Where/What/How is The Thin Place?

This week I read Kathryn Davis's The Thin Place. You may remember her name because I looked at another one of her novels, Versailles, some time ago. Link here.

When I first thought of writing about The Thin Place for BA101, I worried that I wouldn't know what to write about. It felt uncomfortable--the idea of nailing any words to the page in an attempt to perfectly describe what The Thin Place is. It's sort of about a New England town that is both usual and unusual, populated by usual and unusual people. It's a little magical, but weirdly real. If I tried to package it up with a plot summary and tie it with a bow, it wouldn't convey what the book does.

And actually, I also read Flannery O'Connor's collection of occasional prose, Mystery and Manners, this week and she had something to say about just such an idea. She says:

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. 96

Mystery and Manners, I'd put in here, is amazing. One of the best books about "how to write" that I've ever read. At times it's cynical and wry--other times, enlightened and nearly prophetic. My head is going to buzz with her advice for years.

But back to The Thin Place. I'm totally intrigued by the idea that the book or work that defies easy summary is more likely to be "a very good one." It's hard enough to do "theme," let alone attempt to write "theme that is not effable theme." So the anti-themed novel must take real talent.

But on the flip side, what a misery for book publishers, to be in charge of writing the jacket copy for a book like The Thin Place! No doubt, resistance to summary or "blurbs" doesn't make a book very easy to sell--even if it makes it amazing (which may be why, regrettably enough, I found The Thin Place at a dollar store). Still, it bears consideration. And one last blurb to chew on from Mystery and Manners.

As the late John Peale Bishop said: “You can’t say Cezanne painted apples and a tablecloth and have said what Cezanne painted.” 75

With The Thin Place, it's very much the same.

How to Read How to Read a Novel

Well, I've been doing a whole slew of reading this week--mostly books about reading books. And so this week, just a few quick words about John Sutherland's How to Read a Novel. Mr. Sutherland's book is a light book filled with trivia about books, writers, and readers. It's witty, informative, and fun. A must-read for readers.

Here's how it breaks down:

Geared Toward: Advanced or intermediate readers across all genres
Focus: Becoming self-aware of how/why we read what we do
Dryness Factor: Pizza with a glass of expensive wine
Practical Application: Untangles questions of what to read, how to read, when to read, etc.
Snob factor: Hangs with the "in-crowd" of bookworms
Other notes: This book is highly recommended--a quick, light read

Here's some quotes that give you an idea of the book's tone:

On reading: It is, I would maintain, as difficult to read a novel well as to write one well.

On e-books: ...what emerges from the labs as 'e-paper' and 'e-ink' will, I suspect, have the same relationship to the real thing as the the blow-up doll has to [fill in your preferred, or wished for, partner here].

On sexy book covers: If, when you're buying a book, you feel a tender hand on your genitals, the other is probably feeling your wallet.

Next week, more Flannery O'Connor.

Aspects of Aspects of the Novel

This week, I read E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel. Why, you may ask, did I read E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel if I have not yet proclaimed myself an E.M. Forster fan (I admit to yawning through much of Where Angels Fear to Tread)? It's simply that I can't remember the last book about writing that I read that didn't refer to this text. Every writing book refers to this writing book. It's as classic as A Room of One's Own, so I thought I'd give it a go.

For those of you on the hunt for books about books, let me break it down like this: How this guy looks on the cover is how I felt reading his book.

Geared Toward: Intermediate or Advanced Writers
Focus: Craft and Process
Dryness Factor: Thick Oatmeal
Practical Application: Very idealist
Snob factor: Minor aristocracy
Other notes: Must have read a number of the classics in order to really appreciate this book.

One thing I did want to quote, though, in light of my last post about Judith Gould and ensemble casts: Forster talks about ensembles by comparing "stand-alone" main characters to trees, and ensemble characters to landscaping. To him, Jane Austen's characters are ensembles, Moll Flanders is a stand-alone. He writes:

"Miss Bates and Emma herself are like bushes in a shrubbery--not isolated trees like Moll--and anyone who has tried to thin out a shrubbery knows how wretched the bushes look if they are transplanted elsewhere, and how wretched is the look of the bushes that remain."

So he's sort of taken the approach that ensemble characters need each other in order to be themselves, which is an interesting idea I hadn't thought of in my last post. Ensemble characters, forced to stand alone, risk falling over like they've had their crutches pulled out from under them. I sort of like this idea: that characters are indebted to each other for their own characterizations. Not too unlike life, I think.

Okay. I'm wandering out of the blogosphere now.

Happy reading, wormies!

The Ensemble Cast: Pleasures and Pitfalls

Hi bookworms.

Finally, this long-awaited, and oft-promised post about writing ensemble casts. Let me tell you this: for as long as I've been saying I was going to write about Judith Gould's The Secret Heiress, that's how long the book's been overdue at the library. You know how it goes: sneaking into the front doors, head down, apologetic, saying "I think there's a fine on my card"--the bookworm's walk of shame.

Anyway, Judith Gould's book can be summed up pretty neatly for our purposes today: It's a reworking of The Man in the Iron Mask. One twin is an evil society princess, so egocentric that she resorts to quasi-murder to "have" another woman's man. The other twin is a humble college professor, a beautiful nerd. You can guess what happens.

Ms. Gould has written what I'd call an Emotional Thriller: a book that's emotionally violent and thrilling. In TV terms, it would translate into a Showtime series--gritty plots interlaced with sporadic (and slightly rote), pornographic sex.

What makes this book interesting from a craft perspective is that Ms. Gould doesn't have one main character--she has a whole slew of them. Each character is absolutely vital to the plot and so each gets significant real estate in the text. So I've done some thinking about ensemble casts in novels and have put together this handy (and very basic) list of Positives and Negatives for using ensembles.

Positives

1) Multiple intertwining subplots can create a suspenseful storyarc as all subplots gradually come together to make sense. This structure is typical of thrillers.


2) Ensemble casts mean a writer can show off snazzy characterization.


3) Ensemble casts mean shorter scenes with much variety--good for low-attention span readerships.


4) Ensemble casts mean easy control over tension and pacing: writers can choose where to place the slow scene, the sex scene, the action scene, the grief scene, etc., just by picking from among their characters.

Negatives

1) Ensemble casts mean there is less page-space/time to develop characters. This can lead to flat characters and to characters who have no emotional development. In other words, there's real danger that the ensemble cast writer will have to resort to "types" or "stock characters" to drive her plot forward.


2) Readers may become attached to one character more than another, and feel disappointed if the story doesn't focus enough on said likable character.


3) There is potential for confusing characters--therefore, stark lines must be drawn between one character an another.


4) Sometimes, there just isn't enough time for a reader to become emotionally attached to a character, or to identify with that character, when there are so many characters to split the focus.

Okay. So there's my first thoughts on ensemble casts. Gould's book was fun, escapist, fast-paced--even if some sacrifices had to be made to achieve this effect.

But now I'm going to return it.

Or maybe tomorrow. Since it's already overdue...

A short treatise in favor of promiscuity in reading

If you're reading this blog, then you already know I have oddball reading habits. When I go the library there's no telling what kinds of things I'll come home with--nonfiction, fiction, thriller, romance, mystery, literature, just name it. In fact, sometimes I like to play a game that I've always called "library roulette." The way you play is you walk into an aisle of books, drag your pointer finger along the spines of the books sort of like a kid dragging a stick along a picket fence, and when you stop, you read whatever book your finger points to.

Yesterday, I told another bibliophile about this method because I was trying to explain "what kinds of books I like." She scoffed at the idea of library roulette. She's not the only one. I've encountered resistance to the idea of random reading before.

I defended the concept: "But I feel like it's important to read outside your comfort zone. That you've got to look at the way narrative works from lots of perspectives to really get it. And I figure all published books have something to teach, if not about narrative, then at least about the way other people read."

Laughing, she told me she could never play library roulette. "Because I have standards," she said. It wasn't meant as unkind.

Since yesterday, I've given the conversation much thought. Am I wasting my time by reading books that I don't necessarily like? Or books that aren't dazzling works of literature? Do I lack--as she put it--standards?

The answer, I realized today, is that I am, in fact, a promiscuous reader--sure, I'll read anything. But I don't think it's that I lack standards. I feel like there's some element of (un)scientific inquiry in my reading habits. Standards are like the control group, the point of comparison. But then, a person needs variables too. If there's no variables, then it's not an experiment. If there's no variables, then the outcome becomes dangerously predictable. Running the same test over and over. And what fun is that?

Another way to look at it (or, at least another way I look at it), is that trying to figure out how books work by only looking at one kind of book would be like trying to understand Michelangelo's Pieta by only looking at one photograph of it. To understand it, really understand it, you'd need to see lots of pictures of lots of sizes taken in lots of different light.

Basically, what this means, is that I have a lot more to learn.

How to Organize a Bookshelf (A Guide for Cheapskates)

Last week, I had every intention of posting. I read a few books, got thoughts together, and then, inspiration grabbed me by the throat. My bookshelf could not go one more day without being organized!!!!

And so this week, I present: How to Organize a Bookshelf (A Guide for Cheapskates).

With some embarrassment I present to you, the BEFORE:

I know. It's shameful. Granted, you're seeing it when I had sortof torn it apart and thrown it back together quickly, but even before I did that, it wasn't pretty. Total, I spent two whole days trying to figure out the best way to solve the multiple problems that this lovely shelf imposed. This, I'm proud to say, is the AFTER:

Problem 1) Books stacked messily--jagged edges, clashing colors, no order. Solution: Put books in baskets and boxes, with only select books of similar sizes and colors to the front. That way, the book covers that you like, you can use to decorate. Plus they match the rest of the room!

Problem 2) These shelves didn't have backs, so you could see through the mess on the shelf to the mess on the desk behind the shelf. They're good shelves, just meant to be against the wall, not freestanding. Solution: I lined the back of the shelves with white paper ("bulletin board paper") from Staples ($7). I tried canvas, but that was too expense ($140 for two rolls). And cloth material was too see-through. I also considered buying a bamboo-style blind, but for the price of bamboo shades I could have bought a whole new bookshelf ($100 per shade). So paper was a good deal. And it gives a nice glow when my desk lamp is lit! Also, my bookshelves now section off my desk area from the rest of the room, so it doesn't quite feel like you're walking into an "office."

Problem 3) Inappropriate containers and lack of containers. Solution: I bought a few matching baskets on sale at AC Moore. For the rest of the storage I needed, I picked out a fabric that I liked and covered some old shoe boxes. They're exactly the storage containers I wanted, and I paid almost nothing for them. In fact, the most expensive containers I bought were simple, gray mesh desk organizers from The Container Store.

Problem 4) The shelves also must hold the very ugly telephone, answering machine, router, and cable box. Solution: I bought an awesome pair of boots that came in a long box (only in my world does organizing a bookself mean an excuse to buy rockin' boots). To hide the ugly tech stuff, I just covered the lid to the boot's box with the same fabric as the other boxes and used it as a kind of panel.

Problem 5) Couldn't display anything pretty. Solution: I managed to condense and organize, so now I have a shelf space devoted only to works that I've published. I also have a few "carved" baskets that feature in my upcoming novel. And I even have room for a pretty fern up at the top of the shelf.

So it was a productive week for me. Later this week, I'm going to dissect Judith Gould's The Secret Heiress and talk about how ensemble casts work in books.

But for now, I'm going to bask in the glow of a completed project. If anyone wants to post picts or comments about how they handle the many "problems" of storage for bookworms, please do. My own shelf is still a work in progress and I love new ideas!

Is someone going to get that?

This week, my boyfriend tried to get me to watch a scary movie. I said, no. In the early years of dating (near seven years ago) I might have considered it. I'd once agreed to let him pick one scary movie a year to drag me to. But that contract has long since expired. And now when he's holding the remote and browsing OnDemand, I simply say, "Sure you can watch it. I'm going to go read."

This week, however, he threw me for a loop. "But it's like research," he said. "Aren't you supposed to be reading thrillers? You're going to not watch this thriller with me and instead go into the other room and read one? Aren't there techniques you can pick up from this?"

I grabbed a pillow and blanket and sat down to watch.

The movie was called Vacancy: this couple gets stranded at a hotel that makes snuff films out of its guests. I knew all the tricks--the creepy lighting, the slightly "off" costuming of the bad guys, the "what was that?" moments. But still, it was scary. It wasn't that I really cared about the characters, but I felt like certain audio and visual cues simply scared me for no reason, like those poor, over-cited dogs Pavlov used to torment.

Anyway, I pretended I needed a drink, looked up the movie on Wikipedia, read the ending, then went back into the living room for a while until I got bored.

I would never have done that with a book.

I remember Donald Maass writing that books are, by their nature, slow-paced even when they are fast-paced. And so it's the particular challenge of the writer to boost the reader's heart rate without the visual and audio cues that instigate the automatic response: "be scared." In Elizabeth Lowell's Innocent as Sin, I think she does manage to keep up the pace and at the same time call on cinematic cues for composing a scene and upping tension. Read this:

"The phone rang.
He opened the case.
Kayla saw that it was lined with plastic foam that had been cut out to hold certain shapes.
The phone rang.
The pistol on the desk would have fit one of the empty cutouts. Next to it lay a black metal cylinder that she guessed was a silencer.
The phone rang.
Black on silver is out this season, she thought. But she didn't say it out loud. She didn't trust her voice.
The phone rang." (334)

You get the picture. Here, Lowell is taking cues from the movies to break up the scene, to stall it, and yet, to increase the tension level at the same time. If Kayla had been thinking this stuff without the punctuations of the rining phone, it would have been way more boring. Like:

"He opened the case. Kayla saw that it was lined with plastic foam that had been cut out to hold certain shapes. The pistol on the desk would have fit one of the empty cutouts. Next to it lay a black metal cylinder that she guessed was a silencer. Black on silver is out this season, she thought. But she didn't say it out loud. She didn't trust her voice."

That ringing phone gives so much to the tension and pacing--I just thought it was great.

Next week, either Russel Banks or Judith Gould. We'll see.

The Tudors and Flannery O'connor

Just a short post this week, I'm afraid. I was supposed to read a thriller this week, but instead I discovered The Tudors on Showtime. Normally I'm not a TV person. But a few weeks ago (after I read, Mademoiselle Boleyn by Robin Maxwell) I thought to myself, "Gee, how easy is it to write about the Tudors? You don't have to do any work at all. The plot is already there for you!" And lo and behold, I found Showtime's series. It's so smutty, and way too fun.

Anyway, instead of reading a whole novel this week, as I'd intended to do, I decided instead to re-read some of my favorite stories by Flannery O'connor. Some writers out there don't like to read other people's stuff while they're writing, but I'm not one of them. I think that re-reading O'connor, really figuring out how she makes her stories work, made my own story better. I just love her.

Here's a paragraph I wrote that follows like the opening of O'Connor's "The Turkey": A young boy, of unspecified age but certainly younger than thirteen, was playing by himself in the woods—which he normally did. This didn’t bother him because he had a good imagination. He imagined he was a cowboy who had just caught a dangerous cattle rustler. But then, he got distracted by a turkey nearby.

It's not bad, but it ain't Shakespeare either. O'Connor's opening, however, is brilliant:

His guns glinted sun steel in the ribs of the tree and, half aloud through a crack in his mouth, he growled, “All right, Mason, this is as far as you go. The jig’s up.” The six-shooters in Mason’s belt stuck out like waiting rattlers but he flipped them into the air and, when they fell at his feet, kicked them behind him like so many dried steer skulls. “You varmit,” he muttered, drawing his rope tight around the captured man’s ankles, “this is the last rustlin’ you’ll do.” He took three steps backward and leveled one gun to his eye. “Okay,” he said with cold, slow precision, “this is…” And then he saw it, just moving slightly through the bushes farther over, a touch of bronze and a rustle and then, through another gap in the leaves, the eye, set in red folds that covered
the head and hung down along the neck, trembling slightly.

I love the way O'connor doesn't quite identify a clear line between what's real and what's imagined. We instinctively know where the line may be, but here, the boy's imagination and the real world overlap a bit, and it's great technique. Real control, without telling too much.

Admittedly, it's classier writing than most of what you'll find on The Tudors. And yet, I'm counting the days until the new season begins.

For all you Horse Lovers

Amazing thing. I came back from Phoenix's Valley of the Sun (or is it Sun Valley, I'm not quite sure) to seriously wacky weather. In the desert, it was so cold I wore long johns under my jeans in the evenings (yes, friends, I'm writing about under-pants for the second blog post in a row). Then, I get back to New Jersey, and find that it's seventy degrees outside! At least the weather for the Big Game was friendly to Big Blue--even if the Patriots fans weren't!

Anyway, over the course of many time zones and many layovers, I did manage to read a novel by Aryn Kyle, called The God of Animals (thanks for the recommendation, Suzz!). It would be reductive to call the story "coming of age" but that's what it is. It's along the same lines as The Lovely Bones and The Secret Life of Bees. What sets this book apart as far as shelf-appeal is its hook: girl growing up on a ranch, among all things equestrian.

(This was particularly appropriate for me this week because I did in fact go horseback riding in the desert a few days ago--on what might have been the world's slowest horse. See video to the right. If your video looks like a picture, don't adjust your screen. That's just how slow the horse is walking.)

To get back to The God of Animals, what I liked about this book (and actually, what Publisher's Weekly didn't like) is how understated and clear the language is. Consider this passage, in which young Sheila is explaining things:

"Well," Mrs. Altman said, straightening. "I'm not sure I like the whip."

Sheila took a deep breath and I stepped backward in case she really
might throw up. "It's a crop, Mom," she said. "And Joe only uses it for
the noise."

I turned to look at her, trying to tell when my
father had shifted from Mr. Winston into Joe. (54)

What I like about this is the way the dialogue feels real and reflects a subtle change in relationships. Sheila is being obvious in the vocabulary lesson she's teaching her mother: it's the narrator who hears the unobvious lesson that Sheila is getting closer to the narrator's Dad.

One note here: in writing classes they say that you're not supposed to use italics too much. This is an example of a writer breaking the rule. She does what she wants to. It's all about emphasis. But I think it's a good idea to hold off on italics, for the most part. They get annoying.

Next week, a thriller. If anyone knows what are the thrillers I should read (sorry I really did need the italics there), I'd love hear recommendations. Which are the "important" thrillers that I should look at?

Later.

Reading and Airport Security

So, technically this post isn't an anatomical study of a novel, but a funny book-related thing happened to me in the airport yesterday and it's too good not to repeat here.

So I was going through airport security, taking off shoes, coat, scarf, wrestling my laptop from my bag, etc. Went through the metal detector, no problems. But the woman on the other side, who had made eye-contact with me a few moments prior, pulled me aside and said, "Ma'am, you need to stand here," and she held out her arm the way people do when they're attempting move you to a certain place without touching you.

I'd resolved I'd never be one of those people who gets pissed in airport security, so I said, "sure of course."

But after standing there a moment, I realized that I couldn't see my purse, my bag, my computer. This made me nervous, so I said to the woman, "I don't like just leaving my bags on the conveyor belt with everyone walking past them. They're up for grabs."

So a hurried and no-nonsense security guard moved all my stuff away from the belt, then called me over. Another woman, whose curly brown hair and sweet face made her look like a retired pre-school teacher, explained to me that she was going to pat me down--she was very explicit about what precisely that meant--but I didn't care. I just wanted to be done because my dinner was getting cold.

Then, they took this wand with a piece of fabric on the end and stuck it in my shoes. The swath of fabric came off and went into a machine. It gave a tiny little beep that I took to mean, "no explosives here."

Then they did the same with my purse, the same little beep. Unfortunately, when they swabbed my laptop, with its books and notebooks and extra pair of undies in case of baggage loss, the machine went nuts! Beeping and flashing lights! My bag somehow set off the bomb detector!

The woman looked at me and sighed. I think she wanted to apologize, but couldn't. Instead she said, "we're going to have to go through everything." At which point the undies came out. As well as the makeup, the books, pens, sticky notes, and everything else.

It was only afterward that I realized why my bag set off the alarms. It wasn't that I had a bomb, but that I had inflammatory reading material. Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope. Clearly, the government doesn't like Obama. I'm probably going to be on a "flight risk" list after this.

Anyway, now I'm here at this beautiful hotel (I should say resort) and blogging in the lobby. (How's that for devotion?) Going hiking in a few so until later...happy trails.