This making a living thing is really getting in the way of writing/publishing/marketing my books. But lest I sound bitchy, I have a lot of built-in time to do things. It’s just that there are so many things I need to do, that a To Do List is not sufficient.
I need an assistant.
Perhaps I can find a English-speaking Czech who wants to intern as a publishing publicist. Then I can have help researching proper review mags & newspapers & on-line sites to send WHAT BEAUTY. That’s a start. And then there are the calls I need to make to the USA to drum up radio interviews, feature stories in art mags and NY papers (a good novel about art & NYC has to gain some ground; or perhaps tie in with another story).
See, this is the kind of stuff I think up, but need arms and legs and fingers and brain to make happen.
Meanwhile, the new novel is getting started in my head.
Oh, and Asia is doing just fine; bopping around the now-frozen Prague on her power walks. Life is grand.
The other day I commented on a LinkedIN discussion thread, where a writer recommended to (I can only imagine) inexperienced writers that dialogue should be paramount to a story. Something on the ratio of 70% dialogue to 30% narrative, is how she broke it down. Further, she relegated narrative as “boring” and likely to “drive readers away,” while dialogue will tell story more effectively and move the story along. She also suggested that writers should rewrite narrative passages into dialogue-driven “story.” I think she is wrong on several grounds.
Here’s my take on the uses of dialogue:
While dialogue is important to establish character and, yes, to move story forward, by putting dialogue in front of narrative, as a rule, does two harms. Firstly, dialogue that is used in place of narrative usually rings false because the “information” (i.e., setting, description, and story narrative) we otherwise get in the narrative is often already known or should be known by the characters. Or, the narrative is important history of these characters (or place or the characters themselves) and cannot be fudged into dialogue. Or else such dialogue leaves the reader curious about “what” is happening and “why” it has happened.
An example of a bad dialogue story (80%+ dialogue-to-narrative ratio) can be found in Ethan Hawke’s “The Hottest State” — where we get the story (what little there is) from characters who merely walk around (and talk) or sit somewhere (and talk). The effect of this type of story is that seldom does the reader understand where the hell this scene is taking place, or when (night or day?), or how (where did these people come from; how did they get there; what the hell is happening outside their immediate environment?). In other words, the story lacks the narrative “thread” that holds together character with “the story behind, or of, the character.”
It ceases to be “narrative fiction” and is otherwise a theater playscript or film script. The difference is in technique of storytelling, naturally, but lacking story narrative hurts both the characters (they come off wordy and long-winded) and the overall story. At least when you read a play or film script, you get prompts of setting, position, time of day, etc. But plays and scripts are meant to be performed, not read. This is the difference I speak of.
Of course, you can find fiction in which dialogue is made the centerpiece. Philip Roth’s “Deception” is a perfect example (as is Julian Barnes’ “Talking it Over”). There is, by just a cursory look, nearly 90% dialogue. This is intentional, whereby Roth wants to draw you into the purely verbal world of these characters. Setting is implied (or given as dialogue that develops the scene; but never as a simple marker — “Oh, isn’t this hide-away lovers’ hotel perfect!” Blech!).
The reader is immediately drawn in because, despite the lack of narrative (for place, time-span, scene development) the dialogue is both compelling and illustrative of the situation. We don’t need narrative here because these scenes are, at once, intimate and secret, and made to be independent of each other. The story works because we know this going in (or at least within the first five pages; after which we don’t miss narrative, don’t need it, and can find that it gets in the way of these characters who successfully volley their repartee as stage characters are demanded to hold).
Hawke doesn’t assume this same intent. And by not assuming it directly, immediately, he shows his inexperience as a writer and his poor understanding of what makes story work; he’s an actor who has worked with dialogue as a career demand, and now has tried to write a narrative story relying on dialogue to carry its weight. The story fails (partly) through this technique (but otherwise fails because Hawke just isn’t a very good writer with narrative or dialogue). Genre fiction writers often rely on such dialogue-driven techniques, which is my hunch why the writer answering the LinkedIN thread made such a comment; genre fiction that sells a lot of books is often confused with good writing.
What I have found from reading the best writers who wrote during the last century (book-award winners; Nobel Prize recipients), and from my own 30 years’ writing experience, is that the use of dialogue can be most powerful when used for 1) direct interaction between two characters (of course!), and 2) within or between narrative passages, thereby reinforcing the narrative; this use of narrative is spartan, a device (if you will) that energizes the narrative around which the dialogue is found.
John Updike uses this second technique often, and well, in his novel “In the Beauty of the Lilies.” At one point he develops five pages of dialogue to describe a young girl’s upbringing in small-town Delaware, how the family lives on its low income, where she plays, what her dad does to entertain her, what her mother does to instruct her. Central to this narrative development is the movie house in town, and what she remembers of being told about her grandfather, who found refuge in movie houses after his religious faith deserted him. At the end of this narrative we get this dialogue:
“On the walk home, they passed the Roxie, where ONE HUNDRED MEN AND A GIRL STARRING DEANNE DURBIN was spelled out on the marquee. ‘Please, Momma,” Essie begged. “I want to go.’
‘But Daddy and I can’t take you,’ her mother told her, in that singing, spaced-out, too-clear voice she used when being a mother. ‘I have to help Grandpa and Grandma in the greenhouse this afternoon, and Daddy and I are going to play cards with Aunt Esther and Uncle Peter this evening while Ama takes care of you and Danny.’ ”
The effect of this small bit of “talking” between mother and daughter is far weightier, more powerful, and says so much more about both Essie and her mother than if (by way of turning most of that narrative into dialogue) Updike had made the characters talk and talk and talk.
Writing dialogue is itself a careful task; the writer wants to effect the speech of THIS and only THIS character, while making the words ring true to any reader. To put so much importance on dialogue, then, to carry a story, is to dilute the power that rich dialogue can create for a story. If the writer doesn’t get that dialogue right, and right every single time, the story fails.
Maxwell Perkins discovered, edited, and nurtured some of America’s greatest 20th century novelists: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Erskine Caldwell, and Ring Lardner, to name but a few. He gave editorial advice, he stroked their egos, he lent them money, and he knew how to get their best writing on the page.
july 3, 2009
“Writing a novel is a very hard thing to do because it covers so long a space of time, and if you get discouraged it is not a bad sign, but a good one. If you think you are not doing it well, you are thinking the way real novelists do. I never knew one who did not feel greatly discouraged at times, and some get desperate, and I have always found that to be a good symptom.”
– Letter from Maxwell Perkins to Nancy Hale, circa 1932
January 19, 2012 at 2:48 pm · Filed under Ways of Seeing
Samuel Johnson once explained to James Boswell his mind on conversation:
“There must, in the first place, be knowledge, there must be materials; in the second place, there must be a command of words; in the third place, there must be imagination, to place things in such views as they are not commonly seen in; and in the fourth place, there must be presence of mind, and a resolution that is not to be overcome by failures; this last is an essential requisite; for want of it many people do not excel in conversation.”
As much as we cannot want to intellectualize all subjects, we do find a need to challenge our friends, acquaintances, and even ourselves. We are social animals, and the need for interaction demands the need for conversation. “Never is there more a need for reasonable conversation than in today’s society, wherever people live.” Do you know where this quote comes from? It’s familiar, isn’t it? It comes from no one famous, in fact, because I just wrote it. Yet we have all heard something like it spoken or written somewhere. And, it cannot be more wrong.
Today is no more important, and likely less so, than the dark days of WWII; the blighted years of politically and socially banned books (pick your favorite century); 1,200 years of Catholic Inquisition combating “heresy”; or all of history’s oppression of women (no less objectionable to what is found today in India or throughout the Muslim Middle East and Africa). There has been, historically, a distinct lack of social conversation available to people where it could affect change. Much of the “good” conversation reserved itself inside senatorial houses, philosopher’s academies, monarchical courts, and those private chambers of the social elite.
Since the advent of the printing press, and, later, the establishment of largely parliamentary and democratic societies, people worked at making conversation a vital structure of society’s machinery. When governments failed, too often, at debate and compromise,at least the educated people demonstrated ample enthusiasm to conversation’s benefits.
In Parisian parlors of the 17th and 18th centuries, conversation came into its own. A whole coterie of parlor groups met, sometimes in secret, to discuss issues of the day, including politics, male-female relationships, sex (without the potty talk), and art of all kinds. For a time, most of those who met were women (of high means). The French were known already for their manners, their dress, their codes of honor (among both sexes). The women, it has been argue (“The Age of Conversation” by Benedetta Craveri) took it upon themselves to improve society (and their own positions within) by improving the manners and conversation of the French males. Success for women and society, on that smallish level, was great. Many of these parlor members kept diaries, and recorded conversations after a night of talk. Some have been published, but either have not been translated into English, or wallow away somewhere in a long-since out-of-print copy on a library shelf.
Over in England, in the middle half of the 18th century, Dr. Samuel Johnson had elevated conversation to somewhat of an art form. He had become famous for his “Dictionary of the English Language” (1755), and for writing twice-weekly essays under the title “The Rambler.” What Johnson might have lacked in oratorical compromise, he made up for in breadth of subjects he was willing and able to discuss. He particularly liked questions of liberty, and argued vehemently against changing one’s religion. Regardless of subject matter, Johnson demanded people bring knowledge to a conversation. Force of character and demonstrative positioning meant nothing if an argument did not come with humanist logic.
Today’s high-speed media environment could learn a lot from Dr. Johnson. The term “news cycle” has helped to fracture any attempt at sustained speech, or conversation. Sure, we have political and social talk shows, but too often they flounder in the sea of entertainment channels. And the American mind suffers from this lack.
While “The Simpsons,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “American Idol” achieve high viewer ratings — that turn advertising into gold dust — can we say they do something for conversation? Perhaps. And what is the difference between those entertainment programs and “60 Minutes” newsmagazine to initiate conversation? Any tense, psycho-political drama brings up important issues. An amateur-hour program can induce people to talk about what vocal art is … and is not. Exploring hot news topics or celebrity gossip can engage social discussion or reminiscences. But do any of these actually make discussion rather than seem to make discussion? Of course, we must not leave out the emergence of TWITTER and FACEBOOK. Conversation? Yes … but make it quick, because I’m stepping off the train.
If one looks at blogs, we find 4-5 sentence “posts” that often quote other sources (some spurious), or else link to an article written by—surprise!—a professional with a byline at a national newspaper or magazine. These posts are likely followed by shorter comments. Both resemble a nature that is difficult to define as conversation. Repetitive banter may more aptly describe their character. Nevertheless, one can argue, people are “connecting” where recently they were merely sitting in front of the television.
If there is yet conversation among us, and I think there is, it should get into the daily diet of all thinking people. I’m suggesting that people, if they are not doing so, get into the habit of talking about subjects that come to their minds, and not necessarily those in the news. Subjects that excite you, trouble you, irritate you (always a classic), or subjects you know little about but want to try to understand them through conversation with family, a lover, friends, colleagues.
I have my own suggestions: What thing of beauty have you seen today? How can you talk about that as art? Engagement with society is not a spectator sport, but something, I think, is of intrinsic importance to our individual lives.
The best writers know how to make us readers see what’s in a room, and what’s going on in the scene, and where we are at in the world. In this little gem, Bellow finds the details in how one man’s life (or any life?) can be led with purpose. This, my friends, is writing:
january 18, 2012
“And this universal eligibility to be noble, taught everywhere, was what gave Simon airs of honor, Iroquois posture and eagle bearing, the lithe step that didn’t crack a twig, the grace of Chevalier Bayard and the hand of Cincinnatus at the plow, the industry of the Nassau Street match-boy who became the king of corporations. Without a special gift of vision, maybe you wouldn’t have seen it in most of us, lining up in the school-yard on a red fall morning, standing on the gravel in black sheepskins and twisted black stockings, mittens, Western gauntlets, and peeling shoes, while the drum and bugle corps blasted and pounded and the glassy tides of wind drove weeds, leaves, and smoke around, struck the flag stiff and clanked the buckle of the rope on the steel pole.”
I noted on my FB page that my latest novel, WHAT BEAUTY, was soon to be in galley pages, and this was a good time to get that story out of my system. The best way to begin that process is to start working through my notes on the next novel, its working title “Max the Blind Guy.”
Max and Greta, after 40 years of marriage, are still together, but have had their problems. This is the crux, the linchpin, the beauty, and the utter horror of their story. How could they possibly still be together after all that has happened? I guess I’ll learn that myself, when I finish the novel in another 3 years or so.
The beginning of any project for me is one that finds me writing notes of variable length: two sentences of dialogue; an image for a scene (say the flattened grass beneath a pear tree after outdoor sex); the name of a character and where he/she went to school, what was studied, and why. When one of my rotating notebooks (one for home, one for “out of the house”) becomes fat with notes, it’s time for me to transfer that writing into the computer.
This is as much for safety (archiving) as it is a chance to do some editing/re-writing, and seeing more of the story or characters, and building scenes that I hadn’t yet thought existed (because they hadn’t; only while looking through the notebook do I make further discoveries).
This, in a nutshell, is my writing method, these days, when beginning a new project. Only after six month or so, maybe sooner if the narrative arc and a sense of the story’s continuity is solidly in my mind, will I begin to shuffle these scenes into shape, some order, a timeline, a scene progression. When that sense of the story is available to me, that’s when I can “begin writing” … from the beginning.
Until that time, I’ll simply let my mind wander in all the possibilities of Max and Greta.
I figured out how to get a great feed through the NFL site. Since I’ve paid the admission price for the post-season feeds in HD, I wanted to see the games w/o a hitch in the screen. You see, my computer is a bit out of date; still fast, but not comparable to what’s available or to the tech that’s being used by the pros.
Anyway, I was getting herky-jerky feeds, with a minor ripple in the video every 6 secs or so. Annoying, but watchable, and you can get used to it. But I wanted better. So I emptied my caches (download streaming cache, and the Mozilla cache), cleaned up my hard drive, ran a disk permissions utility fix, and then rebooted the internet (unplugged both router and other thingy I don’t even know what it’s for).
Now the video comes in crisp, HD quality, and no video hitches. Perfect for the 4 games I watched yesterday and today.
I say, Y’day & T’day because I don’t watch the games live, but as archived feeds. This saves me time; the archived games take but 2hrs to watch, commercial free. Just as well, the Euro-USA time diff demands I need to watch the late game at 9 or 10 o’clock. With the archived feeds, I can get up on Sunday morning and watch the first game, then have lunch or work out or take a walk with Asia, and come back for the second game. On Monday morning, I wake at 5.30 to catch the first (Sunday) game, go teach a class, and return for the second game.
Some of you might suggest that I’ll learn of the score before I have time to watch the game. This is nearly impossible. Firstly, Czech’s don’t watch NFL football, and its late game doesn’t make the newspapers or whatever. Secondly, I make sure I don’t go on the web and “accidentaly” learn the scores. Foolproof, or nearly so.
For the Superbowl, I’m going to get a good night’s sleep, then wake up and watch a commercial-free game. Six a.m. start? No problem: I’ll crack a beer and pop some corn w/real melted butter. Beats the hell out of standing in line at the stadium to pee or get a $12 beer, or missing the multi-angled replays.
Immortalization is a slippery word, these days. If you’re online, you can be immortalized by inclusion in an article, but if/when that article is deep-six archived, you lose that imprimatur of deathlessness. That’s when you are eulogized, I suppose.
However, for the time being, I’ve been added to the ranks of Wikipedia under Mark Beyer (novelist). This addition, while flattering, naturally, can also be a bit embarrassing. Do I deserve such recognition? Well, here’s when I tell myself, “Calm down, pal; don’t get self-indulgent.”
A former student recently got in touch via Facebook, and she’s a Wiki editor; one msg led to another, and I provided her with some references and info that could make up an article. She has come through on her promise, and quickly (I might add). The Wiki people have labeled it a “stub,” which means it’s no more than the basic info. I remembered this morning that what could be added are my two awards for writing: 1998, for short fiction, and 2005 for news features. Big Wow, as we used to say in 6th grade.
January 10, 2012 at 7:31 pm · Filed under Ways of Seeing
“Koyaanisqatsi” is a film you can easily envision having been made in the 1920s or ‘30s, or even the 1950s — that wonderful Cold War decade that sent schoolchildren scrambling beneath their desks for nuclear war safety drills — a film out of somewhere like China, or Russia. One of those strange, state-sponsored films to show capitalism in disreputable, and unchecked, disintegration. Likewise, to show some Benevolent Government (it doesn’t have to be China or Russia, but I’m a Westerner and have been properly washed of all things harmful coming from Daddy Country; this year such a country could be Iran, or Venezuela; or America!) in perfect resolve to protect its people and uplift them, and show the outside world the splendid life they live, under the watchful and care of said Benevolent Gov’t.
Nothing could be further from the truth, however. This scenario comes wholly from the imagination of historical happenstance. “Koyaanisqatsi” premiered in 1982, directed by Godfrey Reggio (famous for broad, panning scopes that articulate the world in poetic folds of visual concentration), and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. The film features what many high-profile reviews and casual viewers have described as “a movie with no conventional plot.” Fifteen thousand home reviews gave it an 8.1 out of 10, by the way.
What’s here is a focus on humanity’s unbalanced relationship with the Earth’s environment, brought about through untamed progress. One can disagree with the reviews my own, simple, synopsis of “Koyaanisqatsi.” It’s certainly an art film, by all stretches of modern film description. Yet it also holds that socio-political angle, if at least (or, only?) by interpretation of its subtitle: “Life Out of Balance”.
I have rarely review movies. As my passion for arts extends to each possible room of art’s domicile, I can say something about how the movie affected me. Before I do so — let me point out that this affect has little to do with my overall point of this essay. Nonetheless, readers expect this, in the back of their mind, to the effect of asking themselves, “But what do you think about the movie?”
So here’s my take on “Koyaanisqatsi.” Reggio presents a vision of life that seems straight out of Alvin Toffler’s 1970’s “Future Shock”, a dramatic exposition of life happening so quickly that people’s minds — partly because of genetics, perhaps, but more likely their sense of history and of themselves in its maelstrom — cannot grasp the ever new landscape presented to them by science, medicine, manufacturing, social change, architecture, even art. All this sounds familiar, doesn’t it? A computer’s life is about two years; pharmacology has advanced to such a point that people live much longer than they should ever rightly expect; the Internet has changed everything about communication and information retrieval for the present and into the long, long future. Do you think future shock is lived by you? Now? Think again. If I were writing this essay in 1970, I would have had to stop and go to the library to look up Toffler’s book for the year it was published; likewise for Reggio’s ”Koyaanisqatsi” — 12 years later! Instead, I found both references—and all the information I could possibly want and mostly discard— within 18 seconds, just by Googling both names. That, my friends, is future shock.
“Koyaanisqatsi” makes a case for life out of balance through images and sound. First, by showing in those broad, sweeping pans, Mother Earth in its pristine nature. Then, gradually, it introduces the effects of humanity on both Earth’s landscape and, ultimately, the environment. As this happens, music plays; first with the tempo appropriate to Earth’s historic geological progress, then, increasingly, according to humanity’s intrusion on the world, right up to that present day when the film’s last roll was shot in 1981. I won’t say more of “what happens” in the film, because that would sully the overall experience each of us can have with its images and musical score. However, a few minor notes before one overriding issue: there is no dialogue; there are no characters; and, you can watch this film with popcorn and soda.
That Web sites and reviews call ”Koyaanisqatsi” “without conventional plot,” I would both agree and disagree. Shut up, please, and let me be contradictory for a moment. “Plot” is such a conventional term that I’m not surprised ”Koyaanisqatsi” is described that way. Yet plot is not needed, or, to wit, plot need not be talked about at all with so much else going on. What else is there going on, Mr Reviewer? you may ask. I will tell you!
Metaphor.
Reggio uses images and music to do the work in 1.5 hours that thousands of voices in the ‘60-70’s “ecology” movement did to finally help establish the Environmental Protection Agency in the USA raised for at least a decade: too much is going on with our lives, and in society, that affects the environment and humanity. This film is the microscope under which these issues are enlarged.
Plot? Plot?? Who needs plot when you have character? “The Earth”; “Machinery”; “Shapeless High-Rise Buildings”; “A Man Walking Quickly”; “A Woman Staring.” Or, who needs plot when you have metaphor? “Man Vs. Himself; “The Machinery of Progress Vs. Necessities of Life Fully Lived; “Modern Life’s Speed Vs. Stress on One’s Humanness”. Or…come up with your own after you’ve watched the film.
The irony of that ubiquitous statement— “a film without conventional plot” — is part of what ”Koyaanisqatsi” battles against. Plot summaries are quick avenues to the notation of materials, be they film, book, play, ballet, television plot, and even poetry. Speed is what society, worldwide, is all about nowadays. We want things fast. We want information there, when we need it, as we demand it. I’m no different. When I searched for the “Future Shock” reference, I had to wait nearly two seconds for the page to load. What agony when I’m holding onto a thought to complete the sentence I had in mind to write!
Yes. Life out of balance. The increased speed with which we live, and thus demand of those objects — and people — that we use for our business, relationships, relaxation, and pleasure. There is no time for plotless movies, is there? Well, if that where true, there is then no time for metaphor, no time for irony (if people even know what that is anymore); and, then, there is little enough time for Shakespeare, for Sam Johnson, even for … … plug in your own ending.
Shame on this sentiment. And a pox, too! For when we loose the mental image that metaphor creates, and then the story that springs from metaphor (yes, story), we as humans are in fact the slaves to the very machines that we’ve demanded use of in order to lessen our dependence on long, painstaking tasks, and thus leave us more time to read, to succeed in our relationships; more time for love, for our children, even time to contemplate the world. If that limitation becomes reality, what is to happen to our sense of ethics, skepticism, or even honor?
BTW: can you “like” this on Facebook? And, oh … oh: Tweet it, too? Just go ahead and get this out to all that soc-media stuff
I began reading José Saragamo in the 1980s. His narrative style was simple, to my understanding, then, of narrative. When I read him I felt as if a wise man, or else an old man who’d seen much in life, was telling me a story over a cup of coffee, his newspaper cast aside, folded into half. His is the voice of someone who enjoys telling stories, and knows how to move himself, the storyteller, in and out of the narrative in just that way where we get humorous, or black, or critical information, and then as seamlessly as we might imagine, brings us back with a mere caress.
Everyone knows “Blindness” but my favorite of Saragamo’s is “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” — we get the life of Christ, with all that we might have thought was missing, as told by the most cryptic character in all of literature.
january, 2005
“I’ll bet if we met the devil and he allowed us to open him up, we might be surprised to find God jumping out. Pastor still liked to provoke Jesus with these outrageous remarks. Jesus had gradually learned that the best way to deal with this was ignore it and say nothing. For Pastor might have gone even further, suggesting that on opening up God one might find the devil inside.”
– José Saragamo, “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ”
