Chemical Reactions

chemistry--the tangible result occurring when two or more characters interact; an effect that seems to emerge and transfer into action when characters notably get along or develop an enmity; a palpable aura of reality emerging from the manner in which characters respond to one another; non-verbal signals which draw characters into friendships, alliances, or mutual distrust.

Chemistry is the unspoken glue in fiction, producing its own inexorable logic and the resulting consequences of that logic. Often coming as a surprise to the writer, particularly when it threatens to shift the predetermined direction of the story, chemistry is a jump-start to motivation and action. Sometimes the chemistry between characters is accepted by the writer and the reader on a non-verbal level, "just because it is." This very quality helps project a greater sense of reality and believability because of the way it overrides logic. Readers will probably have some sense in their own life of disliking or liking someone on sight, without any good reason; they probably make judgements as a direct result of such non-verbal signals, picked up by the sensory receptors of the social animal humans have become.

One of the many great chemistries in American fiction emerges in the characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, each drawn to the other in ways that make sense only after they are considered in light of the activities shared by the two. To Tom, Huck represents the freedom and anti-convention that runs rampant in a young boy, the ability to come and go as he pleases and the "worldly" knowledge such freedom brings. Huck on the other hand has come to accept Tom's views of conventional behavior, a slap-dash view of chivalry as seen by Walter Scott, and the classroom view of the way the world worked at that time. Tom was social, Huck wasn't. In this primordial ooze came their boyish desires for adventure, and from this came the chemistry that bound them.

In real life, Harry Longabaugh and Robert Leroy Parker met while in prison, each jailed separately on horse theft charges. The chemistry between them brings the Tom Sawyer-Huck Finn chemistry to mind. Longabaugh morphed into the Sundance Kid, an appellation doubtless hung on him by Parker since the name of the prison in Wyoming Territory where they met was the Sundance Prison. Parker, of course, was known as Butch Cassidy.

Yet another version of chemistry between characters emerged in the lengthy series of mysteries featuring Robert Parker's investigator, Spenser, and the unorthodox operative, Hawk, often retained by Spenser as a consultant (for which trope, read "backup gun hand").

Not to forget Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

The important fact for writers to consider takes in the reaches of partnering (say Dashiel Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man series, and Dionysus and his slave, Xanthias, in Aristophanes' play, The Frogs) and leaving one character alone on stage for too long. When two characters appear to get on well or, as in Louise Erdrich's remarkable short story, "St.Marie," plucked from her novel, Love Medicine, a young Native American girl in a convent school forms a totally explosive relationship with a nun, run with the energy. Follow the trail. Exploit the chemistry.

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The Unreliable Narrator

As our interest and sophistication in reading and writing grow, our curiosity about motivation in the participants in nonfiction and fiction grows.

Early in my reading career, it would not have occurred to me to question, much less think about agendas and motives in the work I read, wishing instead to immerse myself in the now-ness, the immediacy of the narrative in which I sought to immerse myself. Although I had distinct loyalties in narratives well outside my contemporary horizons, I seldom spent the time to think through the longer-term implications of why characters behaved as they did. 

 It was enough to root for Ivanhoe and against Sir Reginald Front d'Boeuf in Scott's rousing epic, and although I was more culturally attuned to Rebecca, I saw no reason why Ivanhoe should not pursue the Lady Rowena instead of Rebecca. 

 Hey, now I think it could be a masterly romp to have had Ivanhoe drawn by the force of his gonads to Rebecca, even though in time the question would have come up, "So what about it, Willie (for that is what she would have called Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe), we gonna raise the kid Anglican or, you know?" Actually, she'd have been after him much sooner, quoting Leviticus at him within a few days of the birth of their first son. As in circumcision.As indeed, Rebecca would have been on Willie's case to have the deed done on himself.As in: "You mean--"?

"Yes," she said, "I mean--"

"Unh, can I have some time to think it over?"

Not until I reached high school, having been yanked about the country by forces beyond my control to such arcane places as New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Florida, did the agenda of the narrator become important to me. When it did, the result was momentous. The authors of a text on U.S. History which covered, among other things, a long-term battle variously referred to as The Civil War, The War Between the States, and The War of Northern Aggression, depending on which part of the country I happened to live in at the time, were all affiliated with universities in the South. Did this have anything to do, I wondered aloud, with the fact that the text was snarky about Federalism and more openly favoring the self-determination of the states?

Later at that same high school, I was introduced to the concept of journalism being objective. This was at a time when the elder Hearst, William Randolph, of Citizen Kane fame was alive and kicking. The clock began ticking, which is to say I began keeping score.

Another watermark moment came when, at the appropriate age of eighteen, I read Thomas Wolfe (not the one with the funky white suits) and, of all people, Ayn Rand. Mr. Wolfe had a lovely way with words but not such a lovely way with racism and sexism, nor did he reveal a significant sense of humor. Ms. Rand, especially in The Fountainhead, was clearly in better control but still leaning toward propaganda, which erupted into full view with Atlas Shrugged. She, too, it appeared, was left home when the rest of the writing class was taken on a field trip to view humor.

By now, a sense of the agenda--hidden or otherwise--of the narrator came down on my head as though I were out walking in a rainstorm without hat or umbrella, which leads me a fork in the road an author and a reader must take. Is the unreliable narrator deviously unreliable? (See Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?) Does the narrator have some hidden agenda? Or perhaps the narrator is lacking a clue, which is to say he or she is naive?

Becky Sharp, who narrates Thackeray's Vanity Fair is the quintessential pragmatist, her self-interest apparent from the get-go. Don Quixote of the eponymous saga is naive bordering on deluded; the protagonist of Jaroslav Hasek's lovely send-up of war and army life, The Good Soldier Schweik, is either a bumpkin, a shrewd master of his fate, or, as at least one other character calls him, a lunatic. Another novel with a nearly similar title, The Good Soldier, by Ford Maddox Ford, allows us to experience--don't worry, I won't spoil it for you--a remarkable irony, perpetrated on a seemingly reliable narrator.

The list of narrators with ambiguous agendas is seemingly endless, but none more splendidly illustrates such a powerful dramatic force in recent times as Mr. Stevens, the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro's memorable novel, The Remains of the Day. Loaded throughout with the technical pazazz of irony, ambiguity, humor, aching tragedy, and acutely realized characters, The Remains of the Day allows us the delicious luxury of seeing the tragedy of what might have been for Mr. Stevens, the sum total of what he got for what he gave, the opportunity to admire and like the man while still rendering harsh judgments about him.

It is no small thing to keep the narrator in mind as we read whatever it is we happen to be reading at the moment. This is oversight at its most important. What are the motives of those who present our news to us, our descriptions of scientific discovery, our entertainments, our representations of history.

Generations of Spaniards of a particular social class speak their language with a lisp because of the speech impediment and/or affectation of a member of the royal class, centuries ago. Foot fetishists may slather at the lore of foot binding in China, and some historians--undoubtedly male historians--may argue that the smaller the woman's foot, the greater was her beauty considered to be, but try telling that to the women who could scarcely get away. Don Imus says he was only trying to make a joke, William Randolph Hearst believed war sold newspapers, Jerry Springer says everyone loves a good verbal squabble, and Pat Robertson thinks AIDS is a celestial punishment rendered against the gay community.

In a real sense, we are all unreliable narrators. As writers, our reliability works in direct ratio to our vision of the worlds we attempt to depict and the persons we chose to populate the world. Nick Caraway, another naive narrator, says Gatsby was a romantic. I love the book, but take issue with Nick; I think Gatsby was a victim of the very system he bought into in order to win Daisy.

From time to time, in a classroom, I'll ask what I consider to be two significant questions: Who's telling your story? Why? Very often the answer is a row of bright, attractive faces, looking at me in wonderment. Why would anyone, they seem to be saying, ask such questions?

Somethings to consider: What did Virgil have in mind when he wrote The Aneid? What did the incumbent President of the United States have in mind when, on April 19, 2007, he offered his complete confidence in the Attorney General of the United States?

The Prescience of Sir Walter Scott

There it is, for all to see, but how many of us saw it? I mean really saw it? Sir Walter saw it.

Marmion, canto vi, verse 17:

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

The tangled web runs from under my bed and the five-drawer chest left to me by my mother, across a narrow aisle to the Queen Anne secretary she also left me. It trips me at least once a day, and it causes me to look with reverent awe at features in Architectural Digest, showing how a room--any room--ought to look.

Whenever The New York Times runs its Circuits feature, I browse with great interest at the range of gadgets and advertisements that promise an end to the tangled web, which is, of course, a sinuous, treacherous network of wires connecting computer, printer,router, modem, iPod recharger, telephone answering machine,a Maxtor external hard drive for back-up (about which more in a Moment), and for all I know, an electric can opener.

Some day, I tell myself, it will all be wireless. Even the wireless modem will be wireless, and there will be fewer things to trip on.

Some day.

Some day, also, the Carbonite back-up system will have completed its initial back-up of my hard drive, allowing me to remove aforementioned Maxtor external hard drive from its notional connection and store it in The Closet, which is to say that eclectic catch-all space wherein I contribute to the science of archaeology. Since we are on a Some-day sort of roll, some day, future archaeologists will discover The Closet and reconstruct from it what it was like to live in the twenty-first century. Surely by then my Carbonite backup will have completed its download and provided some tiny wedge into the world of bloggery (sounds almost sexual, doesn't it?), from which the bigger picture can be reconstructed.

For the nonce, it is all a tangle, every last bit of it, and as I go my way, tripping over it and cursing, and waiting for Carbonite to download (yet another word to be added to the tangle within the Oxford English Dictionary), I take fierce joy in not being a Luddite. I actually enjoy the inherent promise of gadgets. Only yesterday, I bookmarked (would Chaucer have bookmarked?) a neat little package called Coordinator, which indeed attempts some housekeeping with The Tangle.

In fact, I look to gadgets to solve societal ills the way some look to science to solve other existential problems.

Meanwhile, my mantra is: Watch out for the tangled web and keep your eye on Carbonite.