After listening to Eugenides read “Extreme Solitude” aloud in his own
voice, this chapter took on a more severe kind of timeliness – though,
interestingly, the chapter didn’t deal very deeply with the concept of tone. I
guess it was already wrapped up in diction and uses of dialog. Either way, when
I read “Extreme Solitude” I recognized subtle humor, but never laughed really.
The jokes were dark or ironic and seemed laced with the dynamics of a
relationship – a bigger meaning – not just a tension relief for the reader.
However, when he read the story Tuesday night, he had the room laughing. His
tone of voice, inflections, and silly accents hadn’t come across to me in my
own head, and I can’t figure out if that’s due to a lack of imagination on my
part, or ambiguity on his. The story still held its emotional resonance with me
when he read it, and I teared up at the same spot as I had before, but overall
everything was more okay, the grim of
Leonard’s apartment became more acceptable somehow when a whole room giggled
knowingly at the dirty details. Usually though, there isn’t that audience
participation when reading or writing. A group of people who came all this way, took the time, want to
like you. Instead, there has to be a reliance on just letting go. Hope the
reader will get the point without ever being so bland as to out rightly say
what that point is. To carry that burden, and a plot, there are characters.
I like our textbook
because it takes away that romantic veil and shows you how the trick is done,
but doesn’t make writing seem any less fun or fulfilling or full of possible variations.
Burroway writes that the reader “wants a chance to fall in love, too”. (Is that
a correct place for the period in that particular sentence?) Picking and
choosing what scenes to play out and what to gloss over will determine what a
reader might remember from a book – and if it’s not remembered, it might as
well have never happened.
Diction is important. What
a character says is basically a reveal of who they want you to think they are,
or who they want to believe they are. This may or may not be in conflict with
who they actually are. That conflict of character, the self or between another,
is what creates tension/conflict/contrast and either reveals information or
pushes along the story.
Back to the chapter: I
have to admit the two authors who have influenced my dialog most are JK Rowling
and Chuck Palahniuk. JK Rowling taught me to bridge scenes and chapters with a
line of dialog and how to use said invisibly, or no tags at all. Saying more by
saying nothing – what is left unsaid somehow means more. How to convey action
between commas filled with words.
Palahniuk brought to life the internal dialog and the monolog. The turn
of phrase that seems revolutionary, but is still a madman’s thoughts. It’s the
“Holden Caulfield Effect” – you begin to love/sympathize someone because you
get in their head – you feel like you know them – even if they are
fundamentally flawed.
I was happy when Burroway added a comment about
“provincial curiosities”. A writer isn’t just what s/he is able to put down
into words on paper – but especially today – are an image in and of themselves.
I like it because Burroway earlier gave three passages meant to convey a great
deal about character in a short amount of lines. Though they did reveal what
the characters might have thought of other people or themselves, I’m sensitive
about making a mental image of them because I don’t want to fall back on dull
stereotypes. Of course, I guess that’s the line that must be drawn between
preaching and writing – something I need to be mindful of. It is supposed to be
entertaining after all, not merely informative or somehow explicative of a
world view.
Fiesta 1980 by Junot Diaz has a unique sort of dialog.
He doesn’t include quotation marks, and I personally think this adds to the
fluidity of the piece. Language is fluid, and as this is a memory, it makes
sense that spoken word and what was understood run into one another. Sometimes
it made it hard to follow, but only if you were going to be tested or something
– which obviously wasn’t the writer’s intention. Really, you could say the
entire piece is the spoken words of the narrator, and so perhaps it would all
be in between two huge quotation marks. The language “like the wind through a
tree”, “with the sun sliding out of the sky like spit off a wall” – that comes
from the older self of the narrator and sets his mood. He is recounting
something personal – something beautiful yet tragic or disordered.
Furthermore, the story is really being spoken in
Spanish, as is evident when he says “Rafa said to me in English”. There are
little glimpses of the language scattered through the piece, cognates that are
somewhat easy to put into context for an English speaking reader. This choice
has a dual purpose. It simultaneously draws you in, but also keeps you at bay
from the real emotional center. Like a person holding their hand out, their
palm flat on your chest, but at arm’s length as if to say “stop, no further”. This actually mimics the character’s attitude toward his
father’s infidelity, as he allows the situation to build up in him and
distrusts even his family.
No comments:
Post a Comment