James Lande
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The sixth chapter of Book II, which describes the foreign rifles assault on the city of Tsingpoo in August of 1860, is proving particularly difficult because of a change in style. In Book I and the earlier chapters of Book II the thought of many characters in the story has been liberally depicted to offer readers a perspective of the hearts and minds as well as the words and deeds of these people. The style has been mostly indirect interior monologue set off with “he/she thought” tags, and less often direct interior monologue in which thought is not set off with tags and weaves in and out of dialogue and narrative. In the current chapter there is no narrator at all – only the thoughts of the characters, slipping between direct interior monologue and more chaotic stream of consciousness (not so chaotic however as, say, Faulkner). The chapter has five sections:
1. Foreign Rifles guard boats on the canal to Tsingpoo
2. Landing at Tsingpoo and deployment of the force
3. Climbing the wall of Tsingpoo under fire
4. Fletcher Thorson Wood shot in the jaw
5. Foreign Rifles retreat to Kuangfulin
Each section has four streams of thought:
Fletcher Thorson Wood
Vincente Macanaya
Hannibal Benedict
Delevan Slaughter
These streams of thought occur simultaneously but with shared events that serve as markers to help the reader follow their sequence. Work on the chapter progresses slowly due to the necessity of working up backstory for Hannibal and Slaughter. Fletcher and Vincente the reader already knows pretty well from Book I, but little has been said about Hannibal’s origins in North Carolina, and nothing about his experience as a Senate page in Washington DC, or the time he spent in India, all of which must be researched and then assembled as plausible experience that will crowd into his stream of thought. It does not help that the author’s advancing age effects a waning of vitality that also slows progress.
The sixth chapter of Book II, which describes the foreign rifles assault on the city of Tsingpoo in August of 1860, is proving particularly difficult because of a change in style. In Book I and the earlier chapters of Book II the thought of many characters in the story has been liberally depicted to offer readers a perspective of the hearts and minds as well as the words and deeds of these people. The style has been mostly indirect interior monologue set off with “he/she thought” tags, and less often direct interior monologue in which thought is not set off with tags and weaves in and out of dialogue and narrative. In the current chapter there is no narrator at all – only the thoughts of the characters, slipping between direct interior monologue and more chaotic stream of consciousness (not so chaotic however as, say, Faulkner). The chapter has five sections:
1. Foreign Rifles guard boats on the canal to Tsingpoo
2. Landing at Tsingpoo and deployment of the force
3. Climbing the wall of Tsingpoo under fire
4. Fletcher Thorson Wood shot in the jaw
5. Foreign Rifles retreat to Kuangfulin
Each section has four streams of thought:
Fletcher Thorson Wood
Vincente Macanaya
Hannibal Benedict
Delevan Slaughter
These streams of thought occur simultaneously but with shared events that serve as markers to help the reader follow their sequence. Work on the chapter progresses slowly due to the necessity of working up backstory for Hannibal and Slaughter. Fletcher and Vincente the reader already knows pretty well from Book I, but little has been said about Hannibal’s origins in North Carolina, and nothing about his experience as a Senate page in Washington DC, or the time he spent in India, all of which must be researched and then assembled as plausible experience that will crowd into his stream of thought. It does not help that the author’s advancing age effects a waning of vitality that also slows progress.
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