As I was reading /If You Follow Me/ I was really interested in the way time was functioning in the text. After the flashback to college, the novel seems to become less and less chronological and it made me think of Smiley's statement that, ""Time sequence can be abused however the writer wishes to abuse it, because the human tendency, at least in the West, to think in sequence is so strong that the reader will keep track of beginning, middle, and end on her own." There were times when I struggled to keep track of the timeline of events in the novel. It made me wonder if that was part of the challenge of using present tense (except for the flashback which is in past tense) or is it just a challenge of the way Watrous decided to structure the novel? I thought this even more when I read her essay about the novel and she said that the novel, "is really four novellas, each one featuring a different core cast of characters, whose stories hopefully do weave together by the end." I think ultimately the novel does cohere, but I wonder how knowing before reading it that Watrous viewed the novel as four novellas would have changed my reading. Or is the non-linear form the novel takes one way Watrous is exploring the cultural differences between the East and West? Is the structure of the seasons truly functioning in a linear way in the story?
The question that I'd like to ask Malena when she comes on Tuesday is to what extent the novel is real and where did she really take fictional liberties. I think one of the reasons that this novel is successful is that it feels true, even if there are places where I would challenge the reality of the story. There are definitely many times when I feel the narrative is given over to craft, and is well-crafted. It seems natural to take the story at face value though, and I never feel that the story is "put on," or trying so hard to /be a novel/ when it need not.
I feel like the conceit of the narrative is the parallel drawn between cultures (mostly the US and Japan), and the ways in which disjunction as well as common ground emerge from that. In this way, the novel often hinges on language and translation. For example, it's a really useful structuring device to head each chapter with a translation that is thematic, and also that reestablishes the particular connections and disconnections of the narrator's situation of living and translating in a foreign country.
The moments when I notice or appreciate the craft, are times like when Miyoshi is defined by his speech pattern, his use of "maybe" and how that reflects part of the narrator's relationship to him. Other times the craft is stretched (like when the two children jump into the pool mimicking the death of the narrator's father) but doesn't go too far. Sometimes its tragically funny like the joke about the cat named Amana dying in the Amana refrigerator. The novel hinges on these moves though in a way that quietly but assuredly sews together the narrative and allows for its greater stakes to emerge.
In general, I think the relationships of characters in the story are thematized by, if not a direct result of, language and cultural. It seems the book is as much about barriers and understanding between people as it is about cultural translation.
I was intrigued by Smiley’s association of prose with “realism”, the whole realistic narrative and writing about common things bit on p. 24, and was especially wondering how to reconcile that with stuff like “genre” fiction—if we follow Smiley’s notion that prose is the language of money and memos and everyday language, then we should expect to see Sci Fi and Fantasy and Horror in other types of writing, but it’s almost exclusively prose, especially in the era of the novel. I suppose “genre” fiction doesn’t count as literature for the purposes of these sorts of essays? But then what about all the “genre” characters in the list that Smiley gives: Dracula and Frankenstein, the Count of Monte Cristo and Scrooge, and so forth?
Watrous' (slash Robinson's) mention of sui generis (two words, right?) as well as her claim that "there's no way I could have imagined a foreign setting without having spent a fair amount of time there" struck a note with me. Last night a friend was in town and he and I were talking about a story I'd written. He was saying while the story was well crafted, the characters, setting, situation, etc. were believable, all that was great, he found it somewhat empty, because those characters, the setting and the situation, were all constructed. That none of it came from my own experience, so it felt crafted, or derivative, and empty. Soulless. He said the best writing comes at least somewhat from an author's real-life experience.
I countered with Well, what about Cormac McCarthy, for example. He doesn't live all the shit he writes about, let's hope. Nabokov didn't actually want to have sex with eleven-year-olds, did he?
Obviously it's possible to craft a moving/successful novel/story without drawing at all from one's own experiences; is it just more difficult? Does it just require a more accomplished writer? Like maybe it's not that my characters/setting/etc. were constructed, but that they felt constructed, that I didn't do enough to convince him of their real-ness. Maybe for a beginning writer it helps to start with one's own experiences ("Write what you know")? Sometimes I feel like I'm copping out when I draw from my own experiences, though. Like it's too obvious. Like what if someone tried to workshop a short story about a guy getting his NFA from a small school in Noraga called St. Nary's? I think we'd all roll our eyes and go, Yeah, okay dude. Mice try.
Anyway. Curious to hear people's thoughts on this issue. If we must only write about our own experiences, the obvious fear is What do we do when we run out of material? No one wants to repeat him/herself. And yet so many of my favorite novels are largely drawn from the author's life. The Corrections, Infinite Jest, The Sportswriter, Tropic of Cancer, every Raymond Carver story. My friend said a lot of contemporary writing focuses too much on craft, on sentences, and doesn't have that truth to it, that authenticity, that heart.
I guess my question is, on Pearl Jam's 1994 album, Vitalogy, which is the better song: "Immortality" or "Corduroy"?
Well Paul, as writers we never run out of material to use for stories/novellas/novels. I don't think we are limited to our own experiences, but when we write outside of our own experiences, then writing becomes like anything else we are unfamiliar with in that we will struggle with it. Starting with experience helps because it is a comfortable place to write from, we also have ideas and opinions which have built up over time to give us perspective when we write to hopefully give the work more depth and perspective. When Katharine Noel was here she talked about writing from her experience of working with troubled kids, but she also talked about waiting for enough time to pass before starting that novel so she could have more perspective. The question I have stems from the handout and the idea that length somehow makes up a novel. So how far should length go in determining if a work is a novel or not? The example of Heart of Darkness is given as a short novel, but I've read works of equal length or longer which are considered novellas. We read Madeline is Sleeping last year and that was a published short story first which was later expanded into a novel, so the scope of the story did expand, but the basic premise for the story remained in tact, doesn't that suggest that MIS is still a story, just a longer one? I'm curious because I'm working on a piece now that I've thought could be short story, novella or novel and am not sure where to take it, so besides length, what ultimately determines what a story is and are the terms we have just an inhibiting nuisance?
To get a little bit into what Paul is wondering about (Nothingman, hands down), but also similar conversations I've had in the past regarding the "write-what-you-know" mantra we're often taught, which seems especially applicable to beginning writers. If someone had asked me this ten years ago, when I was in my mid-20's, I would say I too consciously shied away from writing close to home (now just the opposite, ironically Memory now refuses to comply), not necessarily because I considered it a "cop out" (what does that mean really?), but because I didn't have all that much to offer, at least I didn't think I did...until I got older, and realized I carried entire worlds and countless stories within me-- unique, wonderful, bizarre, tragic worlds, which no one had ever seen or experienced quite the same way I had. That I could be the voice for those stories, those now voiceless people. A powerful but also frightening realization. Kind of paralyzing. Writing about our experiences is an incredibly difficult task, at least to write with honesty, clarity and compassion. But it also makes for some of the most engaging fiction and nonfiction out there.
I also think the "I" is a powerful point of view to come to grips with, for all writers to embrace and become comfortable with at some point or another. I haven't as yet. (Would the Watrous novel work just as well in third-person? I'm curious to know if she tried that and abandoned it. If she chose present tense because in a way the narrator is trying to reconcile the past?) For me first person allows for deeper truths, for difficult excavations that sometimes the third-person keeps at bay, the pronouns themselves inherently distant and (distancing) and removed. Some stories feel soulless because, well, they are-- they haven't been imbued with much meaning, haven't exposed enough, opened their glistening throbbing guts to the light of day, so they simply reside in the sentences themselves, static beautiful symbols. They are empty, they don't travel, they don't move (us). And that's not necessarily due to a lack of talent on the writer's part, it's simply that they haven't found their voice, the right voice...or the right story to tell.
I think it's important to realize we're not inventing anything new here, not charting the course of the cosmos in the night sky, just simply giving rise to our own unique vision (stories and characters), the only authentic reality we've ever known or will know with conviction--our present, our past; navigating those distant turbulent seas from within the feeble boat that is our body, carrying memory and imagination along with it, hoping against hope someone will spot us adrift out there, waving and shouting, will see our plight and send up a flare of recognition, a beacon of light against the encroaching darkness.
Don't know about the rest of you, but it's that time of the semester where I feel like I'm dead at the end of every week--stupid Zicam isn't working!--but then I get to the blog and read all your great comments, and I get energized again. I love reading this-it keeps me thinking, makes me feel lucky to teach in our MFA program. I'll miss the blog when it's over. ANYWAY... it's funny that we haven't discussed the 'write what you know' philosophy of fiction writing (probably because we take that--and the different positions on subject--for granted), but I'm glad Malena's book is bringing up the issue. To a certain extent, I believe we’re all writing ‘what we know,’ in that as writers, we all know what we’re emotionally interested in, which usually comes from our own experience. In that sense, most of fiction, I’d venture to say, is emotionally autobiographical. But in terms of writing fiction based on autobiographical fact and event—that seems incredibly daunting to me, to reconcile the necessity for factual truth with the orchestrative/manipulative nature of fiction and storytelling. Some of what Smiley says makes the idea of “writing what you know” even more challenging, her claim that, “the subject of any novel comes to be the coexistence of the protagonist and his group.” If this is true (and I believe to an extent it is, personally), and if a writer “writes what she/he knows,” isn’t the writer obligated to measure that knowledge against the knowledge of “the group” written about? Say, in Malena’s book for instance, she’s having to render Shika, the school, the culture, the people, etc., in ways that ring true to everyone concerned. And I don’t just mean facts—I mean the character of a place and a people, their attitudes and efficacies. Obviously, it’s Marina’s story, yet it’s also the story of a place and time, and at a certain point, I’d imagine it has to be rendered with an objective authenticity (I have no idea if that made sense. It did in my head. Stupid Zicam!). But I’m also a writer who has never written anything significantly autobiographical (in terms of event or fact)—true, many of my characters are Filipinos, immigrants, a few wear glasses, one had a teacher named Mr. Cosgrove—but that’s the extent of it. Except for research, I make everything up, partly due to the concerns stated above. (Plus, except for that one time I almost shoplifted a cookie cutter in the second grade, my life isn’t that interesting.)
Don't know about the rest of you, but it's that time of the semester where I feel like I'm dead at the end of every week--stupid Zicam isn't working!--but then I get to the blog and read all your great comments, and I get energized again. I love reading this-it keeps me thinking, makes me feel lucky to teach in our MFA program. I'll miss the blog when it's over. ANYWAY... it's funny that we haven't discussed the 'write what you know' philosophy of fiction writing (probably because we take that--and the different positions on subject--for granted), but I'm glad Malena's book is bringing up the issue. To a certain extent, I believe we’re all writing ‘what we know,’ in that as writers, we all know what we’re emotionally interested in, which usually comes from our own experience. In that sense, most of fiction, I’d venture to say, is emotionally autobiographical. But in terms of writing fiction based on autobiographical fact and event—that seems incredibly daunting to me, to reconcile the necessity for factual truth with the orchestrative/manipulative nature of fiction and storytelling. Some of what Smiley says makes the idea of “writing what you know” even more challenging, her claim that, “the subject of any novel comes to be the coexistence of the protagonist and his group.” If this is true (and I believe to an extent it is, personally), and if a writer “writes what she/he knows,” isn’t the writer obligated to measure that knowledge against the knowledge of “the group” written about? Say, in Malena’s book for instance, she’s having to render Shika, the school, the culture, the people, etc., in ways that ring true to everyone concerned. And I don’t just mean facts—I mean the character of a place and a people, their attitudes and efficacies. Obviously, it’s Marina’s story, yet it’s also the story of a place and time, and at a certain point, I’d imagine it has to be rendered with an objective authenticity (I have no idea if that made sense. It did in my head. Stupid Zicam!). But I’m also a writer who has never written anything significantly autobiographical (in terms of event or fact)—true, many of my characters are Filipinos, immigrants, a few wear glasses, one had a teacher named Mr. Cosgrove—but that’s the extent of it. Except for research, I make everything up, partly due to the concerns stated above. (Plus, except for that one time I almost shoplifted a cookie cutter in the second grade, my life isn’t that interesting.)
I have to question/take issue with/aimlessly rant about the passage of the Smiley essay that attempts to illustrate the difference between the ability to memorise and the actually memorable qualities of poetry and prose. Her notion that 'a poem must be remembered word for word or it loses its identity' doesn't seem all that exclusive to poetry for me; sure, reading a story will evoke a lot of imaginative work, filling in the blanks in a character's past, summarised or omitted action, creating a sort of backstory that could exist alongside the fiction--and, in a similar sense, poems can evoke memories and emotions and implications that aren't there on the page. In either case, however, all we have are those words on the page, and that is deliberate and significant. If prose is largely forgettable, then why am I reading it?
And, on the other side of the coin, I have to come out in defense of the non-quantifiable, affective aspect of poetry, the kind of memory and sense that exists beyond just reciting the words. I can't quote a line from Paul Celan's 'Death Fugue' (okay, partially because the translations vary and I don't know the original German), but just thinking of the poem I can remember the creepy, haunting, viscerally moving sense of it, and I seriously doubt that I will ever forget that sense or that the poem exists at all-- not to mention what a testament it is to the power of that poem that it can survive translation.
With apologies to the non-poets for that last paragraph (i.e. the majority of my classmates), my point is that there always seems to be this crowbar separation of prose and poetry in criticism, and, for the best of reasons, I can't see how they're all that different sometimes. Word choice is, let's face it, entirely arbitrary in all of them, but the finished manuscript that goes to the printer and ends up in our hands is inevitable and unique, as is the effect that it has on each of us emotionally. I think we have to honour that in prose and poetry alike.
Another essay that I want to bronze and hang on my wall, is this the Smiley? (Thirteen ways?) I LOVE her discussion of narrative, that 'a sequence of sentences..must inevitably result in a narrative.' The idea of 'before-and-after qualities of written sentences imply, mimic and require the passage of time.' Also the idea that 'the more lyrical and less narrative a novel is, the shorter it is.' Which seems obvious, I guess, but wasn't necessarily obvious to me! In regard to Paul's fear that writing about oneself too often would lead to a running dry of the well, so to speak, I used to feel that way too! A decidedly uncomfortable place to be in, in a nonfiction program...But what I'm feeling now is the more I prick the surface of things that 'happened' the more offshoots appear, and I could follow this one here, and that one there and then offshoots appear to those trajectories, and so on. It's a relief, makes one feel a bit more 'valid' I guess, to realize that there are many many different variations of whatever it is we might want to say. Also, tone, any given story can be told in a myriad of tones, and each tone will then govern how that story is told, what structure it then borrows, which characters appear...I appreciate the Watrous piece because it DID feel so much like nonfiction to me. Nonfiction but borrowing 'fiction' just enough to get the story told. I feel more comfortable with the idea of scraping the bottom of 'real life' and just adding bits of fiction here and there to grease the wheel...
After reading Watrous' longer essay, I couldn't help but think what gives an author the stick-to-it-ness to finish a novel? When she says, "the device of four seasons was also something that took a few years to land upon," I think WOW! A FEW YEARS! And that the essential element of the father's suicide also came late in the novel's creation makes me understand the gift that finishing a novel is. Was she working with an editor who pushed her along? Did she simply sit and think about the gaps that needed to be filled or was there an objective set of eyes who helped her? I can get so bogged down in my work, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. How is the author able to detach from their story enough to see what still needs work? I guess this connects to a question I've had all semester: When do we know when we are finished?
Corduroy. Immortality is pretty good, as is Nothingman, but Corduroy just speaks to me in way that neither of those do.
My hands down, all-time favorite Pearl Jam song remains Yellow Ledbetter, of course.
Oh, right. Blog post. Ol' Pauly D's post got me thinking about the way in which stories speak to their readers, and how it's possible to lose a reader due to a lack of authenticity (I know that's not the focus of the essays, or the novel, necessarily, but hey, this is where my brain has taken me.) If the writer is taking a decidedly specific situation or setting and writing about it generically, readers have every right to roll their eyes and say, "Mice try." Of course, there are some things people simply can't experience, due to the limits of our current 21st century technology. I mean, it'll be at least ten years before Toby's able to hop in a time machine and go to Soviet Russia, until Erin can visit a Civil War battlefield populated by actual soldiers and not people LARPing. That's where research comes in.
I suppose my question is, then, how much research is necessary to really capture the feel of an era, or a location, or a zeitgeist? Glen David Gold, the current Fiction workshop professor, likes to say, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story," but where's the line where you start losing readers because the truth got stretched too far? Does it boil down to math; find the LD50 for your readership, and don't cross that point? Should we simply snort and say, "Well, I was writing for THEM anyway?"
Anyway, back to the subject of grunge, best Nirvana album? I posit that it's "Unplugged in New York," but what do others think?
I wonder if having a break down helps one become a better writer? Maybe this is the secret to the Iowa Writers Workshop- the winters, the crazy landlords, the cops who shoot people who are on the phone, and etc.
The Watrous essays brought up two things I’ve been consciously wrestling with in writing: these ideas of suigeneris and defamiliarization. In relation to writing fiction, it is difficult enough writing poetry that isn’t in some way unavoidably derivative. At least for me, I in most instances work on a poem under the oppressive feeling that anything I write has been done before. So I make a concerted effort to work toward these rewarding instances of suigeneris. It feels harder to come by when I write fiction. I find that these moments are best facilitated by formal choices which in turn eventually affect the content. What are some of the ways we can attempt to be less derivative, more self-generative when we write?
Defamiliarization is also something I actively attempt to employ when I write poetry. Strangeness is often something that is lauded in workshop or when we talk about published poems. Like suigeneris, I find it hard to incorporate or engage defamiliarization in writing fiction. I can turn phrases or at least think I can when I write poetry, but defamiliarizing material in relation to a story is a bit more difficult or foreign to me. Again, I end up doing something formally to my fiction pieces to get at a defamiliarizing effect or perspective. What are some ways we can make strange this walk we call writing and dance?
When Smiley writes, "the protagonist must contrast to those around him to be the protagonist. This means that his fate sets him apart, happy or sad,"I wonder what she means by fate. Is it because the reader is focused on him or if it means that to be the protagonist something extraordinary has to happen to him or her in relation to other characters? Doesn't this take some of the sameness out of the experience of living? Are there any great books where nothing extraordinary happens?
I was intrigued by what Smiley said about the need for every important character in a novel to have some kind of moral complexity: "If a character is solely evil, or is solely good... [that character is] not possessed of agency, which in a novel is the only standard of real importance." (pp. 27-28)
Is it?
I guess a lot depends on one's interpretation of "solely," but I've liked a lot of novels with somewhat one-dimensional characters who play a major role: Shrike in Miss Lonelyhearts, the dwarf in The Dwarf, Smerdyakov in The Brothers K.
Miss L. is very short, true, but the other two aren't. And one can argue, as well, that these characters are fairly complex. But anyway...
I was intrigued by what Smiley said about the need for every important character in a novel to have some kind of moral complexity: "If a character is solely evil, or is solely good... [that character is] not possessed of agency, which in a novel is the only standard of real importance." (pp. 27-28)
Is it?
I guess a lot depends on one's interpretation of "solely," but I've liked a lot of novels with somewhat one-dimensional characters who play a major role: Shrike in Miss Lonelyhearts, the dwarf in The Dwarf, Smerdyakov in The Brothers K.
Miss L. is very short, true, but the other two aren't. One could argue, I suppose, that these characters are fairly complex...
Malena's essay on Short Story to Novel made a lot of sense after having read "If You Follow Me." Although I disagree that each section has its own cast of characters, the important ones seem to remain throughout (except Carolyn's disappearance-see below), I understand how each season or section is functioning as kind of mini-novella and I think for the most part this is working to the novel's advantage. One example of where it isn't working, is in the second section when Carolyn disappears from the narrative, or the narrator chooses to ignore Carolyn for awhile. It was jarring to have one of the main characters of the novel just fall out of the narrative like that. Did anyone else have an issue with this? I also became a little frustrated with the novel's plotlines, sometimes they seemed too fragmentary, but overall I appreciated the quietness of "If You Follow Me."
I'm really interested in the questions Malena Watrous addresses on her essay about setting. Over the course of the 20th century, the world went from being a big, mysterious spectrum of alien worlds to an interconnected, homogenized microcosm of familiar people and settings. Watrous writes, "Defamiliarization is a classic writer's trick." I wonder though, as the world becomes smaller and smaller, it is disingenuous of the writer to defamiliarize too much? To what degree is this or isn't this true? Certainly, the rural Shika is unfamiliar to the American reader, but what about the "stories set in vaguely rendered America"? Is it fair to shrug these off because they're too familiar, or does the familiarity add authenticity? Are these just different types of stories altogether that shouldn't be compared? Smiley writes that part of what makes a novel pleasurable is length, which builds a familiarity between the world of the novel and the reader. Is it more pleasurable, then, to find familiarity in something that is initially unfamiliar rather than beginning with the familiarity that Smiley appreciates? As a reader and wannabe writer, I think this is true and crucial. I find myself attracted to absurdism, hyperbolized realities, and settings that border on sci-fi. Becoming familiar with the unfamiliar is very satisfying, a deep-rooted human urge to explore and discover. The novel I'm writing takes place in a not so distant future of the United States, and I'm finding that balancing the unfamiliar with the familiar is like river dancing on a high wire. How do we as writers defamiliarize without ignoring the globalization that characterizes the world we live in?
I dove right into the book and when I began reading I started underlining passages and making mental notes and before I knew it I wasn't anymore. I just kept reading and reading and underlining only really small tidbits here and there that really struck out to me, on a personal level rather than with a critical eye. So I'm glad it was assigned because I really liked it and it was a humorous and emotional read. (which just really means this didn't feel like homework to me!)
I agree with Skye on the point that the "disappearance" of Carolyn's character was jarring, that was a bit odd for me, but I kind of liked that she was gone for a while. I really wanted to stay with Marina, concentrate on one protagonist. Which was also aided by the first person voice and is why I think she uses it, to keep us always on Marina, how she is reacting and how she is acted upon. Smiley (I just love that), said that the narrator is "the author but not the author," and after reading the handouts, I really could see Watrous in Marina.
Okay.. let me just get to my question. The parts that I really loved reading, though they were kind of painful too (I once had a housemate who left really passive aggressive reminders around the house) were Hiro's letters, and also the language of the Japanese characters. To craft in English is hard enough, but to write letters and dialogue from these perspectives is a whole new level. Language obviously plays an important role in this book. How did she write this language which was existing in two worlds, and what were the challenges?
I dove right into the book and when I began reading I started underlining passages and making mental notes and before I knew it I wasn't anymore. I just kept reading and reading and underlining only really small tidbits here and there that really struck out to me, on a personal level rather than with a critical eye. So I'm glad it was assigned because I really liked it and it was a humorous and emotional read. (which just really means this didn't feel like homework to me!)
I agree with Skye on the point that the "disappearance" of Carolyn's character was jarring, that was a bit odd for me, but I kind of liked that she was gone for a while. I really wanted to stay with Marina, concentrate on one protagonist. Which was also aided by the first person voice and is why I think she uses it, to keep us always on Marina, how she is reacting and how she is acted upon. Smiley (I just love that), said that the narrator is "the author but not the author," and after reading the handouts, I really could see Watrous in Marina.
Okay.. let me just get to my question. The parts that I really loved reading, though they were kind of painful too (I once had a housemate who left really passive aggressive reminders around the house) were Hiro's letters, and also the language of the Japanese characters. To craft in English is hard enough, but to write letters and dialogue from these perspectives is a whole new level. Language obviously plays an important role in this book. How did she write this language which was existing in two worlds, and what were the challenges?
As I was reading /If You Follow Me/ I was really interested in the way time was functioning in the text. After the flashback to college, the novel seems to become less and less chronological and it made me think of Smiley's statement that, ""Time sequence can be abused however the writer wishes to abuse it, because the human tendency, at least in the West, to think in sequence is so strong that the reader will keep track of beginning, middle, and end on her own." There were times when I struggled to keep track of the timeline of events in the novel. It made me wonder if that was part of the challenge of using present tense (except for the flashback which is in past tense) or is it just a challenge of the way Watrous decided to structure the novel? I thought this even more when I read her essay about the novel and she said that the novel, "is really four novellas, each one featuring a different core cast of characters, whose stories hopefully do weave together by the end." I think ultimately the novel does cohere, but I wonder how knowing before reading it that Watrous viewed the novel as four novellas would have changed my reading. Or is the non-linear form the novel takes one way Watrous is exploring the cultural differences between the East and West? Is the structure of the seasons truly functioning in a linear way in the story?
ReplyDeleteThe question that I'd like to ask Malena when she comes on Tuesday is to what extent the novel is real and where did she really take fictional liberties. I think one of the reasons that this novel is successful is that it feels true, even if there are places where I would challenge the reality of the story. There are definitely many times when I feel the narrative is given over to craft, and is well-crafted. It seems natural to take the story at face value though, and I never feel that the story is "put on," or trying so hard to /be a novel/ when it need not.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the conceit of the narrative is the parallel drawn between cultures (mostly the US and Japan), and the ways in which disjunction as well as common ground emerge from that. In this way, the novel often hinges on language and translation. For example, it's a really useful structuring device to head each chapter with a translation that is thematic, and also that reestablishes the particular connections and disconnections of the narrator's situation of living and translating in a foreign country.
The moments when I notice or appreciate the craft, are times like when Miyoshi is defined by his speech pattern, his use of "maybe" and how that reflects part of the narrator's relationship to him. Other times the craft is stretched (like when the two children jump into the pool mimicking the death of the narrator's father) but doesn't go too far. Sometimes its tragically funny like the joke about the cat named Amana dying in the Amana refrigerator. The novel hinges on these moves though in a way that quietly but assuredly sews together the narrative and allows for its greater stakes to emerge.
In general, I think the relationships of characters in the story are thematized by, if not a direct result of, language and cultural. It seems the book is as much about barriers and understanding between people as it is about cultural translation.
I was intrigued by Smiley’s association of prose with “realism”, the whole realistic narrative and writing about common things bit on p. 24, and was especially wondering how to reconcile that with stuff like “genre” fiction—if we follow Smiley’s notion that prose is the language of money and memos and everyday language, then we should expect to see Sci Fi and Fantasy and Horror in other types of writing, but it’s almost exclusively prose, especially in the era of the novel. I suppose “genre” fiction doesn’t count as literature for the purposes of these sorts of essays? But then what about all the “genre” characters in the list that Smiley gives: Dracula and Frankenstein, the Count of Monte Cristo and Scrooge, and so forth?
ReplyDeleteWatrous' (slash Robinson's) mention of sui generis (two words, right?) as well as her claim that "there's no way I could have imagined a foreign setting without having spent a fair amount of time there" struck a note with me. Last night a friend was in town and he and I were talking about a story I'd written. He was saying while the story was well crafted, the characters, setting, situation, etc. were believable, all that was great, he found it somewhat empty, because those characters, the setting and the situation, were all constructed. That none of it came from my own experience, so it felt crafted, or derivative, and empty. Soulless. He said the best writing comes at least somewhat from an author's real-life experience.
ReplyDeleteI countered with Well, what about Cormac McCarthy, for example. He doesn't live all the shit he writes about, let's hope. Nabokov didn't actually want to have sex with eleven-year-olds, did he?
Obviously it's possible to craft a moving/successful novel/story without drawing at all from one's own experiences; is it just more difficult? Does it just require a more accomplished writer? Like maybe it's not that my characters/setting/etc. were constructed, but that they felt constructed, that I didn't do enough to convince him of their real-ness. Maybe for a beginning writer it helps to start with one's own experiences ("Write what you know")? Sometimes I feel like I'm copping out when I draw from my own experiences, though. Like it's too obvious. Like what if someone tried to workshop a short story about a guy getting his NFA from a small school in Noraga called St. Nary's? I think we'd all roll our eyes and go, Yeah, okay dude. Mice try.
Anyway. Curious to hear people's thoughts on this issue. If we must only write about our own experiences, the obvious fear is What do we do when we run out of material? No one wants to repeat him/herself. And yet so many of my favorite novels are largely drawn from the author's life. The Corrections, Infinite Jest, The Sportswriter, Tropic of Cancer, every Raymond Carver story. My friend said a lot of contemporary writing focuses too much on craft, on sentences, and doesn't have that truth to it, that authenticity, that heart.
I guess my question is, on Pearl Jam's 1994 album, Vitalogy, which is the better song: "Immortality" or "Corduroy"?
My post just got eaten by the blog.
ReplyDeleteWell Paul, as writers we never run out of material to use for stories/novellas/novels. I don't think we are limited to our own experiences, but when we write outside of our own experiences, then writing becomes like anything else we are unfamiliar with in that we will struggle with it. Starting with experience helps because it is a comfortable place to write from, we also have ideas and opinions which have built up over time to give us perspective when we write to hopefully give the work more depth and perspective. When Katharine Noel was here she talked about writing from her experience of working with troubled kids, but she also talked about waiting for enough time to pass before starting that novel so she could have more perspective. The question I have stems from the handout and the idea that length somehow makes up a novel. So how far should length go in determining if a work is a novel or not? The example of Heart of Darkness is given as a short novel, but I've read works of equal length or longer which are considered novellas. We read Madeline is Sleeping last year and that was a published short story first which was later expanded into a novel, so the scope of the story did expand, but the basic premise for the story remained in tact, doesn't that suggest that MIS is still a story, just a longer one? I'm curious because I'm working on a piece now that I've thought could be short story, novella or novel and am not sure where to take it, so besides length, what ultimately determines what a story is and are the terms we have just an inhibiting nuisance?
ReplyDeleteTo get a little bit into what Paul is wondering about (Nothingman, hands down), but also similar conversations I've had in the past regarding the "write-what-you-know" mantra we're often taught, which seems especially applicable to beginning writers. If someone had asked me this ten years ago, when I was in my mid-20's, I would say I too consciously shied away from writing close to home (now just the opposite, ironically Memory now refuses to comply), not necessarily because I considered it a "cop out" (what does that mean really?), but because I didn't have all that much to offer, at least I didn't think I did...until I got older, and realized I carried entire worlds and countless stories within me-- unique, wonderful, bizarre, tragic worlds, which no one had ever seen or experienced quite the same way I had. That I could be the voice for those stories, those now voiceless people. A powerful but also frightening realization. Kind of paralyzing. Writing about our experiences is an incredibly difficult task, at least to write with honesty, clarity and compassion. But it also makes for some of the most engaging fiction and nonfiction out there.
ReplyDeleteI also think the "I" is a powerful point of view to come to grips with, for all writers to embrace and become comfortable with at some point or another. I haven't as yet. (Would the Watrous novel work just as well in third-person? I'm curious to know if she tried that and abandoned it. If she chose present tense because in a way the narrator is trying to reconcile the past?) For me first person allows for deeper truths, for difficult excavations that sometimes the third-person keeps at bay, the pronouns themselves inherently distant and (distancing) and removed. Some stories feel soulless because, well, they are-- they haven't been imbued with much meaning, haven't exposed enough, opened their glistening throbbing guts to the light of day, so they simply reside in the sentences themselves, static beautiful symbols. They are empty, they don't travel, they don't move (us). And that's not necessarily due to a lack of talent on the writer's part, it's simply that they haven't found their voice, the right voice...or the right story to tell.
I think it's important to realize we're not inventing anything new here, not charting the course of the cosmos in the night sky, just simply giving rise to our own unique vision (stories and characters), the only authentic reality we've ever known or will know with conviction--our present, our past; navigating those distant turbulent seas from within the feeble boat that is our body, carrying memory and imagination along with it, hoping against hope someone will spot us adrift out there, waving and shouting, will see our plight and send up a flare of recognition, a beacon of light against the encroaching darkness.
Don't know about the rest of you, but it's that time of the semester where I feel like I'm dead at the end of every week--stupid Zicam isn't working!--but then I get to the blog and read all your great comments, and I get energized again. I love reading this-it keeps me thinking, makes me feel lucky to teach in our MFA program. I'll miss the blog when it's over. ANYWAY... it's funny that we haven't discussed the 'write what you know' philosophy of fiction writing (probably because we take that--and the different positions on subject--for granted), but I'm glad Malena's book is bringing up the issue. To a certain extent, I believe we’re all writing ‘what we know,’ in that as writers, we all know what we’re emotionally interested in, which usually comes from our own experience. In that sense, most of fiction, I’d venture to say, is emotionally autobiographical. But in terms of writing fiction based on autobiographical fact and event—that seems incredibly daunting to me, to reconcile the necessity for factual truth with the orchestrative/manipulative nature of fiction and storytelling. Some of what Smiley says makes the idea of “writing what you know” even more challenging, her claim that, “the subject of any novel comes to be the coexistence of the protagonist and his group.” If this is true (and I believe to an extent it is, personally), and if a writer “writes what she/he knows,” isn’t the writer obligated to measure that knowledge against the knowledge of “the group” written about? Say, in Malena’s book for instance, she’s having to render Shika, the school, the culture, the people, etc., in ways that ring true to everyone concerned. And I don’t just mean facts—I mean the character of a place and a people, their attitudes and efficacies. Obviously, it’s Marina’s story, yet it’s also the story of a place and time, and at a certain point, I’d imagine it has to be rendered with an objective authenticity (I have no idea if that made sense. It did in my head. Stupid Zicam!). But I’m also a writer who has never written anything significantly autobiographical (in terms of event or fact)—true, many of my characters are Filipinos, immigrants, a few wear glasses, one had a teacher named Mr. Cosgrove—but that’s the extent of it. Except for research, I make everything up, partly due to the concerns stated above. (Plus, except for that one time I almost shoplifted a cookie cutter in the second grade, my life isn’t that interesting.)
ReplyDeleteDon't know about the rest of you, but it's that time of the semester where I feel like I'm dead at the end of every week--stupid Zicam isn't working!--but then I get to the blog and read all your great comments, and I get energized again. I love reading this-it keeps me thinking, makes me feel lucky to teach in our MFA program. I'll miss the blog when it's over. ANYWAY... it's funny that we haven't discussed the 'write what you know' philosophy of fiction writing (probably because we take that--and the different positions on subject--for granted), but I'm glad Malena's book is bringing up the issue. To a certain extent, I believe we’re all writing ‘what we know,’ in that as writers, we all know what we’re emotionally interested in, which usually comes from our own experience. In that sense, most of fiction, I’d venture to say, is emotionally autobiographical. But in terms of writing fiction based on autobiographical fact and event—that seems incredibly daunting to me, to reconcile the necessity for factual truth with the orchestrative/manipulative nature of fiction and storytelling. Some of what Smiley says makes the idea of “writing what you know” even more challenging, her claim that, “the subject of any novel comes to be the coexistence of the protagonist and his group.” If this is true (and I believe to an extent it is, personally), and if a writer “writes what she/he knows,” isn’t the writer obligated to measure that knowledge against the knowledge of “the group” written about? Say, in Malena’s book for instance, she’s having to render Shika, the school, the culture, the people, etc., in ways that ring true to everyone concerned. And I don’t just mean facts—I mean the character of a place and a people, their attitudes and efficacies. Obviously, it’s Marina’s story, yet it’s also the story of a place and time, and at a certain point, I’d imagine it has to be rendered with an objective authenticity (I have no idea if that made sense. It did in my head. Stupid Zicam!). But I’m also a writer who has never written anything significantly autobiographical (in terms of event or fact)—true, many of my characters are Filipinos, immigrants, a few wear glasses, one had a teacher named Mr. Cosgrove—but that’s the extent of it. Except for research, I make everything up, partly due to the concerns stated above. (Plus, except for that one time I almost shoplifted a cookie cutter in the second grade, my life isn’t that interesting.)
ReplyDeleteI have to question/take issue with/aimlessly rant about the passage of the Smiley essay that attempts to illustrate the difference between the ability to memorise and the actually memorable qualities of poetry and prose. Her notion that 'a poem must be remembered word for word or it loses its identity' doesn't seem all that exclusive to poetry for me; sure, reading a story will evoke a lot of imaginative work, filling in the blanks in a character's past, summarised or omitted action, creating a sort of backstory that could exist alongside the fiction--and, in a similar sense, poems can evoke memories and emotions and implications that aren't there on the page. In either case, however, all we have are those words on the page, and that is deliberate and significant. If prose is largely forgettable, then why am I reading it?
ReplyDeleteAnd, on the other side of the coin, I have to come out in defense of the non-quantifiable, affective aspect of poetry, the kind of memory and sense that exists beyond just reciting the words. I can't quote a line from Paul Celan's 'Death Fugue' (okay, partially because the translations vary and I don't know the original German), but just thinking of the poem I can remember the creepy, haunting, viscerally moving sense of it, and I seriously doubt that I will ever forget that sense or that the poem exists at all-- not to mention what a testament it is to the power of that poem that it can survive translation.
With apologies to the non-poets for that last paragraph (i.e. the majority of my classmates), my point is that there always seems to be this crowbar separation of prose and poetry in criticism, and, for the best of reasons, I can't see how they're all that different sometimes. Word choice is, let's face it, entirely arbitrary in all of them, but the finished manuscript that goes to the printer and ends up in our hands is inevitable and unique, as is the effect that it has on each of us emotionally. I think we have to honour that in prose and poetry alike.
Another essay that I want to bronze and hang on my wall, is this the Smiley? (Thirteen ways?) I LOVE her discussion of narrative, that 'a sequence of sentences..must inevitably result in a narrative.' The idea of 'before-and-after qualities of written sentences imply, mimic and require the passage of time.' Also the idea that 'the more lyrical and less narrative a novel is, the shorter it is.' Which seems obvious, I guess, but wasn't necessarily obvious to me! In regard to Paul's fear that writing about oneself too often would lead to a running dry of the well, so to speak, I used to feel that way too! A decidedly uncomfortable place to be in, in a nonfiction program...But what I'm feeling now is the more I prick the surface of things that 'happened' the more offshoots appear, and I could follow this one here, and that one there and then offshoots appear to those trajectories, and so on. It's a relief, makes one feel a bit more 'valid' I guess, to realize that there are many many different variations of whatever it is we might want to say. Also, tone, any given story can be told in a myriad of tones, and each tone will then govern how that story is told, what structure it then borrows, which characters appear...I appreciate the Watrous piece because it DID feel so much like nonfiction to me. Nonfiction but borrowing 'fiction' just enough to get the story told. I feel more comfortable with the idea of scraping the bottom of 'real life' and just adding bits of fiction here and there to grease the wheel...
ReplyDeleteGuys: 'Emily' is really ME (Chris!!!) Somehow I logged into my daughter's account... :)
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Watrous' longer essay, I couldn't help but think what gives an author the stick-to-it-ness to finish a novel? When she says, "the device of four seasons was also something that took a few years to land upon," I think WOW! A FEW YEARS! And that the essential element of the father's suicide also came late in the novel's creation makes me understand the gift that finishing a novel is. Was she working with an editor who pushed her along? Did she simply sit and think about the gaps that needed to be filled or was there an objective set of eyes who helped her? I can get so bogged down in my work, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. How is the author able to detach from their story enough to see what still needs work? I guess this connects to a question I've had all semester: When do we know when we are finished?
ReplyDeleteCorduroy. Immortality is pretty good, as is Nothingman, but Corduroy just speaks to me in way that neither of those do.
ReplyDeleteMy hands down, all-time favorite Pearl Jam song remains Yellow Ledbetter, of course.
Oh, right. Blog post. Ol' Pauly D's post got me thinking about the way in which stories speak to their readers, and how it's possible to lose a reader due to a lack of authenticity (I know that's not the focus of the essays, or the novel, necessarily, but hey, this is where my brain has taken me.) If the writer is taking a decidedly specific situation or setting and writing about it generically, readers have every right to roll their eyes and say, "Mice try." Of course, there are some things people simply can't experience, due to the limits of our current 21st century technology. I mean, it'll be at least ten years before Toby's able to hop in a time machine and go to Soviet Russia, until Erin can visit a Civil War battlefield populated by actual soldiers and not people LARPing. That's where research comes in.
I suppose my question is, then, how much research is necessary to really capture the feel of an era, or a location, or a zeitgeist? Glen David Gold, the current Fiction workshop professor, likes to say, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story," but where's the line where you start losing readers because the truth got stretched too far? Does it boil down to math; find the LD50 for your readership, and don't cross that point? Should we simply snort and say, "Well, I was writing for THEM anyway?"
Anyway, back to the subject of grunge, best Nirvana album? I posit that it's "Unplugged in New York," but what do others think?
I wonder if having a break down helps one become a better writer? Maybe this is the secret to the Iowa Writers Workshop- the winters, the crazy landlords, the cops who shoot people who are on the phone, and etc.
ReplyDeleteThe Watrous essays brought up two things I’ve been consciously wrestling with in writing: these ideas of suigeneris and defamiliarization. In relation to writing fiction, it is difficult enough writing poetry that isn’t in some way unavoidably derivative. At least for me, I in most instances work on a poem under the oppressive feeling that anything I write has been done before. So I make a concerted effort to work toward these rewarding instances of suigeneris. It feels harder to come by when I write fiction. I find that these moments are best facilitated by formal choices which in turn eventually affect the content. What are some of the ways we can attempt to be less derivative, more self-generative when we write?
ReplyDeleteDefamiliarization is also something I actively attempt to employ when I write poetry. Strangeness is often something that is lauded in workshop or when we talk about published poems. Like suigeneris, I find it hard to incorporate or engage defamiliarization in writing fiction. I can turn phrases or at least think I can when I write poetry, but defamiliarizing material in relation to a story is a bit more difficult or foreign to me. Again, I end up doing something formally to my fiction pieces to get at a defamiliarizing effect or perspective. What are some ways we can make strange this walk we call writing and dance?
When Smiley writes, "the protagonist must contrast to those around him to be the protagonist. This means that his fate sets him apart, happy or sad,"I wonder what she means by fate. Is it because the reader is focused on him or if it means that to be the protagonist something extraordinary has to happen to him or her in relation to other characters? Doesn't this take some of the sameness out of the experience of living? Are there any great books where nothing extraordinary happens?
ReplyDeleteI was intrigued by what Smiley said about the need for every important character in a novel to have some kind of moral complexity: "If a character is solely evil, or is solely good... [that character is] not possessed of agency, which in a novel is the only standard of real importance." (pp. 27-28)
ReplyDeleteIs it?
I guess a lot depends on one's interpretation of "solely," but I've liked a lot of novels with somewhat one-dimensional characters who play a major role: Shrike in Miss Lonelyhearts, the dwarf in The Dwarf, Smerdyakov in The Brothers K.
Miss L. is very short, true, but the other two aren't. And one can argue, as well, that these characters are fairly complex. But anyway...
I was intrigued by what Smiley said about the need for every important character in a novel to have some kind of moral complexity: "If a character is solely evil, or is solely good... [that character is] not possessed of agency, which in a novel is the only standard of real importance." (pp. 27-28)
ReplyDeleteIs it?
I guess a lot depends on one's interpretation of "solely," but I've liked a lot of novels with somewhat one-dimensional characters who play a major role: Shrike in Miss Lonelyhearts, the dwarf in The Dwarf, Smerdyakov in The Brothers K.
Miss L. is very short, true, but the other two aren't. One could argue, I suppose, that these characters are fairly complex...
Malena's essay on Short Story to Novel made a lot of sense after having read "If You Follow Me." Although I disagree that each section has its own cast of characters, the important ones seem to remain throughout (except Carolyn's disappearance-see below), I understand how each season or section is functioning as kind of mini-novella and I think for the most part this is working to the novel's advantage. One example of where it isn't working, is in the second section when Carolyn disappears from the narrative, or the narrator chooses to ignore Carolyn for awhile. It was jarring to have one of the main characters of the novel just fall out of the narrative like that. Did anyone else have an issue with this? I also became a little frustrated with the novel's plotlines, sometimes they seemed too fragmentary, but overall I appreciated the quietness of "If You Follow Me."
ReplyDeleteI'm really interested in the questions Malena Watrous addresses on her essay about setting. Over the course of the 20th century, the world went from being a big, mysterious spectrum of alien worlds to an interconnected, homogenized microcosm of familiar people and settings. Watrous writes, "Defamiliarization is a classic writer's trick." I wonder though, as the world becomes smaller and smaller, it is disingenuous of the writer to defamiliarize too much? To what degree is this or isn't this true? Certainly, the rural Shika is unfamiliar to the American reader, but what about the "stories set in vaguely rendered America"? Is it fair to shrug these off because they're too familiar, or does the familiarity add authenticity? Are these just different types of stories altogether that shouldn't be compared? Smiley writes that part of what makes a novel pleasurable is length, which builds a familiarity between the world of the novel and the reader. Is it more pleasurable, then, to find familiarity in something that is initially unfamiliar rather than beginning with the familiarity that Smiley appreciates? As a reader and wannabe writer, I think this is true and crucial. I find myself attracted to absurdism, hyperbolized realities, and settings that border on sci-fi. Becoming familiar with the unfamiliar is very satisfying, a deep-rooted human urge to explore and discover. The novel I'm writing takes place in a not so distant future of the United States, and I'm finding that balancing the unfamiliar with the familiar is like river dancing on a high wire. How do we as writers defamiliarize without ignoring the globalization that characterizes the world we live in?
ReplyDeleteI dove right into the book and when I began reading I started underlining passages and making mental notes and before I knew it I wasn't anymore. I just kept reading and reading and underlining only really small tidbits here and there that really struck out to me, on a personal level rather than with a critical eye. So I'm glad it was assigned because I really liked it and it was a humorous and emotional read. (which just really means this didn't feel like homework to me!)
ReplyDeleteI agree with Skye on the point that the "disappearance" of Carolyn's character was jarring, that was a bit odd for me, but I kind of liked that she was gone for a while. I really wanted to stay with Marina, concentrate on one protagonist. Which was also aided by the first person voice and is why I think she uses it, to keep us always on Marina, how she is reacting and how she is acted upon. Smiley (I just love that), said that the narrator is "the author but not the author," and after reading the handouts, I really could see Watrous in Marina.
Okay.. let me just get to my question. The parts that I really loved reading, though they were kind of painful too (I once had a housemate who left really passive aggressive reminders around the house) were Hiro's letters, and also the language of the Japanese characters. To craft in English is hard enough, but to write letters and dialogue from these perspectives is a whole new level. Language obviously plays an important role in this book. How did she write this language which was existing in two worlds, and what were the challenges?
I dove right into the book and when I began reading I started underlining passages and making mental notes and before I knew it I wasn't anymore. I just kept reading and reading and underlining only really small tidbits here and there that really struck out to me, on a personal level rather than with a critical eye. So I'm glad it was assigned because I really liked it and it was a humorous and emotional read. (which just really means this didn't feel like homework to me!)
ReplyDeleteI agree with Skye on the point that the "disappearance" of Carolyn's character was jarring, that was a bit odd for me, but I kind of liked that she was gone for a while. I really wanted to stay with Marina, concentrate on one protagonist. Which was also aided by the first person voice and is why I think she uses it, to keep us always on Marina, how she is reacting and how she is acted upon. Smiley (I just love that), said that the narrator is "the author but not the author," and after reading the handouts, I really could see Watrous in Marina.
Okay.. let me just get to my question. The parts that I really loved reading, though they were kind of painful too (I once had a housemate who left really passive aggressive reminders around the house) were Hiro's letters, and also the language of the Japanese characters. To craft in English is hard enough, but to write letters and dialogue from these perspectives is a whole new level. Language obviously plays an important role in this book. How did she write this language which was existing in two worlds, and what were the challenges?