“You're a Choir Boy Compared to Me!”: Protagonists Who Would Be Raging Bastards in Real Life

I came across this piece some weeks ago by Annie Cardi, weighing in on likeability.  The whole piece is worth a read, but for the time constrained, I'll sum it up.  Cardi believes readers miss out on meaningful experiences in literature when they gravitate only towards "likeable" or "relatable" characters.  As in politics, if readers encounter a character--particularly a protagonist--they wouldn't want to have a beer with, they'll dismiss the work.  So, she urges readers to look instead for characters that seem human, who express important facets of the human condition or challenge our worldview.  Remove "likeable" and "relatable" from your review vocabulary, she suggests.

Cardi, I think, is mostly right.  "Likeable" means too much to too many people; it puts too much stock on individual taste.   And anyone can point out the heap of stories that have been told by, and about, terrible assholes: your Patrick Batemans (American Pyscho), your Alexes (A Clockwork Orange).

Or this fella, from one of my very favorite films, which I won't talk about further here lest this post run about 10,000 words:

Seriously, I could go on and on about how much I love this damn crazy movie.

I see Cardi's point regarding "relatable"; it too is a relative term, relying on individual taste.  Still, I don't think we should dismiss relatability so quickly.  Or at the very least, consider that relatability tends to factor in what we can find human.

Association Three: Back to Perfection

This week, it’s back to description.  It might be obvious by now that I just love description.  My favorite writing exercise (along with writing Wikipedia-style summaries of characters I invent) is to describe objects, places, or people, usually to no point or purpose.  To that end, I’ve been thinking of the best kind of description: the short kind.

You might instead call it the efficient kind.  I might love description, but I won’t tolerate entire paragraphs devoted to one person, one miserable car.  What gives the greatest shudder of pleasure when I read is that perfect one-liner.  

"Last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it."

It's a Little 'Too' Quiet in Here: Writing an Atmosphere

photo credit: National Weather Service

I’m going to step away from being OCD about description, and get OCD about something slightly different this week.

Atmosphere changes a story. Unlike plot or thematic content—speaking to the audience’s sense of logic or intellect—atmosphere appeals almost entirely to the emotions. Like “immersion” for video games, atmosphere in narrative does the work of removing readers from their own time and place. And subject matter, characters, and language that look fun and sunny in one piece of writing turn warped and frightening when the narrative’s atmosphere changes.

"Well this place seems relaxed and friendly!"

“It Came from Planet Plothole”: What I Learned about Writing from Ed Wood, Jr.

I am a gigantic bad movie fan.  Battlefield Earth, Manos: The Hands of Fate, The Shadow, The Beast, Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York; classics all.  I’ve watched hours of Mystery Science Theater 3000, allowing Joel and/or Mike and the Bots to subject me to piles of dreck: Escape 2000, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, The Thing that Couldn’t Die, Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell.  I’ve listened to “The Flophouse” and “How Did This Get Made?” as they marvel at The Room, Birdemic, Foodfight!, and Gymkata (“The skill of gymnastics.  The KILL of karate!”).  I love the listless acting and the scenery-chewing; I love the cardboard props and forced-perspective monsters; I love the motivations of characters the audience isn’t privileged enough to know; and I love the hard crack my suspension of disbelief makes when it finally snaps.  

You might think that slogging through hours of mediocre “art” and “entertainment” would amount to little more than An Amazing Colossal Waste of Time for me, but hear me out; I promise I’m going somewhere with this.

Association Two: Aftershocks

After I spent the last post discussing when associative devices really work, I’d like to go back to passages I’ve encountered that, to me, really don’t. 

Perhaps you have seen this series of mystery novels by Monica Ferris, in which needlework shop owner Betsy Devonshire solves crimes in the suburban, lakeside town of Excelsior, Minnesota, which in this universe has a murder rate roughly equivalent to Detroit:

Yes, these books are just as goofy as they look.  I have read several of them.  The less said about this, the better*. 

*Okay fine I know I’m acting super elitist about this series, so to make up for it I have to admit that they are not without their own comforting, whimsical charm; like spending the afternoon gossiping with your grandmother over coffee and almond cookies.  

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)

The Ways and Means of Description: Or, Why Fantine's Hands Make Me Swoon

For the first actual-content post of this little blog, I’m going straight into one of my favorite sentences in all of literature, courtesy of the great Victor Hugo. 

“Her long, slender fingers were those of a vestal stirring the ash beneath the sacred flame with a rod of gold.”

(Les Misérables, Part One, Book Three: “Four and Four”.  Translation by Norman Denny.)

For the completionists, here is the original French:

Fantine avait les longs doigts blancs et fins de la vestale qui remue les cendres du feu sacré avec une épingle d’or.

I was nearly moved to tears the first time I read that sentence. 

Perhaps you think this description of Fantine’s hands isn’t the most world-breaking, face-meltingly staggering sentence I could have found in literature.  Perhaps it isn’t even the most staggering sentence in Les Misérables.  You may be right; but I value this sentence so highly for a reason.  It changed the way I understand the craft and art of description.