Thursday, August 7, 2008
I've written a book report! (Of sorts...)
This is in response to a request for a Friday Forgotten Book. The book I chose was The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. What follows is my read, slightly more craft centered than necessary, but hey...
We have an adolescent unwitting transsexual murder as a narrator, a supporting cast that includes a dog torturer, a dwarf, and an obsessed father, and a location that is literally off the mainland of society. And yet, the book reads like a traditional narrative. It does not cross into melodrama (or it crosses only rarely, and that right at the end when, arguably, it would be difficult not to cross over), the narrator seems rational if slightly off, and the action follows logically from one event to the next. Actually, very little happens in this novel: The narrator goes to the pub, eats, wanders around the island, kills some rabbits, and has conversations with his insane brother on the phone. And yet . . .? It occurred to me while reading that the book succeeds in its weirdness by being in some ways very traditional, even heavy handed, in its structure and style. We should all read this book as an example of and lesson in contrasting subject and structure—setting them as counterweights to each other in order to keep the balance of the story in place.
Most of the novel takes place in backstory, a necessary choice for this particular story. My feeling while reading was that the central question of the novel was in the past: What happened to the narrator to make him so weird? That’s the meaning question, the reason we keep reading, the thing we want to find out. The narrative question, the plot that pulls us forward, is: What will happen when the narrator’s insane brother returns? In the first chapter, we learn that the insane brother has escaped, and is making his way back home. We see him, finally, in the final chapter. (When we see him, he is a asleep, which makes me believe that Banks didn’t have much use for him as a character, only as a plot driver.) The middle of the book is dedicated to the backstory of the narrator, interspersed with conversations and events that don’t let us forget that the narrative engine is still moving forward, and that the crazy brother will return. The meaning question and the narrative question is answered at the same time. We learn what happened to the narrator at the same moment that we see the crazy brother finally returned. It is a perfect, and perfectly elegant novel structure, and it is expertly constructed from scene one.
The structure is helped along by these reoccurring categories of action: the mystery of the father’s study and the narrator’s consistent checking of the door; the scenes of cruelty to animals; the descriptions of the narrator’s systems (wasp factory, bunker, torture practices, bomb making, etc.); a friend on the outside (Jamie) who occasionally calls in and who gives the narrator an opportunity to talk out loud.
A few observations of interest:
1) The dialog is horrible. It doesn’t have any sing in it, any implied tone shifts, any subtlety. It seems to exist only as an exchange of information.
2) The syntax is, at times, complicated and over-educated. Consider: “I kept a log, naturally, and therefore have it recorded that it took no less than thirty-seven of these supposed flight experiments before my trusty long-handled trowel, in biting the Skull Grounds’ earth skin, struck something harder than the sandy soil, and I finally knew where the dog’s bones were.” This syntax contrasts with the age and education of the narrator, lending to the weird feeling that suffuses the tone of the text.
3) The narrative takes place in the past tense. At times, the narrator slips into present tense. Despite these occasional slips, the present tense isn’t really fleshed out. I don’t know when the “now” is that the narrator refers to, or at what remove the narrator is seeing the story. For instance: “I could see my father, still painting the window surrounds of the lounge. I can just remember the designs he used to have on the front of the house… Only the vaguest outlines are still discernible now, along with a few freak patches of real colour, like peeling skin.” Did Banks intend to edit the present tense out? Are they remnants from an earlier draft? Or did he want some sense of the story continuing into the present, with the ironic distance that the present-tense retrospective narrator brings?
So okay. The book isn’t perfect. But it’s a hell of an example of weird fiction, done right.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Why are we so scared of clowns? And corpses? And ghosts, dolls, and anything with a mask its face? In a recent lecture to the Warren Wilson MFA crowd, Susan Neville explained her idea of the uncanny, or those qualities that make a book a little bit weird. She also talked about something called the Uncanny Valley, or the dip in the reported heebie-geebie factor the closer something gets to looking human, but not quiet. Us humans are apparently put off by the slight differences between the living and the breathing among us, and anything that seems to be faking living and breathing. Hence, clowns, dolls, puppets.
And what about corpses? We also have a reaction, Neville said, to things that seem like they should be alive, but aren’t. Or things that shouldn’t, but are. Like ghosts. And, to get a littler deeper into the weird, how about those things that should be inanimate but which are suddenly endowed with life. Like the trees that say creepy things in the woods. Like the water demons we see in waves.
Thought I’d share…
What I’m reading now: Melville’s Billy Budd
What I read last: Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses
What I’ll read next: McCarthy’s The Crossing
I’m on a little bit of a kick…
Monday, July 7, 2008
Summer in the mountains of North Carolina. Hush puppies and cicadas and tank tops. During the days, we go to classes and lectures, at night we watch fireflies. I'm heading into my final semester at Warren Wilson, the world's best MFA program. While I have some ambiguity about being both a student and a publisher, I also feel that I'm doing perhaps the best thing for both the Underland books and for my own writing. This semester, I'll be working with Kevin McIlvoy, a powerful writer, a student of voice, and perhaps the greatest teacher I've ever encountered. I'm thrilled.
Greenville
Monday, June 30, 2008
I'm on the road, and enjoying every second. In Greenville, South Carolina now, with a friend who is settling into a new job at Furman college just outside of town. We've been eating our fair share of grits, catching up on everything we've missed, and enjoying the mild summer. My friend only eats "ethical" meat, which is as good a way of being a carnivore as I've seen.
No time for a big post now. I'm preparing for residency at Warren Wilson, and, of course, keeping up with Underland work while away. We're getting our galley proofs ready now for our first two titles: The Pilo Family Circus, and Last Days. More on that, later . . .
Warren Wilson
Friday, June 27, 2008
After two and a half years trying to keep myself in the Warren Wilson MFA program, I’m now moving into the final stages of the degree. I’m traveling back to North Carolina today to start the summer residency. A little Chekhov, a little Johnson, a little O’Connor, a little Munro. A little Turchi, a little D’Ambrosio. It’s the world’s most perfect MFA program.
I’ll try to post from the road, but it might get tricky. Cory Doctorow apparently podcasts in the airports. I’m not at that stage yet.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
I’ve been laid up, sick as a dog, knocked flat. And worried the entire time that I was shirking my responsibilities as a blogger. You see, I’ve never blogged before. Not once. Back in my journalism days, I often thought that I should have a blog, that everybody else seemed to be doing it, and that it seemed like it could be fun. But there were a lot of things I didn’t understand about blogging. Things I still don’t understand. Like, for instance, what to do if you’re sick. Do I blog about being sick? That seems particularly tasteless. Do I blog about blogging about being sick?
You see the problem.
Instead, I’ll blog about two great things that I discovered recently. One is a post by the Seattle Stranger writer Paul Constant, who apparently attended a very different Book Expo than I did. But his article is well worth reading, not least because I count Underland as one of the new Indies he mentioned . . . the ones who are shaking things up in publishing.
The other wonderful thing I discovered was Bleak House Books, and their very charming, very affable publisher Benjamin LeRoy. In a two hour conversation by phone the other night, Benjamin gave me the low down on his experience starting an indie house—the mistakes he made, the triumphs, and the lessons he learned along the way. Plus, some helpful tips on how to manage 20 interns. I’m in awe.
Okay, a third wonderful thing. Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love. If you haven’t read it already, you should. This link will take you directly to the Amazon page to buy it. It’s Angela Carter, one square weirder and with a little more natural story.
Look for some subtle changes on the site in the coming days. We’re tightening the layout and making the text flow more easily. As my Spanish teacher used to say, Little steps for little feet.