Association: When a Thing is Like a Sort of Like Another Thing

Continuing from the last post on description, I want to work further with the type of descriptive device Victor Hugo employs.  Metonymy, the use of an association to create an impression, is one of my personal pet devices, and one of my favorite avenues for creativity in a work of fiction (or non-fiction, if you’re into that sort of thing).  Hugo, as I described before, brings in Classical allusions to paint Fantine as the archetypical pastoral girl.

To read an association used to wildly different ends, I’ll turn a wildly different writer.  Raymond Chandler still is, I believe, the master of noir, and perhaps as well the master of establishing atmosphere in a narrative (Digression note: I’ll dig into this for real in a future post, but I believe the keystone of the “noir”, whether in literature or film, is the bleakness of the atmosphere.  Chandler’s ability to cultivate atmosphere is, I find, a large part of the reason why he is the standard by which all others are judged.  /Digression).  He uses several instruments to create a setting of vague, disengaged despondency; association helps prop it up:

“The noise of the traffic from the boulevard came in waves, like nausea.”

(Farewell, My Lovely, Chapter 13)

To say nothing more than the fact that there is traffic noise coming through Marlowe’s open office window, and that it is not constant, is not necessary in and of itself.  If it were, Chandler doesn’t need to associate it with anything; the idea of traffic passing through a stoplight at intervals is easy enough to grasp.  If he insisted, the obvious comparison to waves of the ocean—or moving away from waves, from the noise of the revolution of a car on a race track—will explain the sound’s pattern.  Instead, Chandler implants the idea of the sound resembling a visceral feeling of illness, to stay consistent with the sense of disgust Marlowe conveys throughout his narration.

This is the beauty of association.  The point is not just to describe, but to build a sensation in the reader (as I wrote in the last post), by evoking some other familiar sensation.  Like Hugo, he allows the content to inform the association, and lets it do all the heavy lifting.  Chandler doesn’t need to explain how the traffic makes Marlowe feel; the reader just assumes. 

I’d also like to point out the alternate employment of association.  Observe:

“Sensitive.  That killed me.  That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddamn toilet seat.”

(The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 8)

Yes, it’s from Catcher in the Rye.  Yes, I know Holden Caulfield personifies first-world adolescent angst to no end.  I don’t care, I effin’ love this book, I’ve got my reasons, shut up all of you!

In any case.  I absolutely love that line; it’s the perfect use of what you could consider to be reverse association.  But just like Chandler and Hugo, Salinger gets the job done; he’s described Morrow, and in his sarcasm he’s stayed faithful to Holden’s character.