Borrowed Fire: Physical gesture in fiction

For the past few weeks I've talked about ways to depict Big Ideas in fiction. But I'm feeling micro today. So for this writing workshop on The Brothers Karamazov, as Dmitri caroms across the landscape on the most fateful errand of his life, I would like to focus on the comic relief passage. I'm especially interested in a little moment of physical action that interrupts the usual Dostoevskian activity of yelling.

Desperate to borrow money (so that he can look even more like a murderer than he already does), Dmitri appeals to Mme. Hohlakov. This dingbat serves as Dostoevsky's explanation for why women should not be "liberated," or even allowed to read. She offers to solve all Dmitri's financial problems by giving him a suggestion worth a thousand times more than the paltry sum he wants to borrow: he must go to the gold mines. It takes Dmitri awhile to realize that Mme. H is giving him the suggestion instead of money, rather than in addition to it--and so follows a somewhat amusing scene of mistaken-assumption type humor. (It might be interesting, though not right now, to compare this to Melville's proto-Abbot-and-Costello routine in Moby Dick.) As Dmitri gets even more flustered, Mme. H offers him a final gift:

“Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, enough!” Madame Hohlakov interrupted emphatically. “The question is, will you go to the gold-mines or not; have you quite made up your mind? Answer yes or no.”

“I will go, madam, afterwards.... I'll go where you like ... but now—”

“Wait!” cried Madame Hohlakov. And jumping up and running to a handsome bureau with numerous little drawers, she began pulling out one drawer after another, looking for something with desperate haste.

“The three thousand,” thought Mitya, his heart almost stopping, “and at the instant ... without any papers or formalities ... that's doing things in gentlemanly style! She's a splendid woman, if only she didn't talk so much!”

“Here!” cried Madame Hohlakov, running back joyfully to Mitya, “here is what I was looking for!”

It was a tiny silver ikon on a cord, such as is sometimes worn next the skin with a cross.

“This is from Kiev, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” she went on reverently, “from the relics of the Holy Martyr, Varvara. Let me put it on your neck myself, and with it dedicate you to a new life, to a new career.”

And she actually put the cord round his neck, and began arranging it. In extreme embarrassment, Mitya bent down and helped her, and at last he got it under his neck-tie and collar through his shirt to his chest.

“Now you can set off,” Madame Hohlakov pronounced, sitting down triumphantly in her place again.

I direct my fellow writers to the two sentences beginning with "And she actually put the cord around his neck..." Dmitri's actions in helping her with this useless (to him) gift are so plausible, precisely because they seem implausible. As frustrated as he is, some ancient habit of politeness and propriety still kicks in. We all wait and watch as he gets the ikon properly situated. Of course this detail tells that Dmitri is not a bad sort deep down, for all his bluster and violence. It also shows us how hard he's trying to get on Mme. H's good side, as the money he still thinks he's getting fades away before his eyes. Also it briefly slows the pace of the story, which is otherwise in a headlong rush. Dostoevsky, once in awhile at least, recognizes that his readers need breathers; prose, like music, needs diminuendos as well as crescendos.

The preciseness of this action got me thinking about how writers use characters' physical gestures in general. I sometimes find myself getting so caught up in writing a dialog, or the broader actions in a scene, that I forget to look at what the characters are doing while everything's happening. Now, one can go too far in the other direction:

"What are you thinking?" she asked, twisting her hair around her index finger.
"Nothing," he said. He stubbed out his cigarette.
She took a sip of her wine. "It doesn't look like nothing."
"What are you implying?" he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

In real life, people are constantly moving in some fashion, unless they are dead. We don't need to record all these movements. However, when we do show them, they should be significant and interesting. In addition to over-recording the gestures, the passage above (straight from the fevered brain of yours truly, solely for the purposes of illustration) relies on stock gestures: wine, cigarettes, hair. B-movie stuff. The neck action is a little better; perhaps our man has a crick from some interesting experience we will learn about later.

This is an area in which writing is very much like acting. As writers, we inhabit imagined bodies and can operate them as we wish. This gives us great freedom, and we don't want to waste it standing around like dorks--or stubbing out cigarettes. I remember hanging out with an actor several years ago, and feeling increasingly self-conscious as I realized she was observing and filing away my gestures for later use. (I realized this because she told me she was doing it.) Nevertheless, this was a good practice for her as an artist, and it behooves writers to do it as well. In a couple of writing classes, I've been given the assignment to surreptitiously record conversations to learn how people really talk. I would give us all the assignment of watching how people move. Note especially the gestures that deviate from stock actions--which most gestures do, after all. I am even thinking of keeping a gesture library in my journal, so I won't fall back on hair-twisting.

At least, if my female character above is going to twist her hair, she must do it in an original and telling way. Maybe she could be wrapping it around a pencil, a process that ends up drawing far more of her concentration than she had expected to have to give it. Immediately she and the conversation become far more interesting.

Literary journals list

A very helpful list of top literary journals, with links. Thanks, BookFox!

Borrowed Fire: How to corrupt a hero

I'll start this week's workshop on The Brothers Karamazov with a follow-up to last week's post. I attempted to explain why Dostoevsky chose to interrupt a nicely galloping mystery plot with a biography of an idealized individual, who is not even central to that plot. The broad answer is that the mystery story is merely a scaffolding on which Dostoevsky hangs his spiritual portrait of Russia--so he is not only free but obliged to wander off into theological labyrinths just as the central crime is about to take place. This structure does serve to create suspense (which may or may not be the same as reader frustration). Also it's interesting that a mystery tale is the apparatus for theological exploration. For Dostoevsky, God and the human heart are intertwined mysteries, so it makes sense that the ostensible plot is about searching, wondering, fastening on clues and chasing down false leads, and being desperate for answers. We literary writers could do well to revisit various forms of genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy, romance, detective, horror, thriller, etc.), with an eye to how these plots might lend themselves to various Big Questions. Personally I find the juxtaposition of genre and anti-genre (if you will) in BK quite bracing.

The Zossima section, as I mentioned last time, depicts religious ecstasy in a convincing manner. Zossima, his professed atheist brother, and a local dignitary who's wrestling with a secret crime, all come to realize and exalt in the interconnectedness of all beings. Zossima's vision is humanistic, by which I mean he believes heaven and hell are ultimately provinces of the human heart. The greatest joy comes when we sense our own hearts opening to reveal infinite love for all creation, the heaven that is contained within each of us. We are all capable--temporarily--of love on this divine scale. A modern equivalent of Zossima's tales might be David Foster Wallace's "All That," which is a really beautiful story. In both, such ecstatic moments are always fleeting; perhaps because the heart can't bear such joy for long without exploding, or maybe because--as Dostoevsky makes explicit in BK--the human vessel is literally corrupt.

Now we discover another reason for the long digression on Zossima's life. Dostoevsky has set him up in order to bring him down. Way down. Writing teachers tell us not to protect our characters, especially those we love and admire the most, and here Dostoevsky complies by causing Zossima's body literally to stink. First, the ailing monk passes away, somewhat peacefully, but not without significant pain, surprising both Alyosha and the reader. Like Alyosha, we're expecting God, and / or the author, to grant this saintly man a painless death. But then things get even worse. There's a general belief on the part of the monks and the townspeople that God does not allow the corpses of holy men to rot. As Zossima's body is laid out and viewed, everyone looks forward to witnessing the miracle of his physical preservation...and then someone suggests they open a window. Zossima's body is rotting, and even faster than expected. This brings cynical delight to all who like to see great men cut down, and it devastates Alyosha--not because he wanted to see a miracle, but because he can't understand why God would humiliate his faithful servant in such a gruesome manner.

Of the corruption, Dostoevsky says,

I should, of course, have omitted all mention of it in my story, if it had not exerted a very strong influence on the heart and soul of the chief, though future, hero of my story, Alyosha, forming a crisis and turning-point in his spiritual development, giving a shock to his intellect, which finally strengthened it for the rest of his life and gave it a definite aim.

And this is why authors should imitate Dostoevsky and his God. They must bring the mighty, especially the morally mighty, low. You need not be cruel; you do not want readers like the cynical townspeople and monks, who like to see goodness punished for their own gratification. But there is nothing more human than corruption, in the larger sense. And nothing more challenging to faith and love. You need to give some genuine "shock" to the intellect and emotions of your characters, to strengthen them and give them definite aim. That's how they become real literary heroes.

Dracula and other epic fails

This morning as I cast my gaze around my workspace, seeking some project to tide me over while my novel cools (or bakes, or congeals...feel free to choose your metaphor), I caught sight of my copy of Dracula. I'm thinking of doing this for the next edition of Borrowed Fire, which is not to say that I am in any way tiring of our current tome, The Brothers Karamazov. Far from it! Why, just yesterday I passed the halfway point, and a new post is coming very shortly... However, Dracula intrigues me, because it's one of those books that one expects to be bad, but isn't. Although it does have its problems, chief of which is that in order for the plot to work, the renowned vampire hunter Van Helsing--much like Gandalf the Wizard--must prove incompetent at the very thing he's renowned for.

But speaking of incompetence. When we think of the 1931 Dracula film, we mostly think of Bela Lugosi, his bouncy accent, and his cape. We may not recall what a complete disaster the film is. Wikipedia rather mildly calls it "a mostly disorganized affair." The director, Todd Browning, pretty much abandoned the set; Wiki speculates that this was due to grief over the death of Lon Chaney, whom Browning had wanted for the lead. Anyway, if you've ever asked yourself, Do films really need directors?, take a look at this shipwreck. After maybe the first couple scenes, the actors are literally directionless.

Dracula, the film, resembles an experience I had in high school. I had somehow managed to get cast as a querulous old woman in a Chekhov one-act play (yes, our destinies are set in stone early). As part of an evening of one-acts, this play, whose name I'm still too traumatized to recall, had only one performance. That performance was marred, perhaps 2/3 of the way through, by an attack of amnesia on the part of every single one of the actors. I am not certain if we looked around for help from our director; in any case, I suspect she was only capable of open-mouthed horror (or perhaps she had already flown the coop, like Browning). So one of the actors--possibly me--decided we ought to chase each other around the sofa, screaming colorful accusations, until we collapsed in a heap. The curtain was wrung down to the cheers of the electrified audience, who, while likely unfamiliar with the original text, were certainly not expecting anything like that.

I suppose you could call this a triumph of sorts, although I also recall that before the play began, I was standing in the wings with an actor from one of the other plays, and intoned to him that Chekhov (unlike the other dorky authors being showcased) was subtle.

Borrowed Fire: Creating a spiritual landscape

While we are on the subject of Russian literature, it's high time I got back to The Brothers Karamazov.

Last week we saw Dostoevsky shift from the philosophical / spiritual set piece of The Grand Inquisitor into full-on mystery-novel mode. The shift takes place via the consciousness of Ivan, the spiritually tormented intellectual. (Ivan is also my candidate for "author insert," even though Dostoevsky probably wished he were Alyosha.) Ivan's tendency to obsess about matters of good and evil is what leads him into Smerdyakov's trap. Smerdyakov knows Ivan can't resist a moral and spiritual puzzle; he also knows that he himself represents that very kind of puzzle to Ivan. So he lies in wait for him, and then explains how he just might have one of his epileptic fits after Ivan leaves town, at the very moment when Dmitri just might be coming to the house to do something really terrible to the brothers' father Fyodor.

Sure enough, Ivan leaves for Moscow, down Smerdyakov goes, and just as the plot is really heating up, we get...umpteen pages on the life of Father Zossima. This is Alyosha's spiritual mentor, here to represent the godly life well-led. What kind of crappy mystery novel is this?

Well, I remember reading in some book on writing craft (I really can't remember the guy's name; he was a screenwriter, I think) that you should "never take readers where they want to go." This is a method for creating suspense, and I suppose Dostoevsky succeeds in that, because I really didn't want to read about Father Zossima at this point--or possibly at any point. Still, as didactic as the section is so far (I haven't finished yet), it does convey several varieties of religious experience and ecstasy. So it seems to me that the larger purpose of this heavy-handed "meanwhile" is to further explore the spiritual landscape of Russia.

As Elif Batuman mentioned during her reading at Kepler's a few nights ago, Dostoevsky--in contrast to Tolstoy--doesn't spend a lot of time on conventional setting: if Tolstoy is movies, Dostoevsky is theater. That is certainly borne out by BK. While we gather that the story takes place in a small provincial town, Dostoevsky is far more concerned with what goes on in people's minds and hearts than with how their daily lives look from the outside. With BK he presents a sweeping portrait of Russia, but it is a spiritual landscape, filmed with a special kind of night-vision camera. Instead of racing over dunes and forests and mountain passes, like the camera in contemporary "epic" films, Dostoevsky swoops and dives from one soul into another--from Alyosha to Ivan to Smerdyakov to Zossima--and covers a territory just as vast.

So this week's nugget for fiction writers to mull over is an idea I've brought up before, in relation to characterization. Perhaps Dostoevsky's brand of show-don't-tell could be an antidote for our overly visual age. That same book on craft I mentioned earlier says that today's readers expect lots of visual detail, because we've been trained by movies and television in ways that readers from previous eras were not. But maybe writers can overdo the visual--or else feel compelled to focus on it, neglecting the wild terrain of the inner landscape.

An exercise: what would a spiritual portrait of your hometown look like?

More good news for Russian literature fans...

Gregory Freidin, a professor at Stanford and one of the people Elif Batuman writes about in The Possessed, has published a new book: The Enigma of Isaac Babel. This is the first examination of Babel's life and art since the fall of Communism and the opening of Soviet archives.

Read more about the book here.

(h/t Amanda Z.)


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The Possessed by Elif Batuman

A hilarious and moving book for anyone who loves to read:


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Netflix FAIL haikus

1.
Because you liked Moon
Japanese Screaming Contest
Is our pick for you

2.
You say you enjoyed
Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains
Jeez, you must be old

3.
Little indie film
Is supposed to be charming
But it is creepy

4.
User / reviewer
Sixty-eight percent like you
Is a psychopath

...yes, it appears I need something to do...

First draft of novel

Done. That only took five years.

Now to try to ignore it for six weeks, per Stephen King's advice, so that when I reread it, it will seem new to me. (I always do what Stephen King says.) After that, revisions, then critiques, then more revisions, then...oh, god. Out into the world...

Plotting and planning

While we're on the subject of plot, it has now dawned on me--maybe you knew this already--that "plot" is a synonym for "plan." I had this flash of insight while reading this short piece by Joshua Henkin. He warns writers against doing too much planning, because "If you plan out too much, you can end up injecting characters into a preordained plot and you get...Lipton-Cup-a-Story." Instead, he tries to create "situations where something important can take place" and lets his imagination run with them.

This seems similar to the advice Robert Olen Butler gives in his book From Where You Dream. He suggests beginning a novel with an extended period (a couple months, if I remember correctly) of "dreaming" up images. You don't want extended scenes, just mental pictures that feel intriguing to you (or make you "thrum," to use his term). Note each image on a different index card. When you're done, organize the index cards till you have them in the right order; and only then do you sit down and write the novel. But, you know, you've done most of the work already, so the writing's pretty much smooth sailing. Maybe if you're R.O.B.

I tried this when my novel was already in progress, and I found I couldn't do it. That's because I could not let go of the problem of plot, of linking intriguing scene A to intriguing scene B. So I had hundreds of cards, the bulk of which said something like "L has to get a job. What job??? Has to be one that involves DRIVING." These were not inspiring. I still have those cards in a shoebox that says "Novel: Do Not Pitch" on the lid. But I never open that box anymore.

Now that I've nearly finished a draft of same novel, I have a better idea what Butler means. For my next book, I might try the index-card business again. However, I still can't get past the fact that I get most of my ideas / scenes while I am actually writing. No amount of sitting and trying to visualize can substitute for cranking words out on the page. Also, *after* I've done my session for the day, scenes tend to occur to me, which I then note down. Entering these into my outline helps me ease into the session the next day.

So, what I think would work is a process like in those old films, in which railway workers are laying track right in front of the oncoming train. (Fortunately the engineer is patient and the train is moving very slowly.) I'd start with 2-3 scenes and write, say, fifty pages. I would expect maybe a dozen more scenes to pop up from that, which I would then note in my outline. (I really don't get index cards--never have, probably never will.) Once I'm about 100 pages in, I'll probably have enough track set up in front of me that I can see my way the end. But the track will always change; earlier scenes will have to be deleted or revised. Also, amazing new ideas might show up right near the end.

That's what's happening to me now, and instead of being worrisome, it's exciting. These new insights actually put lots of earlier stuff in context, and are helping me resolve issues that I couldn't decide about earlier, no matter how hard I wracked my brain. As everyone always says, though I refused to believe it until now, you have to keep going forward despite the fact that what you have now is imperfect. You can revise your first 50 pages until the Rapture and beyond (because, if you're like me, you'll be left behind, still writing). But once you get to the end you will *still* have to revise your entire book from the beginning. You will simply not know certain things till you've finished. So there's no sense wasting time.


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Borrowed Fire: Depression and plot

Another week has gone by, and I have read all of one page in The Brothers Karamazov. But it is a good page. Partly because we're now in the point of view of Ivan, a more tormented character than Alyosha, but not so histrionic as Dmitri or Fyodor. So he's a good guy to hang around with, narratively speaking--emotional, but able to reflect on his emotions in an intelligent and even entertaining way. Not coincidentally, this combination turns out to be helpful for the plot. My friend Kate and I were discussing how to motivate characters, i.e. how to get them (and therefore your plot) moving from where they are to where you want them to go. I think we can learn something from Dostoevsky here about precisely rendered emotion as a driver of plot.

Having delivered himself of his great poem "The Grand Inquisitor," Ivan heads back to his father's house. His internal monologue is dryly funny:

And Ivan, on parting from Alyosha, went home to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house. But, strange to say, he was overcome by insufferable depression, which grew greater at every step he took towards the house. There was nothing strange in his being depressed; what was strange was that Ivan could not have said what was the cause of it.

A recent article in the NYT Magazine on depression tells us that in a study, eighty percent of the writers in the Iowa Writers Workshop met the diagnostic criteria for depression. There are so many ways to enjoy this information that I cannot begin to detail them all here. However, the article reasserts the well-established link between depression and creativity. It's safe to say that depression is the life-blood of literature in general, and certainly of BK. The article, called "Depression's Upside," also suggests there is an evolutionary point to depression, in that it gets us to slow down and really examine our problems, which leads ultimately to solutions. In my experience this is generally true, except for the "solutions" part. One ruminates, one even thinks of plausible solutions; however, one does not act, but simply goes on ruminating until the end of time. Rather like being stuck on a plot point.

But if you're an author, presumably you at least recognize that circular rumination is no good for your book; you want your characters to actually do stuff. So it may be particularly compelling for a depressed author to create a depressed character--who's also an author--who figures out exactly what's wrong, and then does something about it. This character moves your plot forward, which allows you to finish your book, which then lifts your depression, maybe, somewhat, for awhile. So, I dunno: maybe there is an upside to depression, but only if you're able to deploy it through your art.

Anyway, like a good depressive, Ivan ruminates on all the possible reasons he has for feeling like crap.

Yet at that moment, though the apprehension of the new and unknown certainly found place in his heart, what was worrying him was something quite different. “Is it loathing for my father's house?” he wondered. “Quite likely; I am so sick of it; and though it's the last time I shall cross its hateful threshold, still I loathe it.... No, it's not that either. Is it the parting with Alyosha and the conversation I had with him? For so many years I've been silent with the whole world and not deigned to speak, and all of a sudden I reel off a rigmarole like that.” It certainly might have been the youthful vexation of youthful inexperience and vanity—vexation at having failed to express himself, especially with such a being as Alyosha, on whom his heart had certainly been reckoning. No doubt that came in, that vexation, it must have done indeed; but yet that was not it, that was not it either. “I feel sick with depression and yet I can't tell what I want. Better not think, perhaps.”

Ivan tried “not to think,” but that, too, was no use. What made his depression so vexatious and irritating was that it had a kind of casual, external character—he felt that. Some person or thing seemed to be standing out somewhere, just as something will sometimes obtrude itself upon the eye, and though one may be so busy with work or conversation that for a long time one does not notice it, yet it irritates and almost torments one till at last one realizes, and removes the offending object, often quite a trifling and ridiculous one—some article left about in the wrong place, a handkerchief on the floor, a book not replaced on the shelf, and so on.

Ivan is so attuned to the nuances of his depression (again, as the best depressives are) that he realizes that this particular flavor of it is unusual. For once it has an "external character," and he surmises (wrongly, as we will see) that if he can only identify it, he can move it out of his way. Having suffered from depression most of his life, Ivan is highly motivated to deal with this rare, concrete form.

At last, feeling very cross and ill-humored, Ivan arrived home, and suddenly, about fifteen paces from the garden gate, he guessed what was fretting and worrying him.

On a bench in the gateway the valet Smerdyakov was sitting enjoying the coolness of the evening, and at the first glance at him Ivan knew that the valet Smerdyakov was on his mind, and that it was this man that his soul loathed. It all dawned upon him suddenly and became clear.

Unfortunately for Ivan, Smerdyakov is no mere book that he can simply replace on its shelf.

Ivan shook. “Get away, miserable idiot. What have I to do with you?” was on the tip of his tongue, but to his profound astonishment he heard himself say, “Is my father still asleep, or has he waked?”

He asked the question softly and meekly, to his own surprise, and at once, again to his own surprise, sat down on the bench. For an instant he felt almost frightened; he remembered it afterwards. Smerdyakov stood facing him, his hands behind his back, looking at him with assurance and almost severity.

“His honor is still asleep,” he articulated deliberately (“You were the first to speak, not I,” he seemed to say). “I am surprised at you, sir,” he added, after a pause, dropping his eyes affectedly, setting his right foot forward, and playing with the tip of his polished boot.

“Why are you surprised at me?” Ivan asked abruptly and sullenly, doing his utmost to restrain himself, and suddenly realizing, with disgust, that he was feeling intense curiosity and would not, on any account, have gone away without satisfying it.

Ivan's loathing for Smerdyakov is intertwined with (even motivated by) curiosity. The valet is a distorted reflection of Ivan: intellectual, but soulless and conniving. Smerdyakov is also a figure for Ivan's depression--that mixture of curiosity and loathing Ivan feels is like depressive rumination itself. One cannot bear it, but one also cannot turn away. So Ivan cannot simply pass by Smerdyakov or put him, so to speak, back in his place. Smerdyakov is a servant, and as his "better" Ivan can and should put him there. (Radical in some ways, Dostoevsky is no egalitarian. The fact that Smerdyakov blatantly flouts his social standing is a sign of his villainy.) Well aware of Ivan's nature, Smerdyakov easily lures him into a conversation which will turn out to be a major plot point for the book.

Sometimes writers have their characters stumble into circumstances which they don't anticipate or understand. That could be fine, or it could be a sign that your plot, rather than your characters, is driving your story. If so, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, unless that process doesn't feel right. Maybe your people seem to be resisting you when you push. Or maybe when you push, they fall right over, because there's not enough to them in the first place. I've had both problems in writing my novel, and I think I "emptied out" one character because I needed him to do stuff without question. I had my plot in mind and he was going to follow it, dammit. But in the process I made him a shell, and as a result, the plot itself became implausible.

Here, Ivan is stumbling into a set-up, but it feels entirely like his own doing. He's not stupid or hapless, but highly intelligent, as well as plausibly and vividly depressed. He's drawn to the villain because he wants to understand himself, so he can stop suffering. It's telling that Smerdyakov is waiting for Ivan here. He doesn't have to go out looking for him; Ivan comes right to him.

The Bat Segundo Show explained

Thanks to The Rejectionist for explaining what The Bat Segundo Show is. Like TR, I've been getting Bat's mysterious...OK, let's just call it spam, because it started showing up in my Gmail a few years ago, without my consent. When the infiltration first started, I glanced at the emails and noted they were about some kind of literary series. It was located in New York, so I couldn't go to it...but neither did I click the link to unsubscribe. This is my way of supporting literary endeavors: I allow their spam in my inbox; but I punish them for spamming by not reading their emails closely.

Turns out...it's a *podcast*! Like a *virtual* show on the *Internet* and so I can go to it! Anytime I want! Now I have even more excuses for not writing, because I am *learning about writing* from skilled practitioners! Thus far I'd say the interviews are excellent, and there's a whole lot of them, too.

Good on Bob's Red Mill

Via The Slacktivist, Bob of Bob's Red Mill just gave his company to his employees for his 81st birthday. Way to be awesome, Bob.

Borrowed Fire: The Brothers Karamazov: The Grand Inquisitor

This week we arrive at a major milestone in this many-mile long book: the story-within-a-story called "The Grand Inquisitor." It's often taught in high schools and colleges as a stand-alone piece, and even people who haven't read BK have read, or somehow know, the GI.

I've read it a bunch of times now, and it still blows me away every time. Maybe it's just because I'm a lifelong secular humanist / atheist, who occasionally dabbles in Northern California Buddhism. Maybe people who've grown up with religion find the issues here old hat, or else beside the point. It is the same old stuff--the problem of evil and suffering, how we can have free will if there's a God, how Jesus's teachings get twisted by those who teach them. Of course it's also an extended fusillade at the Catholic church, which tends to present a big target in all centuries; and a warning about totalitarianism, which in this case comes cloaked in religion. The Grand Inquisitor's vision looks a lot like the Fox News Channel to me, but never mind.

Anyway, there's no point in my trying to summarize the piece here. I really think you should just go read it. It's only about twenty pages. If you read nothing else in BK, you can do this. I can wait.

[elevator music plays]

I tell you, it just knocks me out, even though it's not a story at all, but a philosophical tract the form of a monologue. One guy (GI) talking to another guy (Jesus), who doesn't even talk back. The occasional interruptions by the storyteller (Ivan) and his listener (Alyosha) are mainly points of clarification; they offer a less clunky way for Dostoevsky to make the GI's philosophy clearer to us, without having him rant on even further.

So how about that Jesus, huh? He actually wants to make things hard for his followers. He doesn't make it easy to believe in him. He refuses to perform the miracles that would convince people to follow him on the spot. They must choose him of their own free will, and deal with the fact that he probably won't show his face to them--unambiguously, anyway--in their lifetime. The GI, meanwhile, just wants to help people who are suffering from this uncertainty. By taking people's free will from them, he gives them what they really want: security and community, which comes through a confirmed belief in miracles. And yet the GI suffers, too. Unlike stock villains, he doesn't enjoy his power in the slightest. He knows he's doing evil, and he suffers--because he wants people to be happy, and not suffer as he does. It's just not easy for anybody in this world, not even the devil. And yet we're still supposed to have faith. That is faith, apparently, this suffering.

All well and fine. But what is the lesson for fiction writers here? Am I suggesting we all write a "poem" (as Ivan calls his story) like this and plunk it down in the middle of our novels or medium-to-long stories? I say yes! I am a big fan of the story-within-a-story, especially if it's self-contained, difficult, and from another time and place than the larger story, with other rules.* I love the unexpectedness of such things, the plunge down the rabbit hole, after which we climb back out and continue on our path through the larger fictional world--only slightly dizzy, and wondering exactly what just happened.

But how to you keep the s-w-a-s from being a mere "lump" that the reader trips over? Especially if it's almost pure research or philosophy, rather than an actual story? A few tips from Dostoevsky:

1) Have a character tell the story, and have that character be mysterious and maybe a little bit unhinged.

2) Make the story a different kind of story than you'd expect that character to tell (as Alyosha points out, Ivan, who has a big problem with God, has ended up praising Jesus in the GI).

3) Make the story slam the outer action to a halt. This sounds counter-intuitive; but the fact that Alyosha has just come from a round of visits to various frantic people, and is desperate to go and see his mentor on his deathbed, raises the stakes of Ivan's story. The story has to be good, and important, for Alyosha to stop and listen to it.

4) Allow interruptions by the "outer" characters. If you are presenting a big block of information (or philosophy), it helps to break it up and offer other characters' takes on the story. We do learn more about Alyosha and Ivan through their little exchanges in the midst of all this heavy stuff. Alyosha's frightened but interested; Ivan, while tormented by these ideas, laughs and is gentle with his brother.

5) Have good, fully developed characters within the story, not stock or purely allegorical figures. In this case, Jesus is still a bit of a cipher. But the suffering Grand Inquisitor towers as high as any of the Karamazov brothers, or Milton's Satan. He is one for the ages.

*Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin is a great example, which comes to mind 'cos I just finished it.

Novel milestone

I am pleased to report that the word-count + I'm-not-really-writing-now strategy works. I recently passed the 60,000 word mark, and I once read in Writers Digest that 60K is the official minimum length for a novel. I'm not done, but at least I know the thing's going to be long enough!

Borrowed Fire: The Brothers Karamazov: Where is the fault?

(For those new to the blog: Borrowed Fire is an ongoing series, in which I attempt to learn fiction writing by reading classic works of literature. All BF texts are posted on Project Gutenberg, so everyone can follow along, or at least locate the relevant sections. We're now about knee-deep in The Brothers Karamazov, God help us. Previous works include Chekhov's "Gusev," H.G. Wells's "The Door in the Wall," Melville's Moby Dick, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Gogol's "The Overcoat," Conrad's The Secret Agent, and Thoreau's Walden. One of my purposes is to figure out how older--and perhaps seemingly outdated--ideas and techniques might be brought to bear on contemporary fiction. This is not, by the way, to say I don't like Raymond Carver. I do. Really. But there are other models we might follow, too, or...dare I say, instead...)

So this past week I was reading along through the series of chapters called "Lacerations." And I have to say it was getting a tad monotonous. Our hero, Alyosha, has become the designated errand boy for the bunch of lunatics that comprise his family and the small town in which they live. We therefore get many, many pages of people falling upon him, pouring out their troubles, and begging him to go see so-and-so and explain to them about such-and-such, because they can't bear to do it themselves, you see... The problem is they all express themselves in pretty much the same way, at length, and at the textual equivalent of high volume (lots of exclamation points!). As we know from the latest season of Lost, constant high volume is as boring as no volume at all. We need ups and downs, what they call in music dynamics. And we need people's voices not to all sound the same.

Still, I'm pretty sure I see where Dostoevsky is going. For one thing, he's building toward "The Grand Inquisitor," possibly the greatest set-piece in all of literature, and certainly one of the most intriguing meditations on Christianity that I've ever read. Before that, the pious Alyosha has to be exposed to all manner of suffering, the bulk of it undeserved--because his faith, although he never loses it, is going to be challenged. The question of why God allows innocents to suffer (or maybe makes them suffer, for that has to be the same thing, really) preoccupies Dostoevsky. The three brothers Karamazov, representing sensuality, intellectuality, and spirituality, are instruments through which he works these questions out. The degree to which they are also very human--not allowing themselves to be completely instrumentalized, by either Dostoevsky or God--is one of the most fascinating aspects of BK. They really do rebel against their creator(s).

Which brings me to today's topic, which was going to be the topic even before I attended Richard Powers's talk yesterday. Now it's even more the topic, because I have it on good authority that this is a question writers are going to have to consider seriously as the trans-human age approaches. The question is, where do characters' faults lie? In the stars or in themselves, or in some specific combination of the two? In other words, does fate (or genes) or free will rule, and how do these forces actually function in your created world?

All right, let's make the question specific to BK. In the course of his errand-running, Alyosha happens across a group of schoolboys who are throwing stones at another boy. Taking the underdog's side, as a good Christian, Alyosha approaches the lone boy to attempt to find out why the others are attacking him. But the victim promptly grabs Alyosha's hand and chomps the hell out of his finger. As fortune--i.e. the tangled web of intrigue woven by Dmitri--would have it, Katerina sends him to the household of that very boy's father. Turns out Dmitri humiliated the boy's father, a captain, by dragging him out of a tavern into the street, by his beard, no less. The schoolboys, who witnessed the scene, call the beard a "wisp of tow," and I suppose the Freudian implications need not be elaborated upon here.

Anyway, in talking to the captain, Alyosha figures out why Ilusha bit his hand.

"I think I understand it all now," said Alyosha gently and sorrowfully, still keeping his seat. "So your boy is a good boy, he loves his father, and he attacked me as the brother of your assailant.... Now I understand it," he repeated thoughtfully.

Alyosha understands that Ilusha is not really justified in biting him. But Alyosha is a Karamazov, a fact of which people keep pointedly reminding him. He is as different from Dmitri as can be, but he bears the same name. Therefore he bears some responsibility, if not guilt, for Dmitri's actions.* There is talk throughout the novel of a "Karamazov curse." Alyosha can disavow neither his brother's actions, nor his name. In this world, there's no going elsewhere and reinventing yourself. This does not mean Alyosha is powerless, but he has to play the cards he's been dealt; and his, though unfairly, will always be marked with a "K." Thus all the errand-running.

This notion of having relatively little control over your basic identity has at least two sources here: a firm belief in an all-seeing God, and the kind of rural / small-town setting that keeps extended families close together. Everyone knows who you are; God knows who you are. And so you are that guy, forever enmeshed in that web. Contrast this with (for example) the atomized three-sibling family in The Corrections, another sprawling family novel that I love. The Corrections concerns questions of responsibility as well, especially responsibility toward one's aging parents when one's own life is going down the toilet. But the sins of Chip have nothing to do with the sins of Gary. They and their sister each struggle along in their own narrative silos; while each appears in the others' stories, the bulk of the novel is made up of separate narrative sections in which each sibling is the lead protagonist. If someone told Gary that Chip was an asshole, Gary might say, "Yeah, he is, isn't he?" and that would be a perfectly reasonable response. Gary has his own problems, besides. But Alyosha must constantly circulate from brother to father, from wronged fiancee to humiliated captain, because the fault is not *only* with oneself in BK. It is familial, national, and ultimately global. Humans are all fallen, and all are therefore responsible for each other.

In other words, deciding where the "fault" lies will shape the structure of your fiction, as well as the precise nature of your characters. An interesting experiment for your (or my) next story might be shifting the location of the fault from where we normally would place it. If you tend to think people are the masters of their own destinies, make it so they aren't. If you believe in an overarching fate or power, remove it, or change that power's nature. Just being conscious of where we place the fault, I think, will yield some very interesting results.

*See the Slacktivist for a fascinating discussion of guilt vs. responsibility, which ties right into Dostoevsky.

Against the black box

I went to a fascinating talk by Richard Powers at Stanford today. I will have more to say about this shortly, as the talk--quite fortuitously!--tied into a post I've been wrestling with about The Brothers Karamazov. (Yes, this week's post is overdue, and I know you're burning up with questions--is Alyosha still boring? Who will have an aneurysm first--Dmitri or Fyodor, or, coming up fast on the inside lane, Katerina Ivanovna? And is there a God, or what?)

Anyway, here's just a tidbit from Powers. He's now written two novels focusing on the human genome, The Gold Bug Variations and, most recently, Generosity. (He's also had his own genome mapped, courtesy of GQ Magazine, which is an experience I'll be quite happy not to have--in case anyone's asking.) Anyway, he feels genomics is critical for novelists not only to understand, but to write about. Genomics, he said, is "filled with questions of narrative." In an era when we can begin to manipulate our genetic code, we are no longer talking about playing the hand of cards we have been dealt--by the gods or God (or "the stars"), or by nature. Rather, we can get a whole new hand. It may soon become impossible to consider ourselves as "scripted actors" in any sense. Instead, we can be "co-authors of our own script" in a more profound way than ever before. We, as humans, can be rewritten.

And because novelists understand both writing and character, it's our job to investigate who is doing the rewriting, and how. That's why we need to understand genomics and related technologies, and present them in our work. We should not, Powers said, "black box" the technology. Rather, we need to try to understand what now functions as "the gods"--the forces that make us who we are, which we may soon be able to take hold of and change forever.

There was some resistance in the audience to this notion. Several people brought up the problem of the "lump of research." A novel is bopping along nicely, then suddenly comes to a screeching halt as the author displays, for many pages, his knowledge of some highly technical subject or process. The knowledge was obviously acquired at some cost, and there is a sense that whether it really serves the story or not, the author is going to shove it in there because he doesn't want that effort to go to waste. Powers's novels have been criticized for this, as has Ian McEwan's brain surgery scene in Saturday. (You could also easily point to Moby Dick as an example--though because it's old, perhaps the "lump" seems quaint or exotic instead of merely annoying.) Tobias Wolff brought up the end of Hitchcock's Psycho, wherein we get the complete Freudian explanation for Norman Bates's deeds.

Powers's response was that there's a humanistic aversion to certain types of "research" showing up in fiction. We don't object to some kinds of processes being portrayed in detail, but hard scientific stuff seems to raise hackles. He did make the point, though, that the research has to be shown in terms of a character's passion for the subject. If it's not a character's interest that motivates the inclusion, then the author has written an "essay," not a novel.

Also he pointed out that doing this kind of research is especially hard for humanists. We have a lot more to learn about science than many scientists have to learn about narrative--which is much easier to come across and digest than, say, articles in scientific journals. I'd say proof of this idea can be found in the many perfectly good science fiction novels by practicing scientists. These aren't Shakespeare, nor do they pretend to be; but they do just fine in the storytelling department, and some do much better than fine. Meanwhile humanists still turn up their noses at the hard work of understanding the technologies that are shaping humanity.

On Moon

This Rumpus piece on Moon is a great read. It's a glowing review, followed by an interview with the director, Duncan Jones. I especially like the line, "He's like a cuddly David Bowie." Being a cuddly David Bowie is an achievement in itself.

We saw Moon on DVD about a month ago, and my first reaction was, you know, it's pretty good. Better than average. Plus it has Sam Rockwell, who makes everything he's in at least better than average. I would watch him in anything; I would watch him leaf through wallpaper swatches. For hours.

But I have to say, I didn't really get the movie. There were a lot of obvious quotes of famous science fiction movies--most obviously 2001, but also Silent Running, Alien, and others. These moments seemed intended to be obvious--because the ripoffs were just so blatant, they would otherwise seem almost criminal--but they didn't do much for me at the time. They stuck out, and thus "kicked me out" of the story, as we sometimes say in writing workshop. Also the lunar vehicles were clearly miniatures. In reality they were no less artificial-looking than CG effects, but in a different way. The fact that I saw the miniatures as more obviously fake just tells me that CG is now the custom in science fiction movies, and I've trained myself to look past (somewhat) the excessive smoothness of those images. The currently accepted convention has a better chance of disappearing. This is also true, I'd say, in literature, but that is for another post. Anyway, the miniatures also kicked me out.

In short, I wasn't bowled over. Then we watched the Bonus Features, which included several interviews with Jones. He said pretty much the same things as in the Rumpus interview, the upshot being that Moon is a manifesto of sorts for returning to classic science-fiction filmmaking. Silent Running and the rest represent the kind of films Jones wants to make, which are focused on character rather than effects. The miniature aesthetic is a feature of those types of films. Miniatures and human actors (some, anyway) are both cheaper than massive CG effects. But the cheapness is ultimately a bonus of that approach, rather than its cause. In other words, Jones would rather make films about people anyway, and the cost savings just happens to be a perk. (For his next film, he'll likely get a lot more money, so we'll see if he sticks with this aesthetic. I hope so.)

After watching these interviews, I came to think of Moon as brilliant. Now that I've recognized its "manifesto" aspect, I see it as a (please bear with me) post-post-modern work of art. Like po-mo, it points out its own tropes, but unlike that exhausted style, it then reaffirms those tropes instead of blowing them up. The quotes aren't ironic, but a way for the film to include its own history as a film. You could say the movie has a backstory, just like a character. This makes the movie itself seem alive. And so the film's been lingering with me these past weeks, in the way that only a few truly special works have done.

Yet. I have often complained when authors (on Oprah, say, or in a foreword) tell readers how their books are supposed to be read. A work of art should stand on its own, I've said. Also, I've said, once you publish it, it's ours, or at least no longer yours as such. If you didn't convey what you intended, that's your problem. Let us find our own way through the work. I will leave aside the real possibility that I was not smart enough to get what Jones was doing on my own. (And that is a sad commentary, for I am a fully trained and certified post-modern critic, albeit one who has abandoned the trade for the even more lucrative field of fiction writing.) The question is--does some art need to be accompanied by critical commentary, either by authors or others--in order to function, as it were, properly?

I'd now say the answer is a qualified yes. There's a difference between explaining what you meant (because you didn't get it across) and providing a cultural or historical context for understanding a work. We weren't all born with the ability to get, say, Gravity's Rainbow, and the world would be poorer without it. There is a crucial role for critics and teachers, which is to clear space for diverse forms of art not only to appear, but thrive. So now I say to creators of difficult works*--and their interpreters--get out there and tell us how to read! Don't be shy! We'll complain, but we'll thank you for it later!

Hey, I think I just wrote a manifesto for literary and cultural studies.

*Moon is not so difficult as Gravity's Rainbow. At least I don't think so. In this case the problem was really me and my cinematic naivete. But then again, I feel it bears more consideration...another sign that this movie is great.

Borrowed Fire: The Brothers Karamazov: Multiple characterization

This week in The Brothers Karamazov, we learn an excellent method for depicting not only individual characters, but two or more characters at once, while subtly drawing out aspects of their relationships. I am sure I've talked about this with regard to some other book, but have not done it recently, so here we go again.

The basic idea is to reveal a character indirectly, via what another character thinks about her. Dostoevsky does a spectacular job of it in describing Katerina Ivanovna through Alyosha's eyes. You may recall that Katerina is the fiancee of Dmitri, Alyosha's brother. Dmitri has sent Alyosha (who really is kind of a drip for doing this) to break off the engagement, because he has fallen for Grushenka, about whom more later. Having already staggered through a series of embarrassing scenes involving various family members--all the action has thus far taken place in a single day, a day that would make an ordinary man renounce all contact with his family for all time--Alyosha arrives at Katerina's to deliver the good news.

Alyosha has met her before, and our first view of her, when he encounters her again, is a memory of his first impression:

He was struck by the imperiousness, proud ease, and self-confidence of the haughty girl. And all that was certain, Alyosha felt that he was not exaggerating it. He thought her great glowing black eyes were very fine, especially with her pale, even rather sallow, longish face. But in those eyes and in the lines of her exquisite lips there was something with which his brother might well be passionately in love, but which perhaps could not be loved for long.

Dostoevsky, not particularly known for verbal efficiency, is getting a lot done here. First off, he's setting Alyosha up for a change of heart about Katerina. Alyosha recalls that he "felt he was not exaggerating" his sense of her imperiousness, which shows he is already rethinking that impression. He now senses that, although he is not necessarily going to reverse his opinion entirely, he will develop a deeper understanding of what is behind this appearance of haughtiness. A nice aspect of this technique is that it tells us readers that Katerina is complex--there's more to her than first meets the eye, although we don't yet know what that "more" is. Which reminds us that character need not be revealed all at once; it can unfold over time. We also see here how willing Alyosha is to change his opinions. He's not perfect; he passes harsh judgments on people just like everybody else, but he doesn't like doing that and is open to more information.

I also like how Dostoevsky uses Alyosha's point of view to work in a solid physical description of Katerina--her black eyes, pale complexion, and longish face. Because Alyosha's thoughts are swirling around this description, it becomes less static than the usual laundry list of features. It also reminds us how much a character's appearance is in the eye (or under the control of) the beholder. If we were meant to see Katerina as a villain, we might get a straightforwardly harsh description of her, either via Alyosha (whose opinions we are largely supposed to trust) or the author. It would be easy to make her angular face look witchy. But here the nature of these features is in play, as Alyosha reconsiders them. He discovers, as we do, that Katerina's face is expressive, and that what it expresses is complex and changeable and somewhat mysterious. This seems to me an aspect of physical characterization that many writers don't do enough of--show the character's features in a state of flux, without actually pinning down what sentiment those features express. Again, we come away with the notion that Katerina is complex. She can't be pinned like a gassed butterfly to a board in just a few sentences. We are going to have to learn more about her over time--as is the case with real people. This is why she feels real to us.

What I originally planned to write about in this post is this line: "But in those eyes and in the lines of her exquisite lips there was something with which his brother might well be passionately in love, but which perhaps could not be loved for long." Here Dostoevsky pulls off a threefer. He's told us quite a bit about Katerina, Alyosha, and Dmitri, plus how they all relate to one another.

• We see more of Katerina's face, particularly her "exquisite" lips, and some hint of a puzzling expression thereon.
• We see that Alyosha finds her beautiful and is even drawn to her, but then promptly inserts Dmitri into the picture in order to push himself away. Alyosha values his chastity and is highly nervous around women. He's also loyal to his brother, even as his brother is trying to ditch this woman.
  
• We are reminded (because we already know this) that Dmitri's passions are changeable. We gather that there is something particular about Katerina that might ignite his passion but will not hold it forever. What is that something? We don't exactly know as of yet.
• We see Alyosha's understanding and forgiveness of his brother. He is able to see why Dmitri might want to leave her.
  
• The ambiguity of the passive voice--"could not be loved for long"--is also intriguing. (I'm too lazy to look this up in the Russian, so let's just assume this is what Dostoevsky intended.) The passive construction puts the onus for losing Dmitri's love somewhere between Katerina and Dmitri. It's possible that no one could love Katerina for long, or it's possible that it's just Dmitri who can't. The passive suggests the former, but at the same time, it does not make Katerina fully responsible for the problem. She doesn't make people stop loving her; she just possesses some quality that cannot be loved for long. That makes her tragic, not a mere bitch.

Apparently I could go on and on about this short passage. However, the take-away for us writers is to try revealing one character through another's eyes. And when doing this, I'd suggest showing the point-of-view character being somewhat foiled in his attempt to "know" the character he's considering. As long as the POV character's opinions are in flux, the reader remains curious about both characters, and senses them as complex, changeable, and more fully human.

Again with the likability issue

Slate's Claire Dederer gives us the flip side to Monday's post on whether--and why--fictional characters should be likable. Reviewing Amy Bloom's Where the God of Love Hangs Out, Dederer delights in Bloom's ability to make readers love her characters. She goes so far as to make her review a primer on creating lovable characters, though she acknowledges she's not really doing justice to Bloom's gift.

First caveat: once again, I have not read the book being reviewed, only the review itself. I presume someone else has taken care of the blog post suggesting that those of us who read reviews instead of the actual books are foot soldiers in the army of the damned.

Second caveat: I am going to indulge an urge to speak somewhat sarcastically about this review. This sarcasm is simply not deserved. It's just that have issues about "liking" or "loving" characters, which probably speak to my own troubled psyche as much as anything. I taught an entire class on the reasons for, and advisability of, responding to literary characters as human beings. I just think it's weird. And I think we ought question the distinction, at least, and I'm interested in asking such questions through my own fiction. Yet, as a writer, I also want people to love my fiction, which, from all evidence, means making them care deeply about my characters. What does it take to do this? How much of my grumpy soul must I chop off and sell, in order to get with a program that's obvious to everyone else? These are burning questions for me. So anything that smacks of a "formula" for characterization just sets me off...even if that formula is helpful and correct, which I rather suspect Dederer's may be.

Anyway, here is my willfully nuance-free take on the formula for creating lovable characters:
1. Start with perfect human.
2. Add significant but understandable flaw (gout, mild alcoholism).
3. Refrain from judging character for this flaw, both via authorial voice and other characters. (Bonus if other characters are specifically attracted to the flaw.)

The more I think about this, the more I believe it *will* work. Consider: is this not the way most of us would strive to see the world? When we're being our best selves, don't we see (or want to see) people as basically good, with understandable flaws for which we do not pass judgment? So maybe reading Bloom gives us pleasure because she lets us be those best selves--people who give others the benefit of the doubt, who are intrigued or amused, rather than enraged, by people's faults. Books like hers give us practice in open-mindedness and forgiveness, and remind us of the pleasure such a worldview can bring. It's better to be this way. Gilead is Exhibit One for this theory.

So why do I fear the theory? Why won't I submit to its obvious truth and get on with it? I'll feel better. Writing will come easier. In fact, even as I grouse, I'm sifting through my novel for opportunities to make my characters more positive, their flaws less drastic.

Well, I'm worried about blandness, for one thing. I'm worried that all these lovable characters are all more or less alike, our reactions to them more or less the same (even if that reaction is the commendable one of loving). Moreover the fictional worlds they inhabit will have to be similar, in order to accommodate these particular kinds of creatures--the worlds are realistic, mostly comfortable, relatively safe. Again, maybe that's what reading fiction is all about. Surely some fiction can and should be about this. But all of it? Would something be lost if Fun with Problems vanished from the shelves?

I suppose one could push the boundaries of the formula to see if more interesting results ensue. Make the character ridiculously perfect, her flaw just on the border (or on the other side) of acceptable. Find some clever ways of passing judgment without forcing them upon the reader--because readers really don't like being told how they're supposed to think about characters.