Mike Duron's Blog - Posts Tagged "unkown"
Some Notes on Saramago's :: The Tale of the Unknown Island
Wonderful technique here where the characters' speech isn't corralled within quotation marks. It remains perfectly clear -- and has several advantages over the conventional method (to use James Wood's favorite term toward the end of "How Fiction Works").
What are the advantages of getting rid of the quotes? What are the disadvantages? Why do it at all? Why the impossibly-long sentence used to convey this conversation?
I think the important thing to focus on is the fairy-tale setting Saramago is using to tell this tale. The strangeness starts on page one, where the king worries that the rapping on the door requesting favors from the king, gone unanswered for too long, will disturb the neighbors. What sort of king has neighbors and doesn't live in a castle? Of course! A king of a small number of people who live on an island. The use of the fairy-tale language immediately made me think of an old-fashioned European king who would, of course, reside in a castle, but the title of the story makes it obvious these are people on an "Unknown Island." Or are they?
At the very beginning of the story, we can't know for sure. Although the title gives us a clue, we don't know yet if maybe this actually is a European kingdom and perhaps the suppliant will discover an island after he gets his boat from his king. Either way, the king having neighbors whose opinion he has to worry about is minor compared to the conversation quoted above. That's actually pretty brilliant, and I think it's very clever because it reflects an almost stream of consciousness technique that hijacks the reader's phonological loop (as described in Baddeley's model of working memory) in a very subtle way.
The reason the quotation marks are missing and the speech isn't broken up into paragraphs is because the words on the paper very smoothly penetrate and take over the articulatory loop so they become the thoughts of the reader. This is why the speakers in the conversation aren't confused by the average reader. That reader, though many other characters have already been mentioned, knows exactly who is taking part in the conversation and to whom each line should belong.
This writing is -- even in translation -- white hot with a mastery of written language. Lots to learn here....
"...When the cleaning woman asked him through the crack in the door, What do you want, the man, unlike all the others, did not ask for a title, a medal, or simply money, he said, I want to talk to the king, You know perfectly well that the king can't come, he's busy at the door for favors, replied the woman, Well, go and tell him that I'm not leaving here until he comes, in person, to find out what I want, said the man, and he lay down across the threshold, covering himself with a blanket against the cold. Anyone going in or out would have to step over him first...."
What are the advantages of getting rid of the quotes? What are the disadvantages? Why do it at all? Why the impossibly-long sentence used to convey this conversation?
I think the important thing to focus on is the fairy-tale setting Saramago is using to tell this tale. The strangeness starts on page one, where the king worries that the rapping on the door requesting favors from the king, gone unanswered for too long, will disturb the neighbors. What sort of king has neighbors and doesn't live in a castle? Of course! A king of a small number of people who live on an island. The use of the fairy-tale language immediately made me think of an old-fashioned European king who would, of course, reside in a castle, but the title of the story makes it obvious these are people on an "Unknown Island." Or are they?
At the very beginning of the story, we can't know for sure. Although the title gives us a clue, we don't know yet if maybe this actually is a European kingdom and perhaps the suppliant will discover an island after he gets his boat from his king. Either way, the king having neighbors whose opinion he has to worry about is minor compared to the conversation quoted above. That's actually pretty brilliant, and I think it's very clever because it reflects an almost stream of consciousness technique that hijacks the reader's phonological loop (as described in Baddeley's model of working memory) in a very subtle way.
The reason the quotation marks are missing and the speech isn't broken up into paragraphs is because the words on the paper very smoothly penetrate and take over the articulatory loop so they become the thoughts of the reader. This is why the speakers in the conversation aren't confused by the average reader. That reader, though many other characters have already been mentioned, knows exactly who is taking part in the conversation and to whom each line should belong.
This writing is -- even in translation -- white hot with a mastery of written language. Lots to learn here....
