Captain Obvious to the Rescue

Uncertainty about what might occur makes people unhappy? No shit!

Eine Schlange ist durch den Holzhaufen geschlängelt

"A snake slithered through the woodpile."

Today. A few hours ago. From the bathroom window I saw a snake, about the length of my forearm, slither into view from under the porch. It crept along, over the dwindling woodpile. I got my daughter and we watched the snake from the back door, until it disappeared. The snake was black, with yellow racing stripes along the length of its body. Beautiful.

Reflecting on Melville’s "Moby-Dick"

I began reading Moby-Dick because, well, I wanted to read it. The first time I attempted to read this tome I only got as far as the end of Chapter III. At the time I suppose I was a far less patient reader than I am now. I thought the novel seemed too wordy, too overly descriptive, the diction too elevated, the narrator too...I don’t know what. I just stopped reading it!

Now, though, Moby-Dick holds my attention in ways I never expected. As I’ve been reading, a question has formulated from somewhere, my unconscious maybe. That question is: What can I learn about Writing from the novel Moby-Dick? If I pay close enough attention to Melville’s prose, what can I take from it? What did Melville accomplish 158 years ago that is today not only relevant but also revolutionary? fresh? original? That is, by paying enough attention, what can I learn from Melville that I can apply to my own fiction?

At first glance his narrative seems dense, somehow unapproachable. This is nonsense, of course: everything that Melville has placed into Moby-Dick he has placed for a reason. From outside sources that I’ve read regarding Melville in general and Moby-Dick in particular, the conclusion that many have drawn is that Melville was obsessed with Mystery and the Unexplainable. He struggled to enlighten his readers as to the point he tried so hard to get across: Mystery. The Unknown.

I think again of "Bartleby." Why doesn’t the narrator simply throw Bartleby out on his ass? Yeah, because to do so would be impolite somehow, or unbecoming a man of the narrator’s position, or whatever other seemingly acceptable explanation one might dream up in order to excuse the narrator for his behavior. But the true reason, whatever it may be, runs much deeper. The narrator cannot explain himself, and Bartleby certainly would never be able to explain his own behavior. No proper answer is ever given. Whoever needs a proper reason or explanation for someone else’s bizarre behavior?

He or she who has been wronged or hurt by the bizarre-acting character, that’s who.

Life does not provide answers or explanations for things. People provide answers and explanations, a constant, steady stream of them. An unceasing flow of This is why and Well, you see and Because this happened and God wills it and Shit happens and Because I don’t like you and He did it to himself and so on and so forth unto infinity.

I love characters who act so strangely and without obvious reasons for their odd behavior. I love how they cannot be explained rationally. Some characters simply demand to be witnessed, seen, experienced, discussed, analyzed, gossiped about. They draw us in, whether they mean to or not. They draw us in and stir up our lives in ways that we may not like. Such characters make life more interesting. They make narrative life more interesting. I think of a Calvin & Hobbes strip, wherein Calvin has been playing musical instruments in bed, in the middle of the night. His mom is leaning into his room, half-asleep, and Calvin says, "Geez, I gotta have a reason for everything?"

Characters who raise a racket in the dead of night mean to provoke us, and their reasons are their own. We are not privy to them. I am okay with this.

As I said above, Melville placed everything in Moby-Dick for a reason. Everything points forward, into the depths of the novel where I have yet to plumb...

...Also, I like saying "Moby-Dick" over and over. And perhaps people searching for porn via google will be directed to my post, read it, and decide to give old Moby-Dick a try. Why not?

Code of Chivalrous Conduct

1. Honor and Defend thy Writing Time. 2. That which cannot Distract, will not. 3. Knowing before you begin to write, that which shall occupy your Writing Time, prevents you from wasting energy in Indecision. 4. Leave your Writing only for that which is essential to your needs. 5. When the Writing cannot move, cannot progress, read from that which moves you. 6. Mood is sacred. Before and during Writing Time, avoid news, websites, blogs, email. 7. Never forget: No Story [or poem, or essay] Comes in a Day. 8. Should you violate your code, you may be the only person who knows; but, that knowledge shall weigh on your conscience. 9. No subject is so taboo as not to be committed to paper. 10. Never forget your family.

Stop All Other Activity and Read this Book

I don’t know how Wells Tower learned to write the way he does, but it’s fortunate for the rest of us that he did. His debut collection of stories, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, demands that once you begin reading, you do not put it down. (I might ask: Why would you put it down?) The collection begins and ends on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In the first story, "The Brown Coast", Bob Munroe incorrectly builds a flight of stairs in a new house. A man falls down the stairs, files a lawsuit, and Bob is fired. Then his wife finds out he’s been cheating on her. Thus the theme of self-imposed exile is set in motion: Bob moves to his uncle Randall’s fixer-upper on the tip of a small island. A neglected aquarium begins to fill with sea life that Bob fishes out of a tide pool. His wife may or may not divorce him.

In "Retreat", the narrator exiles himself to an unfinished mountaintop cabin in Maine, spending much of his time drinking with an old local named George. This is a story about brothers: Matthew, the narrator, invites his little brother, Stephen, across the country to see the mountain and the cabin, part of a continuous state of sibling rivalry.

A man’s father is forgetting his own family members and the short-term details of his life in another story. In "Leopard", you are an eleven-year-old boy who hates his stepfather with a passion. And of course the title story must be experienced for itself.

Wells Tower has a suprising eye for fresh images. The sun, in "The Brown Coast", looks "orange and slick, like a canned peach." The eighty-three-year-old narrator of "Door in Your Eye" describes what he used to write in his diary: "...when I looked back on what I wrote, I noticed I’d become like a cheap newspaperman about my life, only telling unpleasant things–-when I fought with my wife, or how much money I had given my daughter, or a time I was eating at a restaurant and a woman fell off her chair from a seizure." Tower describes a flock of geese calling to each other "in voices like nails being pulled from old boards."

I cannot do this book justice with these few meager examples. How much simpler it would be if you just read it yourself. Please do. Buy a copy new, and support this man’s writing. I hope to see another Wells Tower collection or a novel forthcoming someday soon.

Limitations

Limits with which to stimulate the brains:

1. Do not use any words longer than 4 letters.
2. Do not use any words longer than 5 letters.
3. Do not use any words longer than 6 letters.
4. Do not use any words longer than 7 letters.
5. Write without using these negatives: No, Not, None, Never.
6. Write in 3rd-Person Objective perspective.
7. Have at least one character speak in rhyme.
8. Write about someone you know, but change his or her sex.
9. Write within a min-max word limit: 1000–3000 words.
10. Write from the point of view of a character who is blind.
11. Write from the point of view of a character who is deaf.
12. Write from the point of view of a character who is dead.
13. Write from the point of view of a character who is dying.
14. Write from the point of view of a character who is paralyzed.
15. Write from the point of view of a character who is confronting his/her worst fear.
16. Write without Flashback.
17. In place of Flashback, use Flashforward.
18. Write a piece set entirely in one scene. If flashback or recollection is used, they must relate to the one scene in which the piece is set.
19. Write from the point of view of a character who is severely hyperactive or who is otherwise far too overstimulated.
20. Write from the point of view of a character who talks to himself or herself.
21. Write from the point of view of a character who is trying to justify to a group of people some act that the group considers unjustifiable.
22. Use an unusual setting or environment: a wine cellar; a bomb crater; a drained swimming pool; a burning building; a hot air balloon; a railroad yard; the inside of a cargo plane; a freeway underpass; a vault full of gold bullion; a hotel room, the address of which a S.W.A.T. team has mistakenly been given.
23. Write about one or more characters procrastinating: the act of procrastination is the source of conflict.
24. Write using one or more characters who have an unusual or off-the-wall hobby.
25. Write using one or more characters who have an unusual or off-the-wall pet.
26. Write using one or more characters who have an unusual or off-the-wall obsession.

Lesen

For purposes I cannot fathom, my stack of books to read this summer includes several works of literature that are nearly or more than one-hundred years old.

Herman Melville: "Bartleby" (just finished); "The Bell-Tower"; "Billy Bud, Sailor"
Franz Kafka: "A Hunger Artist" (just finished); "The Great Wall of China"; "The Metamorphosis" (re-reading)
Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi
Vladimir Nabokov: Invitation to a Beheading
David Rhodes: Rock Island Line
Bill Holm: The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth
Bernardo Atxaga: The Accordionist’s Son
J.C. Hallman: The Hospital for Bad Poets (almost finished)
Norah Labiner: German for Travelers: A Novel in 95 Lessons

I find recently that my patience for reading antiquated (if that’s the best word) texts has been improving. A year ago I may have started "Bartleby" but not read to its end. It’s a strange story, mostly interior (character) and reflective. Why doesn’t the narrator just throw Bartleby out of the office? I like how Melville was obsessed with characters in pursuit of unanswerable questions. Nabokov, of course, is a delight to read; what stunning details! seamless transitions! vivid characters! unrelenting precision of narrative! Lolita, Pale Fire, and Pnin all share these traits. I reiterate from a long-ago post: Nabokov is one of the few authors whose long stretches of exposition are a delight to read, and his scenes grab you by your eyelids and don’t let go.

Mining for Language

What use can be wrung from the oldest stories collecting digital dust in your hard drive? I have called them "White Whales" because, well, they are an obsession. But I’m not trying to hunt them across the sea and kill them. The metaphor is imprecise. These old stories are those I wrote three or more years ago. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just wrote them. Tackier stories have been written. Stupider stories have been written. But these old stories are awfully tacky and generally stupid: embarrassingly so.

But: they contain weird, interesting stuff. Rough images. Raw voices full of grit and dandruff. Narratives bent at odd angles like girders before a collapse. These are fucked-up pieces of artifice, as gangly and awkward as teenagers. And now, a few years distant, I can see what you were struggling so hard to do back then. You were putting in quite an effort. You had something to prove. Your story, it made no sense. But, wow! Do you see what you did without even knowing it? In those days writing a story was a pursuit, a chase. Words added up to pages and pages of this which was not a story, but something better: a story mine.

A mine, as in "coal mine" or "uranium mine" or "gold mine" or whichever mineral you wish to extract from the narrative earth. Bizarre images jump out among the striated patterns. From another, more recent story, I extracted one entirely new story from a single paragraph of about two-hundred words. That is what I mean by a mine. Much the same way that I read with a pen—–writing down unusual sentences, noting images that catch my attention, reminding myself to look up an unfamiliar word later—–when reading a book, I extract the useful and the strange from my own narratives, things I never noticed before.

Do we all have story mines? I’ve heard that Tobias Wolff throws away every rough draft. Why would he do that? I’ll probably spend the rest of my life dragging around binders of notes and papers wherever I go. Words are up for grabs. I must find them and write them down.

Further Sideways Process

What seen when pondering a cat. The wishing cat. Here, have an elbow. He elbowed him in the face. [verb: to ELBOW] ‘Fatalism’ is a system of belief in those things which cause death. Scratched out and abandoned to all of one’s money. In this place we try to question every answer; the reward is not money, not cars, not appliances, but hard liquor. *** There are times when I feel unafraid. Other times I feel so afraid it’s all I can consider, my fear. Moaning doesn’t help. Nor does groaning. My fingertips tingle. The cat pretends to sleep though she is actually watching me with her ears. I watch her breathing. I watch with my eyes. Pricks are not prickly. Remember the census. The census! *** I took up the cats’ toy and in a great fury pressed it against my asshole and farted; the toy, a miniature plush moose, was now saturated with fart. I proceeded to present the moose to each of the cats. Each cat sniffed the moose and the fart. I felt vindicated. *** Consider the contra-bassoon. And what of? And what of? And what of? Hammer sledgehammer ballpeen-hammer hammertoes drop-forged hammer hammerhead hammerheart lunghammer hammer to the guts Hammer-Smashed Face Imbibe the stomach Drink the stomach Drink it! A racoon bears fangs grinning. It knows something delicate but you can’t tell what no matter how long you squint A racoon just knows and eats your tossings your uneaten and scatters the rest for her offspring. *** People made him nervous. Unreasonable people who interrupted his reverie during lizard-feeding time were in particular prone to make him nervous. He kept a gila monster in a fifty-gallon terrarium with a heat rock and a little cave made of stones. The gila monster feasted on eggs. *** Miniature ampitheaters. In this place dwelt a live scorpion, a black one with enormous fat pincers. It rarely moved. *** An indoor herb garden. We raised parsley, rosemary, and grass of a sort meant to be eaten by the cat, though she avoided the grass and instead waited until we dropped collard greens or lettuce on the floor. *** Abandoned caboose. Hands always feeling about. *** Have you ever driven through a town after a tornado had hit? Like a couple days after, when people are out trying to clean up, but they don’t have any heavy equipment yet, and it doesn’t look like they’re really doing anything but standing around? *** Decorum? *** Unhook your eyes from my chest, please.

Twitchiness and Nonretention

At this link is a series of charts showing how Twitter can't retain its users. Which I think is apt and funny. What is it, an average of 20 to 40 words per "twitch"? It is called a twitch, right? If not, it should be. Twitter has all the makings of a speed-addict's flightiness, little bursts of information regarding what a person is doing at a particular moment. In truth, each and every twitch implies the act of typing out the twitch itself. For example:

I am staring at Einstein's hair! [I am typing this message]

Why am I going on and on about this?

Exclamation: !

At this link, a British guy discusses exclamation marks and other punctuation.

What do you think of exclamation marks? Should they, as Elmore Leonard apparently prefers, appear no more than once or twice per 100,000 words of prose? I beg to differ. I love exclamation marks. When used at precisely the right moment, an exclamation mark makes all the difference in rhetorical and/or emotional effect. Exclamation marks convey desparation in a way no other punctuation can. The lesson is use exclamation marks but not to excess!

Attack of the Silent B's

subtle: subtlety ; unsubtle ; subtlize
doubt: redoubt ; doubtful ; doubting ; doubtless
bomb: bomber ; bombing ; firebomb ; nailbomb ; bombast [The B asserts itself in the describing of "Grandiose but empty language"]
aplomb
debt
comb
numb
dumb
crumb: crumble [Aha! The B asserts itself in the act of crumbling!]
plumb
plumber: plumbing

How many more Silent B words are there? How & Why has such a strange (and decidedly unsubtle) construction entered the English language?

Further Notes on the Writing Process

[As an actor must perform as if there is no audience, a writer must write as though there were no audience. This at first may seem nonsensical; of course there is no audience in the moment of writing: No external audience. The audience in the moment of writing is internal. Some witness inside the writer judges everything he writes. Is the witness an editor? A censor? A procrastinator? A floating eye? A gossip? An idler? A shiftless layabout? A Roman Emperor demanding to be fed grapes by beautiful women and fanned by eunuch slaves? A crybaby? A gremlin? A deviant narcoleptic? It doesn’t matter. Write as if the internal witness were powerless to stop you.]
***
[Each reader imagines your scenes a little bit differently. This is why the simplest, most direct, least cluttered prose is the easiest prose a reader can follow. The more you try to control what the reader sees in his mind’s eye, the more each reader will deivate from the scene as you wish it to be seen.]

Process IX

stepping stones gazing balls ceramic mushrooms
coppertone mushrooms, rising among black-eyed susans
like live oil slicks, wizard’s caps.
bird houses: made of? to resemble? located where?
awnings
stained glass windows: what design? located where?
sconces
"conestoga" cupboards
red barstools
tennis balls, baskets rain galoshes
"pergola" "arbor" "trellis"
ceramic rooster

[it’s not about what I want. what do the characters want? what do the characters not want?]
down shit crik a snapper’s back a diving submarine

"ensconced"
-Gone, the stepping stones across the yard. Gone, the calm of the road.
-SWAP PAWS WASP (SPAW) Birds wobbled.
-the logic of "as if". "almost as if".
-a drumbeat through the ceiling. Inconsiderate upstairs neighbors. -A great clattering across the floor, of interlocking blocks no longer locked.
-objects that possess: Houses; Desks; Diaries & Journals; Chests; Trunks; Bureaus, Wardrobes
-neaten, neatening
-secrete / secrete

A Checklist

1: What does it smell like?
2: Where has it been?
3: Where is it going?
4: How has it come to be as it is?
5: and Why?
6: Is it at risk of infection?

Vertebrae, Nerve Fibers, Prose

Yesterday I cut a spine out of the newspaper. A backbone, actually. Part of a hip came with it. Presently I shall seal the paper backbone and hip in a casing of transparent packing tape. The backbone and hip will then make an exquisite bookmark: a reminder of the logical foundation of writing. The Spine!
***
Invertebrate writing is out there. Some may know it as "Experimental Writing." Have we ever read a piece of writing that seems to have a bad case of Scoliosis? Or fused vertebrae? The root of "vertebrate," in the Latin, means something like "to turn." INVERT. VERTICAL. VERTIGO. REVERT. PERVERT. SUBVERT. INTROVERT. EXTROVERT. To turn, in one way or another; to make standing; to disorient; to turn back; to turn upon, twist, twist upon itself; to turn under or to turn over; to turn inward, to turn outward; to look inside, to look toward or outward.
***
[Please do not twist my spine]
[Like a mallard’s neck.]
[And do not invert my legs]
[Without first going out]
[Of your way to clarify]
[Whatever it is you want]
[To say - I can’t handle]
[Your perverse prose.]
***
[And do not call.]
[I will not answer.]

They Came in Leopard Print

Meet the Giant Garden Slug.

The last house we inhabited in southern Illinois had a basement. The foundation was cracked. Water stood upright on the floor. Camel crickets dotted the walls. Mold, black spots of it, along with miniature forests of small mushrooms, grew on the walls. Brown recluses scuttled about. And, at night during the summer, Giant Garden Slugs came up the stairs in a great swarm. I fed them cat food. They seemed grateful for the sustenance. These slugs grew to immense proportions, some longer and fatter than any one of my fingers. Seeing this silent and glistening host at the top of the basement stairs filled me with a sense of paternal pride. They were like my subjects! Never once did I salt them. I miss them today. The Giant Garden Slugs are the only other nonhuman inhabitants of that house that I miss.

The Latest Fashion for a Night on the Town:

This understated lacing of the neck bespeaks a gentle coyness of spirit, does it not? It says, I am willing not only to lace up my bootstraps but also my neck, I am willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. I will stretch my neck out to please.

In St. Paul, and other Niceties

We visited the Science Museum in St. Paul yesterday and looked at dinosaur fossils, the Quackery Museum display, the Visible Woman, and so forth.

Who wasn't fascinated with dinosaurs in childhood?

She has excellent bone structure.

This device was purported to aid in curing indigestion or somesuch ailment, among others. It's a chair in a box. I do not understand the purpose of the window. There is also a vibrating chair, and some kind of plug that is inserted rectally and connected by a wire to a blue light bulb. I would almost say "You can't make this stuff up" but someone already has and tried to profit from it at the expense of a gullible public. Thus, some things just don't change.

Reading List: In No Particular Order

A large number of books are waiting for me to read them:

The Collected Stories of Leonard Michaels.
Rock Island Line by David Rhodes.
Celebration by Harry Crews.
The Gospel Singer by Harry Crews (reading now).
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (reading now).
Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams (reading now).
The Accordionist's Son by Bernardo Atxaga.
Flickers by William Trowbridge (reading now).
The Collected Stories of J.F. Powers.
***
Harry Crews writes in such a way that the story moves quickly without losing the reader. I just finished Body. I never once got lost. The novel, many times, made me laugh out loud. Body meets the criteria for what I consider quality writing, fine writing. 1: Moves quickly. 2: Does not lose me. 3: Keeps me interested. 4: Makes me laugh. 5: The end is surprising but, yes, inevitable.

Not many writers are able to do this. Harry Crews and William Maxwell are two. Not even Joy Williams meets all of these criteria (I am enamored of her writing for different reasons I am utterly unable to explain). Have we all read Harry Crews’s novels? I know some of us have read Childhood: A Biography of a Place. But the novels? My god, the novels! A Feast of Snakes! Body!