Man Martin's Blog, page 223
June 4, 2011
The Tendency to Repeat Yourself
Everyone else had left, and Eustice was alone.
If you're a writer, do you ever have sentences like the one above? Do you ever conclude a paragraph restating what the rest of the paragraph has already established? Why do we do that?
There are at least three possible answers. The first is that we tend to build paragraphs like ladders, using the previous sentence as a step to the next. If we're not careful, this results in a lot of overlap. This can be fixed by close editing.
A second reason, really chilling, is we just don't have anything new to say. Once Eustice is alone, we don't know what to do with him, so we just keep emphasizing the one thing we can say about him. This is a good time to get another cup of coffee or go for a walk while you meditate on your next step.
A more serious problem could be that we ourselves weren't convinced the first time we wrote something. Not that Eustice's being alone is improbable but saying that, and only that, seems unsubstantial, so we say it again.
Everyone had left, and Eustice was alone. By himself. On his lonesome. Solo. No one in the place but him. Ay-el-oh-en-ee. Alone.
Have you ever read anything like that? Hell, I've written stuff like that.
The desire to repeat what you've already said is a sure sign you need to find a better way to say it in the first place, and the way to say it better is good old description. Imagine Eustice's environs as vividly as you can and isolate the details that detail his isolation. If you do it really well, you can convey his solitude without ever using the word "alone" at all.
Eustice idly ran his finger around the rim of his wineglass and thought about what he'd just said. He'd been right, hadn't he? Maybe he could have found a way to be more polite, but better to come out with it and get it over with. The people at the next table were pointedly not looking at him. This was a nice restaurant and customers respected one another's privacy, which is one of the reasons Eustice chose it. The half-finished glass of chardonay in front of him wore the mark of Margot's lipstick, but when he tried to catch the lingering trace of her perfume, it was already gone.
I think that works better. I had to cheat a little bit, adding some people at the next table, but it's a lot harder being alone if you don't have someone around to see you do it. Of course this way is a lot more work than just saying Eustice is alone and repeating it until you feel satisfied, but no one ever said writing wouldn't be work. Because it is. Work. Labor. Strain. Double-you - Oh - Ar - Kay. Work.
If you're a writer, do you ever have sentences like the one above? Do you ever conclude a paragraph restating what the rest of the paragraph has already established? Why do we do that?
There are at least three possible answers. The first is that we tend to build paragraphs like ladders, using the previous sentence as a step to the next. If we're not careful, this results in a lot of overlap. This can be fixed by close editing.
A second reason, really chilling, is we just don't have anything new to say. Once Eustice is alone, we don't know what to do with him, so we just keep emphasizing the one thing we can say about him. This is a good time to get another cup of coffee or go for a walk while you meditate on your next step.
A more serious problem could be that we ourselves weren't convinced the first time we wrote something. Not that Eustice's being alone is improbable but saying that, and only that, seems unsubstantial, so we say it again.
Everyone had left, and Eustice was alone. By himself. On his lonesome. Solo. No one in the place but him. Ay-el-oh-en-ee. Alone.
Have you ever read anything like that? Hell, I've written stuff like that.
The desire to repeat what you've already said is a sure sign you need to find a better way to say it in the first place, and the way to say it better is good old description. Imagine Eustice's environs as vividly as you can and isolate the details that detail his isolation. If you do it really well, you can convey his solitude without ever using the word "alone" at all.
Eustice idly ran his finger around the rim of his wineglass and thought about what he'd just said. He'd been right, hadn't he? Maybe he could have found a way to be more polite, but better to come out with it and get it over with. The people at the next table were pointedly not looking at him. This was a nice restaurant and customers respected one another's privacy, which is one of the reasons Eustice chose it. The half-finished glass of chardonay in front of him wore the mark of Margot's lipstick, but when he tried to catch the lingering trace of her perfume, it was already gone.
I think that works better. I had to cheat a little bit, adding some people at the next table, but it's a lot harder being alone if you don't have someone around to see you do it. Of course this way is a lot more work than just saying Eustice is alone and repeating it until you feel satisfied, but no one ever said writing wouldn't be work. Because it is. Work. Labor. Strain. Double-you - Oh - Ar - Kay. Work.
June 3, 2011
Courage to Admit You're a Writer
Nancy is currently reading Sonny Brewer's Don't Quit Your Day Job, a collection of essays by writers telling what they did before becoming writers. One of them says she was so secretive about her writing that when she called her best friend and said she'd sold a book, her friend didn't know what she was talking about. "What, at a yard sale?"
It takes a lot of courage telling people you're a writer, even more courage than it takes to write in the first place. (Come to think of it, writing doesn't really take courage, just blind persistence. Ants aren't especially courageous to make anthills nor beavers to make beaver dams. We might marvel at the completed project, but it's less on the beauty of their engineering and more on the order of how anything so patently stupid could manage to create anything at all. It's the same with writers.)
Standing before someone and announcing "I'm a writer" means bracing for the impact of their mingled disbelief, scorn, pity, and patronizing pretense of interest. Actually, this is usually not the reaction you get, but fear is the anticipation of unpleasantness, not the unpleasantness itself.
I used to be coy when it came to saying I was a writer. "What are you studying at Georgia State?" they'd ask when learning I was in pursuit of a PhD. "Creative writing," I'd say. And I'd shrink inside imagining their thoughts, "Oh, I thought he was getting a real degree." Or I'd admit to being a writer only as a footnote. "I teach high school English," I'd say, and allow a three-quarter beat pause, "and I write."
Even after my first novel came out, I was hesitant to self-identify as a writer. Obviously I had written, but did that make me a writer? I'd be reticent around strangers and let someone else tell them about my book.
Why the hestitation? Maybe it's because Writing is such a glorious and godlike avocation it sounds insufferably egotistical to say you do it. "I write for a living," as Barton Fink said. "I create. I live the life of the Mind."
Well, my second novel comes out in three days. I'm at work on another. I have tour dates lined up and get invited to book festivals and book clubs. It's time to come out of the closet.
I am a writer.
It takes a lot of courage telling people you're a writer, even more courage than it takes to write in the first place. (Come to think of it, writing doesn't really take courage, just blind persistence. Ants aren't especially courageous to make anthills nor beavers to make beaver dams. We might marvel at the completed project, but it's less on the beauty of their engineering and more on the order of how anything so patently stupid could manage to create anything at all. It's the same with writers.)
Standing before someone and announcing "I'm a writer" means bracing for the impact of their mingled disbelief, scorn, pity, and patronizing pretense of interest. Actually, this is usually not the reaction you get, but fear is the anticipation of unpleasantness, not the unpleasantness itself.
I used to be coy when it came to saying I was a writer. "What are you studying at Georgia State?" they'd ask when learning I was in pursuit of a PhD. "Creative writing," I'd say. And I'd shrink inside imagining their thoughts, "Oh, I thought he was getting a real degree." Or I'd admit to being a writer only as a footnote. "I teach high school English," I'd say, and allow a three-quarter beat pause, "and I write."
Even after my first novel came out, I was hesitant to self-identify as a writer. Obviously I had written, but did that make me a writer? I'd be reticent around strangers and let someone else tell them about my book.
Why the hestitation? Maybe it's because Writing is such a glorious and godlike avocation it sounds insufferably egotistical to say you do it. "I write for a living," as Barton Fink said. "I create. I live the life of the Mind."
Well, my second novel comes out in three days. I'm at work on another. I have tour dates lined up and get invited to book festivals and book clubs. It's time to come out of the closet.
I am a writer.
June 2, 2011
More Thoughts on What HAS to Happen vs What WOULD Happen
I was pleased to read my friend David Gardner's comment on my earlier post on the same topic, understanding the distinction between What WOULD Happen and verisimilitude (true-seeming). In ENDLESS CORVETTE (still only $14.95 and a dandy gift for all occaisions) I bend the truth a number of times, starting with the Corvette of the title. But being a tall-tale, what WOULD happen is not at all congruous with normal laws of logic. It does not seem unconvincing that birds, mistaking Paul Bunyan's popcorn crumbs for snow, should all fly south for the winter, nor that when a river is frozen solid, chopped into sections, and each section reversed in the river bed, the river would flow in the opposite direction when thawed. These things are perfectly consistent with the bent logic of the tall-tale world.
Similarly, it doesn't distress us to see the Pirates of Penzance marry the daughters of the Major General - a "bevy" of young women all aged between eighteen and twenty. That the Major General should have ten or more daughters all less than three years apart is exactly what we would expect in a world where Pirates serve apprenticeships and cannot be released from their indentures if they happened to be born on the 29th of February. This is the world of the farce, and like the tall-tale, it operates under a different logical dispensation than our own world. PARADISE DOGS (on sale June 7, and a $24.95, a dandy gift for all occaisions) is also a farce, and has a series of conveniently happy endings as silly in their way as Gilbert and Sullivan.
There are also times when a real master pulls what I can only describe as daylight robbery. So flagrantly abuses the logic of his own story, we may scarcely be aware what has been pulled off, like a magician yanking the tablecloth out from under the tablesettings of crystal and china. Homer does this a couple of times, as does Wild Bill Shakespeare (if you don't believe me, go back and read Hamlet. That play has more howlers in it than you can shake a stick at.) When Nabokov needs Lolita's mother out of the picture, he has her killed by a car as she runs across the street, and he doesn't even blush. In Hitchcock's North by Northwest - admittedly both these examples operate under a twisted logic of their own - it just so happens the arch villain played by James Mason (who also played Humbert Humbert in the movie) has his gorgeous home atop Mount Rushmore, so that Carey Grant and Kim Novak can have a deliciously improbable chase scene across the face of Abraham Lincoln. Hitch was never one to let mere logic stand in the way of a good story - one of his movies ends with a chase scene into torch of the Statue of Liberty.
Flannery O'Connor observed that a writer can do anything he can get away with, but that "nobody ever got away with much." If the need arises to get away with something, my advice is, don't be shy about it. Do it in a big way. It takes infinite finesse to pick someone's pocket, but if you pull up with a tractor trailer and haul away their house, they're likely to just stand there dumbfounded. Don't settle for the small coincidence, send 'em on a chase scene across Mount Rushmore.
check this space June 7 for THE RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST!
Similarly, it doesn't distress us to see the Pirates of Penzance marry the daughters of the Major General - a "bevy" of young women all aged between eighteen and twenty. That the Major General should have ten or more daughters all less than three years apart is exactly what we would expect in a world where Pirates serve apprenticeships and cannot be released from their indentures if they happened to be born on the 29th of February. This is the world of the farce, and like the tall-tale, it operates under a different logical dispensation than our own world. PARADISE DOGS (on sale June 7, and a $24.95, a dandy gift for all occaisions) is also a farce, and has a series of conveniently happy endings as silly in their way as Gilbert and Sullivan.
There are also times when a real master pulls what I can only describe as daylight robbery. So flagrantly abuses the logic of his own story, we may scarcely be aware what has been pulled off, like a magician yanking the tablecloth out from under the tablesettings of crystal and china. Homer does this a couple of times, as does Wild Bill Shakespeare (if you don't believe me, go back and read Hamlet. That play has more howlers in it than you can shake a stick at.) When Nabokov needs Lolita's mother out of the picture, he has her killed by a car as she runs across the street, and he doesn't even blush. In Hitchcock's North by Northwest - admittedly both these examples operate under a twisted logic of their own - it just so happens the arch villain played by James Mason (who also played Humbert Humbert in the movie) has his gorgeous home atop Mount Rushmore, so that Carey Grant and Kim Novak can have a deliciously improbable chase scene across the face of Abraham Lincoln. Hitch was never one to let mere logic stand in the way of a good story - one of his movies ends with a chase scene into torch of the Statue of Liberty.
Flannery O'Connor observed that a writer can do anything he can get away with, but that "nobody ever got away with much." If the need arises to get away with something, my advice is, don't be shy about it. Do it in a big way. It takes infinite finesse to pick someone's pocket, but if you pull up with a tractor trailer and haul away their house, they're likely to just stand there dumbfounded. Don't settle for the small coincidence, send 'em on a chase scene across Mount Rushmore.
check this space June 7 for THE RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST!
June 1, 2011
Atlanta InTown
Thanks to Atlanta InTown and Collin Kelley for a great interview about
Paradise Dogs
. Go to
http://www.atlantaintownpaper.com/2011/06/summer-reads-by-southern-authors/ to check it out.
Just 6 more days until the release of Paradise Dogs! Visit http://manmartin.net/ for details on the soon-to-be famous Pink Alligator Tour!
And... check this space June 7 for THE RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST!
http://www.atlantaintownpaper.com/2011/06/summer-reads-by-southern-authors/ to check it out.
Just 6 more days until the release of Paradise Dogs! Visit http://manmartin.net/ for details on the soon-to-be famous Pink Alligator Tour!
And... check this space June 7 for THE RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST!
May 31, 2011
Dogging Johnny Cash
Nancy and I were on a long car trip to the Gulf this weekend and listened to - among other things - a Johnny Cash CD. Be it said, I love Johnny Cash, but there's one of his songs I just hate.
Ring of Fire has got to be the dumbest song ever written. My friend Mike Dockins rages against a song that promises to take a lover to the Milky Way "and even Mars." "You can't say 'even Mars' like that's a topper! Mars is closer than the Milky Way. It's like saying we're going to Europe and even Alabama."
Apart from the incongruous and strangely appropriate Mexicali trumpets, "Ring of Fire" is the song that gets my goat. Listening in the car I figured out why. At least part of it has to do with figures of speech. I wrote down a stanza and identified the figure of speech used after each line.
The taste of love is sweet (Synesthesia - love doesn't have a flavor)
When hearts like ours meet (Metonymy - hearts don't really meet, lovers do)
I fell for you like a child (Dead metaphor - he didn't really "fall" and simile - he compares himself to a child.)
Oh, but the fire went wild. (Metaphor - comparing love to a fire)
Five figures of speech in four lines! The lines don't quite scan,but the real problem is they don't make sense. Are these hearts bumping into each other or eating something? Is this kid falling or playing with matches? Maybe he's falling while playing with matches.
Now so you don't think I'm picking on Johnny, I'll give some lines from a song I adore, Folsom Prison.
I bet there's rich folks eating in a fancy dining car
They're probably drinking coffee and smoking big cigars.
I know I had it coming, I know I can't be free,
But that train keeps a'moving, and that's what tortures me.
What I love about it, is the prisoner's vision of the good life. They're not drinking champagne or even whiskey; it's coffee, the sort of thing you might really miss behind bars. And locked in his cell, he imagines others also inside a room, a dining car - the intervening fields between the prison and the railroad and the empty miles beyond are too alien to his experience to touch his imagination. It's the thought being in a moving car that tortures him.
Anyway, Johnny, you know I'm still a fan even if I don't like "Ring of Fire." And I admit those trumpets are pretty cool. "Buh-ba-duh-ba-da-duh-duh-duh, Buh-ba-duh-ba-da-duh-duh-duh."
Ring of Fire has got to be the dumbest song ever written. My friend Mike Dockins rages against a song that promises to take a lover to the Milky Way "and even Mars." "You can't say 'even Mars' like that's a topper! Mars is closer than the Milky Way. It's like saying we're going to Europe and even Alabama."
Apart from the incongruous and strangely appropriate Mexicali trumpets, "Ring of Fire" is the song that gets my goat. Listening in the car I figured out why. At least part of it has to do with figures of speech. I wrote down a stanza and identified the figure of speech used after each line.
The taste of love is sweet (Synesthesia - love doesn't have a flavor)
When hearts like ours meet (Metonymy - hearts don't really meet, lovers do)
I fell for you like a child (Dead metaphor - he didn't really "fall" and simile - he compares himself to a child.)
Oh, but the fire went wild. (Metaphor - comparing love to a fire)
Five figures of speech in four lines! The lines don't quite scan,but the real problem is they don't make sense. Are these hearts bumping into each other or eating something? Is this kid falling or playing with matches? Maybe he's falling while playing with matches.
Now so you don't think I'm picking on Johnny, I'll give some lines from a song I adore, Folsom Prison.
I bet there's rich folks eating in a fancy dining car
They're probably drinking coffee and smoking big cigars.
I know I had it coming, I know I can't be free,
But that train keeps a'moving, and that's what tortures me.
What I love about it, is the prisoner's vision of the good life. They're not drinking champagne or even whiskey; it's coffee, the sort of thing you might really miss behind bars. And locked in his cell, he imagines others also inside a room, a dining car - the intervening fields between the prison and the railroad and the empty miles beyond are too alien to his experience to touch his imagination. It's the thought being in a moving car that tortures him.
Anyway, Johnny, you know I'm still a fan even if I don't like "Ring of Fire." And I admit those trumpets are pretty cool. "Buh-ba-duh-ba-da-duh-duh-duh, Buh-ba-duh-ba-da-duh-duh-duh."
May 30, 2011
Great Review in Atlanta Magazine
Teresa Weaver, who is as discerning as she is beautiful, wrote a wonderful review of Paradise Dogs in the June issue of Atlanta Magazine. She praises its "beautifully drawn" characters, its "shimmering detail," and concludes by saying "Fine writing and slapstick comedy can be a prickly combination, but Martin makes it look effortless."
How true. How true.
The June issue of Atlanta Magazine is on sale now, and Paradise Dogs is available for advance order from Amazon.
How true. How true.
The June issue of Atlanta Magazine is on sale now, and Paradise Dogs is available for advance order from Amazon.
May 29, 2011
What Would Happen and What Has to Happen
Nancy's reading a book, which shall go untitled here, except that it revolves around transporting an entire hospital's worth of mentally ill patients - some criminally insane - by train from California to Oklahoma during the second world war.
Nancy finds this improbable.
Of course, presumably if the writer didn't find a way to make this happen, there wouldn't be a story. It's rather like Snakes on a Plane. It's a great title, and once you've got snakes on a plane something's bound to happen; the only problem is finding a reason to get them there in the first place.
This is the age-old writer's problem of What Would Happen versus what has to happen. What Would Happen is the events as they would logically unfold on their own given the circumstances. What Has to Happen is what the writer needs to contrive to make the story go. If we graph this on a chart, using WWH on the X axis, and WHH on the Y axis, the... Oh, the hell with it. I'm no good at math anyway.
As a general rule, the greater the disparity between What Would Happen and What Has to Happen, the less satisfactory the story. This isn't the same as verisimilitude. The reality of Alice in Wonderland or Gravity's Rainbow is a funhouse mirror, but it's still a reality. There are certain rules that pertain, although we may only discover them as we go along, but at the end of the book, the reader is gratified that the writer has followed his own rules scrupulously, whatever those rules are.
In fact, I would venture that this is really all there is to writing a novel. If at the end of the book, What Would Happen and What Has to Happen coincide precisely - whether it's Humbert seeing Lolita one last time or Peter Rabbit being put to bed with chamomile tea - you have a great story on your hands. If not... Well, it may just be a trainload of crazy people.
Nancy finds this improbable.
Of course, presumably if the writer didn't find a way to make this happen, there wouldn't be a story. It's rather like Snakes on a Plane. It's a great title, and once you've got snakes on a plane something's bound to happen; the only problem is finding a reason to get them there in the first place.
This is the age-old writer's problem of What Would Happen versus what has to happen. What Would Happen is the events as they would logically unfold on their own given the circumstances. What Has to Happen is what the writer needs to contrive to make the story go. If we graph this on a chart, using WWH on the X axis, and WHH on the Y axis, the... Oh, the hell with it. I'm no good at math anyway.
As a general rule, the greater the disparity between What Would Happen and What Has to Happen, the less satisfactory the story. This isn't the same as verisimilitude. The reality of Alice in Wonderland or Gravity's Rainbow is a funhouse mirror, but it's still a reality. There are certain rules that pertain, although we may only discover them as we go along, but at the end of the book, the reader is gratified that the writer has followed his own rules scrupulously, whatever those rules are.
In fact, I would venture that this is really all there is to writing a novel. If at the end of the book, What Would Happen and What Has to Happen coincide precisely - whether it's Humbert seeing Lolita one last time or Peter Rabbit being put to bed with chamomile tea - you have a great story on your hands. If not... Well, it may just be a trainload of crazy people.
May 28, 2011
Wellerisms and Swifties
A couple of figures of speech usually - probably justly - overlooked are Wellerisms and Swifties.
Wellerisms are named after a Dickens character who liked saying things like, "'Out with it!' As the father told his son who'd swallowed a farthing." I believe Lincoln used a lot of Wellerisms, too, although they wouldn't have been called that at the time. I have an impression he was known to make mildly off-color remarks with the tagline, "As the widow said to the preacher."
Another is the redoubtable Tom Swifty. The traditional one is an adverbial pun - "Is that bear still outside?" he asked intently. - but I have a fondness for variations. "I have multiple personalities," Tom said, being frank. or "Thar she blows!" Tom wailed.
It would be a fun, but stupid, idea to have a single character in a book who spoke either in Tom Swifties or Wellerisms. Maybe a combination of the two?
"'It's over my head,' as Cleopatra remarked falling out of the boat, deep in denial," or "You'll just have to stick it out a little longer,' as the urologist predicted peevishly." "'I have nothing to hide,' as the eunuch barely disclosed at the nudist colony."
Never mind.
As I said there's a reason these figures of speech are overlooked.
Wellerisms are named after a Dickens character who liked saying things like, "'Out with it!' As the father told his son who'd swallowed a farthing." I believe Lincoln used a lot of Wellerisms, too, although they wouldn't have been called that at the time. I have an impression he was known to make mildly off-color remarks with the tagline, "As the widow said to the preacher."
Another is the redoubtable Tom Swifty. The traditional one is an adverbial pun - "Is that bear still outside?" he asked intently. - but I have a fondness for variations. "I have multiple personalities," Tom said, being frank. or "Thar she blows!" Tom wailed.
It would be a fun, but stupid, idea to have a single character in a book who spoke either in Tom Swifties or Wellerisms. Maybe a combination of the two?
"'It's over my head,' as Cleopatra remarked falling out of the boat, deep in denial," or "You'll just have to stick it out a little longer,' as the urologist predicted peevishly." "'I have nothing to hide,' as the eunuch barely disclosed at the nudist colony."
Never mind.
As I said there's a reason these figures of speech are overlooked.
May 27, 2011
Towards More Civil Discourse
What I have to propose might seem insensitive, so I don't want it to be misconstrued; I don't want people thinking I'm making light of the holocaust or facetiously indulging in bigotry. But. Hitler, we know, is a convenient touchstone for human evil. If you ever want to know what "bad" is, just compare it to Nazism. In an old Peanuts cartoon, Lucy defends Beethoven with, "Well, he never supported Hitler!" the only complimentary thing she can think of to say.
In our current polarized society, the right and left view each other across a no-man's land laced with barbed wire and pitted with mortar shells; there's a strong and all-but-irresistable tendency to indulge in hyperbole and ad hominem. To my shame, I have done it myself. Sometimes I felt provoked when I saw ideological oponents doing likewise. But they were only oponents because I believed them to be. They were really just other Americans. The problem is, while the crude reductionism of other people's remarks is obvious to us, our own is invisible.
So what I propose is this. Anytime you feel like saying something snarky or even just critical about the folks on the other side of the minefield and barbed wire, imagine saying the same thing, replacing the relevant words with "Good Aryan German" and "Jew." If you're referring to institutions rather than individuals, use "Third Reich" and "International Jewish Conspiracy."
Here's how it would work in practice. Years, and years, and years ago, in Piedmont Park I saw someone wearing a tee-shirt reading, "Die Yuppie Scum." No doubt he thought it was clever. No doubt he smugly picked it off the rack and paid the equally smug cashier feeling smug loathing for Yuppies for - among other things - their narrowness and intolerance. (???) But would he have bought the same shirt if it said, "Die Jewish Scum"? I doubt it.
Think of all the people who tried raising doubts about Obama's birth certificate. Would they have made the same silly attacks if they'd imagined how it would sound claiming he wasn't really a Good Aryan German but a Jew?
Or the phrase "War on the Middle Class." Both sides employ that one. If you've ever said the other party was waging War on the Middle Class, imagine saying it was the International Jewish Conspiracy doing it instead of the Republicans or Democrats or whatever and see how vile it sounds.
The beauty of this system is that if you say something reasonable, it doesn't sound despicable, just silly. "The International Jewish Conspiracy is well-intentioned, but they aren't considering whether their healthcare plan is economically sustainable." Or, "The International Jewish Conspiracy raises important points about the cost of healthcare, but they need to see that the moral obligation to care for our citizens comes first."
See how it works? Of course, it's not as much fun going around being reasonable all the time as it is throwing ideological bombshells, but I'm sure it was lots of laughs being a brownshirt, too.
Maybe it's not too late to learn how to play nice.
In our current polarized society, the right and left view each other across a no-man's land laced with barbed wire and pitted with mortar shells; there's a strong and all-but-irresistable tendency to indulge in hyperbole and ad hominem. To my shame, I have done it myself. Sometimes I felt provoked when I saw ideological oponents doing likewise. But they were only oponents because I believed them to be. They were really just other Americans. The problem is, while the crude reductionism of other people's remarks is obvious to us, our own is invisible.
So what I propose is this. Anytime you feel like saying something snarky or even just critical about the folks on the other side of the minefield and barbed wire, imagine saying the same thing, replacing the relevant words with "Good Aryan German" and "Jew." If you're referring to institutions rather than individuals, use "Third Reich" and "International Jewish Conspiracy."
Here's how it would work in practice. Years, and years, and years ago, in Piedmont Park I saw someone wearing a tee-shirt reading, "Die Yuppie Scum." No doubt he thought it was clever. No doubt he smugly picked it off the rack and paid the equally smug cashier feeling smug loathing for Yuppies for - among other things - their narrowness and intolerance. (???) But would he have bought the same shirt if it said, "Die Jewish Scum"? I doubt it.
Think of all the people who tried raising doubts about Obama's birth certificate. Would they have made the same silly attacks if they'd imagined how it would sound claiming he wasn't really a Good Aryan German but a Jew?
Or the phrase "War on the Middle Class." Both sides employ that one. If you've ever said the other party was waging War on the Middle Class, imagine saying it was the International Jewish Conspiracy doing it instead of the Republicans or Democrats or whatever and see how vile it sounds.
The beauty of this system is that if you say something reasonable, it doesn't sound despicable, just silly. "The International Jewish Conspiracy is well-intentioned, but they aren't considering whether their healthcare plan is economically sustainable." Or, "The International Jewish Conspiracy raises important points about the cost of healthcare, but they need to see that the moral obligation to care for our citizens comes first."
See how it works? Of course, it's not as much fun going around being reasonable all the time as it is throwing ideological bombshells, but I'm sure it was lots of laughs being a brownshirt, too.
Maybe it's not too late to learn how to play nice.
May 26, 2011
Writerly Talk/Real Talk
I've never read the DaVinci Code, but I listened to as much as I could stand on a CD once. (I know some people love that book, but it just seemed silly to me. I skipped to the last CD and when I got to the surprise ending, I howled with laughter. Talk about marrying the boss's daughter!)
The Novel of Ideas is especially prone to this kind of goofy talk because the author is concerned with getting across an ideology . The characters are tokens representing opposing viewpoints, each of which must be aired fully and articulately. The DaVinci Code, as I recall, was a series of scenes in which our heroes run to some expert or other, who fills them in on a lot of background and exposition, delivered as a page of unbroken talky-talk before hustling them off to the next expert down the line so they can hear another page-full of exposition from him.
The rest of us who aren't proving a point but merely trying to tell a story do a little better, but not much. My problem is when I write dialogue, I'm trying to get somewhere. Something must be revealed, an agreement struck, friendship or enemyship consolodated, something. I can't allow conversation to follow the meandering course of real life. (Actually, "meandering" implies too much of a destination. "Puddling" is more like it.)
To start with, so much of our daily talk has no meaning; this is called phatic discourse. "How are you?" "Fine." What is really means is "I acknowledge your presence as a human being." Being mildly LD, I sometimes screw up this simple exchange. I muddle "How're you," and "How's it going?" and bust out with, "How're you going?" This doesn't even make sense; nevertheless, my interlocutor responds, "Fine." He wasn't even listening.
It's tempting to say that in writerly conversations, people talk about something, but that's not the case. They talk to it. In real life we talk about things, circling them, crossing and recrossing our steps, returning to them, and leaving them again, but not for long. In writerly conversation, people speak in full sentences and come to complete stops. Once a point is established, it is not repeated. In real conversations, repetition is the norm, and rare is the sentence that gets finished. Instead, one speaker trails off, inviting the other speaker to jump in. And if you can't think of something dandy of your own to say, it's perfectly kosher to repeat something from the other guy. But I'm repeating myself.
Here, as well as I can reconstruct it, is part of a delightful conversation Nancy and I had about The Godfather.
"...Diane Keaton isn't what... It's a life he imagines for himself... the waspy white..."
"Yes, yes, I know what you mean, a better wife for him would be an Italian like his mother..."
"Like that Italian girl he marries in Sicily."
"Right. But Diane Keaton is what he thinks..."
"Right. For the perfect... Zoe! Good girl! Sit!"
That's not exactly how it went, but you get the idea. The reason for the last part is we were walking the dog, and Nancy had to put Zoe's leash back on. Real conversation is even more amorphous, tangential, and fragmented.
I couldn't stand duplicating real conversation with its pointless phatic ritual and endless rambling, but could I make my writerly dialogue a little more like the real thing?
Maybe.
It's certainly worth discussing.
The Novel of Ideas is especially prone to this kind of goofy talk because the author is concerned with getting across an ideology . The characters are tokens representing opposing viewpoints, each of which must be aired fully and articulately. The DaVinci Code, as I recall, was a series of scenes in which our heroes run to some expert or other, who fills them in on a lot of background and exposition, delivered as a page of unbroken talky-talk before hustling them off to the next expert down the line so they can hear another page-full of exposition from him.
The rest of us who aren't proving a point but merely trying to tell a story do a little better, but not much. My problem is when I write dialogue, I'm trying to get somewhere. Something must be revealed, an agreement struck, friendship or enemyship consolodated, something. I can't allow conversation to follow the meandering course of real life. (Actually, "meandering" implies too much of a destination. "Puddling" is more like it.)
To start with, so much of our daily talk has no meaning; this is called phatic discourse. "How are you?" "Fine." What is really means is "I acknowledge your presence as a human being." Being mildly LD, I sometimes screw up this simple exchange. I muddle "How're you," and "How's it going?" and bust out with, "How're you going?" This doesn't even make sense; nevertheless, my interlocutor responds, "Fine." He wasn't even listening.
It's tempting to say that in writerly conversations, people talk about something, but that's not the case. They talk to it. In real life we talk about things, circling them, crossing and recrossing our steps, returning to them, and leaving them again, but not for long. In writerly conversation, people speak in full sentences and come to complete stops. Once a point is established, it is not repeated. In real conversations, repetition is the norm, and rare is the sentence that gets finished. Instead, one speaker trails off, inviting the other speaker to jump in. And if you can't think of something dandy of your own to say, it's perfectly kosher to repeat something from the other guy. But I'm repeating myself.
Here, as well as I can reconstruct it, is part of a delightful conversation Nancy and I had about The Godfather.
"...Diane Keaton isn't what... It's a life he imagines for himself... the waspy white..."
"Yes, yes, I know what you mean, a better wife for him would be an Italian like his mother..."
"Like that Italian girl he marries in Sicily."
"Right. But Diane Keaton is what he thinks..."
"Right. For the perfect... Zoe! Good girl! Sit!"
That's not exactly how it went, but you get the idea. The reason for the last part is we were walking the dog, and Nancy had to put Zoe's leash back on. Real conversation is even more amorphous, tangential, and fragmented.
I couldn't stand duplicating real conversation with its pointless phatic ritual and endless rambling, but could I make my writerly dialogue a little more like the real thing?
Maybe.
It's certainly worth discussing.
