Thanks for the Memory

You, it appears, have a quirky memory. In yesterday's New York Times op-ed section, the economist Paul Krugman got off a nice rejoinder about lunatic Republicans, using the trope There's no sanity clause. This took you back immediately to a moment at least sixty years in the past, from an old Marx Brothers movie, A Night at the Opera, in which Chico and Groucho were in the midst of a riff on contracts. During the course of the riff, Chico uttered the line, "Everybody knows there's no sanity clause." Krugman's deft, Christmas-day use of the pun was effective; many of the news and opinion bloggers you follow caught it, remarking on its originality. You even Twittered one of them with the citation.

Twice during a prolonged afternoon lunch conversation with Barnaby Conrad and Sandy Vanocer, you were transported back to events you'd witnessed or had read about in order to supply a slight correction to the record, an unintentional role you played as historian. True to form, Conrad commented on this trick memory of yours. Even though Sandy's reminiscences of his past as a newsman were interesting and vivid, you were drawn into the on-going debate within you about the nature of memory, particularly the awareness that your memory of an event is tinged with the colors you impart and may well differ from the memory of another who experienced the same event. Sometimes the difference of the memory resides within the nuance of a particular word. You, for instance, always thought of David Brinkley's voice as wry and amused. Sandy, who knew Brinkley personally and worked with him considered his voice dry and bordering on incredulous. Other times, although the memory comes to you wrapped in more than one sense, say visual and aural, or visual and smell, you wonder if the memory took place or that you are remembering your invention of it, life, as it were, lived as though you had wished rather than as it actually happened. And then there is the not inconsiderable use of that word "actually." Actually means really, or existing as a matter of fact. Compare actual with fictional. Did it happen or did you invent it? Much of your writing life has been focused on invention, in some measure because you felt that not enough of note was happening to you in real life, thus your need to invent it. Possibly because you were not satisfied with the outcome of things in your real life, you sought to rearrange the furniture of events to better suit your sense of self. Possibly.

Can you trust your memory? With some exceptions, the answer is yes, particularly if the memory is of a formula, a mantra, a fact that can be easily checked against two or more sources. Can memory in general be trusted? Well, that depends, and thus does a boundary line emerge between fact and fiction, between participation in an event and self-interest. That wasn't your idea, someone tells you, that was my idea, in a grand sense taking possession of the memory. You experience a squeeze of irritation, knowing it was in fact your idea, in effect wrenching the memory back from an individual who has been suddenly transported from the ranks of family, friend, lover to opponent in the Monopoly game of memory. Then an interior voice speaks to you, Screw it. Let him/her have the memory. You know the truth. Thus in one mighty concession, you have become bigger, more humane in your own eyes, a tower of empathy. You know with rigid certainty that you would never give a woman a gardenia. More likely you would have given roses or camellias but never gardenias. Of all the flowers you know and admire, the gardenia is so far down on the list that you would not even think of it much less give it. If she wants to remember gardenias, be my guest. Thus you are delivered to the nobility of allowing her memory of an event to vibrate reality for her. But you know better; you know the truth and of course, storyteller that you are, you live in the memory of truth.

So then, all the stories you tell of yourself are true? Well, you have a point there. Although he had no say in the mentorship, you have taken the memories of being mentored by Mark Twain, and he has indirectly whispered in your ear that making yourself the butt of a story can work wonders with an audience, even more so than making yourself the hero. In fact, making yourself even slightly heroic tends to heat up the room with the boredom factor. The eyes begin to roll upward, the yawns, at first stifled, tend to break through, and there, you've done it again, you've committed the act of boring an audience.

What emerges in any discussion of memory is the literary equivalent and mixed metaphor of the political football, moved up and down the grid at will and whim, one major truth being that we cling to memories as the dear and defining gifts that they are, incredulous that anyone would think to take them away from us or supplant them with their own.

Secrets

It may well be that you have written your way into a  awareness if not outright discovery for the thing you had been searching, much as Lewis and Clark had searched for a Northwest Passage.  Ambiguity and irony have occupied your thoughts for some while; so too has the notion of constructing a biography of each character before beginning a story (particularly a longer one).  

You began one particular story, "Dog Star," with the notion that there was a character of some financial success as an actor, who had bought his way into a second home, a get-away home, in Santa Barbara, and subsequently fallen in with a group of breakfast regulars at a bakery/coffee shop where you were a breakfast regular with a group of regulars.  You did not want the character to be you; instead, you chose an actor of your acquaintance who more or less filled the basic qualifications for what you have come to think of as armature status, the bare condition about which you would wrap traits, qualities, and past history to form your own dramatic Golem, who would then go forth to deal with story.  All you needed was the extra edge to give your character enough dimension for you to be able to turn him loose, whereupon he would behave and all you'd need to do was write about the things he did, thought, and, importantly, felt.  In this case, the character, John Millain, had a dog whose very presence made the story.  Millain's breakfast regulars tolerated him because of his dog, whom they all greatly admired.  They did not dislike Millain, nor did they fail to recognize what he was in professional life, but on matter of taste, his dog was his ticket to the morning breakfast table and subsequent conversation.

You, as writer, knew something the protagonist did not know. You knew a secret.

At one time, the considerable shadow of Ernest Hemingway fell over you to the extent of you being completely caught in the need to hear the music of his prose, the better to refract that music into your own.  As a result, your own prose may have sounded interesting, but its content lacked the bite and vision you sought.  How, you wondered, could any man who so clearly saw the value of Twain, be of no value to you.  And so you went after him instead of Twain.  Water under the proverb now; the one thing from H. that remains, the one construct that allows you to venture forth to be you rather than a stylistic copyist, is his notion that you start by putting everything in, then gradually reduce it, removing more than you think safe, so that characters are talking and thinking about things in such a way that the reader is able to see them.  With this in mind, you have evolved your own approach, and think about H. only when Conrad discusses him in relationship to his abysmal knowledge of bullfighting and of those who found the bull ring the easel for their art.  Sometimes, you think of H. when you have occasion to remember his son, Gregory, your classmate for a time, and for Gregory's sharing word from him in re things you had written in parody and or admiration of him, or when Gregory showed you letters from him revealing what an egotistical, cold-hearted individual he was.

At the moment, you are in the process of inventing secrets for the characters who inhabit a novel with the word secrets in its title, wondering if by some fortunate misfortune, you began with the formula reversed.  All characters (and indeed all people) have secrets.  When we talk about making reductions in cooking, we consider reducing a sauce or gravy or juice or marinade or some combination of these to a basic liquid essence.  In writing, the reduction is the secret, what she or he holds tight to the bosom, fearful of discovery, fearful of the consequences of discovery, fearful the cover-up will be penetrated.  Secrets.  Fear.  Vulnerability.

The secret may have to do with a slight or more deliberate forging of one's resume, thus one was employed or inducted or invited or romantically involved.  The secret may also involve a hidden dream, an aspiration, an attraction for another person, an aching wish to become a particular sort of person.

We all of us live with our secrets; they are our companions with whom we conspire in the belief that the conspiracy is unnoticed by others.  Our behavior is affected by our secrets; we sometimes use them as bartering chips with loved ones, the equivalent in its way of having the name of a loved one tattooed on a portion of one's body.  What great misadventures erupt when the relationship dissolves, when the shared secret that was once a bartering chip becomes a ransom note.

The discovery/awareness has directly to do with secrets.  Even now, you are compiling a curriculum vitae for a character who is nominally an academic and is now apparently retired.  You have even compiled a list of his publications.  One of his secrets is that all his publications except one are self-published.  Aha, what does that tell you about him?  Another of his secrets is that he wishes more than anything for recognition as a poet (but has a tin ear for dialogue and music).  Yet another is that although he makes reference to his income from royalties and his university pension, the bulk of his income is from a chain of pizza restaurants throughout the Tri-Counties area.  Now you know him.  Or think you do.  What about his second wife, some twenty-five years his junior, and her secret, and her ambition to be a fine art painter?

When you think about it, you suppose your focus on the bedrock concept of secrets could be reduced to yet another concoction:  Nothing is what it seems.  For the moment, the happy, happy moment, you believe you can live with that.  And write about it.

Reliable Narrator or Writer Pursuing a Story?

Time now to turn the light of inquiry squarely on yourself, reminding you as you do so of the many film noir scenes you've watched at various stages of your life in which one or more detectives was attempting to lead a suspect along the perilous border running between the landscape of guilt and the loftier one of exculpation.  The inquisitor may or may not have had a hunch or gut feeling about the relative guilt or innocence of the accused.  He may also have had the cynicism that allowed the belief that all of us are guilty of something.  Or, as some of my lawyer friends have said as the level in the bottle declined, My clients all lie to me in some degree or another.  The inquisitor may simply be doing a job that runs on the duality of guilt and innocent--suspects are one or the other.  Questioning them will bring you and them to one conclusion or the other.  No middle ground.  

Thus the question:  How reliable a narrator are you?  This followed with:  Can your account of an event be trusted?  Add to this the follow-up: Have you a motive or agenda that will color your narration?

The answer to the latter is an emphatic yes.  My motive is to amuse, to inform, to cause suspenseful apprehension, to surprise.  Much as I admire Stephen King, I do not seek to emulate his intent of frightening the reader, although I do not think frightening the reader to be an unworthy aim.

I write in the spirit of observation, energized by the growing involvement in that observation, finding in it meaning and satisfaction from the truths, untruths, layers of meaning and intent that become apparent as I go.  Of course I present questions to these invented characters and situations, thinking they too should squirm in situations as I have squirmed, sometimes in later recognition of how wrong or foolish I was, other times in amazement at what I have learned from a simple transaction.

Guilt and innocence are neither my pole stars nor my cynical quotas, nor do right and wrong call out to me for representation or dramatization; all these are merely settings within a larger landscape of experience and behavior.  Guilt, innocence, right, and wrong are merely costumes the characters wear while performing their parts in the larger drama of trying to get things done and of their attitudes and composure when confronting the true guiding forces of story--consequence.  Take away their routine, their status, and their dignity, then see how they respond, then start writing because then the story has begun.

The Fourth Ammendment

obstacle--an attitude, force, or condition that prevents a character from completing an agenda- or goal-related task. In plot-driven fiction, obstacles are best friends of the construction, adding to the readers' sense of conspiracy theory. Will the mystery be solved? Will justice be done? Will the good guys win? In character-driven fiction, obstacles are the best friends of the characters because they allow the character wiggle room via memories, self-doubt, sucking it (whatever it may be) up, and the greatest luxury of all--action. The manner in which a character deals with obstacles becomes a truer definition of that character than any descriptive narrative; it allows the reader and the other characters to witness this individual at work.

In his last, unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald noted in capital letters, action is character, by which he meant that the reader is called into judgmental play by being given the power to assess the depth and stature of individuals through observation of their behavior.

This observed response is particularly valuable to actors, who speak openly of being to work off one another, a condition that translates to chemistry or synergy. Such chemistry defines the difference between modern drama and the earlier, more emotive drama. Characters in modern fiction seem increasingly focused on "playing off of" one another, uniting against common obstacles or regarding one another as obstacles to be coped with on an immediate and ongoing basis.

Obstacles may be internal or external, a pang of conscience (as in Macbeth, losing his resolve to murder Malcolm) or a tangible disappointment (the eponymous statue in The Maltese Falcon proving to have been case in lead rather than gold). An immutable truth is that obstacles appear with regularity in reality, earning them appropriate venue in story. One such obstacle is time-related; there is ever enough time. Another obstacle is money; there is never enough. Room is often an obstacle as are crying babies, noisy neighbors, allergies to cats, sullen teenagers, vegan relatives, visiting relatives, romantic exes, in-laws, stinginess, and departmental meetings.

Obstacles stalk us, cling to us like limpets, slip ransom notes under the door, insist on having the last word.


truth--a perception of reality held by a character; the sense of the accuracy inherent in a transaction; a vision of events and their outcomes considered to be actual and unbiased.

Truth is a fertile medium for writers who lack confidence in their ability to plot or create plausible story. Put two or more characters into a setting, all of them carrying a vision of a past event or circumstances which each considers to be accurate. Have these characters enter a conversation.

Truth may also be described as the battleground between what a character says and what that character means.

emotive gloss--description, often narrative, that tells the reader what to feel; attributions to dialogue or character description that emerge as unintended footnotes. Emotive gloss is the unnecessary wrapping intended to make sure the reader understands how wonderful or awful a person, place, or thing really is; it quickly becomes an albatross that drags the story into bathos. The Latins have a mantra for materials intended to convey emotion or judgment: res ipsa loquitir. The thing speaks for itself. "If you come any closer, I'll shoot," she said menacingly.

reader feeder--information the writer wants the reader to know and which indeed may be vital to the story, but which the writer is too lazy to dramatize; long chunks of background or character information shoved into the story at inappropriate places; the literary equivalent of dancing with a writer who steps on your foot.

The overall effect from experiencing reader feeder is the sense of the author, not trusting the characters to disclose the material, wrenching point of view away from the characters to make a statement about the content and intent of the story, then patting the characters on the head before telling them to go ahead with what they were doing.

Dialogue becomes a particularly vulnerable target for reader feeder, beyond such obvious giveaways as "As you know perfectly well, Fred, I was saving that for later." to a convenient forgetfulness about the degrees of intimacy between lovers, friends, and family as opposed to, say, office workers, classmates, and complete strangers. In such cases, repetition of information plausibly known by both parties is reader feeder.

Reader feeder also includes detailed repetition to other characters of information we have seen dramatized earlier.

Reality Check

In our personal lives we interact with friends, family, associates. If we are of the writing bent or the teaching bent, we interact with students and readers, wanting to exchange with them on yet another level than the level of friend, family, and associate. To these students or readers, we want to convey, to pass along information, to encourage. As well, we want to entertain. There is no expressed or implied hierarchy in the listed order of these things. It is not wrong for instance to want to entertain our students or encourage our readers.

There is yet another level at which we interact, offering many of the things we offer to our friends, family, and associates; in the bargain we add the things we wish to offer our students and readers. This level is, of course, the level of the self. I surely have moments where I wish to entertain myself or encourage myself. There are also moments where I wish to pass along information, moments where I am reminded of the process I go through when I wish to offer a sales person a check or credit card but cannot find my wallet, which is to say I cannot always locate the encouragement or entertainment I hope to offer myself, much less the information.

This laundry list of associations and associates and relationships is multifarious depending on my mood in a given moment and my target of intentions. Whether knowingly or not, I draw on this swath of associations, responses, and agendas while informing the interactions between characters, either in short stories or longer works. This point is a border crossing between countries; it is easier to get into Mexico or Canada than to get out of them and back to the U.S.; the Brits seem to want to know what took me so long in getting there in the first place and at least during the gurgling administration of George W. Bush, they seemed to wonder why I would want to return to such a place.

Going from relations between self and friends, family, associates, and the like to relations among characters is going from arithmetic progression to the exponential--because there are so many of them and relatively so few of me and friends, family, associates. One of the first things I notice when crossing the border is that spoken language becomes different; it is no longer conversational, thus such conversational tropes as I might use need to be harnessed. "How are things going?" innocent enough, needs to be countered with "You're asking how things are going?" Of course I could render that response "You're asking how things are going?"which in fact does add an edge of attitude to the response somewhat different than the mere repetition.

As things stand, the mere repetition, "You're asking how things are going." suggests/infers/implies the respondent being absorbed in another task and the possibility that a request for a progress report about the respondent's mental or physical well-being borders on a distraction if not an imposition.

Or look at it this way. An individual utters another character's name, punctuating it with a question mark. "Marta?" Which may be taken to mean Is that you? or Are you there?

Add one word, an innocent enough word. "Now,Marta." Suddenly an edge is there, possibly impatience. And by adding one more word, "Damn it, Marta," we have seemingly exploded possibilities for dialogue as opposed to conversation. Yet there is more to come. Look at the possibilities of mere repetition. "Marta. Marta. Marta." How quickly such a repetition yanks us by the collar into the dialogue, curious to see what happens next as opposed to hoping the characters will conversationally reveal some dramatic tidbit.

When we are in the dramatic arena, our characters are seeming to converse but are conversing with their emotions instead of their minds, sending us readers signals by which we interpret the dramatic cloud over the arena that is scene. In such cases, silence is not silence but rather the characters playing on what their feelings are whispering to them.

Imagine yourself trying to please someone, say a work-level superior or a teacher. Allow yourself to feel that emotional agenda. Put an identifying sticker on that in order to come back to it when you need one of your characters trying to please another character. Imagine you, trying to please yourself.

Now, shut up and listen. Even the pause or silences are valuable.

Next week--or maybe this week, the tennis game of truth.

The Palimpsest of Memory

1. If a thing is worth doing, it is really worth doing well?

2. Does memory improve or degrade an event?

3. Does memory improve or degrade a person in an event?

4. How does our version of an individual or event square with a performance of that person and/or event featuring that person?

5. Which is more important in our recollection of an individual or an event involving that individual, ambiguity or agenda?

6. Why is it unseemly to speak ill of the dead?
a-Adolph Hitler, for instance
b-Richard M. Nixon, for instance
c-Henry Kissinger may not be dead, but he is toast.

7. How are we able to impeach a president for lying about sex and not be able to impeach a president for lying about causus belli?

8. At what point do we want to upwardly embellish a pleasant memory?

9. At what point do we want to add more vitriol to an unpleasant memory?

10. At what point does memory of a person or event become a handicap?

Bonus Questions: Even if we are telling events as directly and guileless as possible, does it follow that the reader will believe the narrator?

How can the writer learn to imply that any given character is telling the truth?