Train Wreck, Dramatic Style

Here it is, getting well on into the eleventh year of the twenty-first century, a number of disasters still raw on the face of the earth.  You think of New Orleans, still hurting and needful; Haiti, crying out in unheard agony; Pakistan immersed, soggy, miserable; the seeping wound in the Gulf of Mexico only just staunched but on this very day a new explosion of a rig.  No wonder an expression much in use is train wreck.  With ample pictures of train wrecks at our disposal we extend the metaphor to include any performance that did not go as planned, resulting in some disaster of language, performance, even intentions.  A train wreck has become short hand for Robert Burns' suggestion that "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft agley/An' leave us nought but grief an' pain/For promised joy..."

You have found unfortunate ways to extend the metaphor, the first of which is in things you read as a reader reading for enjoyment (might need an entire essay on what that has come to mean) or in order to provide editorial support, the other being disasters in your own work, accordion-pleated logic or detail strewn about after having collided with unnecessary description or the heavy hand of authorial intervention.

One of the great causes of literary train wreck is convenience, as in an event coming about in fortunate coincidence so that the star-crossed lovers meet or the grudging rivals meet or someone changes his or her mind in order to allow the story to arrive at some comfortable destination.  Perhaps as well a conversation between two or more characters in which vital information is FedExed to the reader, no signature required.  Hi, John, I've been meaning to talk to you about that business from last week.  You mean the one where we agreed to enter into an unlawful conspiracy against Fred?  No, although that was interesting and we might want to finalize that next week.  I mean the one where we both decided to raise prices we used to charge our clients.  Oh, that one.  Yes, that one.

Another cause is unnecessary description of any noun having the misfortune to appear in the story.  It can be the shape and/or color of the beard on the face of a homeless person the protagonist sees on his way to work every day, or a recitation of the exact number of steps a character requires to get from her desk at work to the photocopying machine in the work room, neither object, the beard or the photocopying machine having role or relevance in the story other than a demonstration of the character's acute awareness of quotidian details, thus demonstrating the sensitivity and regard for order experienced by said character.

Yet another train wreck may be an explanation, offered either by one of the characters to another, which is preferred over the explanation offered by the author, either an eighteenth-century author such as Henry Fielding (of Tom Jones fame) or the twentieth-century author Aldous Huxley, who so enjoyed explanations and descriptions that he became quite good at slipping them in between the more active paragraphs of his longer works and was no slouch at using them in short stories.

The more you think about the potential for train wrecks in the context of writing the more you become convinced that thought is a dangerous enterprise to indulge until you have completed at least an early draft of what you consider the work to be.  Even then you want more to listen to the material than think what you wish it to be.  If you listen carefully, you will learn what it wishes to be rather than the train wreck of what you think it ought to be.  Many promising dramatic ventures are spoiled by sending story and thought along the same track

The Egg and I

You have written any number of things--essays, for instance, or news stories, or features, or short stories, novels, poems, critiques, and all those hundreds of reader's reports editors have to write in reference to submitted manuscripts--over a considerable span of time, enough so that you understand intellectually as well as through the viscera that some form of stimulus is necessary to come up with the words, then propel them forth in an attempt at coherence.  True enough, deadlines and job descriptions are somewhat to the rear of the line.  At the moment, your own favorite is enthusiasm, closely followed by curiosity.

There are times in the past (and now for that matter) when such cholers as revenge, anger, impatience, and setting the record straight rush to the head of the line, bullying their way in front of enthusiasm.  Another momentary favorite is deadline because the only deadline you have is for a weekly column for a newspaper with a circulation of about fifty thousand, and that deadline, although certainly an obligation, is quickly addressed by calling up the impressions of the book recently read, which brings forth a resident emotion (including enthusiasm) to propel the words and thoughts.

It is, in fact, the reading of such a book for review, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, by Aldous Huxley, that you are made aware of this concept of emotion or idea or both as catalytic agents for writing.  A man of unquestionable intelligence, wit, and enormous range of interests, he seems to you unable to write more than a paragraph without giving the impression that he cannot help himself from making connections, comparisons, explanations.  Even while telling a story, Huxley is explaining, educating, conjuring up associations that are like running footnotes to a scholarly text.  Somewhere in the last day or so, you recalled a contemporary, Christopher Isherwood, telling you how he, Isherwood, loved his characters while "Aldous loved the ideas his characters represent."

Barbara Kingsolver is of this sort, not only producing story but explaining to you some of the less obvious elements of them.  So, too, is Jane Smiley, and to a large extent, Francine Prose, although when writing fiction, Prose is more content to rely on the energetic effects of her own dramatic force. And not to forget Antonia S. Byatt, who practically kidnaps her readers, removes them to some remote encampment until she completes her narrative, then allows them to find their own way home.  At times in your long association with writing, you have in a real sense wanted to be as these writers were:  they are funny, insightful, stunningly able to connect seemingly disparate things and people.  What writer could ask for more?  Well, you, for instance could and do ask to entertain but not overwhelm, to transport but not to abandon on the outskirts of some remote concept.

It was never easy, being a writer.  Family, friends, associates seem always to be wondering when you are going to get a job or get serious or come to your senses.  Nor did it appear to satisfy them when the jobs you got, editor and teacher, focused on helping others become writers.  One individual likened you to the victim of a shipwreck, sitting on a small raft, helping other ship-wrecked individuals onto the same small raft, even pointing out that at the time you were swimming two miles a day.

Your response, which is different than a defense, is that it was never easy being a person.  There are those whose response to that existential conundrum is that they didn't ask to be born in the first place and were thus absolved from any of the responsibilities, obligations, and moral imperatives of being a person in a social setting.  You so much wanted to be a person that you swam faster than all those other cells, your metaphoric eye on that egg.  You in fact tried from time to time to become something else than a writer, let us say a responsible person who kept a budget, lived within his means, thought constructively, had long-range plans as well as short-range goals.  But these things largely seemed to baffle you when you stopped to think about their implications.

You still have the metaphoric eye on an egg that is also metaphoric, it is the meeting place of the idea, the feeling, the insight, and the connection, a convention center where delegates arrive in hope of sustenance, comfort, and continued enthusiasm for being that most difficult thing to be, a person--it is the egg of story.

What is so rare as a prime rib roast?

No doubt about it:  the matter is purely subjective.

Most of the writers who inhabit the panoply of your favorites (room for at least a footnote if not a separate essay) are writers whom you consider accessible on an emotional level.  Rereading Aldous Huxley at the moment for the purpose of your next Golden Oldie column, you are aware of the gap between his people and, say, Christopher Isherwood's characters.  (Well you see,"  Isherwood told you, "I love all my characters and Aldous loves the ideas for which his characters stand.")  You are thus more easily transported into the world, however strange and remote, of the characters rather than being impressed by the ideas the characters express.  Thus you can measure yourself from having read and been impressed by Huxley's Antic Hay and, to a lesser degree, Time Must Have a Stop, and now finding those somewhat lacking in comparison to Louise Erdrich and Jim Harrison and Annie Proulx.  True enough, you read all the Huxley you could get your hands on because his way of reaching into the story seemed to delightfully conversational and urbane, things you saw at the time as worthy of investigation.  Who would not like to have his work thought of as witty and urbane.  But then you read Isherwood all the way through, particularly reached by A Meeting by the River, and the movement from exterior gloss to inner reflection had been given an encouraging push forward. Reading the former is still fun, but the latter provide a kind of inspiration that leads to combustion and discovery.  Huxley is an excellent parodist and satirist, both aspects of your current work under way, The Secrets of Casa Jocosa, but it was Erdrich's The Plague of Doves that gave you the message that led you to haul the description of the precipitating event from your files, flesh it a bit more, and call it Chapter One.

While editing Conrad's latest anthology-type venture, you came across a segment from Lady Chatterly's Lover that also helped emphasize the point:  you prefer stories in which you can feel what the characters are feeling rather than merely appreciate what they are feeling.  Let's call it the difference between empathy and understanding.  Nor does it hurt that you are currently reading Frans De Waal's The Age of Empathy, in which a world-class primatologist discusses his observations about such issues as the sense of fair play in chimps, the ability of a chimp to feel embarrassment, and the ranges of jealousy that extend from our primate cousins to us.

Scenario:  Fred and Mary are seated next to one another at a dinner party.  Neither knows the other.  Fred is highly attracted to Mary.  In the course of conversation, they learn things about one another, primarily that each is available in the sense of not being in a committed relationship to another.  As the interchange continues, Fred finds himself not only attracted but interested.  What Fred does not know, and what he has not been able to piece together from his observation of Mary is that she is a vegan.  He is not.  When time for the main course arrives and the host calls from the end of the table, "Who's for rare on the roast?" Fred heartily affirms and thus is passed to him a slab of rare prime rib.  After a few moments, he notices that Mary is not being served the roast.  "'Samatter?" he asks.  "Not hungry?"  We can add some added details to, shall I say beef up the circumstances, but we would not be surprised to discover, down the line, Mary having to excuse herself and retire to the loo or at least stand for a few moments in an unobserved corner, deep breathing until her sense of revulsion at the presence of the blood rare slab of roast.  We are also not surprised when what Fred thought of as a growing chemistry between him and Mary appears to be vitiated.

There are any number of ways in which the scenario can progress.  Different writers would direct it differently, using differing techniques to freight the information and the responses to the information, not the least of which is internal monologue through either point of view, but that would not only be telling, it would be avoiding the nuanced play of feelings that exist between all characters when they appear on stage together.

There are different ways in which a scene may progress, depending on the mindset of the writer and the eye of the writer and the heart of the writer.

Counterpoint

counterpoint--the dramatic play of two differing, possibly even opposing themes within the same story; the overall relationship between two voices or agendas in contour and pace; a blending of two seemingly disparate points of view resulting in some added dramatic effect such as irony, satire, humor, or pathos.

Two of the three most obvious examples of thematic counterpoint in literature were composed by Jane Austen (1775--1817); these are Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. The themes are not only sounded in the titles, they are given full orchestration in the thematic use of the characters. 

 Who can forget Elizabeth Bennett as she responds to the chemistry of Fitzwilliam Darcy, each in turn battling against the inner conflict of romantic interest and social position? Another English writer, Aldous Huxley (1894--1963) has a title right on the mark, Point Counterpoint, its opposing themes being reason and passion. 

 Notable among the array of characters in what could be thought of as a run-up to the talky and pretentious 1981 film from Louis Malle, My Dinner with Andre, Huxley presents himself in Point Counterpoint as a novelist who is not very good at getting characters down on paper.

Yet another, wickedly inspired example of counterpoint is found in the Canadian writer, Robertson Davies (1913--95), whose The Rebel Angels appeared in 1981. Long interested in myth and mythology, Davies interests gravitated toward the psychology of Jung. 

 His contrapuntal Rebel Angels appeared to be playing the themes of pure academic research and the effects of mysticism and magic against one another. A significant character in this novel is Maria Theotoky, a graduate student researching Rabelais, which sets the theme of academicism in motion against the likely prospect of her stern discipline being overrun by the overt sexuality and emotional gormandizing of her subject matter. Davies does not stop there. Maria, through her Gypsy heritage, leads the reader into the murky areas of concert-level violinists having their prized instruments temporarily buried in horse dung to impart the true clarity of their voice.

Any seemingly disparate subjects can be employed, provided the characters have sufficient dimension to support the investigation. Of the four examples given, the Davies far outshines even the iconic Pride and Prejudice, suggesting that novels of ideas must have more weight to them than the sense of talking heads in serious discourse. Indeed, the Davies has humor and satire bordering on the blasphemous.

Academic-college-based novels have an open-door policy to thematic counterpoint, the novels of David Lodge and Lucky Jim, the one venture into the medium by Kingsley Amis, added examples of how effective the medium can be. Saved for last is a strong candidate for the most sublime example yet of the effects of counterpoint in story.

D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers engages the theme of a woman of breeding, education, and sensitivity, who meets a rough-and-tumble coal miner at a Christmas dance, falls into a sensual relationship with him almost immediately, then marries him. Together, they produce two sons, each of whom contributes in his way to the counterpoint. 

 The character of Paul Morel has become synonymous with D. H. Lawrence, who was a living example of the unharmonic conflicts visited on him by his mother and father. Watch Paul Morel's relationship with each parent, and then watch his urgent need to leave the atmosphere of the coal mining village and its stiffling effect on him. Now you will have seen and understood counterpoint, the better to use it as a tool in short story, novel, and intermediate lengths, seeing characters for what they represent through articulation of their needs and the circumstances they have built for themselves.

The Time Machine

time sequence--the temporal arc of a story or novel; the chronological order of events in a narrative; the arrangement of narrative events to effect the most dramatic result.

Time plays an important role in a story or novel. How long between events? How long has this--whatever this is--been going on? How long before he gets the idea? How long before she asks him if they have a future together? How much times does a Harlen Coben protagonist have before being discovered rifling the files in an office he has no authority to be in? The pacing or beats per minute is another way to measure the way theme and plot establish themselves within the reader's sensibility, helping the reader to remember bits of information as they come forth, We realize also the contrivance behind such manipulation, resenting it if we do not find it.

The skilled writer knows ways to manipulate time, showing an event in progress, exhuming an event from the past, switching away from a character who actually or metaphorically be hanging from the side of a cliff. Nor is it necessary to remain with a time line, instead juggling the various scenes and confrontations like the dealer in three-card monte.

Example of a relatively brief time line, Romeo and Juliet. In more modern times, James Grady's 1974 novel, The Six Days of the Condor, was successful enough to have evolved into a movie in which the time line was cut in half to The Three Days of the Condor. William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's novel, Logan's Run, had a time-line imposed by population explosion: When a character reached the age of thirty, along came the Sandmen to put the character to sleep, as in the final sleep. Somewhere along the way between the penultimate draft and the draft submitted to the publisher, Nolan and Johnson decided to cut back on the arc of character life from thirty to twenty-one.

The Iliad begins with the story already having been set in action some seven years previously. Tim Gautreaux's 2009 novel, The Missing, takes place largely in the late 1920s but begins in the final days of World War I, then flashes back to an earlier time yet before delivering the reader back to the time the protagonist, Sam Simoneaux, returns from his experiences in World War I France to his job in New Orleans, where the main action sets forth.

Time in story is meant to be manipulated, is asking to be manipulated. Time may be compressed in narrative, frozen within the boundaries of a scene, projected into the future with a cheery "And they all lived happily ever after."

Some stories are about lost or stolen time, others are about travels in time, others yet are about waiting to grow up or trying to forestall the age process, while an entire sub-genre exists in which the focus is on the extent to which characters will go to deny the effects of time. Peter Pan did not wish to grow up, but even more worth further study and consideration is the character Jo Stoyte, from Aldous Huxley's engaging satire, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. Stoyte, a Hollywood millionaire, at first wants merely not to grow older, but this desire morphs into his not wanting to die

The Key

There are a number of keys to be found in my desk, most of which have a purpose I readily remember, but among my trove there is a key that unlocks no recognition or memory whatsoever.

There are two basic approaches to cleaning house, the guilt-driven approach, which is perfunctory in nature, usually involving a quick vacuum and shifting piles of newspapers and magazines from one room to another; and the writing approach, which is more intense and thorough as the writer considers the implications of the current writing problem and accordingly processes or denies it.

I was in the latter, methodically cleaning my desk, when I came upon the key. Still no clue, and so I moved it to another room, which is a step taken toward discarding it entirely, avoiding future embarrassments of recognition.

The image of the key has remained however to trigger by association its literary association the roman a clef, which is the second of two French words having literary significance. The other, of course, is denouement or unknotting, a term we learn early on in our attempts to claim the more formal tools of writing fiction for our own toolkit.

Roman a clef is a novel with a key, meaning that the characters and incidents are slightly changed but not so much that knowledgeable readers will mistake the intent that they relate to real persons in real situations. In recent years the roman a clef has been given the wax job of cynicism whereby its contents must be truer than the biography because the identity and circumstances needed to be altered.

One of the more famous of romans a clef is Summerset Maugham's The Moon and Six Pence in which the Maugham character Charles Strickland bears more than passing similarity to the post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. It is a compelling enough story although far from the polished technique of other Maugham novels and, particularly, the gem-like hardness and clarity of his short fiction. Nor does it compare well to another Maugham roman a clef, Cakes and Ale, which takes its title from a memorable line in Twelfth Night. Cakes and Ale, which Maugham stoutly denied was based on real people and real events, is argued to be an accounting of the final years of the poet and novelist Thomas Hardy, his widow, and her subsequent romantic liaison with another novelist, Horace Walpole, best described as the Tom Clancy of his day. The Walpole-like character was mercilessly skewered, rendered as a feckless bumbler, and by indirection the widow of the late great novelist was added to the shiskebab skewer, her taste in taking up with such a man placing her somewhere between the onions and tomatoes. The matter actually came before an English court, which found Maugham's protestations interesting, given that there was another character in the novel, a medical doctor named William Ashenden, who spoke with a stutter, walked with a limp. Maugham, you see, had a medical degree, spoke with a slight stutter, and walked with a slight limp. Maugham also went on to write a novel called Ashenden, or The Secret Agent. Maugham was known to have had a deep reverence for Thomas Hardy. Thus the delicious gossip and speculation attendant on the roman a clef.

Another of my favorite romans a clef is Aldous Huxley's Chrome Yellow, in which one of the important characters, Mark Rampion, rings true to Huxley's friend, D. H. Lawrence, while another character bears comparison to John Middleton Murry. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night is widely recognized as a prism refracting the lives of two of Fitzgerald's expatriate friends, Gerald and Sara Murphy, and I still recall one of my undergraduate professors at UCLA inducing me to read the novels of Thomas Love Peacock because they contained so much, as he put it, delicious and accurate scandal. In my dear friend Barnaby Conrad's novel, Matador, the protagonist, Pacote, bears an eerie resemblance to the famed Spanish torero, Manolete. Indeed, Conrad and Manolete were friends. Yet another UCLA prof, knowing of my interest in Hawthorne, urged me to read The Blythedale Romance in order to get a sense of the individuals with whom Hawthorne lived and worked while in residence at the Utopian society called Brook Farm.

True enough, the roman a clef is a kind of historical core sampling. I first picked up and read Robert Penn Warren's All the Kings Men knowing it was based on the legendary Louisiana populist, Huey Long, thinking to get flavor rather than actual fact, because at that time I was more interested in flavor than actual fact.

The point I raise here begins in the form of a rhetorical question: Don't we all write romans a clef at some point in our career? We pull characters in from the sidewalks of our memory, subjecting them to casting calls as we prepare the dramatis personae of our novels and short stories, luxuriating in the convenience of being able to borrow a trait from one character, add it to the physique of another, and the ethnicity or lack thereof in yet another. We reset frustrating events in our life so that there is no longer the frustration of missed opportunity but rather instead the challenge foaming forth from met expectations. We return to fond memories, sometimes those involving persons no longer alive, rewriting them with the same tantivy we used in signaling a bartender for another round at some magical gathering. Years after the fact, I set down convivial events in a variety of places, but so many of them really began in The Old Spaghetti Factory and Excelsior Coffee House on Green near Grant in San Francisco, or in the Brass Rail on C Street in Virginia City, Nevada. Having got their essence to my liking, I lift them out of time and place and context and place them where they will do me the most good, in my current work, with a quick nod to the real individuals and events and places of the past.

Roman a clef. Novel with a key. The key opens the door to the inner landscape where all truth had its big bang at the moment of the individual writer's birth, spinning, expanding ever outward toward a common human destiny.