The Secrets of Casa Jocasta

In the examination spirit of a few of your favorite essayists--Hazlitt, for example, or Emerson, and of course Montaigne--you pose yourself the rhetorical questions: What is certainty? and What troubles has believing yourself certain about a person, place or thing caused you?

Certainty is the assured sense of error-free inevitability, a circumstance in which no proof or documentation is necessary. The sun will rise in the east and set in the west. Water will boil at 212 Fahrenheit degrees at sea level.

So far as the answer to the second question is concerned, there have been some misjudgments about human responses (including your own) and your ability to do things you were certain you could do (but eventually did not or could not). Adding a note of perplexity, there is the aspect of retrospect, a down-the-road awareness that something you were certain you understood or know or anticipated was in whole or large part wrong, thus the thrust of this essay, which turns out to be about humor. What is funnier than a person, yourself for instance, discovering something he thought to be so was, in contemporary vernacular, so not so?

Your answer to this question addresses the way you see yourself and the world about you, in the frequent, after the fact condition of being told by your present day self that your earlier self was at best naive, at worst delusional. Individuals who present themselves to you as certain or who behave in ways you associate with certainty are thus suspicious. This extends to the extremes of conspiracy theorists, with whom, you might think, you'd find some sympathy, but the escape hatch there is the certainty the conspiracy theorist brings to the table and the imaginative ability of such individuals to extend the reach of the alleged conspiracy.

Perhaps Heraclitus was right about our not being able to bathe in the same river twice. Would this by extension mean we cannot be certain of the same certainty twice?

Following this line of thinking about certainty leads you to a kind of certainty in which you look back at the intent and texture of your earlier stories and longform work, a pattern emerging in which characters are living with a foot in the real world and another in the world of revisiting what seemed so certain in the past. This may be of considerable help as you are currently wanting to reenter the realm of fiction, of invented story, where a thematic tenet is the buried treasure to be discovered. Indeed, one of the projects carries the word Secrets in its title, The Secrets of Casa Jocasta. In Spanish, Casa Jocasta is about as close as one can come to the title Edith Wharton used with such great effect, The House of Mirth. In your plan, Casa Jocasta is the name of a retirement campus for the affluent, speaking with an ironic bite to your belief that what you have already decided is "Act Three of Life's Drama," (how's that for a little parody?)is undercut with the clanks and shuffles of the consequences of Act One and Act Two, the machine shows signs of wear and needs frequent maintenance.

In keeping with the theme of this mini-essay, you've been certain since the idea came to you that The Secrets of Casa Jocasta was a mystery. Certain, do you hear?

If you are correct in your other, more generic certainly, that the novel and short story are voyages on the sea of discovery, what will you discover that will cause you to laugh at yourself?

Apocalyptic Fiction: If Sarah Had Become VP

apocalyptic fiction--short stories and novels framed on the premise that civilization, as it has evolved until the time of writing, has been traumatized by some natural or man-made catastrophe; narratives dramatizing the consequences of severe trauma to earth and its denizens; the evolutionary unthinkable, come to pass.

Whether it is a nuclear holocaust, tidal waves, epidemic,eruption, greenhouse effect, or some politically inspired pandemic, the story of apocalypse begins with the consequences writ large, dramatizing its effects on the lives and status of the survivors. No matter if the catalyst is a metaphoric result of the sorcerer's apprentice, atomic rockets fired by insurgents, or a worldwide flare-up of mutant salmonella, the story is about what the characters do next and how they accomplish what they do. The apocalyptic novel thus begins with the literary equivalent of Mr. Dickens telling us, It was the worst of times. The English writer H. G. Wells (1866--1946), with his frequent ventures into the medium of science fiction, is often thought of in connection with the apocalyptic genre although Mary Shelley's much earlier work, particularly the 1826 novel, The Last Man, is a place to draw the historical if not the dramatic line.

Like Wells, the American writer Jack London had strong socialist beliefs and wrote about them throughout their careers. In his apocalyptic mode, London produced The Scarlet Plague in1912, depicting a San Francisco of 2027, after a global plague pandemic has killed off enormous chunks of the population. No stranger to her own political extrapolations, Margaret Atwood added another dimension to her speculation, The Handmaid's Tale with the overtly apocalyptic 2003 Oryx and Crake, which builds on extrapolations of genetic engineering and bio-technologies to produce various species who can then be exploited. Earlier, Richard Matheson's 1954 I Am Legend, posited a bacterial pandemic in which Los Angeles resident Robert Neville is the only survivor. The symptoms resemble vampirism, to which Neville, having once been bitten by a vampire bat, is immune.

Apocalyptic novels involve Earth being struck by asteroids and comets; as well there are cultural and political wars, and in John Wyndham's 1951 The Day of the Triffids, an invasion by plants of particularly aggressive behavior who are able to communicate with one another. The triffids are particularly fond of feeding on humans. Nevil Shute's 1957 novel, On the Beach, tunes in on Melbourne, Australia, dramatizing the effects of the survivors of an atomic holocaust as they await the effects of death from the radiation. Walter Miller's plangent 1960 novel, A Canticle for Liebowitz, remains one of the archetypal novels of apocalypse and reconstruction. Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel, On the Road, is yet another example of the flexibility of the apocalyptic novel; things were worse than bad--a cataclysm (probably nuclear, but not specified) has wiped out most of the population of the earth, leaving an unnamed father and son, who undertake a journey toward the sea.

There are literally hundreds of apocalyptic novels readily available for study, many of them from experienced and prolific science fiction writers, just as many others from men and women who have turned from more literary pursuits, driven by their individual senses of concern and politics, to this genre. The apocalyptic story begins with some worst-case scenario--the worse, the better--impending or having taken place. One or more characters is selected to sort through the wreckage and remains, then set forth to do something about making a contribution to the continuation of the human race.

novelette

novelette--a narrative running between 7500 and 25000 words; an arbitrarily defined narrative whose length is longer than a short story and not quite so long as a genre or category novel.

All of Alice Munro's short stories have the feel of novels, but this is because her ability to evoke characters, situations, and settings is so commodious and accomplished. It may be positively said of her that she has compressed novels into a shorter form; it may also be said that it is difficult to read one of her short stories without feeling as though it had the texture and layering of a novel. 
 Many of Munro's short stories have elements commonly associated with novels, elements such as multiple point of view, protracted time span, and extensive shifts in locale (or at least significant shifts from urban to rural settings).

Although technically a novel because of its theme, throughline, and ensemble cast of characters, George Orwell's Animal Farm is often spoken of as a novelette, perhaps as a mild rebuke or patronizing response to the author because of the political views expressed in the work. E. B.White's iconic Charlotte's Web is rarely spoken of a novelette and generally regarded as a novel intended for younger readers. 

 The Orwell and the White are of an approximate length. For a better perspective, try thinking of the serialized story that once appeared in monthly magazines. These had a reduced length, ensemble cast of characters, possible shifts in point of view, and possible shifts in time frame. Such stories were edited with an eye to cliffhanger episode endings and overall space considerations. 

 In the 1950s and 60s, Cosmopolitan Magazine editorially trimmed such novel-length mysteries as Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying and Bill S. Ballinger's A Portrait in Smoke to make them fit in one edition. These and other novelettes (see also novella) appeared later in unedited hardcover and paperback book form.

Because of its word length and the subsequent decision to package it as a part of a hardcover book, Houghton Mifflin packaged Philip Roth's narrative, Good-bye, Columbus as a novella. Had it been given first appearance in a magazine, it could easily have been called a novelette.

In the belief that younger readers are less likely to stick with the 210,000-word length of Moby-Dick, or the 600,000 words of War and Peace, YA novels such as Gary Soto's Afterlife cap at 40,000 words or under. Books for younger readers tend to cap at less, with such nineteenth century titles as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Uncle Tom's Cabin remaining as pre-TV anomalies.

Hints: Write the story for its length. Revise it for its length. Send it forth into the world at whatever length you have felt best presents it. Depending where it is sent, if it is under 40,000 words and over 200,000, expect an argument.

How Do We Get Out of Here?

exit strategy--a dramatic design for concluding a scene in a novel or short story, a chapter in a novel, or an entire novel; a purposeful building of event, discovery/revelation, and surprise that will lead to a resolution in a longer work of fiction, or a significant, reflective pause in a short story.

The two key words for exit strategy are suspense and resolution. Ending a scene without one or the other tempts the reader to set the work down with limited need or intent to return. Ending a scene or chapter with suspense leaves the dramatic outcome unresolved, tempting the reader to remain, hopeful of experiencing further dramatic event, which is to say, how "things" turn out. If "things" turn out well enough to have resolved the major thrust of the story or novel, then the story or novel is ended and there is no pressing need to inject additional suspense.

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, the easy-way-out exit strategy was the trope "...and they all lived happily ever after." A notable exception, perhaps even a trend-setter exit strategy, was Huck Finn who, unwilling to be civilized, lit out for the territory ahead. This strategy was employed midway through the twentieth century when Joseph Heller had his determined bombardier, Yossarian, in a hegira similar to Huck, this one toward the neutral country of Sweden.

For a time in the twentieth century, it seemed that all novels moved to some highly structured resolution where the murderer was revealed and justice restored, where true love was finally allowed back on track, and where all teen-aged rebellions gravitated toward a sensible maturity. Simultaneously, all short stories ended with a punch line, heavy irony, or a trick. But the effects of writers such as Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, James Joyce, and in later years, Eudora Welty, John O'Hara, John Cheever, and Alice Munro forged the exit strategy where resolution meant something less finite, more reflective of how individuals in daily life behave as opposed to moral finality.

Thus does another burden fall on the writer, the burden of articulating a life philosophy that attends the characters and story of a given narrative, then structuring the ending to approximate as close-to-plausible-as-possible a payoff before leaving the reader with the unspoken implication that, soon enough, these characters will become involved in yet another story.

Lord Byron, the poet, observed that tragedies end with death, comedies end with marriage. Modern stories begin with the tragedy of death as it evolves into the next step in the lives of the survivors. Modern stories also begin with the humor of the romantic energy of marriage, then evolve to such mile posts as developing relationships, children, career, and aging, to name only a few. The purpose of a well-thought-out exit strategy in any story is to leave the dramatic quality of aftertaste, the recurring appearance of characters after the story is ended, haunting the hallways and battlements of the readers' mind with add-on possibilities for new stories.

Timing Is Everything

time frame--time scheme in which events in a novel or short story take place; a narrative paradigm that helps readers see the relative position of events in a dramatic narrative; verb tenses used as identifiers to help readers orient to dramatic sequence of events.

Although there is no organized lobby to establish a convention of a strict chronology in a story, there is the tradition of a dramatic unity in which a drama shall proceed in real time from start to finish, hence questions about the "legality" of flashback or other interruptions of time sequence.

It is a rare twenty-first century story that trudges forward from A to Z without some pause for reflection about past events or an actual shift back to events that took place before the story at hand began. Although his novels are set largely at the time of Elizabeth I, twentieth- and twenty-first century crime writer Leonard Tourney frequently begins his mysteries with what he calls "a slice of the crime," in which the novel begins with an out-of-sequence scene in which the reader sees a crime being committed, a crime being contemplated, or a crime being discovered. Other crime writers (Richard Price, George Pelecanos, P.D. James) begin with some provocative event as a preface to the story at hand. Yet other writers (John D. McDonald, for example, in his non-Travis McGee novels)use a combination of a shift in time sequence and a shift in point of view to create a cliffhanger effect. Tim Gautreaux's 2009 novel, Missing, begins at the tail end of World War II, moves forward a few years to a major defining moment, then reverts back in time well before the beginning scenes.

One of the most extreme examples of time bending appears in the opening of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, which begins with a fragment of a sentence, "... riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." A few hundred pages later, the novel ends with "A way a lone a last a loved a long the..." which, were you to connect it with the opening fragment, would form a complete sentence, setting forth in some degree Joyce's intent of an unending circularity.

A simple recipe for use of time line in the short story or the novel: at least sixty percent of the action takes place in the present. Two-line space breaks separate all scenes, but when jumping from time to time and POV to POV, the writer must let the reader know who, when, and where ASAP.

See also backstory, flashback

The How and Why of the Synopsis

synopsis--a summary or abstract of a short story or novel; a compressed outline of the basic plot points and motivation; a guide to the behavior and attitudes of characters in a story.

A writer in search of a literary agent and/or publisher is still beset with a raging enthusiasm for the finished work. The writer wants to see the work in print, to know others, readers, will now have the opportunity to read it. Thus the first roadblock: said literary agent or publisher wants a synopsis--even if said publisher has already heard about the work in a pitch session, then encouraged its submission.

Why, the writer wonders, do they want a synopsis? Why not simply read the manuscript? The answer to these and other publishing-related questions are not rational. For instance, few individuals in publishing (writers included, by the way) have risen through the ranks to at least a journeyman level. Many in publishing have come from business-related areas, their degrees actually MBAs instead of, say, MFA. It is true that acquisitions editors should be able to determine the inherent value of a manuscript, and indeed, many of them can, but there is another truth at play here, which is that the editor has to produce the prospectus for the work before--in most cases--the work goes to the contract stage. In theory, the editor could write the synopsis. In further theory, it might make sense for the editor to do so because the synopsis would reflect the editor's enthusiasm for the work.

In fact, the author is the better person to write the synopsis because the author's intent and enthusiasm emerges, and because the author, however much given to grumbling about the chore of the synopsis, is more likely to produce an emotionally charged work than the editor or literary agent. Look at it this way: Even though you hate writing synopses and can see no purpose for them, who better than you is there to synopsize your novel?

Onward to the outline: Get some practice. Start by writing fifty- and a hundred word abstracts of short stories. Pick two out of any best-of-the-year collections, settling on one you like and one you don't. You're already halfway to the goal because the stories in either of the three major best-of collections have appeared in prestigeous publications, their validity ratified by a number of critics. Your own sense of liking or not liking particular works allows you to see what the critics may have seen, while offering you the opportunity to disagree with their choices.

After you have the hang of abstracting a shorter work, take a look at the Books Briefly Noted section of any issue of the New Yorker (which covers fiction and nonfiction). Next, take a longer work that is not your own, then imagine yourself attacking a similar hundred- to hundred-fifty-word critical apercu. Now you're almost ready to begin.

First step: decide who the principal teller of the story (point of view) will be. If there is more than one narrator, make a note of all. If there is only one narrator, put the initails POV in parens after that individual's name the first time the character is cited. For instance, "Mary (POV) was adopted when she was one year old." If there are other narrators, allow a speace break between Mary and the next narrator, say Fred.

Thus, "Fred (POV) is her older brother, adopted previous to Mary's adoption."

Next step is to introduce what the novel is about, what its primary goal is. Example: "Mary wants to learn the identity and locale of her biological parents." Note how this is done in the present tense regardless of the usage in the actual text of the novel.

The next step is to introduce some potential for early disagreement or outright opposition. "Fred knows who his biological parents were and where they live. He does not want Mary to learn either fact."

Now we have opposition and some conflict, which may demonstrated with: "Although Mary loves and respects her adoptive parents, Fred, relishing the big brother role, is constantly taunting Mary by questioning her loyalty and devotion to her adoptive parents.

The conventional pattern for the synopsis is to keep it at about three single-spaced pages, but this brings us to a fork in the road regarding the ending. Some synopsis writers "end" the summary with the lead-in to the climactic scene, where the tensions and pressures weigh heavily on the characters and they must face some kind of decisive action. How specific must the ending be? Is it possible to keep the reader(s) of the synopsis in suspense with mere outline and occasional bits of dialogue? On the other hand, if the final confrontation/denouement is left unresolved, won't the literary agent or publisher "have" to read the entire manuscript to see the ending?

This is a critical point for all concerned. If the outcome is too detailed, the writer may be stuck with that ending because the editor will have been sold on it ending that way. If the ending is not rendered with enough detail, the editor may become put off, not trusting the author. Thus the trick is to tell just enough to allow the editor to infer what happens, yet continue to hold the editor curious enough to want to read it all the way through to relish the details.

Knowing all this lead-up background, think of the synopsis this way: Your book will be taken on by a publisher, printed, bound, sent forth to appropriate reviewers and subsidiary rights agents, along with several thousands of other titles, there to compete in the metaphorical crowded drawing room that is a book store. Someone will provide Wikipedia and possibly even Amazon dot com with a description of your book, possibly even spoiling the ending to the point of obviating the reader's need to see how things worked out. Your synopsis can get there first, influencing how your novel will be seen.

Repeat slowly: Synopses are not nuisances, they are incentives. Synopses are not...

Another fine mess...

combustion--the point in a short story or novel where dramatic elements collide with sufficient force to provoke action leading to a conclusion; the aggregation of forces prior to denouement; the literal and figurative boiling over of story.

A useful metaphor: story is a crucible into which such elements as characters and their agendas, opposing forces, surprise, reversal, and shifts of power have been added and the heat of plot inertia is applied. The pressure becomes so great that the story combusts, explodes, boils over, leaving the characters to clean up the mess, which is to say effect some kind of resolution, however permanent or temporary.

Most stories, longform or short, have combustion points; those that do not can profit from them. An excellent example of the combustion point in a short story occurs in Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain," where Anders has already been introduced as the point of view through whom the story is told, the bank robber is introduced, and the animosity between Anders and the bank robber set in motion. One combustion point comes when the bank robber fires a gun. A combustion point in a longer work occurs in the film, The Third Man, written by Graham Greene. The combustion point is viewable on You Tube (Third Man/Ferris wheel scene). Holly Martens, the protagonist, meets his old friend Harry Lime in a gondola car of a large Ferris wheel in the Vienna amusement park and Lime delivers his now iconic disquisition on the Swiss and the cuckoo clock. As a result of this cynical observation from Lime, a line is drawn in the moral sand between the two friends.

Each combustion introduces the element of change into the respective stories cited here, nudging each to its unique conclusion. The chemistry becomes: combustion causes change which forces outcome.

Hint: Aggravate, drive, tease, torment the characters to a point where one or more of them moves beyond what he or she appears able to take, causing the behavior that will make some things irrevocable, sweeping safer options off the table. Characters who are always in control ultimately tire the reader. Characters who appear to have breaking points concern the reader. Characters who either discover or are driven to an interior place they did not know they had become permanent residents in the readers' mind.

The Politics of Concept, the Concept of Politics

concept-driven story, the--a dramatic narrative focused on theme; a novel or story whose plot appears to emphasize a particular subject such as revenge, redemption, or poverty while still providing dramatic structure.

Novels such as Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle may be seen as examples of the concept-driven story, and although equally at home in the categories of speculative fiction and cautionary fiction, so too are Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, George Orwell's 1984, and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. Each of these deals with burning political and/or social issues to the point where they have become more than snapshots of a particular era but rather have assumed the status of museum-quality prints, hung in galleries.

Unless a concept-driven story has more to it than the potent dramatization of theme, it runs great risk (as many fictional protagonists do) of being caught in the bog of disaster, which is to say it forgets its debt to story. Alissa Rosenbaum, she who became Ayn Rand, is an unfortunate example of this forgetfulness, beginning her career with The Fountainhead, which took on the theme of art for art's sake to great popularity and, to many critics, to great extreme. Her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, a thirteen-hundred-page-plus novel, articulated her Objectivist philosophy in extraordinary detail, allowing her to express anti-communism, anti-fascism, and anti-welfare-state views in unbridled gallop, reaching a full, Libertarian crescendo in which she deplored any kind of state at all.

In this regard, Rand may be regarded as the right of Upton Sinclair's left. Although they were roughly contemporaries, Rand is probably the better--and more favorably--known, but the reputation comes from her philosophy and argumentative skills rather than her dramatic skills.

The point here is that story is the freighting device for the message. For the concept-driven story to have an audience in the first place, it must eventually have characters who become memorable not because of the smirks they produce but because of the heart tugs. Compare, for instance, George and Lenny with Howard and Domenique or, for that matter, John Gault.


See plot-driven story
See Character-driven story

It's that time

chronology--an arrangement of events in time, beginning with the earliest; a sequence of activities set forth at the time of occurrence; tracking a person, place, or process by its age and subsequent growth.

Chronology is to time as alphabetizing is to the alphabet, leading to some urban mythology among writers that biography and story must be set before the reader in time sequence, beginning with early, then working its way toward the present. Perhaps because they have been bored by strict chronology, readers have come to expect a severe stirring of the pot. Abraham Lincoln may well have been born in a log cabin in Hodgenville, KY in 1809, but most of the multitude of his biographies begin elsewhere, say as a young lawyer or congressman or even as POTUS. Novels often begin in medias res (see), working their way forward and backward at the hand of dramatic whimsy.

It is probably a good idea to know when and where characters were born so that a plausible background can be constructed for them, but the entire subject of chronology raises the better issue of the information a writer needs to know about a character as opposed to the demonstrable and implicit facts the reader knows and deduces. Entire mythologies have been created around such iconic characters as Sherlock Holmes and Sam Spade, but the original venues in which these characters appeared--dramatic narratives--do not rely on the mythology, they depend on the story.

Begin with a character's birth or some other significant rite of passage, if you must, but do not expect the reader to be as interested as you are, perhaps because the reader has not yet seen the character under stress or in thrall to some agenda, but equally perhaps because the mere fact of a birth, bar/bat mitzvah, christening, graduation is not of itself dramatic. The character George Amberson Minafer illustrates this point.

George is a principal character, you might even say a spoiler, in Booth Tarkington's novel, The Magnificent Ambersons. Named after his maternal grandfather, thus his first and middle name,

"At the age of nine, George Amberson Minafer, the Major's one
grandchild, was a princely terror, dreaded not only in [the]Amberson
[mansion] but in many other quarters through which he galloped on his
white pony. "By golly, I guess you think you own this town!" an
embittered laborer complained, one day, as Georgie rode the pony
straight through a pile of sand the man was sieving. "I will when I
grow up," the undisturbed child replied. "I guess my grandpa owns it
now, you bet!" And the baffled workman, having no means to controvert
what seemed a mere exaggeration of the facts could only mutter "Oh,
pull down your vest!"

"Don't haf to! Doctor says it ain't healthy!" the boy returned
promptly. "But I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll pull down my vest if
you'll wipe off your chin!"

That is George's introduction to us, from which point we move well back in time to the point where George's mother was engaged to a man much other than the one who became George's father.

A chronology is most useful for the writer when the work at hand involves the activities of a number of front-rank characters, some of whom may or may not know one another. In such cases, it is a useful guide for planning the order of scenes and, thus, the possibility of a particular character being able to appear in two successive scenes. Chronologies often provide alibis for suspects in mystery novels and, indeed, for stories in which sexual jealousy is a motivating factor.

mise en scene: And You Thought You Knew

mise en scene--the visual aspects of a story; descriptions or evocation of a place, a time, and a setting; the positioning and movement (but not physical description of characters) of individuals in a dramatic narrative.

The term has been borrowed from the stage and motion picture set, where it refers to uses and placement of scenery, blocking, and atmosphere. When used critically or editorially to discuss a particular novel or story, it may mask the critic's or editor's desire to make the concept of setting seem more mystical than it ought to be, thus the warning to writers that terms expressed in foreign words or terms (See denouement and deus ex machina) should be made to show their passports at the border: Is there, they might ask, a suitable English language translation?

Mise en scene gives the writer of narrative fiction an opportunity to provide subtext, wherein the setting an/or activities of characters provide an unspoken, unwritten feeling or theme. Consider early on in the first act of Tennesee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, where the principal character, Blanche DuBois, appears. Had Streetcar been a novel, we might have had some moments of interior monologue, but as the play is mounted, we see Blanche appearing in a brightly lit room, turning down the lights as she appears to be looking for something. Our curiosities aroused, we follow her as she approaches a hidden bottle of whiskey, then takes a bracing pull on it. Not a word has been spoken and yet we have learned things about her.

What would it say, for instance, about two characters who are watching television in their bedroom? What would it say about the same two characters who were watching television in their living room, each seated behind a fold-up tray on which a dinner dish rested? What additional would it say about the same two characters if they were sitting on separate Laz-y Boy chairs which had clear plastic covers on them?

The most effective use of the mise en scene concept can be experienced by remembering the importance of story in the dramatic equation. If mise en scene contributes to a deeper sensory awareness of story, then it is successful.


narrative--a systematic arrangement of dramatic information for the purpose of relating a story; presentation of character-based activities that involve readers to the point where they feel a stake in the outcome; events related with the purpose of keeping the reader alert and concerned.

The term "narrative" is a lazy term, being used generically to mean any story or tale. Narrative in a novel or short story is the sum of interior monologue, description, mise en scene, and action, which leaves only dialogue as non-narrative. A writer's narrative is any fiction intended for print or web media. A writer's voice is the tone with which a story is freighted.

Feeding the Kitty

Schrodinger’s Cat is an existential conundrum advanced by the German physicist, Erwin Schrodinger, to demonstrate the dual nature of matter. This duality provides an excellent bridge to the nature of story; it is a more literary-related way of looking at the famed Frank R. Stockton short story “The Lady or the Tiger,” which itself becomes an illustration of the role played by choice in fiction. The Stockton story, which could have triggered the notion for Schrodinger, provides the main character a choice that must be made.

The Schrodinger’s Cat scenario imagines that a cat is locked in a box, along with a radioactive atom that is connected to a vial containing cyanide. If the atom decays—and it surely will over time--it will open the vial. The cat, inhaling the cyanide fumes, will be killed.

When the box is closed the observer does not know if the atom has decayed or not. This means that the atom can be in both the decayed state and the non-decayed state at the same time. Therefore, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time - which clearly does not happen in classical physics.

The parallel between the cat and a given story is waiting to be drawn, so let’s draw it. When asked to list vital constituents of a dramatic incident (story), writers will supply such ingredients as character—“How can you have a story without character?”—and such other elements as plot, suspense, and reversal (a change in the protagonist's or antagonist's fortune or commanding position). It is the rare, thoughtful professional who will add one of the key qualities inherent in the fiction of the twenty-first century, which is ambiguity (Will she, won't she? Does he, doesn't he?

If we imagine story and Schrodinger’s cat to reside on opposing sides of the equal sign, we can “see” the power of ambiguity in story. Fiction with the built-in element of duality provides an opening for reader participation, that condition where the reader feels not only close to the characters and events but immersed in the outcome as well.

Since about 1950, endings—conclusions, or payoffs—in fiction, particularly in the short form, have tended to move away from the highly visual, seemingly inescapable conclusion of the pulps and slick magazines, drifting toward uncertainty, opaqueness, and choice. Some of this tendency can be related to the uncertainty of the times. Short stories, since about the time of John O'Hara and John Cheever, have ended on an ironic note of dialog or alluded to an impending event, or left you with the feeling that one or more of the characters was on the cusp of having to make a decision without sufficient information to carry forward. This last set of circumstances is much of a piece with life, one possible explanation for the term "slice of life" tacked on to such narratives. These opaque, New Yorker-type stories that leave us so vexed (and yet somehow aware of the resonant frequency of some emotion) are, in Schrodinger Cat fashion more believable and seemingly more real because of their very ambiguity. In some of the modern short stories, the real payoff, something like the aftertaste of an Altoid mint, comes well after we've finished reading the story, leading me to conclude that this effect is deliberate. A salient feature of the modern story is its life off the page, the outcome being transported forth in the reader's imagination.

A novel has more room to bring things and events and persons together or, conversely, apart; the payoff, still nuanced, is more reflective of change in one or more of the major characters. Modern suspense or mystery novels generally have as part of their ending a killer being brought to justice, but we are often led to wonder what effect this or some other form of justice (No Country for Old Men, anyone?) will have on the characters.

Schrodinger notably used the dramatic device of the cat at risk to illustrate a duality in matter. Opportunists that we are, writers may carry that dramatic device farther along the orbit of dramatic inquiry.

A Tale of Two Sidneys

For those who write, there are two sandboxes in which to play, and a third, alternate site reserved for those who take themselves too seriously to enjoy the play of writing. I address here the sandboxes of playfulness, which are the places in which craft of story and self gain entrance into muscle memory.

There are two basic formats for story, long and short.

The long story is a series of wrappings of event about the armature of an individual who ultimately undergoes some form of change. Something happens, somebody changes. My esteemed dramatist colleague from USC, Lee Wochner, reminds me that the three-act play has now changed to two-act. Digby Wolf, inventor of and head writer for Laugh-In, now emeritus from the theater department at UNM, bound now for a gig at the University of Canberra, says nevertheless, Nevertheless, the three-act format is a good template for the longform story. Long story is a stage play, the combined sixty episodes of The Wire, or a novel, say George Pelecanos' remarkable The Turnaround. Long story is also Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, which is to say a series of novels in which a character, Lyra Belacqua, has a number of things happening to her, during the course of which she changes considerably.

The short story is a series of events, usually related in scenes, in which a character is drawn farther into a self-fulfilling encounter, one in which the reader is left to actually see or guess at the outcome. The character may or may not be able to see the outcome. The principal in Tobias Wolff's remarkable Bullet in the Brain, for instance, may not be able to see what we see. It is instructive to note how far the short story has progressed from Ambrose Bierce's Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge to the Tobias Wolff.

The literary landscape is like the Earth during the azimuth of evolution of the dinosaur when Earth was struck by a huge meteorite which obliterated for most practical purposes the evolution if not the very existence of the dinosaur. Who knows what the dinosaur might have become had that collision not got in the way? Story has an azimuth, discerned by looking at its structure from the time it began creeping into the petty pace of day-to-day events, altering them, imparting a sense of connectedness and causality which has led many of us to believe in such things as Fate or the will of the gods, or the will of God (as in His Perfect Plan, and don't blame me for that gender stuff; so far as gods go, I'm pretty happy with Kali). We seem now in 2008 to be nipping at the heels of causality much in the manner of an Australia Cattle Dog, rendering it more a vignette or in some cases a string of events, episodes if you will.

The rousing question is What do you bring to it? What have you done for story lately? To paraphrase William Wordsworth, Story is too much with us, late and soon. Which is to say the evolution of story can progress only if those of us working on it can fold into its ingredients a quality I will call inevitability. This quality is present in all evolution. biological or literary. It represents the individual writer's sense of what is most needed to give the process we call story a nudge forward regardless if I as reader or critic or teacher or writer like it or not. I'm pretty impressed by the presence and beauty of the giraffe, and it makes some sense to me that the giraffe evolved to score the leaves off the topmost branches the dinosaurs couldn't reach and that its neck acts like a siphon for water, but I have no stake in the giraffe. Were it to go extinct as a species, I would, having grown up with a sense of wonderment and admiration for the creature, feel a profound regret, but not the ache of grief at the loss of more personalized things. Truth to tell, my fondness for the short story comes from years of painful practice at the so-called pulp and slick and commercial story enhanced by the realization that what I considered a story outside those confines was something a respected editor agreed with and subsequently took on. I have a visual image of hat I want a short story to be. Every time I open a closet door, that image occurs to me.

True enough, if I deconstruct that series of events many persons agree upon as being story, and do so in terms of my vision, I will find a number of elements that go back to Aristotle's Poetics. I also have come to hold similar views on what a person, a single individual among the many billions who have walked and are still abroad on the Earth, represents as an individual. I also believe that the two are the Scylla and Charybdis of storytelling, my goal being to put events between those two poles

The Combination Plate, por favor

1. The book sat there for some time, seemingly too much book to read in a week and, thus, impossible for this week's review--maybe next week and Spring break.

2. The lure of the book, its title, and a reminder that a great loss was forthcoming, set connection receptors to twitching.

3. The book is Lush Life, which in the right context could be a nod to Billy Strayhorn, the incredibly gifted collaborator of Edward Kennedy Ellington, The Duke.

4. The author is Richard Price of Clockers fame. More to the point, Price is a sometimes writer on The Wire.

5. The Wire, as of tomorrow, is toast.

6. So okay, I'll have a look, then pick up a sensible, shorter book which can be read and commented on and filed by tomorrow night, which has become the default due time for the weekly review.

7. So I'm screwed because Lush Life is nothing less than magnetic, its title indeed an ironic riff on Billy Strayhorn's stunning lyric. You know:

I used to visit all the very gay places,
Those come-what-may places,
Where one relaxes
On the axis
Of the Wheel of Life,
To get the feel of life,
And jazz and cocktail.
The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces,
With distingue traces,
That used to be there,
You could see where
They'd been washed away
By too many through the day
Twelve o'clock-tails.
The you came along
With your siren's song
To tempt me to madness.
I thought for a while
That your poignant smile
Was tinged with the sadness
Of a great love for me.
I guess I was wrong.
Again I was wrong....

Yeah, that one. I think Strayhorn was seventeen or eighteen when he wrote it.

8. Just before we turn on the dry cycle, throw in this enhancement: In addition to Richard Price, many episodes of The Wire were written by Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos.

9. Here's the spin cycle. Just as The Wire and indeed Lush Life are bursting at the seams with an ensemble cast of characters and are related in an intricate patchwork quilt of a format, so are the works of Lehane and Pelecanos, so indeed are the novels of Denise Mina, so are many other of the novels appearing after 2000. What we are seeing is a shift in the DNA of the novel from the single point of view to the ensemble point of view, with shorter scenes, a finger-popping tempo, an edge, and a growing method of authorial observation in which it is clear that although the author may have favorites, he or she does not produce political stereotypes with whom to take opposition. All the characters believe in their individual rightness. Take a look at The History of Live by Nicole Kraus if you don't agree with this vision I present here of the novel's trip ticket Take a look at Richard Powers; The Echo Maker.

10. Individuals will continue to read and to write the "old" novel, the more linear story arc, but for those of us who cannot plot or who will not plot, this ensemble melange is a lovely switch in the depth, texture, and reach of story.

11. Many such modern novels, such as The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Urrea or The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, not only fit this ensemble description, they are wedging in another important event, which is language. Each of these two is inserting Spanish without defensiveness or self-consciousness. Some countries try to keep illegal immigrants from sneaking in across the border; America is doing its best to keep Spanish from sneaking in, but forget it, Spanish is here. Get over it. Read it

Stuff about Writers and Tuna Salad Sandwiches

1. The goal in longform fiction is change. Something happens and someone (ones) change.

2. The goal in shortform fiction is some kind of awareness. Something happens and the narrator realizes a choice must be made, and may, indeed, make the choice. But be careful: since 2000, more or less, take care not to make the choice acted upon seem too mechanical.

3. Writers have multiple personalities. There are probably as many archetypes living inside the writer as there are verb tenses in the English language.

4. The difference between a writer and a lunatic is that the writer knows he has these archetypes living within.

5. A writer at work on a story is like the leader of an Italian parliament.

6. A modern novel is a negotiated settlement.

7. Persons who embark on a writing career because friends or family tell them they ought to put their stories down on paper are buying the literary equivalent of the Minneapolis Bridge.

8. A first draft is like throwing dirt clods at the side of a building.

9. Nothing bad ever happens to a writer.

10. It is all right not to like famous writers.

11. Many of today's most successful writers have not read Middlemarch.

12. Most writers in the early period of their career begin their stories too soon and end them too late.

13. It is not wrong not to have read Jim Harrison, but it is too bad.

14. Ditto Annie Proulx.

15. Readers become quickly bored with mysteries associated with significant things and conversely fascinated with mysteries associated with funny-sounding places. The mysteries of New York does not hold a candle to the Mysteries of Pismo Beach or Pasadena.

16. A peanut butter sandwich is not funny. A tuna salad sandwich is.

17. A writer who has writers' block is not funny. A surgeon who has surgery block is.

Short Story vs Novel: Literary Detente

Much of my life is as tied up with the short story and the novel as the profligate spender is with credit cards. As a consequence, a good deal of energy goes into deciding where to put the short stories and novels I have read, where to store the ones I have not yet read, which convenient place to store the ones loaned to me, and how to record the ones I have out on loan and to whom they are thus loaned.

Equally time consuming is the fork in the road about my absolute favorite medium, the novel or the short story, which of the two I most enjoy writing, and which of the two I enjoy teaching. On any given day, I can be of either mind since both are glorious mediums, intimate splashes of life tossed at a freshly painted wall or a not-so-fresh surface.

The contest didn't used to be so close; as much as I loved short stories, I did not think I could write them because of my belief that in order to do so, one had to know how to plot. From time to time my interests left the equivalent of early autumn zucchini on my doorstep, which is to say what I considered short stories then--mostly concept- or gimmick-driven narratives--landed in my psyche like paramilitary parachutists dropped behind enemy lines. Novels were more my medium because in the novel format I could hide the fact that plot lines were a mystery to me.

Somewhere within the tortured and hallucinatory landscape of my immune system having played a year-long practical joke on me, leaving me more or less allergic to myself, I forged a sense of what the short story was and how I related to it. Well on the road to recovery, I was invited to dinner by Dennis and Gail Lynds and seated propitiously next to John Milton, the editor of The South Dakota Review. John and I liked the same kind of wine, had second helpings of the roast, and seemed to forge a sense of literary respect over the cheese-and-fruit platter. "Send me something," John said.

Three relatively sleepless weeks later, I did, naming the story after my then splendid dog companion, Molly, using the philosophy I'd forged in my illness, and crafting a narrative in which one of my favorite characters contrives to steal his best friend's dog, disguise her, and raise her as his own. A week later I received one of those small envelopes from The South Dakota Review I had come to associate with acceptance notes. In short order, using the same philosophy--as opposed to formula--I had crafted a story about an academic--a Hawthorne scholar-- who receives anonymous threats from an enemy in his faculty mail box. Another small envelope from John Milton. And yet another story, about a man in a senior citizen's writing group who is wildly attracted to a middle-aged woman in his class, doing his best to impress her.

This time, the note in the small envelope from John Milton said, "I guess you're one of my regulars now." To me that meant I could count on placing a story a year in SDR, one of the bright lights in the world of the literary journal world.

My short story output flourished and I was convinced this was the most delicious medium of all, a landscape I'd never thought it possible to inhabit. Life was officially splendid. Until.

John Milton died suddenly, unexpectedly, and with the exception of one seemingly outrageous story about a discovery I'd made about the university where I teach--in a tribute-to-John issue--I've not managed to crack the SDR again, and had to seek my fortunes elsewhere.

Those years have brought me to long-term reading and submission relationships with dozens of literary journals as well as the editorship of one. From time to time I discover a poet or essayist whose work moves me, but the driving force behind my reading is the short story. When the latest issue of The Georgia Review arrived, I fell on it because the cover promised a feature, written by a poet I much admire, that takes me back to the paperback original science fiction adventure stories.

What I realized only last night, just at bed time, was the presence among the short stories of "A Great Piece of Elephant" by Lee K. Abbott, a remarkable stylist who writes as though using a hot-wired computer, his insights, characters, and locales charged with mystical inevitability and glandular honesty. Abbott's characters careen about with the guilt of The Scarlet Letter, the driven inquisitiveness of Saul Bellow, and the humanity of Walker Percy, all these qualities leavened by the humor or--well, of Lee K. Abbott. In addition to it being gorgeously funny and ironic, of a piece with Jim Harrison's "Republican Wives,""A Great Piece of Elephant" is told from three differing points of view, a no-no in short story for anyone but Lee K. Abbott.

The Georgia Review also contains "Next Stop Abbottland: The Stories of Lee K. Abbott," which pays some loving regard to All Things, All at Once, his most recent collection. Herewith, my review of ATAaO.

Abbott teaches writing at the Ohio State University then reverts to the wilder, woolier parts of New Mexico, where everything seems to require the kinds of development--social and economical--that try men's souls and womens' patience. Like all fine humorists, he is a great moralist; like all fine stylists, he hears a cadence of language, of the human heart struggling to find a place, any place, with a wi-fi connection.

Lowenkopf's Uncertainty Principle

A quantum is an invisible entity of energy, say a poem, or short story, or novel. Quantum physics defines the position and momentum of an entity, say a poem, short story or novel.

A vector is an arrow drawn to scale, representing the magnitude and direction of an entity, say a poem, short story, novel, or photograph as it moves from its source somewhere in its creator to its impact point with a section of the viewers kishke.

Conjugate variables is another term from physics that seeks to define such observable dualities as magnitude and direction, time and space, or possibly even time and energy.

Werner Heisenberg, arguably one of the more insightful interpreters of quantum mechanics, noted the increased difficulty in measuring such conjugate variables. Thus the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, reduced to simplistic image with the observation: A watched pot never boils. 

 The more accuracy with which we measure one of the variables, the greater the uncertainty attending our ability to measure, much less define the variables. Indeed, Heisenberg's spectral self seems to be hovering over those physicists who are trying to define the initial state of our universe, thinking this would allow them to be able to predict behavior in the universe infinitely into the future.

Asking what makes a poem, short story, or novel linger in my sensitivities and, accordingly, in any one's sensitivities, brings Heisenberg to mind as a conjugate variable with the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats. In the admittedly alternate universe in which I live, I find it necessary to have the quanta defined by poets and scientists. Yeats, one of my great favorites, was nuttier than the proverbial fruitcake. Indeed:

The Ballad of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
I cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream,
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name;
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded in the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands.
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and hold her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Heisenberg was able to walk among the long dappled grass of mathematics and the relationship of concepts. I am happy to think of him as My Man in Science.

You have only to know me to recognize that I dote on modern short story writers and novelists, even though I have spoken with affection in these entries of Hawthorne. I also add herewith D. H. Lawrence, whose splendid and diverse stories, "The Blacksmith's Daughter," and "The Rocking-Horse Winner," represent some lovely alpha and omega, respectively a gem from a rural landscape and another from an urban one. For me, these two have clearly lasted, withstood the test of time in the linear accelerator that passes for my mind. I can and will revisit them, speak of them with enthusiasm. Today, on Ben Huff's post, I saw two photos that gave me the most agreeable chills, a decidedly good sign.

As a writer, a reader, a reviewer, and a teacher, I bring four conjugate variables to the dinner table. Poems, short stories, novels, and photographs, since I began by mentioning these separate arts, are quanta, sometimes wave, sometimes particle, sometimes--amazingly--both. Attempting to apply a scientific judgment to them somehow deflects or undercuts the brilliance of the light they emit and my ability to bathe in that light.


This week is Oldie Week for my book review column. I have chosen Glendon Swarthout's remarkable, Bless the Beasts and Children, first published in 1970. You can read the review here.