A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

Epistrophe in Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato

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Going After Cacciato - Tim O'Brien“It was a bad time. Billy Boy Watkins was dead, and so was Frenchie Tucker. Billy Boy had died of fright, scared to death on the field of battle, and Frenchie Tucker had been shot through the nose. Bernie Lynn and Lieutenant Sidney Martin had died in tunnels. Pederson was dead and Rudy Chassler was dead. Buff was dead. Ready Mix was dead. They were all among the dead.”

So begins Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien. In six sentences he repeats the words “was dead” five times and “death” or “died” three times. With this repetition, he sets a horrible scene—a battlefield in Vietnam where the men expect to die—and it becomes easy to sympathize with Cacciato as he sets off on foot for Paris. France.

What is O’Brien Doing with this Repetition?

What O’Brien is doing, repeating a phrase at the end of clauses, is called epistrophe. This rhetorical device is meant to bring emphasis. But like its sibling, anaphora (same thing but placed at the beginning of clauses), epistrophe adds more than emphasis—it creates an incantatory effect. It creates magic.

Writers are often taught that repetition is a bad thing, but if we look at the world around us, we can see how entrancing this effect is. Think about the verses of the popular song that are stuck in your head right now—nearly any song will do. Even if the phrases do not repeat within the verse, the verse itself is a repetition and the words become nearly impossible to forget.

Epistrophe as Framing Device

Because O’Brien sinks the phrase “was dead” so deep in our psyche as we read this passage, we feel the inevitability of death as much as the soldiers do. It becomes accepted. This may sound callous, but it isn’t. O’Brien is setting the reader in the same psychic landscape as the soldiers. He is also allowing himself a lot of freedom.

What do I mean by that?

By building a grand expectation of death and dying in these first sentences, O’Brien doesn’t have to mention death at all for a very long time. He is free to explore his characters and the odd situation with Cacciato for pages at a time without returning to the topic of death. That’s because the epistrophe has sunk in and the reader is repeating (knowingly or not) “was dead.” There is a limit and if O’Brien never brings the topic up again, the opening would be wrong for this book. But the next time he does bring up death, it builds on and affirms this rich incantation that he’s already created for us.

In fact, O’Brien waits a full page before bringing up death again (I think he could have waited even longer). In another book, that might seem like a short time, but the intervening passage is filled with rot and missing soldiers and lost limbs (things that also contribute to the general atmosphere of the book) in a staccato, Hemingway-esque style that is also uniquely O’Brien.

I am only a few pages into this novel and I don’t have any idea what’s going to happen, but I am excited to see how O’Brien builds on his epistrophe.

I started using anaphora in my own work in an unconscious way. It wasn’t until an advisor pointed it out that I was able to play with the power of this device. And there is power in it. Until picking up Going After Cacciato, I had thought it was a device better suited to meditations and magical stories. O’Brien is showing me how limited my imagination was, and I can’t wait to play with epistrophe next.

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

Quiet Restraint in American Visa by Wang Ping

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American Visa Wang PingAmerican Visa: Short Stories by Wang Ping covers locations as disparate as the Red Chinese countryside and the New York Subway. The life of her character, Seaweed, is never easy, but the author’s telling of the stories using only the sparest detail removes all trace of melodrama and lets the reader experience it for herself. Using short declarative sentences, Wang lays out the bare facts of the Cultural Revolution, spousal abuse, making it in America as an immigrant, and feeling unloved as a child.

Precise Adjectives

In one paragraph in “Lipstick,” Wang summarizes the barest details the reader needs to know about the Cultural Revolution for the effect of the story. “Who still had the guts to keep a lipstick in 1971, the prime time of the Cultural Revolution?  Anything which was related to beauty, whether Western or Oriental, had been banned.” The only adjectives in those two sentences are prime, Western, and Oriental and yet Wang conveys the force of the danger Seaweed was encountering as she explored this forbidden femininity.

Raising the Stakes

“I’d secretly been trading books at school through a well-organized underground network. Everyone obeyed its strict rules: Never betray the person you got the book from; never delay returning books; never re-lend without the owner’s permission.”

Wang identifies the stakes without ever naming the punishment. The reader is dropped into a world of conspiracy and rebellion by school kids and is left to imagine what terrible fate would befall the students if they were caught.

Similarly, she goes from describing Seaweed’s pinching to their mother’s reaction “My mother always punished me with the bamboo stick behind the door.” She fills in the sisterly rivalry, but leads the mother’s punishment up to the imagination.

Always Leave Them Wanting More

Perhaps it is growing up with movies and television, but I am used to having all the blood and guts played out for me. A severed foot is a gross-out tool, but it doesn’t serve a greater purpose. By not telling me what the soldiers would do or what her mother would do with that bamboo stick, Wang has captured my imagination, and the imagination is often much more brutal than what the writer would have described.

Wang doesn’t shy away from bad things, only awful, and that makes my interpretation of the awful even worse. “The Story of Ju” opens “Ju hung herself on the eve of her wedding.” Obviously this is not going to be a happy story, but the simplicity of the sentence shaped my view of the world Seaweed lives in, a world where sadness is quotidian and characters are resigned to their fates, where “the dead are dead.” Even in describing the abuse Ju’s mother, Crazy Hua, suffers, Wang gives us the aftermath rather than the event. “After that, she came to work every day, often starved and badly bruised.” There is no hope that Hua will ever escape her circumstances but Wang is not elaborating on the horrors of their lives with grisly detail, she simply names them.

It isn’t until Wang lets Ju speak for herself that the reader is privy to the events themselves. Even then, as Ju describes her mother kneeling “on the broken pieces of the bowl.” or her stepfather demanding she “replace” her mother as she’s tied to a chair, Wang had so prepared me to imagine my own horrors that the scene came alive in gruesome detail, but only in my imagination. In reflecting on the story, I find it has taken on a new life in my imagination and in fact I remember the details I created as though they were actually written into the story.

Tight Sentences

Although Wang is writing in a second language, there is no accent or accident in her sentences. The entire flavor of Seaweed’s relationship with her sister Sea Cloud is contained in the two sentences that start “American Visa.”

“Sea Cloud asked me to help her get out of China on the night when we were sailing from Shanghai to Dinghai to attend Father’s funeral. I was surprised as well as pleased.”

If this story stood alone, the reader would know from these two sentences that Seaweed is the stronger sister who has managed to escape circumstance and therefore has power in the relationship, but that Seaweed doesn’t know it. Seaweed craves the acceptance of her sister, whom she envies. We also see that it was difficult for Sea Cloud to come down from her perceived pedestal and ask her sister for something, she had to wait for a moment of quiet during a time that would have brought them closer in sharing grief for their father. Two short sentences, almost entirely devoid of adjectives, and Wang manages to convey a lifetime of struggle between two sisters.

In Polska, 1994, I wrestled with how to describe a rape scene and a culture that is foreign to my audience. I wanted the reader to feel the full force of the scene because it causes the transformation in the main character, but I wasn’t sure how graphically I want to lay it out. Wang showed me to use description of horrors carefully. I don’t want to bowl the reader over, I want to provide them the tools to bowl themselves over.

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

The Methods in Jakov Lind’s Madness

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lind-soul-of-woodMost stories don’t smash me to bits. As I read them, I’m moved, enchanted, worried, dismayed, relieved, sometimes annoyed. But Jakov Lind’s Soul of Wood and Other Stories just left me flattened, feeling empty, and as if I were stranded in a strange shapeless place. The question “Wow, what was that all about?” kept looping in my head like a song, and I was unable to find an answer.

But I think the answer lies in not only the mad brilliance of the story itself, but more so, for me as a writer, in the craft of how Lind created the story. By story I mean the novella, Soul of Wood, which opens the collection. The later short stories are also impressive in their own way, but Soul of Wood is the masterpiece. It’s set in Austria in the 1940s and follows Wohlbrecht, a crippled Austrian soldier, who works to hide Anton Barth, a mostly paralyzed Jewish boy, in a mountain cabin. He enlists the help of Alois, his brother-in-law, and the first half of the book centers on the two’s endeavors of dragging Barth up through the woods while trying to avoid the Nazis and their random air attacks.

Shot from all Sides by Point of View

Lind’s voice is somehow casual, witty, romantic and brusquely masculine all at once. It doesn’t just blast its way through the narrative, but rather tumbles with a clear urgency. This was probably the first technique that I’d love to emulate (oh, if I could.) But what’s crazier and even more unattainable is how the point of view wanders. It, at times, becomes dreamy and surreal before landing flatly in stark reality. Take, for instance, the following passage occurring early in the story, which by the way could be a spoiler, depending on how you view the narrative. Read at your own risk.

As Wohlbrecht and Alois return from the cabin, they stop at the side of the road. Wohlbrecht lays and dozes in the hay as Alois talks of his post-war plans. Alois plans to visit Rumania in an effort to cure his epilepsy. In one paragraph, Alois talks about a renowned doctor and his treatment that Alois believes will mend all aspects of his life. In another, the grand wealth that he and all of Vienna will enjoy after the war. As readers we are relaxed at this point in the passage, imagining hopeful situations and feeling a tender intimacy with Alois.

Then: “The loud engine sounds woke up Wohlbrecht.” This kicks off a random rotation of omniscient narration, stream of consciousness and Wohlbrecht’s spoken words. There’s little punctuation to help us distinguish between what’s happening, what’s being said and what’s being thought.

“Jumping Jesus, he cried, they’ll fly right up my ass. A burst of machine-gun fire beat down like rain on the tin roof and by the time Wohlbrecht cried ‘Cover!’ Alois was dead. Hit right in the back of the head. The blood gushed like a geyser. Alois, Alois, Wohlbrecht yelled thinking he was still asleep. Alois, where’d it get you? Alois didn’t move. Alois, don’t pretend, say something. Alois said nothing. It was so still he could hear a beetle scratching in the hay.”

Here, this mishmash of point of view hits us in the gut. We’re dealing with the sudden chaos of the moment, which poetically reflects the sudden chaos of the entire war experience. It also shows the contrast between life and death, the potential of the future and the negation of it in how Alois is dreaming of better years to come when he is suddenly killed. By the end of these few paragraphs, we’re jarred, upset, and left processing what just happened – as Wohlbrecht is. Lind doesn’t just describe trauma, he hurls us into it so we experience it first hand. That he does this by manipulating point of view is amazing.

There are other amazing aspects to Soul of Wood as well. The plot of the book later bends back on itself and we discover that much of the seemingly random events, forgotten images and off-hand mentions of names and people actually come together in a larger symbolic coherence. That coherence makes this novella one of the most under-appreciated of our time.

The Shorter Works

The Other Stories in the title are mostly outlandish, grotesque short stories rooted in the trauma of World War II. In one, a piano teacher is haunted by his past as an S.S. officer. A traveler stumbles upon a family of cannibals. A man follows his neighbor to a kind of speakeasy only to find a featureless woman who somehow sets him free. A killer about to be executed dreams of killing his father in revenge. Two men, a Jew and a Catholic-converted-Jew, share a snug hole as they hide from the Nazis. Somehow these shorter pieces unfold with a tongue-in-cheek wit. They’re also somewhat allegorical though what they represent is too complex and hidden to explore here. Suffice to say they embody Lind’s seemingly unstable spirit, macabre wit and clever narrative arcs, which leave writers like me both horrified and smiling.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Soul of Wood from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business.

Review of How to Market a Book

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If you need this book, it means you are (or will soon be) published. Congratulations on getting your work out in the world!

Set aside for a moment your depression over having to market your own book. You can always choose not to. But if you want to sell books (and maintain a good relationship with your publisher) today’s world does require you to be involved in marketing your book (and yourself). How to Market a Book is a guide by book marketers for writers new to marketing.

I don’t normally review how-to books, but I’m making an exception here because I know a lot of writers who would find this book useful.

The Dreaded Platform

Marketing can be intimidating for writers, and the rapidly changing landscape of the internet can make anyone feel out of date. How to Market a Book is written in a collegial tone and provides a good introduction to what is sometimes called “building a platform.” I know, I hate the word “platform” too and I give the authors of this book credit for using it sparingly. When I do it, I call it working on my brand—not much better but at least I can imagine myself wrapped in a pretty label (rather than standing on a soap box).

Is This the Book for You?

The strengths of How to Market a Book lie in the explanations of how and why you need to build a website and social media presence and the focus on marketing the writer rather than the book (despite this book’s title). It’s a brave undertaking to write an Internet guide because the landscape changes so fast (the Twitter profile section is already slightly, but not significantly, out of date) but authors Lori Culwell and Katherine Sears do a good job of emphasizing the tried and true methods like Twitter and Facebook while information on other avenues to explore.

How to Market a Book provides a primer for the author who is just looking up from a final draft into the chasm of the Internet, and I would have loved to have this book available when I was marketing Soul’s Road. At times the book started to feel like a list of social media platforms available, and I wish that it included a clearer triage for the author who is overwhelmed by the plethora of options (as so many authors newer to the Internet reasonably are). For example, the section on building subject matter expertise on Answers.com (and the like), while useful for nonfiction writers, could become a procrastination sinkhole for fiction authors. Statistics on return on investment would be a great addition if the Culwell and Sears decide to issue a second edition.

If you are a social media-savvy author with an active Twitter account and website, you might find some tips and tricks in this book (I flipped back and forth between the book and my own profiles to tweak them), but could be bored by explanations of how to use Facebook “as” a page.

Beyond the Internet

The book contains helpful advice on things like proofreading, editing, book design, and press releases. There is a short section on book tours (these are not the go-to they once were). And the thoughts on how (and when) to reply to a review are must-reads. Also, the tip on what to have ready for your personal author kit is invaluable.

Here’s My Advice

Because I work in marketing and spend a lot of time on social media, my friends often ask me for advice. I tell them that yes, you have to market yourself. We are in an age where people want to connect to us, the artists, and it will be much more difficult to sell books if we deny them that access. Find the avenues that feel natural to you and invest most of your efforts there. If you can’t do another social media platform well, don’t start the account. There are lots of tools available to help you manage your accounts, but don’t spend all your time looking for those tools. Read this book, set up your online presence, and then get back to writing that next book.

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

Turning History into Herstory with Hazleton’s Jezebel

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Jezebel - lesley hazletonI have deep respect for Lesley Hazleton. In some ways I want to be her—internationally-savvy, fantastic voice and accent, able to read the Bible in Hebrew. When I heard that she was investigating the story of the Bible’s harlot queen with Jezebel, I was excited to get a better picture of both the Bible and of the way women’s sexuality has been used against us throughout history.

A New Midrash—Interweaving History and Narrative

Jezebel is written from a variety of angles. Hazleton mixes a direct retelling of the story based her own translations from the Hebrew Bible with stories of her travels to the historical places (two especially telling anecdotes involve Christian fundamentalists at the site of Armageddon gleefully calculating how much blood it will take to fill the valley and Hazleton’s attempts to find a holy site that has nearly been erased by history). Hazleton also includes imagined looks at the events of Jezebel’s lifetime from the point of view of the queen herself.

“It is easy to forget that [the Bible] was written by specific men in specific times and places, for specific reasons.” – Lesley Hazleton

This unexpected mix of approaches gave me a more complex view of the stories and the players. Shifting through time allowed Hazleton to make comparisons to modern day politics in the Middle East. I like to think Jezebel was like reading a new Midrash (most everything I know about the Old Testament, I know from reading Davita’s Harp).

Reading the Bible through the Eyes of Others

I am no Biblical scholar—I wasn’t raised with any more religion than I could glean from the (Christian) cultures I grew up in and from books. When I tried to read the King James translation for myself, I never got past the begats. That is to say, my experience of the Bible has always been filtered through the experiences of others. So I loved hearing stories of ancient gods, kings, and queens and their struggles for power. It is clear that Hazleton brought to this book an admiration of Ahab and Jezebel. And the comparisons to modern politics were apt and informative. I appreciated that Hazleton was trying to remove the mask of Orientalism and I could see ways in which a religion is shaped by its believers.

What did not work for me were the moments when Hazleton imbued the scenes with what Jezebel must have been thinking. She did a solid job of outlining the character and I liked the fierce strength and nobility that Hazleton attributed to her, but it was more of a leap into story than I was willing to take.

Overall, it was refreshing to get a contemporary, female view of the Bible. But in the end, I realized that the only way to satisfy my need to get my own full understanding will be to learn Hebrew and read the Bible for myself.

Women Aren’t Sexual Beings—We Are Whole Beings

I was intrigued by the idea of a “harlot queen.” The word “harlot” and its brethren “bitch, slut, whore” and so many others are still used against women today and usually in instances that have everything to do with power and nothing to do with sex.

What I found interesting about Jezebel is that Hazleton removes sex from the equation entirely. A book I thought might be about how female sexuality is positive (rather than negative) turned out to be about the power of a woman as a person. Perhaps this is the more important leap because a person is entitled to power and sexuality and entirety.

I realized that my own investigations into sexuality and feminism with my new novel might be limited. I have been fighting to understand female sexuality and have it seen as equal to that of men. Perhaps instead I should be looking at women as whole people. Maybe I have allowed the very people who seek to minimize my sex to set the terms of this battle.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Jezebel: The Untold Story Of The Bible’s Harlot Queen from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.