Isla McKetta, MFA, Author at A Geography of Reading

Life in Greyscale: Ha Jin’s Saboteur

May 16, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

In Ha Jin’s collection of stories, The Bridegroom, the protagonists are powerless to effect any real change in their circumstance. At best they can hope for vengeance by spreading disease or peeing on purslanes. Ha creates this feeling of constraint and hopelessness in “Saboteur” by tightly controlling his delivery of words.

Through his use of short words within short sentences, Ha subjects the reader to a staccato feeling and gives the effect of tight control. “The rice and cucumber tasted good, and Mr. Chiu was eating unhurriedly.” His sentences rarely include more than two short clauses and he uses few words over three syllables. Even when sentences do run longer, the clauses are short as in the following: “During the two weeks’ vacation, he had been worried about his liver, because three months ago he had suffered from acute hepatitis; he was afraid he might have a relapse.” Ha presents the shortest sentences of all in his dialogue. For example, this exchange between Mr. Chiu and a policeman:

“See, you dumped tea on our feet.”
“You’re lying. You wet your shoes yourself.”
“Comrade Policeman, your duty is to keep order, but you purposely tortured us common citizens. Why violate the laws you are supposed to enforce?”

The policeman’s speech is even more clipped than Mr. Chiu’s. It portrays the policeman’s relationship to the authoritarian government. He has to say very little for his consequences to be understood. Mr. Chiu, on the other hand, in his longish sentence, is trying to assert his rights within the very system that is denying them. Though his sentences are longer, he is speaking the same terse language. Although the abruptness of Ha’s sentences could be a function of writing in a second language, they could also be carefully crafted to make the reader feel the tight constraints of the government and by consequence the society that the characters feel.

Contributing to the sparseness of Ha’s sentences is the fact that he uses few adjectives. The adjectives he does use are more often merely descriptive: sunny, stout, and wet. The most dramatic adjectives he presents are athletic, sallow, and spacious. I was left wondering if the setting was as truly unremarkable as he portrayed it, and I felt the disinterest of the characters in the world around them. Mr. Chiu had never been in Muji before, but he notices on no beauty or ugliness, only the activity of people. This led me to believe that the world Ha was writing about was one in which beauty, and by consequence joy, had no place. I felt the flatness of Mr. Chiu’s life.

In a world of arbitrary rule, Mr. Chiu was only able to seek justice through an act of subversion after the fact. Ha highlights the “after the fact” feeling by sending the reader this teletype: “Within a month over eight hundred people contracted acute hepatitis in Muji. Six died of the disease, including two children. Nobody knew how the epidemic had started.” It is a spit in the face, a final laugh for Mr. Chiu, but it is a punch line delivered after all the actors have left the stage. The bare presentation of the facts conveyed feels as unsatisfying as the act must have been for Mr. Chiu. There is revenge, but no justice, for Mr. Chiu.

My own characters are very different from Ha Jin’s. They have hope for a life beyond their circumstance and when they act, it is with the understanding that despite the odds, there are potential personal rewards. They exist in a world worth fighting for, and I’d like to think my sentences convey that sense of beauty and ugliness that come together as life. If I need to present a situation or a character that is tightly regimented, I can learn from Ha’s tight, short sentences, and if I need a world that feels flat and hopeless, I will consider paring adjectives down to the most essential.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of The Bridegroom from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Characterizing Chekhov’s “The Darling”

May 14, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA 1 Comment

In Anton Chekhov’s “The Darling” from the collection Stories, Olenka is a caregiver to the point that she subsumes her identity to mimic that of the one she cares for. By approaching the topic through description and explanatory sentences, Chekhov fully immerses the reader in the story.

Chekhov names the nature of Olenka’s character early in the story in the following passage: “She was always fond of some one [sic], and could not exist without loving.” He then mentions some of the family members she has loved. But prior to this, her husband, Ivan Petrovitch Kukin, (aka Vanitchka) has had a large blowup about the vulgarity of the patrons of the story. I was drawn into the drama of Kukin and didn’t see this first clue, the subtle unfurling of Olenka’s personality. When she first parrots his opinion, “‘But do you suppose the public understands that?’” I thought we were seeing an action she would habitually take, but I didn’t yet realize this was the key to her nature. It isn’t until Chekhov revealed that the actors referred to her as “Vanitchka and I” that I got the point.

All of the details of the story point to the revelation about Olenka that she becomes a mirror of the one she loves; and Chekhov says it plainly several times. But because he says it plainly and also demonstrates through the action of the characters (I would argue that he never goes into full-blown scenes), the reader is enveloped by Olenka and her nature, rather than being assaulted from one direction. If, for example, Chekhov had simply told the reader over and over what Olenka was like, it would have felt hollow. If he had shown us her nature through action only, we might not have gotten the point. It is precisely this marriage of exposition and explanation that makes the story so rich. And because his explanatory sentences are so simple and direct, they don’t feel like an assault to the reader’s understanding of the story. They feel like an insight not a direction.

Regarding Olenka’s second husband, Chekhov shows her consumed by his lumber business as she “dreamed of perfect mountains of planks and boards, and long strings of wagons, carting timber far away.” He then goes on the say, “Her husband’s ideas were hers.” The entire story is woven with the warp of exposition and the weft of explanation. When Olenka is alone and she fails to muster opinions, Chekhov gives a beautiful description of her wasting away. He also tells us, “she had no opinions of any sort.”

When she begins caring for the veterinarian’s son, Chekhov writes, “Now she had opinions of her own.” What is interesting is the opinions are still not on matters that pertain to her daily life, but rather to the boy’s schooling. Her devotion continues, even when the object is less willing.

It is a short story, eleven pages in the collection I read, but it is a full story. Because Chekhov focuses on this one aspect of Olenka’s character and because he approaches it from more than one angle, the reader is enveloped in a world that is all about Olenka’s assumption of her loved ones’ worries and opinions.

I often worry that I am over-explaining things, but this story showed me that it is possible to go into minute detail about something as long as it is fully explored and done through more than one method. Olenka’s nature was evidently important to express, Chekhov based an entire story on it. It will be important for me to selective about the things I highlight in this way (although I can choose to highlight more because I am working on a novel and not a short story), but if I don’t explain them and expose them, they may not be in the story in the way I want them to. Storytelling is seduction.

A note on the [sic]: obviously I am reading a work in translation, but the use of “some one” versus “someone” more than once in the story made me want to know if this would be as peculiar in Russian or if the translation was somewhat outdated. I couldn’t help but think that the translator was trying to convey the nuance of Chekhov’s phraseology by stressing the individual “one.” Of course, I have no evidence either direction, but it certainly enhanced my understanding of the story.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Chekhov’s Short Stories from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The Wildness of Women Who Run with the Wolves, a Story of Becoming

May 14, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Opening Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, I found a scrap of adding machine tape with my mother’s handwriting. In the top left corner was my own writing from the days when I was learning to shape eights from sixes (before I decided I liked two circles better). I remember sometime long ago when my mother gave me the book, but it had sat so long on the to-read shelf that it was dusty and I no longer remembered what she had said that day.

I enjoyed reading about wild women who trust their instincts and feed their souls. I found post-its beneath important passages and imagined what my mom was thinking about my dad. I’m old and settled enough in myself now that I want her advice on life and love, but it is a newish feeling and I am still hesitant to ask. The mystery deepened when one of the post-its was covered in handwriting that was not my mother’s.

Reading this book and feeling a connection to my mom and to all womanhood was a wonderful way to spend this weekend. Clarissa Pinkola Estés touched on the importance of growing into ourselves and trusting ourselves. She talked about what to do when we have been diverted from the path to ourselves by our families, culture, and choices. I could feel this book feeding my newest novel (the one I’m not ready to talk about). I could feel it feeding me, too. I was learning about my spirit and also my psyche. I was reading about Baba Jaga and Jung. I was integrating and growing.

My first critique is the book is not tightly written. Estés goes on and on in loops and often says in ten paragraphs what she could have said in one. But as she was repeating things, I was taking the chance to daydream about the lessons she was imparting and the fairytales she had introduced. I had the space to create my own thoughts and get closer to myself. I was sorry the length of the book (and my mistaken assumption that it would be dense) kept me from reading it all these years.

My second critique is that this book need not be geared toward women only. There are some lessons that are women-centric (most men, I’d wager, don’t spend time worrying if they are nice enough), but the ideas of learning from instinct and trusting yourself and becoming are universal. Though it will be easier for some women to enjoy the book because it is geared toward them (and I’m sure most of the self-help market is women anyway), I felt sad that men might not see this book’s value for them as well.

Third and last critique. Estés often uses Spanish words where English would have done. I think she was trying to create a voice that was more open and free while evoking her own heritage. As a Spanish speaker, I kept looking at the words wishing that there was a reason they were in Spanish, that there was a strong connotation only Spanish could capture, when often the English meaning is the same.

On Mother’s Day, I spoke with my mom about the book and about how much I was learning from it. She said she never could get into it. A friend had given it to her saying that my mom was a wild woman. Perhaps she couldn’t get into it because my mom already is a wild woman. Perhaps I was quietly learning lessons she already knew. Perhaps I started reading this book at exactly the right time.

My copy of Women Who Run with the Wolves is now heavily underlined and the dog ears at the bottoms of pages grow more frequent toward the end. Those turned corners along with the initials “HG” denote passages I will explore as I write my new book. A book about being a woman not a girl. A book about wildness. A book about becoming.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Love Note to Jonathan Lethem

May 10, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Seven years ago my husband taught me to love Jonathan Lethem. This is unusual because, though my husband is a deep and careful reader with a fantastic memory, I am the voracious one who recommends authors and always hungers to discuss the latest book with him before I forget it. When he kept telling me about this fantastic detective novel he was reading for school, I picked up Motherless Brooklyn and never gave it back.

This week I pulled Gun, With Occasional Music from my to-read shelf because I was tired after a long Soviet binge and wanted something familiar, something easy, something I knew I would enjoy. I have read exactly one Jonathan Lethem novel I didn’t like—Amnesia Moon—but even that may have been my mood. Late at night as I picked up this new read, I didn’t even care what the book was about—I simply sought comfort in Lethem’s pages.

I should have taken a clue from the Raymond Chandler epigraph, still I was surprised by the classic detective novel opening. I’ve read a lot of detective novels and one of the things I liked about Motherless Brooklyn was how it reimagined the genre whereas this book seemed to be pulled straight from it. I closed the book to examine the blurbs—references to both Chandler and Philip K. Dick. I’ve (sadly) never read Dick, but I have watched Blade Runner more times than I care to count. I started reading again and I started to understand—Lethem had immersed himself deeply in the genre so he could play with it from the inside. And it was fun.

One of my favorite things about Lethem is the freedom and playfulness with which he writes. From The Disappointment Artist to Men and Cartoons, I always feel like he is enjoying the writing process and that makes my reading all the more fun. I could go on and on about all the craft elements, and Lethem is an artist, but this week I simply want to appreciate the gift of a writer who loves writing.

I am reading this book slowly—savoring it—so it has been at my bedside for many nights. When my husband saw it, he mentioned how much he had enjoyed it. I said, yes, I loved Motherless Brooklyn but that this was a different approach to a detective novel. He said he’d read Gun, With Occasional Music years ago and asked me whether the kangaroo had started to talk. It was his copy I was marking up night after night and it must have lain on my to-read shelf for years. I’m glad I picked this book this week. I’m even more glad I can discuss every delicious page with my husband.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Gun, With Occasional Music or Motherless Brooklyn from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Jay Gatsby: Boat Against the Current

May 6, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Jay Gatsby is set in opposition to the other characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The harder he tries to row towards them, the farther away he gets. Where other characters are fleshed out in their foibles, Gatsby is silent on the beach against the moonlight, drawing the characters and the reader to seek him out. Fitzgerald accomplishes this through his characterization of Gatsby.

Gatsby is physically separated at his house in West Egg, across the bay from the rest of the cast in East Egg. The only other character we meet from “the less fashionable” West Egg is the narrator, Nick Carraway, who is also set apart from the in crowd. By setting these two characters (one of whom is the point of view character) across from the others, I felt the distance from East Egg and that East Egg is the lifestyle these characters desire. But even more so, I felt the desire to know Gatsby.

Fitzgerald introduces the phantasm of Gatsby on page 2 as the man who “represented everything for which I have unaffected scorn” but he doesn’t speak until page 47 where he is initially unidentified. Until then, his physical presence is an enigma in the moonlight, a man stepping from the darkness and stretching “out his arms toward the dark water.” His reputation, though, precedes him. Gatsby is frequently brought up as the hero or more often villain of endless rumors that tease the reader until I was gagging for a chance to meet the man. He is either related to Kaiser Wilhelm, has killed a man, is a German spy, a bootlegger, or an Oxford man; perhaps he is all. Even the concrete “truth” about the man is first revealed in a summary by Carraway. He is most certainly a man who picks his words with care.

In contrast, the rest of the characters have verbal diarrhea and reveal themselves all over the place, even without always speaking directly about themselves. Daisy speaks of her daughter, “I hope she’ll be a fool-that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” Tom speaks of Myrtle’s new puppy, “It’s a bitch…Here’s your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it.” Myrtle’s sister Catherine speaks of a trip to Monte Carlo, “We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started, but we got gypped out of it all in two days in the private rooms,” even the man in the library reveals himself in marveling at Gatsby’s books, “What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too-didn’t cut the pages.” Daisy comes across as horribly jaded, Tom is an ass, Catherine blames the world for her circumstance, and the man in the library is a snoop though capable of change. All of them are world-weary and cynical.

Fitzgerald draws Gatsby by filling in the negative space around him. The absence of direct observation leaves the reader to accept or deny the conclusions other characters have made about him. By the time Gatsby finally starts speaking for himself, I felt his character was already all sewn up. And in many ways, he was. If he isn’t a bootlegger, he has a “business gonnegtion,” though he didn’t graduate, he did go to Oxford; I don’t know if he killed a man, but he was a soldier in World War I. What Fitzgerald shows us is that these tidbits don’t define Gatsby at all. Reaching across the water that first night was the only true thing the reader knew about Gatsby. He is defined by his quest for Daisy. Everything he appears to be and has done was created for her.

In creating a mysterious façade and giving the reader a meaty parallel story, Fitzgerald sets up a slightly shady but impervious hero. Fitzgerald hints at what he is doing. Carraway’s first encounter with Gatsby has the effect of “stimulating my curiosity,” speaking of Jordan Baker he notes “most affectations conceal something eventually,” even when Gatsby is revealing his past for Carraway, Carraway notes, “The very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned ‘character’ leaking sawdust at every pore.” Despite this, I thought I had him pegged, but when Gatsby meets Daisy for the first time, he glows and “a new well-being radiated from him.” His soft center, his Achilles heel, is revealed and he becomes an entirely different man. Because he was so distant before and because the tease was so compelling, I fell for the man and empathized with him as he is reintroduced to Daisy, loves her, loses her, and dies. Gatsby is revealed as a man with a passion for love and for life. This sets him against the cynicism of other characters and earns him Carraway’s derision

In my novel, Polska, 1994, I also have a character who exists mostly as a legend. Fitzgerald manages to make Gatsby the focus of the book even when he is not present not just through the title, but by always having him mentioned by other characters. Even when he is not present in body, he is being talked about and the reader is getting a sense at least of who he is perceived to be. By creating conflicting accounts of the man, a crook who also replaces a girl’s damaged dress, Fitzgerald keeps the reader interested and also hints at the depths of the man. It is a difficult thing to do, to draw around a character. The juxtaposition of his absence against the cloying presence of other characters is one way to make the reader hunger to know more about that character.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of The Great Gatsby from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.