The return of Hubble

The Hubble space telescope has been repaired and is sending back better pictures than ever. This is awesome news--especially for those of us who like to get our regular doses of awe from the cosmos.

Attention AP and Yahoo News

It is not Obama's speech to students that is "sparking controversy." It is the media, who come running every time right-wing racists set their hair on fire.

Borrowed Fire: Moby Dick: Ahab

At the rate I am making my way through Moby Dick, I should be done with it by, oh, 2015. What will the world be like then? Will we have universal health insurance in the US? Will we remember who Levi Johnston is? Will the Internet be transmitted directly into our brains, or just the Netflix pop-up ads? The good news is that there is so much to learn and savor in this novel that my lack of speed will result in no lack of material for our writing seminar. Oh, and more good news: Ahab has appeared.

This week: how to make a character larger than life.

Obviously there's the old trick of delaying his entrance while other characters build him up. Ishmael keeps wondering where Ahab is, why he hasn't met the captain of the ship on which he's going to spend the next three years. This is most irregular. He keeps hearing that Ahab is "sick" but will be better soon. Meanwhile a self-appointed prophet named Elijah shows up, twice, to deliver warnings about Ahab and the Pequod.

"Stop!" cried the stranger. "Ye said true--ye hav'n't seen Old Thunder yet, have ye?"

"Who's Old Thunder?" said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness of his manner.

"Captain Ahab."

"What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?"

"Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye hav'n't seen him yet, have ye?"

"No, we hav'n't. He's sick they say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long."

"All right again before long!" laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. "Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be all right; not before."

"What do you know about him?"

"What did they tell you about him? Say that!"

"They didn't tell much of anything about him; only I've heard that he's a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew."

"That's true, that's true--yes, both true enough. But you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go--that's the word with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa?-- heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn't ye hear a word about them matters and something more, eh? No, I don't think ye did; how could ye? Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows'ever, mayhap, ye've heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh, yes, that every one knows a'most--I mean they know he's only one leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off."

"My friend," said I, "what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don't know, and I don't much care; for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of his leg."

"All about it, eh--sure you do? all?"

There's nothing like a crazy minor character to deliver lots of disturbing information efficiently. One has to be careful with this, as the technique has become something of a cliche. Still, a crazy person can get away with babbling out fragments of story after story, creating a swirl of mystery and chaos around the character in question. And of course the person hearing those stories has an excuse for denying them and resisting the warning to stay away. Perhaps a contemporary variant on this type of crazy person could be of use in our stories.

So over a hundred pages have gone by, quite enjoyably of course, and finally we meet Ahab. Melville has given himself quite a task in not letting us down after such a buildup.

It was one of those less lowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck.

There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini's cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded.

Could a writer get away with this today--the vaguely threatening sky, the bald statement that "reality outran apprehension"? The quick piling up of similes--a man cut away from the stake, a bronze form, a tree struck by lightning?

In the case of the similes, anyway, I think one could, especially if one is not given to larding one's prose with these in general (confession: guilty). Obviously one should ensure that the figures are striking, original, and highly revealing. The first one, about the man who's been burned to at the stake, is stunning. Not only does it create an unforgettable visual image, it suffuses Ahab's whole character with horror and pain. Being burned at the stake is usually a punishment for heresy--and Ahab is tormented metaphysically, spiritually; but the fire also comes from within him. The bronze image that follows quickly tells us that although he's been consumed in fire he is not fragile. He is a work of art for the ages. And then the tree tells us that, lo and behold, he's still alive--"greenly alive," possibly even more alive than anyone else--despite or because of what he's gone through. In other words, these similes work because they are not just physical comparisons but expressions of Ahab's inner being, and his history. They join inside and outside, and they comment on each other: burned but enduring, not paralyzed but alive. And, yes, larger than life.

And then Ahab really does come to life. I love the last bit of this chapter, in which, after quite a bit more description, we get this:

Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such gladhearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.

This is charming, even funny. Ahab becomes just a tiny bit approachable. We root for him to smile, knowing now what he's been through--not the literal stories, exactly, but their physical and spiritual effects, which are worse. I think this is key to creating the larger-than-life character--just a little touch of humanity, struggling to get out. Now we, like the sailors on the Pequod, are hooked for good.

Bad news on the zombie front

Now that the Large Hadron Collider is temporarily shut down for re-wiring, I don't have to worry about the world getting sucked into a black hole approximately one nanosecond after some guy in Switzerland goes, "oops." The bad news is, according to a new mathematical model, zombies are a far greater menace than I originally thought. Researchers in Canada have found that unless swift and dramatic action is taken at the outset of a zombie outbreak, the zombies could easily wipe out the human race.

Now, this particular summary in Wired online leaves a few questions unanswered. Mainly I am wondering if the model applies to the new-style fast zombies (as in the movie 28 Days Later), or the old-school slow ones. Let's assume it's the latter, since I think we can all agree that the fast ones would pose a problem. But one would think that all but the extremely slow and frail could outrun or even outwalk the slow zombies. They are indeed so slow, that one has to come up with creative ways of passing the time--say, theatrically cowering in a corner--while they make their approach. How could these guys take over the human race?

According to an analysis of this article by my beloved husband, in an epidemic there is always a period of time during which people don't understand what's going on. A few dead guys staggering around in the mall--so what? That's normal, right? And meanwhile these guys are gorging themselves on a handful of unwary shoppers over by the Mervyns side-entrance. During this phase, the "oh, those can't be zombies" phase, they multiply, and before we know it, they have sufficient numbers to overwhelm the living. Volume trumps speed in the end.

Further discussion raised the following additional points. Zombies lurk. Like the Spanish Inquisition, they are, by definition, unexpected, and their lurking skills make them even more so. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, zombies are relentless. As we know from the workplace, it is the relentless who succeed most often, far more than the wise, the charming, or even the powerful. In fact, extreme relentlessness may be a sign that someone is a zombie.

I'm not saying we have to drop everything and obsess about zombies. Indeed, that kind of fear can be paralyzing, which is exactly what slow zombies want. But neither should we be complacement. I would just keep an eye out for those slow, lurking, relentless types, and sound the alarm if you start seeing more of them.

Borrowed Fire: Moby Dick: The comedy routine

When I last read Moby Dick, I was a much more earnest reader than I am today. I was in grad school, and, in a related phenomenon, suffering from clinical depression. Therefore, I seem to have missed most of the comedy in the novel, particularly in the pre-Pequod scenes. This time through, I'm struck by how charmingly Melville depicts the new friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg. The charm has a lot to do with comic misunderstandings which lead not to rage and violence, but curiosity and acceptance of difference.

This is not to say that the comedy allows us to take the friendship lightly. On the contrary, the relationship is highly nuanced, and grows more so. The friendship is founded on delight, and that is what makes the nuance possible. Delight leads to curiosity; curiosity leads to further information; information leads to more layers of complexity in the characters, who in turn become even more curious about each other. A friendship that develops this way is the opposite of a flighty one. It's as firm as they get.

Melville sets it up the delight from the very beginning. Here, Ishmael is trying to find out from the innkeeper about the stranger with whom he'll be forced to share a bed later that night:

"Landlord! said I, "what sort of a chap is he--does he always keep such late hours?" It was now hard upon twelve o'clock.

The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. "No," he answered, "generally he's an early bird--airley to bed and airley to rise--yea, he's the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can't sell his head."

"Can't sell his head?--What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?" getting into a towering rage. "Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?"

"That's precisely it," said the landlord, "and I told him he couldn't sell it here, the market's overstocked."

"With what?" shouted I.

"With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?"

"I tell you what it is, landlord," said I quite calmly, "you'd better stop spinning that yarn to me--I'm not green."

"May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, "but I rayther guess you'll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderin' his head."

"I'll break it for him," said I, now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord's.

"It's broke a'ready," said he.

"Broke," said I--"broke, do you mean?"

"Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess."

"Landlord," said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snowstorm--"landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow--a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution."

"Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath, "that's a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to churches. He wanted to last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions."

Now, I'm too lazy to research this adequately (again: grad school => clinical depression). However, I'm guessing the fact that this sounds like a precursor of an Abbott and Costello routine is no accident. I'm guessing it echoes routines from the precursors of vaudeville, which were variety and minstrel shows. The word "bamboozlingly" suggests the latter. My cursory search on the Internet (and in my dusty old OED) says the word "bamboozle" is of unknown origin, but the fact that Spike Lee used "Bamboozled" as the title of a movie about a modern-day minstrel show--an extremely good, underrated movie, btw--is a strong hint. (If anyone knows anything about this for real, feel free to comment!) Mind, this is not to say that in this day and age we would find minstrel shows themselves delightful. But there is a great deal of pure humor to be found in MD. The humor is theatrical, almost like a set piece. (We will get actual theater later on, in several chapters that are presented as plays, stage directions included.) Ishmael clearly enjoys humor for its own sake, even when the joke is on him. Of course, since he doesn't know Queequeg's language, and Queequeg only knows a little English, much of their relationship is non-verbal. But it is still, in these opening chapters, both comic and sweet.

But shouldn't Melville just get to the point, get us on the damn ship already and give us a glimpse of Ahab and the title whale? What does all this banter and charm do for us, and the novel? It seems to me that the comedy is a powerful method of characterization. In the passage above, it's important that Ishmael presents himself as the butt of the joke. He pretends to be enraged by the innkeeper's obstinate insistence on an impossible prospect--that Queequeg is out selling his head--but really he's amused at his own reaction. The story is too delightful to keep to himself, even though he looks like a fool. He makes a fool of himself again, when he first gets a load of Queequeg in the flesh and screams for the innkeeper to save him--only to have Queequeg politely reassure him, making Ishmael look like the crazy one. Again, Ishmael doesn't mind looking stupid, and Queequeg's decency wins his almost immediate devotion. Over and over, we're shown that for all their differences, Ishmael and Queequeg have an important quality in common: they both like to laugh at themselves.

So next time you're wondering how to get readers to really love your characters, have them tell stories with themselves as the butt of the joke. Then have them laugh along with us. It's a great way for characters to build strong relationships with each other, too.

Bona Fide Books

My friend Kim Wyatt has launched a new small press, Bona Fide Books. They're currently seeking submissions for two anthologies: Permanent Vacation: Living and Working in our National Parks and Queer in the Last Frontier.

Borrowed Fire: Moby Dick (yes, really): In praise of pedantry of a certain kind

This week on BF, we begin a series of writing seminars on...Moby Dick. Good god. Am I really going to wade into this glorious but extremely long, extremely complicated masterpiece, especially when I cannot find my hard copy and so for the time being have to read it online, thus causing my eyeballs to vibrate and my outlook to grow narrow and surly? Yes, I think so. For one thing it's going to help me with my novel, which I would like to somehow mirror the structure and themes of MB, without becoming my own personal white whale.

So, to begin. Call me Ishmael. Or call me crazy. I'd like first to put in a word for pedantry--of a certain kind. As we know, we must not have pedantry in the contemporary novel, unless perhaps it is deeply ironic, hyperbolic, and / or confined to the spoutings of a minor character--or to some dessicated professor, who gets one last shot at really living, courtesy of a twenty-year old free-spirited student.... You sure as hell don't want a long philosophical disquisition in your opening pages. Your potential reader, browsing in Barnes and Noble, will surely set the book down after making a raspberry noise and wander off to the cafe. But we don't want this reader anyway, do we--this middlebrow patsy, this lazybones? We want someone willing to take on the big questions. (Yes, I realize I harp on this. Go big, I say! Big thoughts! Big canvas!)

On page one, before he even comes near the Pequod, Ishmael treats us to a lengthy meditation on human beings' (well, men's anyway) attraction to water.

[...] Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the one charm wanting?-- Water there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Rather than driving me away, this passage fascinates me. I want even more. How does Melville manage it? First, of course the ideas are interesting. Just the scope alone, the leaps from Rockaway Beach to the ancient Persians to Narcissus; the meadows, the dale, the hermit, the crucifix...we're learning this is going to be a book about the whole world, past and present, real and imagined. And water is what will bring that world to us.

But the key, I think, is the urgency of these musings. Melville / Ishmael draws us in by using the second person, imperative mode. Say you are in the country...try this experiment...Go visit the Prairies in June...The reader is an active participant, a voyager like Ishmael, if only in his (it probably is "his") imagination. We're all travelers, and we, like Ishmael, want not only to see but to make sense of the world. Plus, the imperative mode is also an enthusiastic one. We're not being bullied here, but buttonholed. Our exuberant--if recently suicidal, possibly slightly insane--tour guide is grabbing us by the sleeve, pointing out the intellectual sights. This is far from plodding academic discourse.

Finally, this section draws us in because ultimately it's not about answers, but questions. As much as Ishmael seems to know about history, geography, and philosophy, he doesn't really know what the essence of water is. He keeps asking "why," and the question ultimately isn't rhetorical. He says, rather plaintively, "Surely this is not all without meaning." Of course, that will be the great lament, the horror, of the novel--pursuing "the ungraspable phantom of life...the key to it all"--and not succeeding.

So the writing lesson for today is: go ahead and bloviate on vast, cosmogonal themes (in Thoreau's words). Just 1) make it smart and interesting 2) make it more about questions than answers and 3) draw the reader in with urgency, enthusiasm, the second person (use with caution), and perhaps a drop of madness.

Iphigenia and the i-phone

Via Ryanx, a great piece on liberal arts education, by Dan Edelstein of the Stanford French Department:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/08/13/edelstein

Borrowed Fire: Gusev: The Ocean Tells the Story

Before plundering Chekhov's prose for nuggets of writing instruction, let's just take a moment to bask in the spectacular ending of "Gusev":

The soldiers and the officers crossed themselves and looked away at the waves. It was strange that a man should be sewn up in sailcloth and should soon be flying into the sea. Was it possible that such a thing might happen to anyone?

The priest strewed earth upon Gusev and bowed down. They sang "Eternal Memory."

The man on watch duty tilted up the end of the plank, Gusev slid off and flew head foremost, turned a somersault in the air and splashed into the sea. He was covered with foam and for a moment looked as though he were wrapped in lace, but the minute passed and he disappeared in the waves.

He went rapidly towards the bottom. Did he reach it? It was said to be three miles to the bottom. After sinking sixty or seventy feet, he began moving more and more slowly, swaying rhythmically, as though he were hesitating and, carried along by the current, moved more rapidly sideways than downwards.

Then he was met by a shoal of the fish called harbour pilots. Seeing the dark body the fish stopped as though petrified, and suddenly turned round and disappeared. In less than a minute they flew back swift as an arrow to Gusev, and began zig-zagging round him in the water.

After that another dark body appeared. It was a shark. It swam under Gusev with dignity and no show of interest, as though it did not notice him, and sank down upon its back, then it turned belly upwards, basking in the warm, transparent water and languidly opened its jaws with two rows of teeth. The harbour pilots are delighted, they stop to see what will come next. After playing a little with the body the shark nonchalantly puts its jaws under it, cautiously touches it with its teeth, and the sailcloth is rent its full length from head to foot; one of the weights falls out and frightens the harbour pilots, and striking the shark on the ribs goes rapidly to the bottom.

Overhead at this time the clouds are massed together on the side where the sun is setting; one cloud like a triumphal arch, another like a lion, a third like a pair of scissors.... From behind the clouds a broad, green shaft of light pierces through and stretches to the middle of the sky; a little later another, violet-coloured, lies beside it; next that, one of gold, then one rose-coloured.... The sky turns a soft lilac. Looking at this gorgeous, enchanted sky, at first the ocean scowls, but soon it, too, takes tender, joyous, passionate colours for which it is hard to find a name in human speech.

This is one of those occasions when I agree with students who complain about having to do literary analysis. Why do we have to tear this beautiful whole into little pieces? Why can't we just enjoy it as it is? What do you mean, what is the author doing? He is doing this.

Right. But if we're going to improve as writers, we might as well aim for the stars. So, without "murdering to dissect," let's see what we can learn from this glorious passage. And though we'll likely fall very, very short of this mark, we'll still land in a better place than we were before.

For me, the key point here is scope. How many short stories have you read recently that end with a nonverbal dialog between the sky and the ocean? The dialog, particularly the ocean's scowling, then relenting to express joy and passion in its own visual language, answers one question the story asked at the beginning--who's right about the way the world works, Gusev or Pavel Ivanitch? Gusev's vision, the fanciful one in which forces of nature can be anthropomorphized, gets the last word. Of course, that does Gusev himself no good. That's because the story was always bigger than Gusev, bigger than any human. Our speech is inadequate to tell the story; the ocean and its colors ultimately do a better job.

It's also stunning that such a grim, pathetic tale of death in a ship's hold inspires the ocean to express tenderness, joy, and passion. Earlier, we were told that "the sea has no sense and no pity." The sea is, or was, a monster, relentless as the steamer crashing through its waves. Now it seems to be celebrating, and not in the mocking, triumphal way you'd expect of a monster; it seems compassionate, almost grateful, and thrilled to be a part of this very large world. What has caused the sea to change? Now that Gusev's body's in the ocean, has his vision somehow spread through the water? Does the water give him a voice he never had as a person, in life? Have his inadequate words been translated into the ocean's more expressive colors? Or does the aquatic aurora have nothing to do with Gusev at all? I'm not sure. But one reason this ending works is that it allows the pathos that might adhere to Gusev's death to be voiced by this non-verbal, and overwhelmingly powerful, spokes-being. None of the other humans, nor the author himself, is up to the task. In the end, it's a profoundly life-affirming story, though the affirmation comes from something that is not, literally speaking, alive.

I've written before about ways to sequester pathos to prevent stories from becoming sentimental. The cri de coeur by the narrator of "The Overcoat" is one way to contain the powerful emotions that the author hopes to generate in the reader. Here, the ocean is a different type of container: where Gogol's narrator is one small but hyper-articulate voice of protest, the ocean is gigantic, astonishingly beautiful, and silent. So: you can go small with big emotions, distilling them in tiny moments like Gogol's yelps. Or you can expand them well past human scale--as long as there's a non-verbal aspect to that scale, so that any potential maudliness has nowhere to go. (Words are containers for maudliness.) The ocean is telling us to stop talking, stop crying, and just look at the world.

Borrowed Fire: Gusev: Death is not the end (of the story)

It's the second week of our writing seminar on Chekhov's "Gusev," and once again I'm hung up on point of view. And death. And how death gives you (that is, the writer, not the die-er--though I suppose that can't be ruled out) some interesting options with point of view, which might not be available otherwise.

Gusev's is the third death we witness. The first two establish the pattern: in this story, the actual moment of death will be missed, or misunderstood.

Death 1:

Suddenly something strange happened to one of the soldiers playing cards.... He called hearts diamonds, got muddled in his score, and dropped his cards, then with a frightened, foolish smile looked round at all of them.

"I shan't be a minute, mates, I'll..." he said, and lay down on the floor.

Everybody was amazed. They called to him, he did not answer.

"Stephan, maybe you are feeling bad, eh?" the soldier with his arm in a sling asked him. "Perhaps we had better bring the priest, eh?"

"Have a drink of water, Stepan..." said the sailor. "Here, lad, drink."

"Why are you knocking the jug against his teeth?" said Gusev angrily. "Don't you see, turnip head?"

"What?"

"What?" Gusev repeated, mimicking him. "There is no breath in him, he is dead! That's what! What nonsensical people, Lord have mercy on us...!"

Death 2:

Pavel Ivanitch half opened one eye, looked at Gusev with it, and asked softly:

"Gusev, did your commanding officer steal?"

"Who can tell, Pavel Ivanitch! We can't say, it didn't reach us."

And after that a long time passed in silence. Gusev brooded, muttered something in delirium, and kept drinking water; it was hard for him to talk and hard to listen, and he was afraid of being talked to. An hour passed, a second, a third; evening came on, then night, but he did not notice it. He still sat dreaming of the frost.

There was a sound as though someone came into the hospital, and voices were audible, but a few minutes passed and all was still again.

"The Kingdom of Heaven and eternal peace," said the soldier with his arm in a sling. "He was an uncomfortable man."

"What?" asked Gusev. "Who?"

"He is dead, they have just carried him up."

"Oh, well," muttered Gusev, yawning, "the Kingdom of Heaven be his."

It's not that death isn't a big deal in the story. It's more that the line separating life and death is very thin for everyone here, so crossing that line can't involve a lot of dramatic build-up. The "big moment" slips by, amid misunderstandings and botched reverence. (From my single experience witnessing a death, by the way, this strikes me as realistic.) Also, the social circumstances prevent a conventional death-drama--these men have just been thrown together. They are not close; they don't even really like each other. Besides, they've all pretty much given up on surviving. So there's no wailing or rending of garments. Yet they do try to understand each other, to an exent, and connect:

"I haven't written home..." Gusev sighed. "I shall die and they won't know."

"They'll hear of it," the sick sailor brought out in a bass voice. "When you die they will put it down in the Gazette, at Odessa they will send in a report to the commanding officer there and he will send it to the parish or somewhere...."

Gusev began to be uneasy after such a conversation and to feel a vague yearning. He drank water—it was not that; he dragged himself to the window and breathed the hot, moist air—it was not that; he tried to think of home, of the frost—it was not that.... At last it seemed to him one minute longer in the ward and he would certainly expire.

"It's stifling, mates..." he said. "I'll go on deck. Help me up, for Christ's sake."

"All right," assented the soldier with the sling. "I'll carry you, you can't walk, hold on to my neck."

Gusev put his arm round the soldier's neck, the latter put his unhurt arm round him and carried him up. On the deck sailors and time-expired soldiers were lying asleep side by side; there were so many of them it was difficult to pass.

"Stand down," the soldier with the sling said softly. "Follow me quietly, hold on to my shirt...."

This act of kindness is really touching, given how separate the men are from each other. The adverb "softly" in the last line above shows that kindness, both its genuineness and its limitations. The soldier seems to direct the "softness" both at Gusev, whom he wishes to comfort, even though Gusev (it seems) does not even know his name; he also does not want to wake the sleeping soldiers. This moment receives far more authorial attention that Gusev's actual death. Just as people in the story miss others' deaths, we, as readers, seem to miss Gusev's passing:

Gusev went back to the ward and got into his hammock. He was again tormented by a vague craving, and he could not make out what he wanted. There was an oppression on his chest, a throbbing in his head, his mouth was so dry that it was difficult for him to move his tongue. He dozed, and murmured in his sleep, and, worn out with nightmares, his cough, and the stifling heat, towards morning he fell into a sound sleep. He dreamed that they were just taking the bread out of the oven in the barracks and he climbed into the stove and had a steam bath in it, lashing himself with a bunch of birch twigs. He slept for two days, and at midday on the third two sailors came down and carried him out.

He was sewn up in sailcloth and to make him heavier they put with him two iron weights. Sewn up in the sailcloth he looked like a carrot or a radish: broad at the head and narrow at the feet.... Before sunset they brought him up to the deck and put him on a plank; one end of the plank lay on the side of the ship, the other on a box, placed on a stool. Round him stood the soldiers and the officers with their caps off.

When, exactly, did Gusev die? At midday on the third day, the point in the sentence where the point of view changes from Gusev to the omniscient? Probably sometime before that. Why can't, or won't, the narrator tell us exactly? I think it's because the story is driven by forces far outside him. As the narrator has just explained,

The sea has no sense and no pity. If the steamer had been smaller and not made of thick iron, the waves would have crushed it to pieces without the slightest compunction, and would have devoured all the people in it with no distinction of saints or sinners. The steamer had the same cruel and meaningless expression. This monster with its huge beak was dashing onwards, cutting millions of waves in its path; it had no fear of the darkness nor the wind, nor of space, nor of solitude, caring for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, this monster would have crushed them, too, without distinction of saints or sinners.

The "monster"--be it the sea, or the steamer--is the real storyteller. It dashes onwards through death, caring for nothing, even as the men left in its wake try, in their broken ways, to care. No longer possessing Gusev, its temporary mouthpiece, the story moves on. I suppose one could say that any author who kills off his characters is this kind of pitiless monster (a de-personified God)--except the author almost seems to claim that the force is beyond him, too. The story does not serve the characters, or even the author, but only itself. And it's still hungry. Where can it go next?

I think I'll save that answer for next time, partly because I want to savor the marvelous, brilliant ending of "Gusev" (in contrast to the prosaic ending of the character).

So what is our take-away this week? Well, we have that workshop rule about not shifting point of view, especially in a short story, and especially, especially, not mid-sentence. But if you make it clear that the source of your story is an all-powerful force, like the steamer with its "huge beak," it can steamroll all the rules. In the process, your characters' small acts of resistance to being crushed become very poignant.

Lick Observatory

My inner astronomy groupie got a thrill today. We finally made a trip up to the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton, near San Jose. The original telescope (built in the 1880s) is in a gorgeous Art Deco building, where they're currently exhibiting reproductions of Chesley Bonestell's space art. The interior of the dome is very Jules Verne looking, painted aqua with a pale pink lattice over it. Also the entire floor, a circle of beautiful polished wood, rises up to carry the observer to the eyepiece. They currently have nine operational telescopes at Lick, and a new one is just now being completed. Fantastic views of the entire South Bay as well. I'd love to go back at night for one of the public programs.

Borrowed Fire: Gusev: Setting the outer limits

This week, we'll start a writing seminar on Anton Chekhov's short story "Gusev." First, a grateful nod to Eric Puchner, with whom I studied this story in a class called "Fiction that Breaks the Mold." The course title pretty much explains it--we read stories that broke various supposed rules from fiction workshops. "Gusev" breaks at least two that I can think of off the top of my head: no point-of-view shifts, and no dreams /delirium / visions. But of course these are two of my very favorite things to do in fiction. And Chekhov, the master of masters, has given us permission!

However, if your story's going to break the rules, it's important to signal that from the get-go. In other words, if you're going to the outer limits, we have to see you way out there, at least briefly, right at the beginning. Otherwise your later rule-breaking tends to feel more like a trick, or a sudden genre shift. I'm not saying don't try it the other way, only that I have tried it, and have not, thus far, succeeded. So this is a sort of rule about how to break rules.

"Gusev" is going to open out in some really amazing ways at the end. So how does Chekhov set us up for that? By expanding and contracting the story's boundaries at the beginning, reserving the right to play with them throughout, as he sees fit.

IT was getting dark; it would soon be night.

Gusev, a discharged soldier, sat up in his hammock and said in an undertone:

"I say, Pavel Ivanitch. A soldier at Sutchan told me: while they were sailing a big fish came into collision with their ship and stove a hole in it."

The nondescript individual whom he was addressing, and whom everyone in the ship's hospital called Pavel Ivanitch, was silent, as though he had not heard.

And again a stillness followed... The wind frolicked with the rigging, the screw throbbed, the waves lashed, the hammocks creaked, but the ear had long ago become accustomed to these sounds, and it seemed that everything around was asleep and silent. It was dreary. The three invalids—two soldiers and a sailor—who had been playing cards all the day were asleep and talking in their dreams.

It seemed as though the ship were beginning to rock. The hammock slowly rose and fell under Gusev, as though it were heaving a sigh, and this was repeated once, twice, three times.... Something crashed on to the floor with a clang: it must have been a jug falling down.

"The wind has broken loose from its chain..." said Gusev, listening.

This time Pavel Ivanitch cleared his throat and answered irritably:

"One minute a vessel's running into a fish, the next, the wind's breaking loose from its chain. Is the wind a beast that it can break loose from its chain?"

"That's how christened folk talk."

"They are as ignorant as you are then. They say all sorts of things. One must keep a head on one's shoulders and use one's reason. You are a senseless creature."

Pavel Ivanitch was subject to sea-sickness. When the sea was rough he was usually ill-humoured, and the merest trifle would make him irritable. And in Gusev's opinion there was absolutely nothing to be vexed about. What was there strange or wonderful, for instance, in the fish or in the wind's breaking loose from its chain? Suppose the fish were as big as a mountain and its back were as hard as a sturgeon: and in the same way, supposing that away yonder at the end of the world there stood great stone walls and the fierce winds were chained up to the walls... if they had not broken loose, why did they tear about all over the sea like maniacs, and struggle to escape like dogs? If they were not chained up, what did become of them when it was calm?

Gusev pondered for a long time about fishes as big as a mountain and stout, rusty chains, then he began to feel dull and thought of his native place to which he was returning after five years' service in the East. He pictured an immense pond covered with snow.... On one side of the pond the red-brick building of the potteries with a tall chimney and clouds of black smoke; on the other side—a village.... His brother Alexey comes out in a sledge from the fifth yard from the end; behind him sits his little son Vanka in big felt over-boots, and his little girl Akulka, also in big felt boots. Alexey has been drinking, Vanka is laughing, Akulka's face he could not see, she had muffled herself up.

"You never know, he'll get the children frozen..." thought Gusev. "Lord send them sense and judgment that they may honour their father and mother and not be wiser than their parents."

"They want re-soleing," a delirious sailor says in a bass voice. "Yes, yes!"

Gusev's thoughts break off, and instead of a pond there suddenly appears apropos of nothing a huge bull's head without eyes, and the horse and sledge are not driving along, but are whirling round and round in a cloud of smoke. But still he was glad he had seen his own folks. He held his breath from delight, shudders ran all over him, and his fingers twitched.

"The Lord let us meet again," he muttered feverishly, but he at once opened his eyes and sought in the darkness for water.

He drank and lay back, and again the sledge was moving, then again the bull's head without eyes, smoke, clouds.... And so on till daybreak.

Chekhov contrasts the hideous confinement of the ship's sick bay to Gusev's flights of imagination--and then delirium. That's nothing new, in and of itself. We've all seen trapped characters, like prisoners, dreaming of fanciful escapes, but they're generally not rendered with such efficiency. Gusev's visions are short and compact, reeled in by sounds from the ship's hold or by other visions. Different levels of reality interrupt each other; the boundaries of the story shift rapidly. We begin to wonder what really is possible here.

Another factor is Pavel Ivanitch, who criticizes Gusev's figurative language: "One minute a vessel's running into a fish, the next, the wind's breaking loose from its chain. Is the wind a beast that it can break loose from its chain?" Gusev's metaphor about the wind is lovely, yet Chekhov has another character (a literary critic?) undercut it right off the bat. One would expect the author to side with the artistic soul, the maker of figures, and he would seem to do so here as well. But we're not quite certain. The fact that we go into Gusev's head to hear him defending his choice of words suggests his figure of speech is debatable. Pavel Ivanitch introduces just a hint of doubt about the artistic enterprise as a whole, including the author's intentions. Where's the author going with his own images and figures? What's the point of it, especially under such dire circumstances as these? Is imagination really a form of freedom, as one gathers from more conventional stories, or something else--perhaps something sinister?

Despite its title, the question this story asks is not what will happen to Gusev. In fact we learn fairly quickly how ill he is, and that he will not live. The question is, what will happen to his vision? Which is the real world, Gusev's or Pavel Ivanitch's? Or is there another world entirely? That's a huge question, and Chekhov allows himself to address it by claiming a huge amount of territory for himself in the beginning. He makes that claim matter-of-factly, always bringing us back to the actual setting in the ship's hold, the two sick men arguing. The confined setting keeps us from getting the different worlds confused--always a risk in attempting a story like this.

The lesson here is to ground your beginning by having a concrete place to return to. Then you can foray out, at least briefly, as far as you eventually plan to go.

Recipes for tomato season

From SFGate. Can't wait till ours are ripe...I want to try roasting.

Borrowed Fire: The Secret Agent: Winnie's Ending, Part 2

I think this will be our last week on The Secret Agent. Up until this point, I've been feeling like it is an almost perfect book. I've been thinking--maybe if I just rewrite the story and set it in Cleveland or Redwood City, and change all the names...why make all this extra work for myself by thinking up my own plots and characters? Besides, this book is public domain... Yet...at the very end, Winnie's demise does not seem quite right. I actually don't know why, so I'm going to frame this whole post as a question--is the problem me, or is it Conrad? (And if you don't have time to read this whole thing, you might as well assume it's me.)

One very cool aspect of Winnie is that she's a kind of analog of the Professor. Although Winnie is good and the Professor evil, both are black-box characters. They're impenetrable. About Winnie, we're told repeatedly that she believes things do not bear very much "looking into." She is incurious. And, as Conrad explains, "Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation,—a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious." Winnie's mysteriousness helps build the terrific suspense in the scene after she learns that her husband has killed her brother. But at the very end, Conrad is forced to reveal some other qualities of Winnie's character, in order, it seems, to wrap up the novel. These qualities turn out to be strangely disappointing, at least to me. Maybe because any revelation destroys Winnie's mysteriousness, which was so appealing in the first place.

First, Winnie stabs and kills Verloc. As a plot point this is melodramatic, a tad Gothic, and predictable. But it's redeemed by Conrad's dark humor.

He saw partly on the ceiling and partly on the wall the moving shadow of an arm with a clenched hand holding a carving knife. It flickered up and down. Its movements were leisurely. They were leisurely enough for Mr Verloc to recognise the limb and the weapon.

They were leisurely enough for him to take in the full meaning of the portent, and to taste the flavour of death rising in his gorge. His wife had gone raving mad—murdering mad. They were leisurely enough for the first paralysing effect of this discovery to pass away before a resolute determination to come out victorious from the ghastly struggle with that armed lunatic. They were leisurely enough for Mr Verloc to elaborate a plan of defence involving a dash behind the table, and the felling of the woman to the ground with a heavy wooden chair. But they were not leisurely enough to allow Mr Verloc the time to move either hand or foot. The knife was already planted in his breast. It met no resistance on its way. Hazard has such accuracies. Into that plunging blow, delivered over the side of the couch, Mrs Verloc had put all the inheritance of her immemorial and obscure descent, the simple ferocity of the age of caverns, and the unbalanced nervous fury of the age of bar-rooms. Mr Verloc, the Secret Agent, turning slightly on his side with the force of the blow, expired without stirring a limb, in the muttered sound of the word “Don’t” by way of protest.

Verloc is indolent, even after death:

After listening for some time Mrs Verloc lowered her gaze deliberately on her husband’s body. Its attitude of repose was so home-like and familiar that she could do so without feeling embarrassed by any pronounced novelty in the phenomena of her home life. Mr Verloc was taking his habitual ease. He looked comfortable.

But then Conrad undercuts Winnie's role as righteous avenger:

It had been an obscurely prompted blow. The blood trickling on the floor off the handle of the knife had turned it into an extremely plain case of murder. Mrs Verloc, who always refrained from looking deep into things, was compelled to look into the very bottom of this thing. She saw there no haunting face, no reproachful shade, no vision of remorse, no sort of ideal conception. She saw there an object. That object was the gallows. Mrs Verloc was afraid of the gallows.

She was terrified of them ideally. Having never set eyes on that last argument of men’s justice except in illustrative woodcuts to a certain type of tales, she first saw them erect against a black and stormy background, festooned with chains and human bones, circled about by birds that peck at dead men’s eyes. This was frightful enough, but Mrs Verloc, though not a well-informed woman, had a sufficient knowledge of the institutions of her country to know that gallows are no longer erected romantically on the banks of dismal rivers or on wind-swept headlands, but in the yards of jails. There within four high walls, as if into a pit, at dawn of day, the murderer was brought out to be executed, with a horrible quietness and, as the reports in the newspapers always said, “in the presence of the authorities.” With her eyes staring on the floor, her nostrils quivering with anguish and shame, she imagined herself all alone amongst a lot of strange gentlemen in silk hats who were calmly proceeding about the business of hanging her by the neck. That—never! Never! And how was it done? The impossibility of imagining the details of such quiet execution added something maddening to her abstract terror. The newspapers never gave any details except one, but that one with some affectation was always there at the end of a meagre report. Mrs Verloc remembered its nature. It came with a cruel burning pain into her head, as if the words “The drop given was fourteen feet” had been scratched on her brain with a hot needle. “The drop given was fourteen feet.”

I certainly believe she'd be afraid of the gallows. I also believe she'd be unhinged at this point. But for the rest of the novel, Winnie is driven solely by her fear of hanging. It's that fear that throws her into Ossipon's oily, unhelpful arms: "'You will save me, Tom,' she broke out, recoiling, but still keeping her hold on him by the two lapels of his damp coat. “Save me. Hide me. Don’t let them have me. You must kill me first. I couldn’t do it myself—I couldn’t, I couldn’t—not even for what I am afraid of.'" Too afraid for his own skin, Ossipon eventually ditches her, and she throws herself--as we learn from another conversation between Ossipon and the Professor--from the cross-channel boat.

I don't know. Winnie's ending is exciting; it's believable from a psychological standpoint. It almost seems like a cliche, though, like something out of "popular publications"--which, then again, could be intentional. I guess I somehow expected more from Winnie. Maybe I was taken in by her mysteriousness, combined with the one unmistakeable quality she had: her love for Stevie. Not that I want her to be perfect, a symbol of decency, or fearless. Maybe it makes sense that all the sudden chaos of her life would coalesce into this one, driving terror--which is a very realistic one. But I miss the black-box Winnie, the one who might have done something more unexpected, or inexplicable, in the face of all this horror. Instead, she just becomes part of it.

I guess we can't have two black boxes at the end; and, as I've said before, the Professor plays that role.

And the incorruptible Professor walked too, averting his eyes from the odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable—and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.

Anyway, I'm so in awe of this book that I keep thinking I must be missing the real truth to be found in Winnie's last hours. Maybe her inability to rise to some kind of heroism is that truth. I'm still not sure why I want something else for her. Could it be that I...somehow...like her?

One more thing about Cleveland...

It wasn't the Cuyahoga River that caught fire. It was the stuff floating on top of the river. So there.

Denial rocks on

This wire story is a tad depressing. It describes the lineup for a concert at Madison Square Garden, celebrating the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary. Nowhere is it even mentioned that the Hall itself is in (shhh...) Cleveland. As far as I know, since the museum's inception the induction ceremonies have always been held in New York. Because celebrities cannot possibly be asked to go to (shhh....) Cleveland. In fact their names should not even appear in the same article as...that word.

Look, I've (mostly) gotten over my Cleveland defensiveness. (Where are you from? Well, a suburb of Cleveland and it's not so bad there's a great orchestra and lots of trees and we don't all wear white socks and eat sausages...) I live in the Bay Area for good reason. Also, I went to the Rock Hall once and found it bombastic, staid, and tedious. But I have to wonder if the people who worked so hard to bring the museum to Cleveland ever suspected that it would prove yet another source of humiliation for the city. Instead of raising Cleveland's profile, it slaps it down, over and over, as every mention of the museum means deliberately not saying where it is. It's almost absurd.

What can Cleveland do? Even being represented by Dennis Kucinich is not enough to make it hip...

Borrowed Fire: The Secret Agent: Winnie's Ending, Part One

Another writing seminar on Conrad's The Secret Agent. I said last time that there's only one big event in the story, which is the explosion of the bomb. That's not precisely true. At the very end, after discovering Stevie's death and Verloc's role in it, Winnie kills him and then commits suicide. In an ordinary novel, this plot--a secret agent accidentally kills his mentally disabled brother-in-law by making him plant a bomb; when his wife finds out she goes mad, killing both him and herself--would be the main source of drama. But in this novel, these events are oddly anticlimactic. In the case of Winnie's demise, I also think they're just a little off, the only possibly false notes in this great story. But more about that next time.

To me, the most compelling drama of the whole book occurs just after Chief Inspector Heat has left the Verloc's home. Winnie now knows what happened to her brother, and she knows her husband caused it. Conrad slows the pace of the story to a crawl, as Winnie, over the course of many pages, sits in shock and Verloc tries to prod her out of it.

Mr Verloc walked behind the counter of the shop. His intention was not to overwhelm his wife with bitter reproaches. Mr Verloc felt no bitterness. The unexpected march of events had converted him to the doctrine of fatalism. Nothing could be helped now. He said:

“I didn’t mean any harm to come to the boy.”

Mrs Verloc shuddered at the sound of her husband’s voice. She did not uncover her face. The trusted secret agent of the late Baron Stott-Wartenheim looked at her for a time with a heavy, persistent, undiscerning glance. The torn evening paper was lying at her feet. It could not have told her much. Mr Verloc felt the need of talking to his wife.

“It’s that damned Heat—eh?” he said. “He upset you. He’s a brute, blurting it out like this to a woman. I made myself ill thinking how to break it to you. I sat for hours in the little parlour of Cheshire Cheese thinking over the best way. You understand I never meant any harm to come to that boy.”

Mr Verloc, the Secret Agent, was speaking the truth. It was his marital affection that had received the greatest shock from the premature explosion. He added:

“I didn’t feel particularly gay sitting there and thinking of you.”

He observed another slight shudder of his wife, which affected his sensibility. As she persisted in hiding her face in her hands, he thought he had better leave her alone for a while. On this delicate impulse Mr Verloc withdrew into the parlour again, where the gas jet purred like a contented cat. Mrs Verloc’s wifely forethought had left the cold beef on the table with carving knife and fork and half a loaf of bread for Mr Verloc’s supper. He noticed all these things now for the first time, and cutting himself a piece of bread and meat, began to eat.

There's something so ordinary about this scene. A not-so-bright husband has screwed up and now he's cajoling his angry wife to forgive him. He just wants it all to be over so things can go back to normal. Verloc goes so far as to make a few concessions to her anger; he displays and actually possesses a limited sympathy for her feelings. He is careful not to "overwhelm" her. Then, like an ordinary, not-so-bright husband, he slumps into self-pity. This is kind of Winnie's fault in a way, isn't it? Not completely, but kind of? Just before this passage, Verloc reminds himself that she's the one who sewed the address label into Stevie's coat, which is how the police identified his remains--"What did she mean by it? Spare him the trouble of keeping an anxious eye on Stevie? Most likely she had meant well. Only she ought to have told him of the precaution she had taken." Verloc magnanimously tries to forgive his wife's oversight. Then he blames her for making him feel bad at the Cheshire Cheese. This is some severe gallows humor, but it is funny. That's because Conrad takes the time to observe every nuance of the couple's interaction, which arises not just from the moment, but from their whole history together. You can imagine a similar one-sided conversation has happened many times before, over much more minor issues.

The impasse goes on and on.

“You might look at a fellow,” he observed after waiting a while.

As if forced through the hands covering Mrs Verloc’s face the answer came, deadened, almost pitiful.

“I don’t want to look at you as long as I live.”

“Eh? What!” Mr Verloc was merely startled by the superficial and literal meaning of this declaration. It was obviously unreasonable, the mere cry of exaggerated grief. He threw over it the mantle of his marital indulgence. The mind of Mr Verloc lacked profundity. Under the mistaken impression that the value of individuals consists in what they are in themselves, he could not possibly comprehend the value of Stevie in the eyes of Mrs Verloc. She was taking it confoundedly hard, he thought to himself. It was all the fault of that damned Heat. What did he want to upset the woman for? But she mustn’t be allowed, for her own good, to carry on so till she got quite beside herself.

“Look here! You can’t sit like this in the shop,” he said with affected severity, in which there was some real annoyance; for urgent practical matters must be talked over if they had to sit up all night. “Somebody might come in at any minute,” he added, and waited again. No effect was produced, and the idea of the finality of death occurred to Mr Verloc during the pause. He changed his tone. “Come. This won’t bring him back,” he said gently, feeling ready to take her in his arms and press her to his breast, where impatience and compassion dwelt side by side. But except for a short shudder Mrs Verloc remained apparently unaffected by the force of that terrible truism. It was Mr Verloc himself who was moved. He was moved in his simplicity to urge moderation by asserting the claims of his own personality.

As Verloc shifts from one failed strategy to the next, Conrad tracks every movement of his mediocre mind and spirit. Again, this attention to nuance in the face of overwhelming horror seems ridiculous; it almost (or does, in my case) makes you laugh. But that attention is what makes this scene so powerful. After awhile, there's a brief physical interaction, as Verloc pulls Winnie out of her chair and then (I can't help finding this funny, too) takes her seat. But nothing much comes of that, not right away. Winnie establishes herself in the kitchen. Verloc keeps wheedling, complaining about what a pain in the ass his supervisors in the anarchist movement are. Again, so ordinary--what a crappy day I had at the office; pity me! His boss doesn't appreciate him: “There isn’t a murdering plot for the last eleven years that I hadn’t my finger in at the risk of my life. There’s scores of these revolutionists I’ve sent off, with their bombs in their blamed pockets, to get themselves caught on the frontier. The old Baron knew what I was worth to his country...”

Shortly after that, still getting nowhere, Verloc falls back on the tried-and-true ploy of the ages: "You go to bed now. What you want is a good cry." And still, still, Winnie gives him no satisfaction; she does not go to bed. The dance goes on. We start to see more and more of Winnie's point of view, however.

There were several reasons why this comfort was denied him. There was a physical obstacle: Mrs Verloc had no sufficient command over her voice. She did not see any alternative between screaming and silence, and instinctively she chose the silence. Winnie Verloc was temperamentally a silent person. And there was the paralysing atrocity of the thought which occupied her. Her cheeks were blanched, her lips ashy, her immobility amazing. And she thought without looking at Mr Verloc: “This man took the boy away to murder him. He took the boy away from his home to murder him. He took the boy away from me to murder him!”

Mrs Verloc’s whole being was racked by that inconclusive and maddening thought. It was in her veins, in her bones, in the roots of her hair. Mentally she assumed the biblical attitude of mourning—the covered face, the rent garments; the sound of wailing and lamentation filled her head. But her teeth were violently clenched, and her tearless eyes were hot with rage, because she was not a submissive creature. The protection she had extended over her brother had been in its origin of a fierce an indignant complexion. She had to love him with a militant love. She had battled for him—even against herself. His loss had the bitterness of defeat, with the anguish of a baffled passion. It was not an ordinary stroke of death. Moreover, it was not death that took Stevie from her. It was Mr Verloc who took him away. She had seen him. She had watched him, without raising a hand, take the boy away. And she had let him go, like—like a fool—a blind fool. Then after he had murdered the boy he came home to her. Just came home like any other man would come home to his wife. . . .

So Winnie, too, is struck by strange ordinariness of the scene. And it's adding to her shock.

I could go on and on about this scene, which does lead up to Winnie stabbing Verloc. The murder is quite a stunning set piece. After that, something seems to go slightly wrong in the denoument...but I'll save that for next time, I think.

Anyway, the lesson for today: know when to drag things out. And, just as important, know how. A great strategy, as we've seen throughout this book, is to overlay the ordinary on the awful. In particular, you can overlay an ordinary history (like the history of a so-so marriage) on a dreadful one-time event. The tension arises not just from wondering what Winnie's finally going to do, but from the emotional complexity that builds up in the characters, and the reader, as well.

No more tree

Sometime yesterday the neighbors took out the plum tree that I've been using to measure the passage of time. Now we have a lovely, unobstructed view of the carport, and no more white blossoms in March.

Creative writing and reading

I enjoyed Louis Menand's piece in the New Yorker last month about creative writing programs. And I think this letter, from the latest issue, is really onto something. We all know people who want to write but don't want to read ("I have to find my own voice!"), and we duly chastise them. But a good creative writing program, or class, will expect students to read published work from a wide variety of times and places. And if all the people currently pouring into MFA programs develop more receptive, meticulous, and patient reading practices as part of their training, that's good for everybody who cares about literature. The complaint about lots of literary journals is that "only writers read those"--if you publish there, you're not reaching some kind of pure, ideal reader who has no writing agenda of her own. I'd say what we really need is more readers who are also writers, even if they never publish, or want to publish, a word. To that end, literary studies courses and programs ought to include some creative writing.

The truth about writers

Via Wil Wheaton, of whose blog I'm pleasantly reminded every so often...yeah, it's true.