For Better or Worse

Dearest Novel,

Remember that day we first came together—the rush of emotions and first blush of deep recognition? The way your bashful, first blank page called to me? We had such plans, you and I, hopes and dreams. The future was a vast, assailable puzzle we were dedicated to unraveling together. I couldn’t imagine splicing images and their deep meanings with anyone else, or discovering new vistas, or deciding which direction to travel. We viewed situations and people through the same lens, although often I was more forgiving. I always want to wait and give everyone a second chance but you would point out pages and pages of incriminating examples. We didn’t always get along, that much is true. Sometimes you just wouldn’t open up to me and occasionally, I felt you were growing distant and unknowable. But we stuck it out, through thick and thin, the good times and bad, and if at times, I split an infinitive or wrote clunky dialogue, or used the word that even after promising and promising I’d quit—well, it was just my enthusiasm getting ahead of me. I have never been anything but committed to this relationship. Time moved forward, the two of us entwined. And we have these others to think about now, these characters crowding in, and you’ve been perfectly nurturing even if they can, from time to time, disregard the structure you’ve imposed. Somehow, you keep it all together. I suppose in any long relationship, tendencies can rile and frustrate—you, for example, tend to live a bit in your own world and I, well—I can do the same. It gets on my nerves when you repeat yourself or go on and on about something you’ve learned. But you still have the ability to bring me to tears with exquisite phrasing or a heartfelt big gesture. The magic is still there, that’s what I’m saying. I’ll be here for you. Let’s keep trudging forward, you and I, all the way to The End.

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Immediacy in Fiction

 

For the past year, I’ve been reading lots of short stories. I outlined some of the collections in a previous post here, and three made my Best of 2013 list here. I just finished two more: Dear Life by Alice Munro, and a collection chosen by David Sedaris entitled Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, which includes work by Flannery O’Connor, Jhumpa Lahiri and Katherine Mansfield, among others, and which was recommended to me by a thoughtful friend (thanks, Margery!). All of the stories in this one were remarkable and it was interesting to think of each as being an influence on Sedaris’s writing and what I know of him. I was particularly touched by Jean Thompson’s Applause, Applause, which has something to say to writers struggling in one way or another. Munro’s collection begins with a couple of knock-outs, really just masterful stuff, and is strong throughout. I guess those Nobel people know a little something after all.

This morning, I’m thinking about all of these stories I’ve recently read and trying to put a finger on what, if anything, they all have in common. And this may seem like a very obvious thing that I’m about to say but here it is: all of these stories have an immediacy and familiarity about them. They waste no time in making the reader feel that he has been plopped down into the middle of something, from their opening lines. This is the nature of the short story, isn’t it, the brevity, the impact? There’s no time for long asides or extended pages of back story and really, for any labored character analysis. Here’s the opening to Applause, Applause:

"Poor Bernie, Ted thought, as rain thudded against the car like rotten fruit. Watching it stream and bubble on the windshield, he promised himself not to complain about it lest Bernie’s feelings be hurt. He was anxious to impress this on his wife. Poor Bernie, he said aloud. Things never work out the way he plans."

Right away, we have a relationship, the uneven balance of it, and questions about what hasn’t worked out for Bernie and why Ted feels anxious about his wife, and why the rain matters, etc., etc., etc. From the first lines, you are there with Ted, seeing the rain ruin the day, feeling the pity he feels, wondering what comes next.

And from Munro’s story, Gravel:

"At that time we were living beside a gravel pit. Not a large one, hollowed out by monster machinery, just a minor pit that a farmer must have made some money from years before. In fact, the pit was shallow enough to lead you to think that there might have been some other intention for it—foundations for a house, maybe, that never made it any further."

Here, we don’t even know who’s speaking yet but we know something about them and we’re right there: country, farmland, a poor area, perhaps, where the character has had time to contemplate this simple hole in the ground. A feeling of something failed. And don’t you just know something is going to happen in regards to that pit?

We always hear advice about the opening of novels and how they must grab you from the first page, but it’s even more necessary in a short story. The writer must have a sense of urgency but yet a patience too, trusting that the reader will be able to sort things out even if she’s dropped en media res. The true masters of the form know how to condense, how to introduce, how to establish at once a place, a time, a mood. Honestly, I think writers of any form would benefit to dive into shorter forms once in while—both the reading and the writing of them. It reminds you how precious words are.

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In My Wheelhouse

Do you ever hear a phrase and wonder where it came from? I do, all the time. So much so, in fact, that I just hopped over and bought this book for some enlightening bathroom reading: Flying by the Seat of Your Pants.

A phrase I heard recently and have been thinking about is “in your wheelhouse.” I’ll be honest—the source, I think, was Keith Urban on American Idol, and I knew it meant the repertoire of a performer, or the set of skills a person possesses. But what IS a wheelhouse, really? It brings to mind a shed stacked with old bicycle tires, or a house that can roll on its side.

Here’s the scoop:

The idiom “in my/your/his wheelhouse” may have originated in baseball, circa 1950s, possibly earlier. It’s used to describe the zone that is most advantageous for a batter, the range within which he is most likely to hit. Like a sweet spot. This metaphor may allude to a railroad wheelhouse (also called roundhouse), a platform used to spin a train engine or car for transfer to another track. Or it may have a nautical precedent, the pilothouse or wheelhouse of a ship, from where the vessel is controlled. So in widening this beyond baseball, it becomes “an area of knowledge, specific interest, familiarity,” or to designate two things in the same category.

I really like the thought of each person having a wheelhouse, a set of capabilities or strengths. Doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t hit outside of them, just that you’re strongest within them. And if the wheelhouse is the place where the steering happens, your strengths provide the direction to your life and you can take them any place you desire. Every ship needs a captain. We are fueled by our talents but they don’t have to define us; we still have the capacity to turn this way or that.

The Urban Dictionary gives another definition. The wheelhouse, it says, can refer to someone’s mind. As in getting into someone’s wheelhouse to disturb them.

So stay in control your wheelhouse and where it goes, people! You’re the captain and don’t let anyone in to throw shade on your talents. Oh, no. Now I have to go look up “throw shade,” which I don’t even think I’m using correctly…

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Stones by Polly Johnson

Stones by Polly Johnson is a coming-of-age novel set in Brighton, England. Johnson’s descriptions of the seaside community set the stage for this story about Coo, a sixteen-year-old girl still reeling from the death of her older brother some months before. Brighton is a cold, blustery and harsh place, as is Coo’s house, where she and her parents have settled into a chilly and silent impasse. Coo spends much of her time skipping school and hanging out at the pebble-covered beach. Here, she runs into an assortment of homeless characters and befriends one of them, an alcoholic named Banks. Her brother was an alcoholic as well, and the splintered events leading up to his demise are revealed slowly as Coo navigates this new friendship. She feels some measure of guilt about the circumstances of her brother’s death, and because after years of dealing with his abuse, she doesn’t miss him. Her best friend and schoolmate, Joe, seems to guard secrets of his own, and her parents stumble around in a haze, unsure of how to deal with Coo and her increasingly unpredictable behaviors.

I really liked that the setting mirrored the emotional strain of the characters; Johnson portrayed the struggle that exists in any relationship—the desire to know and to be known. It’s a story about what in modern parlance might be called codependency, the allowances we make in the name of love, the despair of addiction, and the often one-sided nature of any adoration. But this is a page-turner, too. The mystery of Coo’s guilt, the strange homeless man who threatens her, the building drama of her attempts to save Banks—the plot had me racing along while I was entranced with the beauty and insightfulness of Johnson’s writing. And I kept thinking about Carson McCuller’s observations about the beloved and the lover, and how they are “from different countries.” Every lover knows that “his love is a solitary thing.” Full quote from The Ballad of the Sad Cafe here. Each character in Johnson's story suffered from love in one way or another, and found that the beloved was perhaps an image of their own making.

Stones is a wonderful debut novel, and I’ll watch for what comes next from Ms. Polly Johnson. Available in ebook for a low introductory price here and very highly recommended by me!

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Stenos to Touchscreens

Recently, we were teasing my sister. She works in accounting and one day at her office, she mentioned Stenos and no one knew what she was talking about. She has many younger coworkers, it seems. But you remember Steno notebooks, right? Green paper, red stripe down the middle. We always had them around the house and that red line continually irked me. I’m going to assume that people who work with numbers know something about its use but for me, it only got in the way. We teased my sister because no one uses or, God forbid, says “Stenos” anymore, do they?

 

Today, someone on Twitter asked about touchscreen desktops and what the pros and cons were. I have a touchscreen, I said, but rarely use it. I forget that I can, and I don’t want fingerprints, I told her. But maybe, just maybe, it’s a bit of the Steno in me. New tricks, older-ish dog, etc.

 

We’re lucky, aren’t we, to live in a time with so many tools for writing? In the movie 12 Years a Slave, there’s a compelling sequence in which the main character, enslaved after living his entire life free, educated, and privileged, tries to fashion a writing utensil and ink from the crude supplies at hand. Although his main goal was to get a letter out to his family, I took it also as a metaphor for how every aspect of his past, cultured life had been taken away.

 

A while back, I wrote a piece for Author magazine, tracing my own experiences with technology since I began writing. I’m re-sharing it here (From Hand to Screen: Technology and the Writer), in case you missed it the first time around. And now I'm off to look for those Steno notebooks, stashed away somewhere and filled with poetry…

 

* For those curious about the origins of the Steno pad (and it has nothing to do with numbers), click here.

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