to have a coherence which she no longer saw in the lives around her...But such a statement does suggest how the sprawl of these stories involves, in fact, an economy of means."
Can anyone elaborate on the term, "economy of means."
In the Weintraub piece she quotes Gardner, "If the story is to be efficient and elegant, the writer must introduce no more background events or major characters than strictly necessary..." (pg. 4) and I wonder how do people see that idea working, well in short stories? I guess what I mean is how much background can go untold and still make a story awesome?
I really enjoyed Goodman's article and wanted to respond to Candace's question concerning her connection to the article being due to her musical background. I have very little background in music, yet found it to be the most helpful article for my own writing. I think what intrigued me the most about it is that it is something that we focus on often (or at least I do) when reading other's work and my own. We talk about "pace" and how it connects us to the piece, and this seems to be how Goodman is looking at stories as well, except for it is taking a universal term that most people understand, music.
There is a point in the essay where Goodman is talking about rhythm and i found myself asking the question "it seems like what is popular in music comes and goes as the fashions change, i wonder if it is the same 'musically' with writing as well?"
It was interesting that Hempel's story was paired with Ferrell's in this section, since to me the "music" seemed so much more obvious in Ferrell's story. It seems as if Ferrell is relying on this element as a way to create a sense of constant flow, something the main character refers to often enough as a way of life for him. I enjoyed this parallel and that is what drew me to the story, more then the story itself. On the other hand, in Hempel's story i find myself more interested in the character's themselves, and relying less on the way it is written. It is that "dream-like state" that puts me in the story, where I am not thinking about the way it is written and just falling into it. I was wondering if anyone saw Hempel using "music" in this story in a way that was much more obvious then I did, and if that affected your reading of the story?
Further to Juan's comment/question on the Brady essay: I have a hard time seeing a clear distinction between telling and showing, just as I did when LaPlante set action and inaction in opposition to each other.
Maybe Brady, when she says telling is "a justified and dramatic element of a story," is suggesting that telling, being "dramatic," is also a kind of showing.
So maybe telling is sometimes showing. I wonder, though, if showing can also be telling.
In Brady's "Showing vs. Telling" she illustrates for us why emotion is best conveyed in imagery, "...direct analysis of the main character's feelings would spoil the dramatic uncovering of this paradox." Not to sound like a broken record, but (for me) this comes down to characterization vs. character. We saw true characters written in Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain." Putting three (front) characters (Ennis, Jack, Alma) with similar backgrounds in the same place is often a recipe for leveled intonation. Proulx uses subtle cues in imagery to show the inner dialogue of the character (tire iron story, for example) and technique to merge ideas and emotions (fishing box note from Alma, shirt enveloping the other in the closet). Each of these sagacious choices builds a connection that is subtle, but not mysterious. From page one, the tenor is steady with dark undertones. Words weave like "chipped, stained, boil, shudder, dirt, die" to hint at danger. I wondered if these building details, or the first page in present-tense before leaning, sewed the reader's attention and attachment to the story that followed.
I was wondering about the effect of Silber's interest in how a short story, as opposed to a novel, "seek[s] to condense lifetimes into shapes that can be seen in one viewing," or on a wider level, how a novelistic short story deals with an accretion of information and disparate parts. Brokeback, as Lysley and Erin discussed, not only has the makings of a novel but it's layers and complexity are multifaceted.
I think there is a lot that Proulx accomplishes structurally to cohere all of the novel's disparate and sometimes divergent information, and that this structural feat is directly linked to theme in the story. The accretion of all these elements, coupled with Proulx's prowess, renders an overwhelming thematic density in Brokeback, a density which would be lost in a longer work.
This thematic density is created from Proulx's structure and literary device in her short story. First off, this is a classic example of a story that begins and ends in the same place: the pre-script more or less gives us the ending. As Proulx writes after the subverted epiphanic moment when Ennis and Jack are together for the last time, “they torqued things almost to where they had been...Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.” From the beginning, the story is constrained, and that constraint directly influences the pressure and constraint imposed thematically on the two protagonists.
One a more textual level, Brokeback is so tightly bound by imagistic and thematic device. There is enough historicity and specified backstory to make the lives of the protagonists both real and detailed, which is absolutely one important reason for why the story is so effective. Yet, watch how easily any part of this story becomes singularly formative of greater design. The image of the lit cigarette--alluring and intoxicating but ultimately dangerous in the story--like the "spark" of fire that Jack see's when he looks at Ennis's camp, forms one of the story's image complexes representative of individual desire in a dangerously oppresive society. Similarly, the word "broke" or "broken" carries so much weight: all the specific uses--mountain, money, body--of "broke" allude to the grand scale in which the persons of these individual characters are injured by their social environment.
I mean, even the sheep represent the internal core of reality (the threat of their boss--who represents the view of society--and the monetary labor/job of watching the sheep that Ennis and Jack have exchanged for labors of affect) in the pastoral landscape of the mountain.
So to end where I began, Proulx’s story forms it's disparate parts and the specific histories of it's protagonists into one singular artistic view meant to be seen in a temporal moment (ie a short story), and the constrained accretion of these (novelistic) elements is the source of power behind the story's thematics.
Also, Erin, I liked your idea about Brokeback being a short story because the "view" we are given of Ennis does seem to be, in one way or another, enabled by Jack--and that that view creates the "singular effect" in the story Lysley mentioned--because I've often wondered what to do with the impulse to read Ennis as /the/ protagonist and Jack as a foil. That said, I do think the story not only enables but also resists (through Jack's specific history) reducing Jack to a conceptualization of Ennis's desire.
So much can be said about the Showing & Telling article, and there is so much from Brady’s article with which I agree. I find it both accurate and prudent the point she makes that “whenever telling exists in some kind of tension or opposition with what is shown in a story, it takes on a dramatic function.” However, I feel that the article ignores or is unconcerned with when showing and telling aren’t oppositional.
I feel that, aside from the virtuosic time-management and novelistic maneuverings (though my comment is integrated with the latter), Proulx’s genius of Brokeback Mountain is its seamless and poignant oscillation between showing and telling. Furthermore, that it utilizes both not only in creating tension or ambiguity between was is told and what is shown, but that it also intensifies the trueness of the story, specifically in terms of emotion. The three first full paragraphs on page 537, the blocked section, illustrate my point; the first paragraph tells, the second magnifies the emotional energy of the first by showing, and the final paragraph in that section concretizes and distills the emotional inflation of the second by way of telling.
When you write, do you prioritize one over the other? Do you generally subscribe to the camp of showing over telling? Is it something you’re conscious of while you write, or do you solely rely on intuition?
I'm fascinated by Proulx's ability to compress so much into a short story. In twenty pages we get twenty years' worth of this relationship, multiple side-characters, etc. etc., and never does it feel rushed. It makes me wonder, and it should make YOU wonder the same, how a writer decides whether her story best befits a novel, a novella, or a short story. There's easily a novel's worth of information in Brokeback Mountain, so why tell it in twenty pages? It's hard for me (and should be for you, too) to imagine Proulx coming up with this situation and going, "Huh. Well, guess I'll have a seat at the old Smith-Corona and start typing, see what happens." She clearly set out to write this as a short story from the get-go. Right? Right. So is this just an arbitrary decision an author makes? "I'm going to start a novel today. It's going to be about X." (Not the drug. The variable.) Or else "I'm going to start a short story today. It's going to be about Y." The more I think about it, the more fascinated I get. And because also, think about this: If you can say it in a short story, why waste everyone's time with a whole novel? Right? I mean, sure, I'm kidding a little bit, but.
ReplyDeleteThere's also, of course, the chance that Proulx is "making a statement" in Brokeback about the passing of time, how fleeting time is, how much happens in a lifetime and but how quickly it all seems to pass when we look back on it, but I think this is sort of an easy and reductive answer and doesn't really serve to further the discussion. So. So how do we decide what's a novel and what's a short story? Whimsy? How much word-stamina we happen to have at a given point in our lives? How much we think we can glean from a particular set of characters/circumstances? Shouldn't any good set of characters/circumstances give us enough material for a novel? Crazy.
I was very interested in the equation of writing with music in the Goodman essay — in poetry of course we tend to think about the aural qualities of the work quite a bit, often in musical terms, but I hadn’t previously extended the idea to prose. My question is, I suppose, how conscious people are of their own “style” of music in their fiction, and whether people make an effort at creating any particular music. We all want our work to sound good, of course, and have our natural voices and so forth, but do people adapt the style to the particular piece, or do our tendencies towards a preferred “music” inform which pieces we write?
ReplyDeleteAs far as our own style of music, that just refers to the tone or voice that each author has that comes out in their writing. Word choice, syntax, grammatical choices such as the over or underuse of commas, themes, all of these go into a piece whether it be poetry or prose. I always know when I'm reading Carver, Gass, Bartholme or Marquez just by the way their sentences are contructed, how they read on the page and how they sound out loud. One of the greatest qualities of Gass' In the Heart of the Heart of the Country is its aural quality, it begs to be read out loud. Goodman says that a sentence is far more than information and I agree with this for a sentence can be beautiful in and of itself, in fact it is possible to write a beautiful story filled with incredible sentences and still write a terrible story, how weird is that. My question is, then, what is the balance we strive for as writers between relaying information and punching up the language and where/what point does writing suffer because of language?
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for folding, Paul.
ReplyDeleteI think that point is purely subjective, T-bone. A great example is DeLillo. I love his style, love love love it, though his critics (haters) say it gets in the way of his content, and of his characters having (let alone showing) emotion. Some people knock Cormac McCarthy for eschewing apostrophes and basically being slightly insane on the page. Those people, of course, are wrong, because Cormac McCarthy is mind-blowingly enjoyable to read, precisely because of his voice/style. Think of it: When was the last time we had our minds blown by a good story? Pff. Don't kid yourself. Like never. What about a well-written sentence or paragraph, though? Now we're talking. Now we're cooking with gass. If story is the skeleton of a piece of prose, and it is, then voice/style is the soul.
ReplyDeleteCan of worms here, but Rosemary G. pointed this article out to me recently, and it basically lambastes writers for being overly voice-y. DeLillo, McCarthy, and even Proulx are discussed. Boy does he knock Proulx. My feelings on the article aside (I sort of absolutely hated it) I think it's totally worth the read. It's long, but honestly. Totally germane.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/07/a-readers-manifesto/2270/
Anyway, I think about rhythm/voice/"music" a lot when I'm writing (maybe more than I should), and it's something I definitely look for in an author, so I was really pleased to read Goodman's article. Even though I kind of felt like dude was in over his head and wasn't too great a writer himself, which made me trust him much less. Much less. (That was my problem with "Big 32," incidentally, that, all due respect, Monson didn't quite have the chops to justify his nontraditional structure. Gass can get away with this sort of thing, so can Barthelme, but not everyone can.) My personal opinion is that a novel should have at least some smidge of narrative to keep us turning the page, but I'm all for a lot of voice and little plot. The Moviegoer and my beloved Frank Bascombe novels are what I'd point to as examples. You do run the risk of losing readers who don't happen to vibe w/ your voice, of course.
Any thoughts on the Myers piece? is I guess my question.
I’ve always been something of an audiophile when it comes to reading prose and I really like what Paul said about story being the skeleton of a piece and voice/style being the soul. I don’t agree, however, that story is completely subordinate to style. Good stories do blow my mind. Hemingway is a great example. Sure, his writing is sober and tame compared with authors like DeLillo, but there is a rhythm and music to his writing. That being said, I’ve never read a Hemingway passage that has blown my mind. But the Old Man and the Sea, that blew my mind.
ReplyDeleteI think style need to be justified by the content of the story, which in my mind, makes story still the skeleton, and style something like intestines. We could have a magnificent, handsome intestine but without a good, sturdy, calcium-reinforced skeleton, what we’ve got is a gory mess of goo and blood on the floor. I think DeLillo’s style works so well because the story elements of his novels are congruous with the postmodern musings of his prose. White Noise and Cosmopolis, for example. McCarthy’s bleak, austere voice matches the violence, Blood Meridian, and hopeless predicaments, The Road, that characterize his novels. Vonnegut’s cynicism and dark humor are perfect for the social and political satire in novels like Slaughterhouse 5 and Mother Night. Maybe this pattern is hard to recognize because most authors don’t like to modify their styles to suit their stories and seem to prefer instead to select stories that suit their style. Vonnegut likes to experiment, and though I love the man dearly, he’s written a handful of books that fail in my opinion, largely because the style doesn’t match the voice. Deadeye Dick, for example. It had it’s moments, but Vonnegut’s prose didn’t really match the story, and his sardonic voice certainly did not make that piece of crap story any better.
I guess my question is what does everyone else think? Is story more important than style, is style more important, or do you see the two as inextricable?
Or not inextricable but equally important?
ReplyDeletePS: Pardon the typos, I hate making typos. :-(
Although there are many different translations of this line from Madame Bovary, this is the one I saw painted on a museum wall in Philadelphia recently (an exhibit of Maira Kalman's art): "...human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars..." For me, this complements the spirit of the Goodman piece. Could you look at a specific piece you've written recently and describe it in musical terms? Do the bears dance, or are the stars moved to pity? (Or whatever.)
ReplyDeleteRe the Hempel story: as someone who has struggled with movement through time in short pieces, I thought her transitions were done with precision and great skill. But maybe this didn't work for everyone. My question: is the structure of the story essential to the telling?
I was interested in Weintraub’s John Gardner quote: “The action must get going almost immediately, and the writer must slip in exposition as he can, the only limit being that by the time we reach the peak of the Fichtean Curve there should be no more exposition to be presented.” It seems odd to state this (or anything) as a hard and fast rule, but it did make me think. I want to pay attention, is there a place in a story when exposition has to be finished with? I was struck, as well, by Weintraub’s statement that as writers we must “find the representative concrete particularity that stands for a larger way of life. We must trust our readers to infer the macrocosmic implications from that microscopic detail.” I realize this applies to Nonfiction as well.
ReplyDeleteI first read steinberg's "testing" last semester and what I remembered about the discussion is how this piece is formed and what the sentence structure was doing. The whole piece has urgency to it. It feels tense and rushed and builds and builds to a climactic ending. If you were to read it aloud it feels that way as well. The last part goes "deep down you're not trash, you're not trash, you're not trash, repeat after me, you are a mountain of stone." It's an example of the music Steinberg is creating, her style. The piece has what Goodman describes as "actual music: rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and balance." I kept thinking, what if she were to break up this part, and experiment with the rhythm. For example, "you're not trash. You're not trash. You're not trash. Repeat after me. You are a mountain of stone." It sounds blunt and harsh, less urgent and pleading, and a key example of how the "music" and meaning are trying to balance. The question I had with Steinberg's piece, which I had last semester and now is, if there isn't much action to give a backstory to what lead to the present, or even a clear direct picture as to what is happening, is there still need for more showing/telling? Goodman says when one hears poetry, "we better understand that often the sound is the meaning." This piece still feels like a poem to me for some reason, or at least sounds like one. Or is this just Steinberg's music, one I have to have an ear for?
ReplyDeletePaul, pun or Freudian slip? "Now we're cooking with gass."
ReplyDeleteI've heard that the rhythm Allen Ginsberg employed in Howl was based on his own speaking cadence. Each line is a "breath," as in that's how many words he could get out in a single breath. That seems like a sensible goal to me, and it's what I usually strive for in my writing. After all, in the event I ever have to read it aloud, I certainly don't want to make an ass of myself standing at a podium before an audience and gasping for breath because of some interminable monologue.
On an unrelated note, let's all just take what I'm saying at face value and not try to read that last sentence aloud.
I have to agree with Ian that style by itself isn't enough to carry a story. Testing was cute, but it just didn't do it for me. I admit that after finishing the first page and finding no punctuation save commas, I immediately started flipping through to find the end of the piece. I can appreciate the sense of rhythm and urgency that Steinberg's writing provides, but at the end of the day, that's not enough to see me through to the end. I suppose it does fulfill Poe's explanation of a short story's purpose, though. The piece does seem singularly committed to conveying the breathless urgency of a Jewish mother chewing out her daughter and worrying about her son.
I wish I possessed the musical talent to write a story that has actual music, but sadly, my skills in that area are limited to Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The best I can hope for is to achieve a consistent and natural sense of rhythm.
Story/style, they go hand in hand for me, hard to divorce one from the other, they fit so perfectly, snuggled together (like Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist's shirts, aw). Seriously, after Goodman's piece on musicality, I paid rapt attention to Proulx's prose (try saying that twice), and was enraptured by her dead-on dialogue and descriptive passages, so particular to that time and place, to Ennis and Jack's flavorful and ornery characters, it all coalesced beautifully, became one lush landscape, and the adjectives/ verbs, etc., often echoed the physical/psychological action taking place. Sharp, really sharp. And I say this not being a big Proulx fan myself (her sentence construction often leaves me breathless, gasping, slow to catch up to her, only to find I'm already three miles behind, the odds stacking up against me).
ReplyDeleteI was also fascinated to see how she wielded time in the Brokeback piece--and i mean, epic staggering hold your breath Time--in all but twenty pages. An impressive feat, and i wonder if that's also somehow to do with the nature of language of the piece--how densely packed the long and winding descriptions are, and how truncated the declarative statements will cut right through some of those, like a steam plow, garnering a strangely hypnotic, if somewhat still askew, balance to the entire story.
The musical resonance to the Steinberg piece clearly stood out, like an incantation, or some crazy jazz riff, full of alliterations and consonance (as opposed to dissonance). But, BUT, she clearly borrowed (or shall we say, ripped off) from Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl." If anyone's ever read the latter, you'll know what i mean, and yes, clearly, Steinberg gave her own wry twist on it, but she was definitely influenced by her predecessor's unique voice.
I'm interested in Paul's earlier question-- how does a writer know when the project is a story, a novel, a novella? "Brokeback Mountain" is a good example of a story that could, arguably, be a novel--almost every character is intriguing enough to warrant more pages, and the landscape itself evolves as a character too-- I can see a writer spending pages and pages on that. To me, the story is the ultimate definition of the novelistic story, and the only reason I can see Proulx wanting this to be a story has to do with what Silber says (citing Poe) in her essay: "[The novelistic story] hops over years to stress the links in disparate elements. A stuffed story that refuses to be a novel is making some claim to the power of the singular effect." But what is this singular effect in "Brokeback Mountain?" While I doubt there's one answer, that story is so layered and complex that my attentions are divided among so many aspects of the narrative--sexuality, marriage, nature, etc. As a writer, I do feel torn about this-- I love the novelistic story, and the notion of this singular effect is what demands the form. And yet as a writer, I also want to say, screw the singular effect--let it be big, let it be sprawling, without the burden (?) of "[stressing] the links of disparate elements."
ReplyDeleteI actually think "Proper Library" is somewhat novelistic, in that its day-in-the-life quality is something the author, I assume, wants the reader to experience. To me, that story takes a while to get going, and is contradictory to the notion that something needs to "occasion" a story immediately, let the reader know why the story is being told in the first place. This story underplays that occasion, I think, and is instead fueled by its style, its musical prose, which I find both admirable and frustrating--the prose is this odd blend of vernacular and a self-conscious poetry. But the argument would be that sustaining an entire novel in such a style would be near impossible (like "testing"), unless perhaps the novel is clearly experimental. Wonder what people think about this.
Like Ian, I tend to see style as intestinal, the story itself skeletal. But a writer like Steinberg would completely disagree with this, and while I doubt she'd ID herself as an intestinal writer, she'd argue that her stories really are story-driven as much as voice-driven, which of course might require (for some) a re-consideration of what story means. Too often, I think such experiments are dismissed as that-- experiments--or worse, gimmicks.
As always, a lot of questions for the group to discuss here, and I'm especially interested to hear how you all consider this idea of style, of music in your prose. We don't always talk about this stuff in workshop, so I'm hoping now is our chance...
And who the heck is Tommy WestSide? Did our class just get even bigger?
I was really fascinated by the idea of a novelistic short story, particularly as someone who can't seem to write a short story and who prefers reading novels. The essay "Long Times in Short Stories..." really intrigued me when paired with "Brokeback Mountain." I took issue with Silber's idea that "a story that covers a long time span may have found one way to circumvent the accusation of the slightness and smallness that haunts contemporary American fiction" (What does that really mean? Who is making such accusations? Is she saying American authors are obsessed with moments and not with lives?). Brokeback Mountain doesn't seem like a slight or small story to me, although the lives the characters lead are incredibly circumscribed. "Condens(ing) lifetimes into shapes that can be seen in one viewing" is exactly what Proulx does in Brokeback Mountain, and to me it started to make sense that this story isn't a novel (although it so clearly could be!) because really, the one thing that defines Ennis' life is his relationship with Jack, which, in terms of time and physical space really takes up very little room, but in terms of import and impact is huge. I wonder if this is something that other novelistic short stories do-- distill what matters most in a character's entire life as an attempt to show that sometimes it is only one aspect of an entire life that is meaningful, that the smallness of the story is a structural attempt to show the slightness of the character's life? I see this as distinct from a short story that examines one moment or event in detail to show its meaning at that moment (the epiphany), but perhaps not how that event has import to the character's life beyond. In Araby, for example, we see that the events of the story have import at that moment at the end. What we don't see is how that epiphany will play out for the character beyond the scope of the story. Whereas, in Brokeback Mountain, we see exactly how the moment on Brokeback Mountain affects the rest of Ennis' life. I almost think my ability to see the impact is greater because the story is so small, so slight, so focused. If the story were a novel, I might not be able to hold all of it in my gaze and really see what matters most.
ReplyDeleteSince I have a musical background, can play an instrument and read sheet music, I found THE MUSIC OF PROSE easy to understand. I'm wondering if those of us without this background, those who aren't poets, found it more difficult to grasp?
ReplyDeleteAlso, some of us have expressed we'd die without music in our lives. Does this make us more prone to insert these lyrical qualities into our prose?
Here's a question for the group, regarding Catherine Brady's "Showing & Telling: The Necessary Partnership" (she looks like such a nerd--both disgusts and turns me on): What do you think when she wrote on pg. 5, "When telling expands the terms of our understanding, creating complexity rather than diminishing it, it is always a justified and dramatic element of a story."
ReplyDelete*Warning* The following blog post may be viewed as slightly rant-y:
ReplyDeleteChris, it's funny to me that you found the following line in Weintraub's essay striking: "find the representative concrete particularity that stands for a larger way of life." I, too, was struck by this line, but perhaps for a different reason. I have no idea why Weintraub thinks this is a good way to describe using small details in your story to illustrate or illuminate a greater point. Isn't that more straightforward? I got stuck on that line for a minute trying to figure out what she meant, and then after I figured it out, trying to figure out why she had to convolute it that way. My big issue with Weintraub's essay, however, is (you guys are going to get sick of hearing me say this) her explanation of the novel "Hotel du Lac" as a good example of withholding information from the reader in order to build tension. She states that "Brookner's judicious doling out of the effects of this backstory on Edith's present life that gives the novel rising tension..." (page 6) and that it is not until page 117 of this 184 page novel that the backstory is revealed and she thinks that this is a good way to build tension. I'm of the opinion that intentional withholding of information from the reader should not be the only source of tension in your novel (or short story)...this to me is worse than a gimmick gone wrong.
"Proper Library" and "Brokeback Mountain" swell with the novelistic yeast, yet one feels very contained, leashed to a specific place and emotion, while the other feels like it's still raw in the middle, not fully cooked but spilling from the pan, relying possibility too much on repetition, on the words, forgetting about something deeper, some lost ingredient. Is the unsatisfying ending part of the overall taste? Is this meant to linger in our mouths? I haven't identified which story I feel fits my ideas/opinions but they may just be obvious. It may be a question of balance, and even a collaboration between the reader and the story, a balance that takes place in the moment of intake.
ReplyDeleteQuestion about LONG TIMES IN SHORT STORIES:
ReplyDeleteWhat does Silber mean when she writes of Munro's method, "She once said that the novel had to have a coherence which she no longer saw in the lives around her...But such a statement does suggest how the sprawl of these stories involves, in fact, an economy of means."
Can anyone elaborate on the term, "economy of means."
Oh! And sorry if my posts from here on out might duplicate someone's above me. Like Joyce, I've decided to never read the blog before I post.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Not a question or comment on the readings, but I thought some might be interested in these "rules for writing fiction:"
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/10-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-two
In the Weintraub piece she quotes Gardner, "If the story is to be efficient and elegant, the writer must introduce no more background events or major characters than strictly necessary..." (pg. 4) and I wonder how do people see that idea working, well in short stories? I guess what I mean is how much background can go untold and still make a story awesome?
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed Goodman's article and wanted to respond to Candace's question concerning her connection to the article being due to her musical background. I have very little background in music, yet found it to be the most helpful article for my own writing. I think what intrigued me the most about it is that it is something that we focus on often (or at least I do) when reading other's work and my own. We talk about "pace" and how it connects us to the piece, and this seems to be how Goodman is looking at stories as well, except for it is taking a universal term that most people understand, music.
ReplyDeleteThere is a point in the essay where Goodman is talking about rhythm and i found myself asking the question "it seems like what is popular in music comes and goes as the fashions change, i wonder if it is the same 'musically' with writing as well?"
It was interesting that Hempel's story was paired with Ferrell's in this section, since to me the "music" seemed so much more obvious in Ferrell's story. It seems as if Ferrell is relying on this element as a way to create a sense of constant flow, something the main character refers to often enough as a way of life for him. I enjoyed this parallel and that is what drew me to the story, more then the story itself. On the other hand, in Hempel's story i find myself more interested in the character's themselves, and relying less on the way it is written. It is that "dream-like state" that puts me in the story, where I am not thinking about the way it is written and just falling into it. I was wondering if anyone saw Hempel using "music" in this story in a way that was much more obvious then I did, and if that affected your reading of the story?
Further to Juan's comment/question on the Brady essay: I have a hard time seeing a clear distinction between telling and showing, just as I did when LaPlante set action and inaction in opposition to each other.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Brady, when she says telling is "a justified and dramatic element of a story," is suggesting that telling, being "dramatic," is also a kind of showing.
So maybe telling is sometimes showing. I wonder, though, if showing can also be telling.
In Brady's "Showing vs. Telling" she illustrates for us why emotion is best conveyed in imagery, "...direct analysis of the main character's feelings would spoil the dramatic uncovering of this paradox." Not to sound like a broken record, but (for me) this comes down to characterization vs. character. We saw true characters written in Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain." Putting three (front) characters (Ennis, Jack, Alma) with similar backgrounds in the same place is often a recipe for leveled intonation. Proulx uses subtle cues in imagery to show the inner dialogue of the character (tire iron story, for example) and technique to merge ideas and emotions (fishing box note from Alma, shirt enveloping the other in the closet). Each of these sagacious choices builds a connection that is subtle, but not mysterious. From page one, the tenor is steady with dark undertones. Words weave like "chipped, stained, boil, shudder, dirt, die" to hint at danger. I wondered if these building details, or the first page in present-tense before leaning, sewed the reader's attention and attachment to the story that followed.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering about the effect of Silber's interest in how a short story, as opposed to a novel, "seek[s] to condense lifetimes into shapes that can be seen in one viewing," or on a wider level, how a novelistic short story deals with an accretion of information and disparate parts. Brokeback, as Lysley and Erin discussed, not only has the makings of a novel but it's layers and complexity are multifaceted.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a lot that Proulx accomplishes structurally to cohere all of the novel's disparate and sometimes divergent information, and that this structural feat is directly linked to theme in the story. The accretion of all these elements, coupled with Proulx's prowess, renders an overwhelming thematic density in Brokeback, a density which would be lost in a longer work.
This thematic density is created from Proulx's structure and literary device in her short story. First off, this is a classic example of a story that begins and ends in the same place: the pre-script more or less gives us the ending. As Proulx writes after the subverted epiphanic moment when Ennis and Jack are together for the last time, “they torqued things almost to where they had been...Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.” From the beginning, the story is constrained, and that constraint directly influences the pressure and constraint imposed thematically on the two protagonists.
One a more textual level, Brokeback is so tightly bound by imagistic and thematic device. There is enough historicity and specified backstory to make the lives of the protagonists both real and detailed, which is absolutely one important reason for why the story is so effective. Yet, watch how easily any part of this story becomes singularly formative of greater design. The image of the lit cigarette--alluring and intoxicating but ultimately dangerous in the story--like the "spark" of fire that Jack see's when he looks at Ennis's camp, forms one of the story's image complexes representative of individual desire in a dangerously oppresive society. Similarly, the word "broke" or "broken" carries so much weight: all the specific uses--mountain, money, body--of "broke" allude to the grand scale in which the persons of these individual characters are injured by their social environment.
I mean, even the sheep represent the internal core of reality (the threat of their boss--who represents the view of society--and the monetary labor/job of watching the sheep that Ennis and Jack have exchanged for labors of affect) in the pastoral landscape of the mountain.
So to end where I began, Proulx’s story forms it's disparate parts and the specific histories of it's protagonists into one singular artistic view meant to be seen in a temporal moment (ie a short story), and the constrained accretion of these (novelistic) elements is the source of power behind the story's thematics.
Also, Erin, I liked your idea about Brokeback being a short story because the "view" we are given of Ennis does seem to be, in one way or another, enabled by Jack--and that that view creates the "singular effect" in the story Lysley mentioned--because I've often wondered what to do with the impulse to read Ennis as /the/ protagonist and Jack as a foil. That said, I do think the story not only enables but also resists (through Jack's specific history) reducing Jack to a conceptualization of Ennis's desire.
ReplyDeleteSo much can be said about the Showing & Telling article, and there is so much from Brady’s article with which I agree. I find it both accurate and prudent the point she makes that “whenever telling exists in some kind of tension or opposition with what is shown in a story, it takes on a dramatic function.” However, I feel that the article ignores or is unconcerned with when showing and telling aren’t oppositional.
ReplyDeleteI feel that, aside from the virtuosic time-management and novelistic maneuverings (though my comment is integrated with the latter), Proulx’s genius of Brokeback Mountain is its seamless and poignant oscillation between showing and telling. Furthermore, that it utilizes both not only in creating tension or ambiguity between was is told and what is shown, but that it also intensifies the trueness of the story, specifically in terms of emotion. The three first full paragraphs on page 537, the blocked section, illustrate my point; the first paragraph tells, the second magnifies the emotional energy of the first by showing, and the final paragraph in that section concretizes and distills the emotional inflation of the second by way of telling.
When you write, do you prioritize one over the other? Do you generally subscribe to the camp of showing over telling? Is it something you’re conscious of while you write, or do you solely rely on intuition?