FBR 111: Atomic Language . . .

Language is not only the atomic level of substance we use to write — the bricks of the building, as it were — but the hugeness of the building and the reason why the building is there in the first place.

There are some writers who believe that novels are NOTHING BUT language, and it's frankly hard to argue with them. Creating, or pretending to create life with words is a pretty cheeky undertaking; it's perfectly comprehensible to believe that a novel is really nothing more, or less, than a structure built of words. It's no more real, let's say, than a piece of sheet music.

But let's set that consideration aside for now and look at a couple aspects of how language is used in fiction

Richard Yates begins REVOLUTIONARY ROAD this way:

The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium. They hardly dared to breathe as the short, solemn figure of their director emerged from the naked seats to join them on stage, as he pulled a stepladder raspingly from the wings and climbed halfway up its rungs to turn and tell them, with several clearings of his throat, that they were a damned talented group of people and a wonderful group of people to work with.

I'll pause here. This paragraph, if you read it aloud, uses perfectly familiar, everyday language, with the exception of the single word "raspingly," and you understand every word of it. It's visible, palpable, this late-night scene on the stage. You see the group of players, exhausted, you see the director dragging the ladder out from off stage, you watch him climb — halfway — and you "hear" his remarks to the players.

What else? It's a melancholy scene, isn't it. "The final dying sounds . . . " "silent and helpless" . . . "climbed [only] halfway up" "several clearings of his throat" . . . and so forth. All the vocabulary works toward this end, which prefigures the mood of the novel. People caught silent and helpless, blinking before the footlights, a little man telling them what? Nothing all that great.

The director's clumsy repetition of "group of people" in the last sentence, which you might easily miss because Yates has been using plain language so far, tells us something, doesn't it? It tells us that the director, the mind behind the production, the great mind behind the Laurel Players' upcoming performance isn't great with language. He uses the same phrase twice because he can't think of another way to say it. This is damning. The one — the only — person the players look to is a short solemn man with a limited ability to speak and lead. Let's look at the next paragraphs.

"It hasn't been an easy job," he said, his glasses glinting soberly around the stage. "We've had a lot of problems here, and quite frankly I'd more or less resigned myself not to expect too much. Well, listen. Maybe this sounds corny, but something happened up here tonight. Sitting out there tonight I suddenly knew, deep down, that you were all putting your hearts into your work for the first time." He let the fingers of one hand splay out across the pocket of his shirt to show what a simple, physical thing the heart was; then he made the same hand into a fist, which he shook slowly and wordlessly in a long dramatic pause, closing one eye and allowing his moist lower lip to curl out in a grimace of triumph and pride. "Do that again tomorrow night," he said, "and we'll have one hell of a show."

They could have wept with relief. Instead, trembling, they cheered and laughed and shook hands and kissed one another, and somebody went out for a case of beer and they all sang songs around the auditorium piano until the time came to agree, unanimously, that they'd better knock it off and get a good night's sleep.

And what more happens here with language? The director is depicted as a sober, sentimental little man, honorable, but self-serious and limited. He does the language thing again, doesn't he? "Something happened up here tonight. Sitting out there tonight . . . " And the forming from splayed fingers of a little fist and shaking it wordlessly with one eye closed — this is almost laughably silly. In this director, we are getting a very quick, but very fresh description of a small-town artist. "A grimace of triumph and pride," indeed. It's a beautifully damning characterization, but one that sets the tone for the story to come, and one that in fact, prefigures the false triumph and pride of its two main characters, one of whom is one of the Laurel Players.

Finally, in that last paragraph, take a look at what happens. After two opening paragraphs in which Yates gives us every detail of what might have taken only three or four minutes, he follows with a swiftly stacked description of events that probably occurred over two hours or so: they cheered, laughed, shook hands, kissed, somebody went out for beer, they sang, and on and on . . . UNTIL . . .

. . . UNTIL this last colloquialism — they'd better knock it off and get a good night's sleep. It's hard to see this as anything less than brilliant. Yates wraps up the evening with a backslapping, chummy admonishment, not only as if we readers were in the Laurel Players ourselves, but by its being low-brow — knock it off — he deflects the reader from thinking he has been manipulated by his mastery of language at all. Yates is tucking the reader right into his pocket here. He has tugged all the strings he wanted to in the first two paragraphs, and now that he has us, let's settle down to the story. As if we were sharing a booth in a dim Boston pub.