The Unreliable Narrator in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”

(10 min. ~1400 wds)

Raymond Carver influenced my writing way back in undergrad. His blue-collar, American themes reflected my upbringing in a Midwestern industrial city. Added to this is his style, a terse, minimalist prose that empowers the reader to enter the story—to invest their thoughts and opinions, sometimes testing them, like he does in “Cathedral,” which uses dramatic irony to make his narrator fallible and unreliable. Carver uses the narrator’s character flaws as an unreliable narrator in a way to create a dramatic effect that employs the reader’s perceptions about morals and propriety.

The story of “Cathedral” is about a brief visit from the narrator’s wife’s longtime friend, an elderly blind man who recently lost his wife. In the opening paragraph, the narrator let’s the reader in on his thoughts, “And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies.” Almost immediately, the narrator in “Cathedral” shows his ignorance and myopic opinions to the reader early in the story and never breaks character. Best of all, he is a character in his own story, one that is often bigoted and vulgar toward others. What he sees and thinks cannot be reliable for the telling of this story.

sunset rearview mirror 350x350.jpg — Warning: Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear

From the beginning of the story, we can see the narrator’s insensitive opinions. And it’s only one of many ignorant statements littering the story. The reader quickly sheds any sympathy for this narrator, because the reader knows more than the narrator. According to Wayne Booth in “The Rhetoric of Fiction,” if a narrator depicts facts and opinions that do not coincide with those of the other characters or commonly held beliefs or theories of the time, then the narrator is no longer a reliable source, because their perspective is skewed to the point of being misleading. The following excerpt from “The Rhetoric of Fiction” explains this very well:

When the novelist chooses to deliver his facts and summaries as though the mind of one of his characters, he is in danger of surrendering precisely “that liberty of transcending the limits of the immediate scene” – particularly the limits of that character he has chosen as his mouthpiece… it is enough to say that a fact, when it has been given to us by the author or his unequivocal spokesperson, is a very different thing from the same “fact” given to us by a fallible character in the story (Booth, p. 174).

This follows Henry James’ insights on dramatic narration through a narrator who is a character in the story. James concluded that because the narrator is a character they are fallible, and this fallibility questions the reliability of the narrator’s perceptions about the story, social constructs, and many other issues surrounding the narrative. A good example of this would be having a Flat Earther tell a story about scientific discovery and fact.

There are many instances where Carver’s narrator shows his ignorance. One place in particular is where he describes the blind man’s dead wife, and criticizes her name, “Beulah! That’s a name for a colored woman.” His use of the word “colored” construct the mentality of a person stuck in the 60s, before the civil rights movement, and proves his ignorance. The narrator is a bigot.

Later in the story, the narrator offers no condolences or sympathy for the blind man’s loss of his wife, who had recently passed away. Upon meeting the blind man for the first time, the narrator describes the blind man’s physical disability:

“But he didn’t use a cane and he didn’t wear dark glasses. I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind… Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it. Creepy.”

Why would glasses be “a must” for someone that is blind? He regards the disability as a defect, making him “Creepy,” something unapproachable, not human, a freak. Carver’s narrator is an immature man, an ignorant man, his juvenile sensibilities incapable to understand the world around him.

Then, this jerk of a narrator describes his wife’s attempted suicide in a perfunctory manner: “But instead of dying, she got sick. She threw up.” His thoughts are ambivalent and without compassion. No love or sympathy about her depression, and subsequent cry for help.

His wife and the blind man exchanged voice recordings for many years. She became a good friend when she was a caretaker and assistant. The narrator recalls listening for the first time to one of the blind man’s recordings. They are interrupted at the critical moment when the blind man was about to offer his opinion of her husband, the narrator, who thinks, “Maybe it was just as well. I’d heard all I wanted to.” He doesn’t care about what others feel or think. Lacking empathy for others, the reader can continue to disregard any feelings they may have toward the narrator.

The final scene in “Cathedral” has the blind man together with the narrator, watching TV, sharing beers and pot. The blind man wanted to know what the cathedral looked like on TV and the only way was through the narrator drawing one for him. They hold hands while working together to draw a cathedral on paper. “It was like nothing else in my life up to now,” explains the narrator. The reader feels this may be a poignant transformation for the narrator, because he is starting to understand what it is like to be blind. He is finally walking in someone else’s shoes. Yet, I would argue that Carver maintains his narrator’s inability to understand what it is like to be blind in the penultimate sentence: “But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.” In the end, the reader understands more about the narrator and the environment surrounding him, than the narrator can comprehend. We want the narrator to change, but he doesn’t; he is incapable of change and remains as closed-minded as he was in the first paragraph. The shock and surprise comes from within the reader, not the character—a type of person already known for his ignorance and unreliable insights. In the end, Carver is looking at you, and asks What did you expect about this guy? That he would change? Now, that’s just impossible. Carver intended to build dramatic irony through his narrator’s ignorance, which according to Booth he becomes unreliable, because his facts don’t jive with the other characters and the reader’s preconceived notions. This is a skillfully used effect to create dramatic irony for the purpose of that famous final scene at the end of the story.

Quotes pulled from Raymond Carver’s short story collection “Where I’m Calling From” published by Vintage Contemporaries, 1989.

David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” and How Futuristic Words Create Authenticity

When I first began reading David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, I was transported to my days as an undergrad. The University of Iowa offered a class in 16th and 17th century English works written by Swift, Defoe, Johnson, Wordsworth, and many others. During that time, our class also read journals written by ship’s captains, traders, and other world travelers. Because I was transported, I renewed my love affair with the language of that time. Their language was undeniably highbrow, necessitating the use of a dictionary for unfamiliar words that are very different from the ones we use today. For example, this excerpt from Laurence Stern’s A Sentimental Journal; Through France and Italy:

I have something within me which cannot bear the shock of the least indecent insinuation; in the sportability of chit-chat I have often endeavored to conquer it, and with infinite pain have hazarded a thousand things to a dozen of the sex together – the least of which I could not venture to a single one, to gain heaven.

Sterne has just described his amazement and reaction over the remarks from Monsieur le Count. This is the speech of an educated person, trying to describe in great detail what could have been described as: “I was shocked when he asked if I had sex with a French woman. It wasn’t the first time I had this kind of conversation and to tell the truth all of the French women I have been with weren’t that great in bed.”

As I read Cloud Atlas, the changes in language from narrator-to-narrator became quite pronounced. A bit jarring at first. But, over time, I saw how it created character and place. Over the centuries, the English language has built a foundational code through Geek and Latin stems, onomatopoetic words describing actions and things, and anglo-saxon roots. These and many more constructs create the DNA of our language that evolves over time and unequivocally represent each period of writing.

Mitchell’s novel is a series stories, connected like nesting dolls resting within each other through tidbits of commonality. Mitchell develops temporal leaps through his use of language. His use of physical and sentient cues attaches his characters to future worlds. He begins with a journal written by a beleaguered American attorney that is found by a rascal musician and apprentice composer, who mentions finding it in letters to his lover. These letters are passed to a reporter decades later. After the reporter, Mitchell introduces Mr. Cavendish, a publisher on the lamb from underworld thugs. Cavendish is an educated man living in the present decade with a penchant for cussing and slang. The lives of these characters span over a hundred years. These narratives are realistic and indicative of written works during their time. Each speak English, and, as should be expected, a substantial difference in language between each one.

The next story, An Orison of Sonmi ~ 451, is about a clone set free only to be captured and terminated, is an oral history of her life that occurs in the distant future. Mitchell brings the reader into the future with this fifth chapter, because Sonmi – 451 is called a fabricant. Her orison, another word for prayer, takes the shape of a personal account of major historical events that are recorded by an Archivist. She is not talking to a priest or a historian or reporter. The Archivist explains right away that they (no gender specified) ask “prisoners to recall their earliest memories to provide a context for corporatic historians of the future.” (p. 185). The Archivist collects data to be sorted through at a later date by historians. Furthermore, the word corporatic appears and technically means nothing to the reader, yet. To come upon words like fabricant and corporatic makes a sudden break from the present day, slang-rich language coming from the Mr. Cavendish.

Other words appear in the text to denote a change in time. Stimulin is a chemical used to wake fabricants from resting periods. Logoman is a god to the fabricants, who recite catechisms to him every morning. Logoman and corpocratic are indications of purely capitalist society, which the reader is given textual facts of how the government functions as the narrative progresses. This society is very different from today’s, futuristic, one of many possible scenarios if corporations continue with their current growth.

Another interesting detail and fascinating construction of a future language is the exclusion of the letter e from its stem of ex, such as Xultation (p. 186) and xactly (p. 187). Logic seems to have excised the need for a silent letter at the beginning of a word. A good example of this is occurs when writing a series of numbers. The zero before the first number in the sequence is never written (as convention would dictate, but sometimes a zero precedes a series of numbers for PINs and passwords).

Today, there is substantial evidence for the evolution of the English language. These new words, made up words, bear the roots and stems of common words, yet appear to have evolved over time. These constructed language words are not as jarring to the mind, nor as obscure and unrelatable.

Following Sonmi’s orison, the evolution of the English language continues to shape characters, imagery, and settings. In Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After, the reader is sent forward in time to Hawaii, but it is a very different place. Zachary, the narrator, gives an oral history of his people using English, as well as eye dialect and dramatic grammatical changes. It would seem that his speech patterns would put him in the distant past, taking place before the first story. His words are vulgar and guttural. Clearly seen in the title of this story, everything reads like dialog, heavy in slang, which is called eye dialect. The name, eye dialect, is a form of writing for the eyes, as opposed to writing for the ear. The spelling and grammar work together to show how a character’s speech is vulgar. The reader is given enough words and textual clues to discern what is being said, but is not sure exactly what it means until Meronym appears, a person from the cultured and educated future. She uses grammar and syntax. She also speaks in Zachary’s language, showing how Zachary’s people live an uneducated and primitive life in the future. Having a dramatic change in language at this point in the novel indicates a dramatic change in time. Through textual evidence, the reader is led to believe that this story takes place hundreds of years beyond Sonmi – 451’s time.

In a NBC News article written in 2014, an expert linguist had some issues with Mitchell’s evolution of language. The linguist pointed out some more logical and fact-based assessments, providing the world went through these fictional changes. Mitchell may have failed to take certain linguistic issues into consideration, but his work remains authentic. To write about a future world takes speculation and risks. I believe many writers forget the nuance of using eye dialect to portray characters. They also fail to take risks with creating new words. Because of these simple word choices, their stories lose depth and authenticity. Mitchell’s choices in language for each of the stories told in Cloud Atlas have the veracity and authenticity of character. That’s exactly what we as readers demand is to be transported into character and setting. We want to take part in the events—feel them happening—and Cloud Atlas performs brilliantly.

#cloudatlasbook

#howtoforwriters

Adam Johnson’s Use of the Unreliable Narrator

Adam Johnson’s masterful writing in his latest collection of stories reveal some very interesting twists. One in particular, “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine,” uses the unreliable narrator as a way of exhibiting a psycho-social disconnect between generations in East Germany.

I think it’s interesting how we find great storytellers. In the fall of 2016, I went back to Louisville for another residency with my MFA program, only I was no longer a student. As a residency assistant, I didn’t think to ask ahead of time what the book in common was (program required reading). I found out when I arrived that it was Adam Johnson’s Orphan Master’s Son, a Pulitzer winner in 2013. I had never heard of him, but that’s not a surprise. There are so many great authors out there that I am still trying to read, popular or not. During this residency, Mr. Johnson spoke to a packed crowd of literati from several writing programs. It took place in a converted, old warehouse, more cave-like with few windows and blacked out doors, located west of downtown near the Ohio River. Very edgy place for an author’s reading, which usually take place in book stores, auditoriums and galleries. He stood in the middle of a stage overlooking rows of listeners and read “Nirvana” from start to finish, then answered several poignant questions from the crowd about writing and theory. I was awestruck by his intellect and approachable demeanor.

After the reading, I purchased his latest book, a collection of short stories called Fortune Smiles, containing the story he had read to us and five others. I also borrowed “Orphan Master’s Son” from a friend, consequently reading it before I started on the collection. Brilliant in so many ways, I was hooked. It’s not an easy read. Nor are many of the choices on the Pulitzer list. But, it does help to read the transcripts from interviews and essays littered about on the internet to get a better understanding of the complexity and where the mind of the author wants to take you. Fortune Smiles is much easier to wrap your head around, wonderfully written with poignant humor and socially significant themes.

While reading “Nirvana” I was taken back to his excellent reading. As fun to hear as much as it was read, Johnson is deft with creating interesting juxtapositions of character, objects and situation. When I made it to “George Orwell was a Friend of Mine,” I had to think about the title, having read several of Orwell’s works, and wonder about the connection to this story. The story had me right away. Johnson’s ability to pull the reader into his work was mesmerizing. Best of all, I saw the intention of an unreliable narrator building as each page passed.

The story comes to us through the narrator, a former prison warden during the communist controlled era in East Germany. The prison was used by the secret police to interrogate political dissidents and torture them. Now retired and the prison an atrocity museum, the warden simply lives in the shadow of where he used to work. The story really is simple, at first, because the warden tells us in a matter-of-fact way what he does, and why he does it. He walks his dog. He sees some old coworkers and has watched the changes taking place after the fall of the Soviet Union. All of it seems so perfunctory for Hans, the Warden. But, there’s a slow buildup of the psychological structure to this man.

The unreliable narrator’s perception of events are often askew, not aligned with current mores. The reader, however, discerns between what is right and how messed up the narrator is, because they are given textual clues. The first of many alarming clues begins when Hans carries his wife to bed, after she passed out from having had too much to drink. “That’s why, when her faint snoring came, I’d open her robe and slowly, tenderly begin making love to her.” (145). That’s not love. That’s rape. His sense of morality is obviously messed up. Through this technique, the reader can be drawn into the story even more, because they have invested their opinion and beliefs.

Another scene early in the story places Hans in direct confrontation with a group of people, comprised mostly teens and their tour guide from the atrocities museum, venerating a significant commemoration, a tree for a famous GDR playwright. Hans showed no regard for the memorial and let his dog to shit at the base of the tree while the guide gave a description of the memorial. He was never sympathetic toward the playwright. And, he didn’t like what the guide said, so he started to interject with his own opinion of the man; “Herr Wexler was a pervert and a drug addict who embezzled money…” The tour guide asks, “If Klaus Wexler’s crime was embezzlement, why did he not go through the criminal courts? Why did the Stasi bring him here, to a secret interrogation prison?” The scene continues with Hans explaining in great detail the reasons for the prison, the solitary confinement, and torture chambers, the reason to force confessions out of political dissidents for the good of the state. He speaks with pride in the work the Stasi did, because they were protecting the state.

It’s from these early scenes that we see Hans and his misguided beliefs—his complete ignorance of the horrific events that occurred underneath his nose—his inability to understand the machine he was a part of. It only gets better, but I won’t spoil it for you. The story progresses with more about Hans’ twisted, almost brainwashed view of the world, still holding onto this belief to the very end. He gives us the details to why he thought that way, but never comes to realize, even at the very end, that it was wrong. In a way, if he had confessed during his own torture, he would have been guilty of a crime, but he never does confess and we are left to wonder what will happen as the water chamber continues to fill up.

This type of character, as a narrator, allows us to think about how authority figures can be myopic and dangerous. Plus, we gain insight into ourselves through how we react to each step in the story. What does it say about the reader when they fail to react to criminal events? Using the unreliable narrator is an excellent tool for all writers if they want to capture the reader’s emotional investment, but to get there the writer needs to think like someone who is diametrically opposed to their own moral fiber, which is not easy to do.

August 28, 2018 0

Great Stories Have Great Beginnings

One of the main reasons, I think, Benjamin Alire Sáenz received the coveted Pen/Faulkner Award for this collection of stories, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, is his talent for amazing story beginnings that invoke conflict and tension through poetic imagery that entices a reader’s interest. The further a reader journeys with each story, the more they can see his vision of place, focusing on the geographical center of the collection—The Kentucky Club, a dive bar located in Juaréz, Mexico.

In his story, “He Has Gone To Be With The Women,” Sáenz first sentence, “The slant of morning light made him look like he was about to catch on fire” (Sáenz 11), is a poetic introduction to the narrator’s psyche. Sáenz’ choice to use morning light depicts the dawn of a relationship, and fire has a multitude of connotations, such as being uncontrollable, igniting others, and consuming itself. The narrator shares a deep emotional response to the reader. The statement about this person becomes enticing, as well as shocking, and makes the reader want to know more.

The second paragraph continues the narrator’s emotionally detailed description to spark more interest:

Every Sunday he was there, a singular, solitary figure—but not sad and not lonely. And not tragic. He became the main character of a story I was writing in my head. Some people are so beautiful that they belong everywhere they go. That was the first sentence. (Sáenz 11)

Now, we are in a story about a story of a man who ignites the heart of the narrator. For me, I’m compelled to read more, and quickly, because I want to find out why.

20161203_173603 — Colorful patterns, like this table mosaic, grabs your attention. It makes you want to sit there longer. Which is what the beginning of every short story should be.

“The Art of Translation” is the second story of the collection. It’s about the victim of racial violence. The tension of this story is about the aftermath of a hate crime on the individual, no longer able to discern their own identity, because they have been marked as a representative of their race and stripped of their individuality. Historically, some of the most horrendous crimes have been committed through racial divides, and wars are continuously fought because of race. This is a mentally stimulating device for any reader is a sense of tension between characters. Construction of tension can be difficult because it can come off as contrive, either due to the situation or forgetting adequate descriptors.

“The Art of Translation” begins after the violent act has occurred, and the victim is in his hospital bed, recovering from his wounds: “There were moments when I sensed my mother and father at my side, staring at me as if they were trying to sift through the wreckage of a storm, trying to find my remains (Sáenz 45). The imagery depicts the narrator’s conflict with the natural world, where he encounters forces beyond his control, leaving only the wreckage behind in the aftermath of a storm. Now, I want to know what happened? Every reader should want to read further and answer this question because it’s so damn intriguing.

Still in the first paragraph, the narrator continues to describe his mother’s touch, “My mother would touch me, hold my hand, whisper words to me, words I couldn’t understand. I felt as if I was no longer in control of my own voice, my own body (Sáenz 45). Her care, even her face is no longer recognizable, because he cannot feel, she cannot comfort him. And, at the end of the short paragraph, the reader learns of another source of pain, “I could see the hurt in her eyes as she whispered my name and I felt as if I had become a wound, the source of all her hurt (Sáenz 45)”.

A brilliant opening such as this makes the reader want to read further into the story and find answers to these questions. Something or someone has taken away the narrator’s identity, and we see it through his loss of control. Not just how it happened, but why did it happen? Will he regain his power? Questions about the main character build with every beautiful line.

Sáenz creates a strong emotive pathway into the reader through his narrator in his third story, “The Rule Maker”. The story begins as a list of early memories of childhood about school, a teacher, and the playground. It takes place in Juárez, Mexico. The school and teacher’s name are Hispanic. Each detail is unique for this narrator and builds a very concrete world for us to enter. Memory invokes powerful emotions, and, combining details involving our senses, we become emotionally invested as readers.

As we read the paragraph, the names of people and places hold meaning, yet, they are distant and difficult to grasp for the narrator. They become feelings, rather than specific images, especially when he remembers: “My first grade teacher’s name, Laura Cedillos. I wanted her to be my mother, not because she was pretty, but because she was so nice and smelled like flowers (Sáenz 67). And from this statement, we can discern that the narrator has no real love for his mother. He remembers how she smelled like flowers, and this becomes more important than his mother. When he describes a desert south-west playground of cement and dirt, another feeling of his past life comes forward “because we stomped the ground until it was a fine powder. We couldn’t pound anything else but we could pound the dirt (Sáenz 67). These brief, emotional insights, bring to the foreground the conflict and tension concerning the narrator’s past.

Sáenz has an amazing talent for great opening sentences, as shown in the above examples. The opening sentence can define a story. It can transport the reader, quickly, like the jolt we get from a thunderclap that shakes us. The first sentence in “Brother In Another Language” does just that: “Instead of winding up dead, I wound up in a therapist’s office (Sáenz 102). Dramatic focus centers on the narrator, and the events leading up to his need for a therapist. Death being a common fear in everyone, the author invites the reader to be empathetic with his main character.

Sáenz use of precise use of language in that first sentence leads the reader through a unique perspective. Known as a material conditional statement in logic, or better known as “if…then…” statements to people outside philosophy, the reader understands the narrator to be alive, but was almost dead, and the cause is psychological in nature, because he is with a therapist and not in a hospital or courtroom. Also, opening with an adverbial phrase, not the remedial verb phrase sentence, gives the allusion of a complex character and intelligent point-of-view. If the sentence were written, “I wound up in a therapist’s office after trying to kill myself,” we lose the personal touch and his psyche is lost, so goes the unique nature of the narrator. The author is able to expose the thought processes of his narrator, and a simple sentence becomes complex when conveying more than a single event.

At the beginning of a story, the reader has to enter the narrator’s psyche, and become emotionally attached. Saenz shows how this is possible. What makes a great beginning to a story? Clearly, something that does more than just pique the reader’s interest. Literary devices such as dramatic focus, tension and conflict, imagery and word choice, all work together to perform amazing feats upon a reader’s psyche. An inciting event defines the nature of the story, implicitly or explicitly, subtly creating the fictional world that is about to take place. A great beginning contains emotional power without overwhelming the reader, so that there is a contract between writer and reader, an agreement that if the reader continues investing their mental energy, the writer will give them a great story. For a young writer, Benjamin Sáenz’s talent for making it all look so easy is a lot like watching a superstar athlete simply play their game.

May 8, 2018 0

Attention Grammar Police! Just Relax

Great writing bends the rules and grammar has a lot of rules to bend.

After finishing Bob Shacochis’ The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, I read some online reviews at Goodreads and in blogs, both personal and professional. I was surprised by the comments made by very intelligent and persuasive writers and critics. Many of them were dogmatic about the need for punctuation, as if their mental faculties could not reach beyond the omission of quotation marks and commas. Some remarks were scathing enough to suggest that the author needed “A real editor,” because the “syntax felt disjointed at times,” and “missing commas and containing long, descriptive sentences.” Regardless of these critics, this book was nominated for a Pulitzer. Yet, Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men did not receive the same demerits from its audience (and was never nominated for a prize, gaining wide-spread notoriety only through film). Sure, there were many who sarcastically mimicked his southwestern dialog, but did little to comment on his use of syntax and punctuation, which resemble in many ways those of Shacochis. I wonder if these people felt the same way after reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

Several arguments can spring from this interesting problem, such as the Goodreads community and the credibility in their comments. Also, the popularity of a writer seems to lessen the barrage of criticism. What really is at stake here are the stylistic concerns for two incredibly talented writers of our time. The artists chose to omit much of the typical punctuation, handling punctuation as a painter deals with color selections and placement, in order to convey two very different stories.

Our eyes rise and fall on the written page, following the channel markers provided by commas and quotation marks. These are some of the most common marks in a book. Of course, the period plays a major part, as does a hyphen and the dreaded semicolon; however, between the first letter of a sentence and the period, commas are frequent, as well as quotation marks.

Both Shacochis and McCarthy forgo the open and closed quotation marks in all of their dialog. Yes, this can be confusing at first, like adjusting your eyes in after the light has been turned on in a dark room. The blending of narration and dialog made my thoughts jump around, never stalling, trying to figure out the speakers. If it frustrates you, then you can skim beyond and hopefully retain some of the meaning of what was said. Or, you can go back and learn the voice of the speaking character and know who is talking without the use of quotation marks. Sure, it takes a bit of work, but so does looking at an amazing painting (there are so many, just think of one), in order to analyze the depth of intention each brush stroke presents. Shacochis’ characters’ voices present themselves brilliantly, with singularity, from a master of the craft. Eventually, I noticed that the omission of quotation marks sped up my progress through the novel, which is a very nice thing considering Shacochis’ work exceeds 750 pages, travels two continents, and has all the trappings of an international spy thriller.

McCarthy’s work is more terse, masculine, and brief, reflecting the simplicity and emptiness of the landscape. Whether it’s third person or first person narration, the character’s voice is clearly heard and understood. The reader understands the frustration of Sherriff Ed Tom. Moreover, the reader feels the tension of what is not said. Hitchcockian tension from the omitted. Following Chigurh’s almost quixotic, definitely crazy, dialog, the rapidity of exchanges heightens the need to slow down and read them closely. Moments that take place, such as the coin toss to decide a potential victims fate exemplify the cold, dark reality of irrational violence, a violence without empathy, the sociopath on display.

Standing firm with grammarians is important, and many omitted marks can confuse a reader. But, think of these artists like they are Pizzaro or Monet, trailblazers into new dimensions of writing theory, like the impressionists, who “Impressionism was a style of representational art that did not necessarily rely on realistic depictions. Scientific thought at the time was beginning to recognize that what the eye perceived and what the brain understood were two different things.”* These books are a form of impressionism. They provoke a sense of feeling. Are Chigurh or Jackie Scott real? Possible, even probable, but not real. They are representational of evil, chaos, fate, and the unknown. All are powers beyond anyone’s reckoning, yet we strive to try and control them as best we can.

If you’ve already taken up the banner of contemporary techniques in fiction, then this essay has very little to do for you, other than possibly introducing something partially enlightening. But this essay is more for those who would believe that sentences need to be tight, always, and precise, forgetting the nuance of a narrator’s voice, their cadence toward highlights in a story, sometimes building the journey that leads to their feeling excitement or dismay. It’s all there for the reader to feel. And, yes, omission of punctuation does this.

May 3, 2018 1

Narratology : A List of Definitions

While at Spalding University, I became fascinated with literary formalism. I enjoyed how it helped me analyze and evaluate a novel’s many features. My study and practice of literary techniques was amplified by my study of formalism and narratology.

After months of reading and discussions with my mentors, I complete my critical thesis on narrative, focusing on the structural qualities of a short story or novel. I am well aware of the changes in literature’s critical movements, and to focus only on the text is myopic. However, this journey has taught me so much more about literary techniques and why they are used.

There are many terms used to describe these qualities. When used in conjunction with good instruction and books on craft, the study of narratology can open up new dimensions of artistic endeavor. I’ve listed some of the major terms below and encourage every writer to at least become familiar with narratology.

Definitions

Sjuzet: Russian Formalists. “The events as they are told by a narrator who may not tell in the order of the happening.” (Keen, 74). Sjuzet are the words on the page placed there by the author, narrated by a specific narrator. This is how the reader learns of the events.

Fabula: Russian Formalists. “The events of a story as they occur (in a restored chronology)” (Keen, 74). The fabula is an umbrella term for the story all of the action and stasis, placed in chronological order after reading.

Story: “The events of a narrative as “they happened” in the imaginative chronological ordering of fictive time.” (Keen, 75). The events of a Story are reconstructed by the reader and placed into chronological order.

Discourse: “The words of the narrative in the order in which they appear in the text.” (Keen, 75) Simply, the words on the page, starting from page one all the way to the end. This is not the plot.

Discourse Level: “The textual level.” (Keen, 75) “A realm of narrated words-in-order.” (Keen, 109) Also, this can refer to the positioning of the words on the page. We usually use in text citations to point out the discourse level.

Plot: Through the discourse, a reader assembles narrated events (action), reconstituted, and “complete with causal relations and consequences (and a clear sense of what does not happen).” (Keen, 76). The significance of plot resides in the reader and their reaction with the discourse.

Mimesis: (Aristotle) Showing or imitation.

Diegesis: (Aristotle) Telling or narrating.

Story World: “Imaginative zone, projections of the text, which a reader constructs out of the information presented in the discourse.” (Keen, 75)

Story Level: “A realm of imagined agents and actions” (Keen, 109). “Projections of the text, which a reader constructs out of the information presented in the discourse.” (Keen, 75)

Story Time: “Time that transpires in the imaginary world projected by the text.” (Keen, 92). Dependent upon the length of the story, which can be a day or take place over generations.

Discourse Time: “Refers to the time implied by the quantity of discourse, in its linear arrangement of elements in the text (it is therefore sometimes called text time).” (Keen, 92). This is the number of pages, lines and words “given to the representation of narrative contents.” (Keen, 92).

Ellipses: A gap in story time and discourse time; “breaks in the temporal continuity” (Genette, 51). Typically, this occurs through authorial intrusion.

Analepses: “The narrated retrospective sections that fill in (temporal gaps), after the event, an earlier gap in the narrative.” (Genette, 51). Narrative back flash and allusions to past events, while the narrator is in present story time.

Prolepses: Anticipatory device, such as foreshadowing. According to Genette, “The ‘first-person’ narrative lends itself better than any other to anticipation, by the very fact of its avowedly retrospective character, which authorizes the narrator to allude to the future and in particular to the present situation.” (Genette, 67). The use of prolepses in other points-of-view is limited due to narrative suspense.

Anachronies: “The various types of discordance between the two orderings of story and narrative (discourse).” (Genette, 36). A combination of analepses and prolepses, which “includes a whole range of devices from flashbacks to flash-forwards and extreme disordering that resists reconstitution into a straight-ahead plot.” (Keen, 101)

Achrony: Events with no attribution of time, date, or age. “Events that cannot be placed in relation to the plot’s fundamental chronology.” (Keen, 102)

Duration: “The relationship between story time elapsed and discourse time expended.” (Keen, 92). This points out the amount of pages spent on particular events, some events taking a paragraph, while others consume whole chapters or more.

References

Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Heath, Malcom. London: Penguin, 1996. Print.

Genette, G. Trans. Lewin, J. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. New York: Cornell

Press. 1983. Print.

Keen, Suzanne. Narrative Form. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003. Print

March 20, 2018 0

The Connection Between Sense of Place and Character Development In Russel Banks’ “The Sweet Hereafter”

Rachel Harper, one of my mentors at Spalding University, suggested that I read Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter to understand alternating narrators and character development. I had been struggling to connect sense of place with my characters and avoid the pitfalls of being sentimental or a bombastic orator. This is something I feel necessary in writing, particularly with stories about society’s structures and awareness.

Banks’ uses four narrators, four very different perspectives, to shape the reader’s understanding of tragedy, loss, and hope. Each narrator is a character in the story living in the village of Sam Dent. They depict life before and after a bus accident in the village of Sam Dent, where over twenty children die in a terrible school bus accident. All of it coalesces into a greater understanding of small-town American life. Many small towns in America have experienced the loss of many children. They represent the future and people left behind to grieve.

Delores Driscoll, the school bus driver and life-long resident of Sam Dent, takes the reader on a ride with her driving the children to the school. Her narration feels like she is reliving this memory, over and over again. She is going over every detail to try and make sense of that unfortunate day. Her detailed account delivers a sense of place with honesty through personal opinions of each child lost in the crash, elaborating on their family and home life, “Poverty and house trailers are not uncommon in Sam Dent” (Banks 9). Much like a tour guide, her nearly daily contact with the children of Sam Dent outside of their homes gives Delores direct insight into their personal lives and insight into herself.

Delores’ personal knowledge of Sam Dent comes from growing up on a dairy farm just outside of town on one of the original homesteads. Her knowledge of the people and surrounding community represents a social history of the village and rural life in the mountains. Along her bus route on Bartlett Hill, she has “three stops in short order” (Banks 15), where the families that live there have built on “lots out of a tract of land that had once belonged to my father and grandfather” (Banks 15). She sold them the land, and watched them build their homes “piecemeal”, but never regretted it:

I’d rather watch the little tatty Capes and ranches of local folks, people I’ve known since they were children themselves, going up on that land than the high-tech summer houses and A-frame ski lodges…built by rich yuppies from New York City who don’t give a damn for this town or the people in it. (Banks 15)

The community is her identity. Delores lets the reader know how Sam Dent is different than Lake Placid and other towns that tourist are attracted to. Tourists can never understand her point-of-view, because “Sam Dent is one of those towns that’s on the way to somewhere else, and when people get this far (from New York City), they usually keep going” (Banks 21).

Billy Ansel’s story follows Delores’. He has the only eyewitness account of the bus accident, because he was following the bus and saw it veer off the highway into a frozen lake. His two children died in that accident. Much of his narrative depicts his character through his view of Sam Dent. He understands how life in Sam Dent follows a certain natural order, unfettered by the fast pace and modern conveniences of big city life that seem unnatural, or outside the laws of nature. He believes in cause and effect, as each generation passes, another one comes up to replace them. For Billy the accident is, “so profoundly against the necessary order of things, that we cannot accept it. It’s almost beyond belief or comprehension that the children should die before the adults” (Banks 78). One of the most profound statements about a parent losing a child.

Billy’s sense of place continues to try and make sense of tragedy. “A town that loses its children loses its meaning” (Banks 78). The natural balance of life has been upset by the accident, and the future of Sam Dent is in jeopardy. This mirrors Delores’ sentiments earlier. The loss of a child is personally devastating, as well as catastrophic for a town, because without the children of a small town, no one will want to settle there and be a part of the community. We understand Billy’s trauma and the extent to which it reaches.

The next narrator is Mitchell Stephens, a big-shot lawyer from New York City. He has an outsider’s view of Sam Dent. This lawyer is familiar with small towns, due to the many lawsuits he pursues in rural communities. He believes his part in the tragedy is to redeem the people’s hope after such horrific circumstances. But, the reader knows he is there only to get a big payout from these children’s death.

Many of Mitchell’s ideas about Sam Dent are presented in the physical description of the upstate region, “It’s dark up there, closed in by mountains of shadow and a blanketing early nightfall” (Banks 93). He depicts a world dominated by massive trees, and a harsh inescapable weather, “It’s a landscape that controls you, sits you down and says, shut up pal, I’m in charge here” (Banks 93). His narration has the advantage of contrasting rural life with big city life; Sam Dent is entirely populated by trees with a few people and businesses living among them, and the only sound is from the constant howling of the wind through the empty boughs, not the jackhammers or traffic he is more accustomed, too.

His outsider’s view of Sam Dent is full of ignorance through statements such as, “Most of the people who live there year round are scattered in little villages in the valleys, living on food stamps and collecting unemployment, huddling close to their fires and waiting out the winter” (Banks 94). He compares the poor of New York City as living on reservations, “Not like Harlem or Bedford-Stuyvesant, where you feel that the poor are imprisoned… life long prisoners of the rich, who live and work in the high-rises outside” (Banks 95). Then, he portrays the poor of Sam Dent as ostracized, “Made to forage in the woods for their sustenance and shelter, grubbing nuts and berries” (Banks 95), living in the ancient fictitious world of Ultima Thule, a northern land that is beyond the civilized world. For Mitchell, the people of Sam Dent are to be pitied, and stirred to anger so that they can enact some form of revenge, which is exactly the opposite belief of Billy and Delores, who want to grieve and move on.

The fourth narrator is Nichole Burnell, a survivor of the crash and wheelchair bound for the rest of her life due to the injuries sustained in the crash. Her view of home life in Sam Dent gives the reader a better view of everyday life: her relationships with her parents and brothers and sister, and the babysitting of other kids in town, as well as her friends and boyfriend. Before the crash she was a cheerleader, academically gifted, and had a bright future for herself, yet plagued with the dark secret of incest. Aspects of her daily life, how she eats, where she goes to the bathroom, how she interacts with others, change dramatically after the accident. She reflects upon these changes within her life, looking at how her life was and how her life will be, which is unusual for a healthy teenager.

Nichole’s character comes through her sense of place. She shows it best when she writes about the founder of the village, Sam Dent. The paper is so well done, she is asked to use it for a salutatorian speech, only if she “Cut out all the bad things he (Sam Dent) had done, like cheating the Indians out of their land and buying his way out of the Civil War things that lots of people did in those days but that were just as bad then as they would be now” (Banks 188). There are wide swaths of history, positive and enlightening, that she keeps from the reader, and the brief historical account of the town the reader encounters contains negative aspects of Sam Dent. She has the intellect to comment on the teachers wanting her to edit the paper, and she feels these details need to remain, because without them the town will forget its past.

Russell Banks use of four very different narrators is a masterful way to develop his characters. Each narrator depicts a unique perspective of Sam Dent, and gives the reader a more complete sense of place. From the grand physical landscape, to the social connections of the people, Sam Dent becomes a character—more than a dot on a map. We embrace these characters through their loss and grief, and sense of place adds a critical layer of depth to their development.

February 21, 2018 0

My collaboration with Dr. Kelli Maw, “The Last Diet”, is now available for purchase on Amazon. This book is a guide for many of us who have succumbed to processed food diets and bad habits that lead to obesity. This book is also about why we shun healthy eating habits and how we can take control of them through lifestyle changes.

There are recipes in the back, but those are only a guide to easy and nutritious low-carb meals. Research has already found the best diet plans of what to eat and how much. That step has been taken care of for us. The hardest part of any diet is getting beyond the personal and social roadblocks.

But, how can you do that if you don’t know what’s blocking you from obtaining your goals? Much of this book deals with thought-provoking issues that require us to reflect upon our current lifestyle choices. It also takes a step into the arena of how diet drugs work and why. How your body changes and so do your motivations.

This project was a personal one for me, because of the years I have struggled to control my weight. I continue to tip the scale up and down, yet I am still determined, more than ever, to stay on course and achieve my goals. So, when Dr. Maw approached me to help with her book, I was already 100% invested.

Dr. Maw describes many of the insights into weight gain and loss that I had learned the hard way during my journey to lose 40 pounds. We worked together to create a mixture of anecdotes and research, so the information is credible, but more importantly, it’s relatable for the reader. There are many topics in this book that I connect with on a very personal level, such as comfort eating, blind eating, and alcohol. Knowing where I have problems and how I can overcome them is a major step in winning the toughest battle I know. And, there are a lot of people like me out there:

(Statistics from National Institute of Health for 2013 – 2014)

It is never too late to lose weight. People have been coming off their diabetes medicine from following the same principles described in detail within “The Last Diet”. If you are apprehensive to make the sacrifices needed to achieve a healthy weight, they’re worth it. I know this, and you will, too.

The Project

From concept to completion, we spent a full year writing and editing. Most of our correspondence was through email, and we had frequent meetings over the phone. Early in the project, I was able to act as a writing coach, providing tips and tricks to keep the words flowing. Through it all, Dr. Maw was able to balance writing with her other duties as a clinician and research scientist.

My background as a technical writer helped with research and fact checking a subject requiring an understanding of health care and research methods. I have collaborated on many writing projects that were hundreds of pages with extensive references. I enjoy works of non-fiction with complex topics and scientific foundations, which makes this project and many future projects interesting and fulfilling for me.

If you’re interested in completing a manuscript or self-publishing works with multifaceted themes and topics, please send me an email: michael@613Creativeinc.com or give me a call: (727) 709-1035.

February 8, 2018 0

First Blog Post

Technically, this is not my first blog post (http://premodays.blogspot.com/), but it is a great starting point for my new site. Over the years, I will be adding my accomplishments and musing on writing and the writing life. Please, feel free to send me an email with any questions or comments you have along the way.

In 2014, I earned my MFA in fiction while working full-time as a senior researcher and dissertation consultant (primarily within the social sciences and business administration). I continue to refine my work and submit to literary journals, agents, and publishing houses. I will also frequently post blogs about my work, essays on other works, and anything else that deals with writing. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter.

As a business writer, I create research based articles to foster intelligent brand messaging. I enable companies to become a source of information for their clients. I continue to learn about new ways to deliver business narratives. For more information on this, please visit my LinkedIn page.

September 17, 2017 0

Michael Leo Premo