[Sherman Alexie]

I have read Sherman Alexie’s work before, and I find him fascinating. He’s just so down to earth. What You Pawn I Will Redeem had a structure to it that I don’t think I would ever personally use. The time signatures are very business-like, but while it works here, I wonder how different it might have been if he just explained with a sentence how time had passed, or allowed the reader to formulate that he was in another place and therefore time. It begins and ends at noon, so I feel that has a significance maybe even beyond the story itself (I wonder how much Spokane mythology is here).

            In terms of the chapter, this story certainly follows a very basic conflict (found grandmother’s regalia), crisis (must get $999), and solution (is given regalia) form. Nevertheless, there are tiny subplots in each time section, always with the other characters involved departing the scene. When it comes to story structure, it’s not about reinventing the wheel – it’s about applying the wheel in new ways to create more complex mechanisms.

            I have talked to a lot of friends about writing, and often there a hang up about plot structure. People like to wave their hands and say “all stories are the same”. Reading A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut, I am familiar with the graph patterns of stories and I think it’s an interesting way to look at a story at its bare minimum. I think “Pawn” could be drawn as a dreamcatcher – which seems oddly stereotypical for some reason – but it’s true. It has a cyclical nature, as though it could be spun and at any moment there is a mini rise and fall of action within it. The inside of the dreamcatcher is an elaborate web of crossing strings and beads, and this seems to accurately describe the relationships Jackson Jackson has with the other people he communicates with. There is a point of no-return where everything changes, and I would say it’s with the police officer. Instead of self-indulgence, he uses to cop’s money to feed the Aleuts. While the outcome is the same (they disappear) Jackson’s conflict has changed. His problem is no longer that he can’t hold onto money because he’s getting drunk, it’s because he is helping someone else.

            Finally, I want to relate to the quote in the chapter, “All good stories are sad.” Alexie’s character Jackson is not Cinderella. The ending is bittersweet. The goal of the plot is accomplished – the crisis is resolved – but was that really the crisis? All through “Pawn” we see homelessness, drunkenness, poverty, and cultural displacement. People come in and out of Jackson’s life until he is the only one left standing. His words, “It’s OK. Indians are everywhere” is misleadingly hopeful. The world is full of these “dispensable people” who are invisible to our mainstream culture, despite having been here first. Jackson is so happy to get the stolen regalia back for $5, but really, shouldn’t it have been free? Shouldn’t he have been given a home and a job and a new life? Isn’t that what he really deserved? So this is a story where nothing is actually resolved or concluded, just rises and falls in the normal turn of life.

Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter [Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni]

Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni implements the movement of time in a compelling way. I loved how natural the flow was between times outside of the current moment of the story. It’s reflective of how we actually think – with little flashes of the past constantly blinking and then evaporating in our minds unless we choose to hold onto it a little longer. Mrs. Dutta’s conflict between old and new is heartbreaking, and interesting from a feminist standpoint. She’s a woman who longs for a life many American women today would frown at – would call her a victim of sorts – but it was her life. She wants to be wanted, needed, once more and her will to live is based on her family. Alone, she has no reason to carry on for herself.

            Divakaruni arranges the flashbacks so that there is a physical response: “The children. A heaviness pulls at Mrs. Dutta’s entire body when she thinks of them.” As she digresses into memory, we are literally pulled down along with her. In this way, it’s not just a memory, but it has a shape and a tone – in this case, disappointment.

The “real time” of the story is taking place all on the same day, but we journey for years between breakfast, laundry, dinner, and finally the written letter. Cooking breakfast this morning is like cooking for 20 years because that scene is extended through a flashback and thought. Each scene still remains significant, however, to character and plot. Mrs. Dutta is living primarily in the past and so it makes sense that the story’s real action takes place in past events, both distant past and recent past. When Mrs. Dutta thinks about Shyamoli’s reaction to her cooking, that’s the recent past. But Mrs. Dutta’s kitchen would be more the distant past.  It isn’t until the letter where she Mrs. Dutta appears at all hopeful or considers much about the future.

Love and Hydrogen [Jim Shepard]

Love and Hydrogen by Jim Shepard is probably my favorite story so far. In high school, I loved Native Son because of the metaphorical white snow which surrounded Bigger Thomas. His environment was directly expressive of his life and the plot. This story is a lot like that. The place – aboard the doomed Hindenburg – has the effect of the movie Titanic in a lot of ways. For one, we know how it’s going to end, but somehow it still shocks us. Also, the love story aboard the vessel is a secret and as precarious as the ship itself. In the end, Gnuss’ emotion has welled within him, doomed, and just as explosive.

            In this way there is that harmony between the characters and their place, but that harmony is due to conflict. The gay lovers sneak around and enjoy a life much better than what they grew up with. They enjoy food and housing and jobs. They enjoy one another. Nevertheless, this is a golden time and it must come to an end. Who knows Meinert’s intentions with the woman passenger? Maybe he was securing a reputation so that his gay relationship was less suspect, or maybe he really did have feeling for her. Sexuality and relationships are just as precarious as a hydrogen balloon – one can only hope that not too many people are aboard should it explode.

            Further, Meinert’s experiences in another place –a place of war – outshine Gnuss and leave him troubled. Meinert has experienced the sensation of being “like Zeus” and Gnuss can do little better than making him feel like “Pan”.  The truth of course is that, high above in a death cloud, neither has as much control as they’d like to believe they do.

These are the men responsible for maintaining the ship, but their love is distracting. Which is ironic in a way, because life is short and these sorts of things are what make it worth living – but if they hadn’t been enjoying themselves with jobs and food and sex maybe the shit would not have engulfed them in the inferno.

One thing that shouldn’t be forgotten is that Gnuss is a least 10 years younger than Meinert. For Gnuss, this is very well his first true romance, while Meinert has been through war and who knows what else. It is also Gnuss’ mixed emotions – his lust, and his jealousy – that engulf him just as the airship is engulfed. So, one could also see a similar message about youth here – young technology, unweathered, and ultimately defeated. Perhaps the author feels a young mind cannot really have a mastery over love, to know love beyond sex or possession, and will inevitably over tighten his grip and destroy the whole relationship. Only with age and time can real love be appreciated (so a sequel with a happier ending might be on a plane).

Mule Killers [Lydia Peelle]

            Mule Killers by Lydia Peelle uses direct characterization  in terms of appearance. I can’t get rid of the image of the girl with onion paper hair. Even if you’ve never seen or felt onion paper, it perfectly characterizes her – sums her up. There’s nothing particularly ugly about onions, and nothing evil or bad, just simply plain. Plain, oily, a thing of the earth. You cry when you cut up an onion – just as you feel sorry that this woman spent her life with a man who never really loved her in any passionate sense. She never even gets a name. By contrast, Eula has magical, mysterious dark hair and just like night she is both beautiful and terrible. She’s larger than life, and couldn’t possibly pair with the farmer’s son.

            The son is the narrator and his character is a little flat but needs to be. He is the filter we read the story through, and so only occasionally do we spot bits of him, “I am twice as old now as he was, the year of the mule killers”. Really, he is more characterized in the last line “Nothing [grows] except the asparagus, which comes up year after year” than in any single part of the story. He is a reflection of his environment, just as his father was, and perhaps his grandfather. This generational theme is what holds together the story.

            The real character here is the father. The man who loved another woman, but still gave the one he married the decency of death before telling anyone. A man whose mind focused on only two things, mules and Eula. The chapter’s advice on knowing what the character wants is pretty clearly used here, the father wants Eula and he wants his childhood mule to live forever, but he is a man repressed. He is also self-aware, as he tells his son this story, perhaps so he doesn’t make the same mistakes.

            The set-up of this story is very practical, as the son had never been told it before all the dialog is significant to him. Nothing conveys information he already knew. There are times when certain elements are overused, however. I personally disliked the characterization of the tractor as a mule. I just kept thinking “okay, I get it already”. It was more than a little heavy handed. I was also disturbed by the image of the father sticking the record player in his front teeth. It’s a good way to show how unsophisticated, yet genuine he is – it’s kind of an innocent thing to do – but the image itself was just very weird.

            One thing about the father is that he is kind of a coward. Eula may have never known how he felt about her. It wasn’t until he took action against her that anything happened in his life – and it was in the opposite direction of what he wanted. He was at odds with himself. He had a choice in that moment when Eula (who probably knew her friend liked him and so didn’t join them) leaves the shop, and he took the opposite course of action. If you could read this story from the girls’ point of view, perhaps all that happened would seem planned out or just as it should be – it’s amazing how what’s in someone’s head isn’t a reflection of reality and that’s obvious here.

            I will end this by talking about the Universal Paradox and how it applies to Mule Killers. This is a very specific story – it’s about pastoral farm life in a religious little town. That’s all reflected in the details – but it still resonates on a larger scale – boy likes girl, boy gets other girl. It’s about heartbreak and settling and perhaps how that isn’t the end of the world, but the future generation can do better.  That’s a bigger theme and that’s what you carry with you when he story is over.

what came to mind (after watching the suitcase)

I am the deep seeded thought in the black of your mind.
What you try to push out – try to forget – try to not let
Get in the way of your comings and goings
Your everyday contentment

If you let me in, just a nudge, just a crack
I will fill you with my darkness
With my truth
Of the speck of this world, of death
And you can do nothing but cry
Alone in the small of a room
And watch the happy people pass you by

I Repeat – Like a Ticking Clock [Analyzing Eugenides]

            Jeffery Eugenides’ “Baster” (2000), and “Extreme Solitude” (2010) were assigned as reading because, for one, the author will be visiting Ithaca College, but moreover because they are examples of good writing. Eugenides builds a world in each of these stories using invisible tools, but still different tools in each story. By “invisible” I mean that he specifically gives very small, almost common details about a place that trigger the reader’s memories and allows them to fill the gaps. “Baster” is a strictly character based world where all description, from clothes to restaurants, to fertility decorations, is taken in as a reflection of Tomasina and Wally. “Extreme Solitude” uses complex metaphor to pass judgment on the characters. Finally, the choice of perspective of each story is entwined with its emotional impact. Wally and Madeleine are the protagonists and we are left feeling the most sympathy for them in the end, yet the stories told through their voices aren’t about them, but the significant others (Tomasina and Leonard) who in turn defines them.

            “Baster” has a very explicit 1990s tone. Like watching the TV show “Friends”, it evokes both nostalgia and staleness. Smoking inside, fertility objects, and themed parties for educated, city-dwelling yuppies all ring with an end-of-the-20^th-century feel. Even Tom’s anxiety over her progressing age is both a theme of the 90s feminist wave, as well as a nod to Y2K. One particular image that both sends one back to the 90s, but also has an element of believability is the description of Tomasina’s party dress, “This wasn’t skimpy, technically. It began at her neck and ended at her ankles. Between those two points, however, an assortment of peepholes had been ingeniously razored into the fabric…” (436). Even if this brings to mind the Spice Girls and Girl Power, it is something the character of Tomasina would do, and so it makes great, still relevant, fiction. The fact is, Tomasina wouldn’t be the same Tomasina if she were turning 40 today instead of 10 years ago. She needs to smoke in restaurants, gesturing with her cigarette, and wear age-inappropriate clothes to a fertility party (instead of a doctor’s office). I think it’s a testament to using bits of the world around you to create a world of fiction – as both a warning and a suggestion.  

In “Extreme Solitude”, I thought the selection of Semiotics (which I later looked up and discovered was the study of signs and symbols) was particularly genius because it is being used as a stand-in for what love is like. As Madeline says, “It explained how she’d always felt when she was in love. It explained what love was like and, just maybe, what was wrong with it” (5). My point is that Madeline is using a very difficult and confusing subject (one she admittedly barely understands) to clarify another difficult and confusing subject (love). Eugenides is exploiting metaphor here in a very subtle way – as though he is saying three things at once. Unlike a usual metaphor that uses one thing to highlight another, by using a conceit - two confusing things that really can’t (and don’t) make the other make any more sense than it did to begin with – the metaphor is turned into a judgment of character. Madeline wants so badly to understand, to be in love that she grips onto false logic. 

            Finally, Eugenides has a kind of trademark based just on these two stories. We are allowed into the protagonist’s thoughts, and ultimately feel sympathy for them, but all we know about them is based on the characters surrounding them. Madeline’s character is chronologically revealed through her past exploits with men, and her feelings about her roommate. From these simple scenes with these skeletal foils, we learn that Madeline is conservative to the point of repression, but is not judgmental when it comes to men. Likewise, Wally’s fatherly potential is stark against the backdrop of Tomasina – who seems to secretly want a man much more than a child. Eugenides reveals these characteristics through prose and pacing of thoughts.

            From the first page, Madeline is given ten consecutive lines worth of prose without a single period. Doing this quick flow of language is typical of illustrating thought, but Eugenides’ diction reveals her remaining immaturity despite believing she is in love, “…as she often was with boys…after Leonard (like every guy)...if the fact that she’d spent the whole night worrying wasn’t a surefire sign she was falling in love” (1). Further, Wally’s constant side comments that go overlooked by Tomasina give away his feelings, but also his hypocrisy. He spends a lot of time complaining that Tomasina is “hunting”, “hiring”, and being “devious” and says, “Call me old-fashioned but…” (435). On the other hand, Eugenides shows us that Wally is equally conniving and “baby crazy” or in other words, obsessed with being legitimized as a successful adult. After explicitly detailing a negative character, and passing judgment on her choices, Wally actually wants exactly what Tomasina thinks she wants – ending up, not with a stranger’s child, but a child who is a stranger.

            To conclude, Eugenides shows immense strength in subtle detail. He’s very good at combing small significant details, metaphors, rhythm, and mechanics in such a way that trigger the reader to form the world for themselves – and thereby believe in it. His details are so subtle that they appear invisible. His metaphors are not direct, but implicitly meaningful such as, “Tomasina – I repeat, like a ticking clock – was forty” (427), which is doubly significant depending on what angle you look at the story.  Eugenides uses real details surrounding him to build fictional situations, and emotionally heartbreaking themes to draw you into that world.

Fiesta 1980 [Junot Diaz] and Jeffrey Eugenides

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.