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The Intimate Lives of Munro’s Girls and Women

July 9, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

In Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munro exposes the reader to the inner world of her first-person narrator, Della Jordan. The psychic distance throughout the book is always close, as I would expect in a first person narrative. However, Munro makes use of a full range of narrative distance from distant: “[t]he snowbanks along the main street got to be so high that an archway was cut in one of them” to close: “the thought of him stayed in my mind like a circus net spread underneath whatever I had to think about at the moment.” When Munro presents scenes of Della’s burgeoning sexuality, she uses the combination of the close psychic distance and a close narrative distance to explore the fullness of Della’s contradictory feelings.

As Della begins to fantasize about Mr. Chamberlain, we are treated to thoughts like: “Mr. Chamberlain’s voice in my mind…acted on me like the touch of rayon silk on my skin, surrounded me, made me feel endangered and desired.” The reader falls in with Della and is treated to her most intimate thoughts as she first begins to see herself as a sexual creature. I felt her naïveté as she mulls over the implications of the conversation she has just heard: “[t]hey mature earlier in those hot climates…A man paid you to let him do it. What did he say? Did he take your clothes off or did he expect you to do that yourself?” The questions she is asking herself reveal the shallowness of her experience, but her observations about Mr. Chamberlain imply how willing she is to explore this new, forbidden realm farther.

“His face contained for me all possibilities of fierceness and sweetness, pride and submissiveness, violence, self-containment. I never saw more in it than I had when I saw it first, because I saw everything then. The whole thing in him that I was going to love, and never catch or explain.” -Alice Munro, The Lives of Girls and Women

Della begins to fantasize about being seduced by Mr. Chamberlain, but “[t]he moment of being seen naked could not be solidified, it was a stab of light….in the corner of my daydream he was featureless but powerful, humming away electrically like a blue fluorescent light.” Because I am deep inside Della’s thoughts, I am privy to the innocence of her inability to fully imagine the scene and also to the lustiness and force of her emotions. Although Della’s hormones are coursing through her like mad, she has no concrete experience on which to base her fantasies. If Munro did not place the reader so deep in Della’s mind, it would be difficult to convey the same complexity of Della’s childlike lasciviousness. She could be a Lolita through Humbert’s eyes or a victim, but not as fully both.

I was involved with Della as she read through Fern’s papers and finds the bawdy poetry. I understand Della’s relationship with the word “fuck, which I had never been able to look at….I had never been able to contemplate before its thrust of brutality, hypnotic swagger.” Della is taking a word that she has seen and for the first time is really starting to understand. Mr. Chamberlain has already groped her and she has willingly gotten in the car with him and the word sits out there as a possibility rather than a profanity. Della is on the cusp of asserting her sexuality.

I enjoyed being so intimate with Della. I think more so because this came so late in the book. She was already a friend and I understood her to a certain extent. I felt like I was willing to grow with her through her contradictory emotions. At some points I felt like Munro was pulling thoughts out of my own adolescent head and I think that is due to the tortured duality of the thoughts. As people, especially as adolescents, we experience uncertainty. When Mr. Chamberlain finally exposes himself to Della, her observation that his penis is “[n]ot at all like marble David’s” says everything. The parts of the fantasy she couldn’t quite imagine are right there in front of her and she could (would) never have imagined them in that way.

My narrator in Polska, 1994, Magda, is of a similar age and sexual experience level as Della. As I think back on this book, I realize how much I learned from the realism of the contradictions in Della’s thoughts. And the stark contrast between the fantasy of sexuality and the reality made the reality of Mr. Chamberlain even more grotesque than a grown man molesting a teenager would stereotypically be. At the same time, the naturalness with which Della faces her sexual desires portends the healthy sexual relationship she will have with Garnet. She is not victimized by Mr. Chamberlain, he is simply one step on her path toward sexual awakening.

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

First Impressions Matter in Atwood’s The Robber Bride

July 1, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Margaret Atwood writes in the first chapter of The Robber Bride, “Where to start is the problem because nothing begins where it begins and nothing’s over when it’s over, and everything needs a preface” but she knows exactly where to begin. She begins by creating a world in which the reader could not possibly like Zenia and she does it while the actual character remains almost entirely offscreen.

“The sun moves into Scorpio, Tony has lunch at the Toxique with her two friends Roz and Charis, a slight breeze blows in over Lake Ontario, and Zenia returns from the dead.” –Margaret Atwood

When Zenia she first appears, we know only that she is supposed to be dead and that people are glad. We have met her through the Tony’s memories and Tony’s reaction to her appearance. Zenia does not interact with any of the main characters at that time.
Atwood switches the focus to Charis and then Roz and we come to know and love them and to see their hatred of Zenia, but we still haven’t met her. I sympathize with Tony and Charis and Roz and I believe in their interpretation of Zenia because I have come to know them as full, round characters. I know from them and from their friends their virtues and their faults. The only character who has only faults in Zenia.

What I love about this book so far is that Margaret Atwood is too smart to have Zenia be merely a flat, despicable villain. She has to have a backstory. But at this point Zenia could be the nicest person in the world and she would still have difficulty convincing me of it because I have made friends with Tony, Charis, and Roz, and she is the enemy of my friends. I cannot wait to see how Atwood changes my mind about Zenia.

Introducing a character through rumor is something Fitzgerald did well in The Great Gatsby. I had all kinds of preconceived notions about Gatsby before I ever met him and I loved seeing where the truth of reading proved and disproved them. Though I can see what Atwood is doing, I am loving the process of being manipulated and I am so excited to find out what she does next.

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

Edan Lepucki and Remembering Why I Love Reading (and Writing) Novellas

June 25, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA 1 Comment

Reading Edan Lepucki’s If You’re Not Yet Like Me this weekend reminded me why I love reading novellas. Many of my favorite books are novellas (The Lover, Franny and Zooey, Cheri, The Awakening, A River Runs Through It). And though some stalwart presses (Melville House and Nouvella) are trying to keep novellas alive, most treat them like the bastard children of short stories.

In honor of Novella Month this June, let’s take a look at some reasons novellas rock.

Quick to Read

I love long books, but sometimes I need to know that I won’t get sucked into something that keeps me up until four in the morning. I read Lepucki’s entire book on a Saturday morning before my husband even woke up. It was engaging, I felt inspired, and I had the whole day left to mull it over.

Concise Writing

One of my favorite things about novellas is the adherence to (and fleshing out of) one theme. The narrator of If You’re Not Yet Like Me, Joellyn, is having some trouble finding the love of her life. Sure, her job probably sucks and her aunt may have cancer, but by focusing solely on Joellyn’s love life, Lepucki lets the reader fully experience the ups and downs of dating a nice guy without all the distractions we face in modern life.

Vivid Characters

Do you remember how many characters there were in Les Misérables? I don’t. You practically need a map to sort them all out. A novella usually has 2-5 characters and you can get deeply involved with each of them. Again, that narrowing of focus brings amazing detail to what is revealed, and a novella gives you the time to get to know those characters in a way you don’t have time to with a short story.

Size Matters

Whether you read on your back or your side, long books are heavy. Most of us spend all day on the computer—why make the carpal tunnel worse by reading tomes in bed? Plus, I love a book I can fit into my purse—it makes the bus ride so much more pleasant.

My first book, Polska, 1994, is a novella, but it didn’t start out that way. I found through revision how much I liked paring the story down to its essential elements. I liked taking out extraneous characters and finding the essential themes. It’s been awhile since I finished writing that book, and I’m grateful to Lepucki for helping me remember what I loved about writing it.

What are your favorite novellas?

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of If You’re Not Yet Like Me from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Dorothy Allison Gets Under My Skin

June 19, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

The world is conspiring to make me a feminist and I’m realizing how sadly overdue that evolution is. I had to become a writer before I could love myself as a woman, and I had to do both before I could become a feminist. This week Dorothy Allison taught me about all of these identities.

I found Skin: Talking About Sex, Class & Literature by pure fate. I never read Bastard out of Carolina, but when I saw Skin at the used bookstore, the title spoke to a lot of things I’m thinking about. So I took it home and put it on the top of the to-read pile. I couldn’t wait to read it and it blew my mind.

“If you do not break out in that sweat of fear when you write, then you have not gone far enough.” – Dorothy Allison

I come from a house where the word feminist was used interchangeably (and as nastily) as dyke. Dorothy Allison is both a lesbian and a feminist, and I’m sorry to say that for many years both would have made me distance myself from her. Instead of chastening me for my ignorance, she writes her own frank assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the two identities as movements. She helped me realize I bristled at some aspects and judgments and not at the identities themselves.

My friend Liza (who is as reasonable and wise as Allison) wrote a brilliant post tying Juneteenth and the recent banning of State Rep. Lisa Brown for saying the word vagina. She advocates for equality of all people. How can we speak our truth when we can’t even name our body parts? Are we that repressed? Yes. We are.

I’m getting interested in the sex positive movement and the idea that whatever consenting adults choose to do is healthy. In the US, images of bodies are almost always sexualized and that makes it difficult to normalize our own. As a curious kid, I couldn’t look naturally at other bodies to see if what was happening to mine was normal (the drawings in sex ed answer so little). I had to resort to Playboy to see what other women looked like naked. Unfortunately those images taught me many other lessons that have been hard to shake.

Over the weekend, I visited Seattle’s Erotic Art Festival. I thought I would be surrounded by raunchy art that would leave me blushing and tittering behind my hand. Instead, I saw films and art that spoke to the simple, human sexuality in all of us. I started to wonder when I got so far away from the idea of myself as a sexual being. My next book is in some ways about the struggle to see myself that way.

“Writing is still revolutionary, writing is still about changing the world…You may not be happy as writers…but you will know who you are and you will change the world.” – Dorothy Allison

In one of her essays, Allison exhorts her reader, “Tell the truth. Write the story you were always afraid to tell. I swear to you there is magic in it, and if you show yourself naked for me, I’ll be naked for you. It will be our covenant.” I can’t think of better encouragement.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Pynchon’s Crazy Voice in The Crying of Lot 49

May 30, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

In the The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon weaves together a series of unlikely events using the voice of a compelling narrator to form the story of a postal conspiracy. From the first sentence of the novel as the narrator takes the protagonist Oedipa from Tupperware party to being the executrix of the estate of a real estate mogul, the novel is full of wild and unexpected turns. These turns might be difficult for a reader to navigate if it weren’t for the extraordinary voice of the narrator.

The voice is whimsical and often strays off topic. For example, just after Oedipa hears about her role in the Inverarity will, the narrator muses:

[s]he tried to think back to whether anything unusual had happened around then. Through the rest of the afternoon, through her trip to the market in downtown Kinneret-Among-The-Pines to buy ricotta and listen to Muzak (today she came through the bead-curtained entrance around bar 4 of the Fort Wayne Settecento Ensemble’s variorium recording of the Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto, Boyd Beaver, soloist); then through the sunned gathering of her marjoram and sweet basil from the herb garden” (10).

The reader is given all sorts of extraneous details, but because the details are so interesting and unusual and because the narration always loops back to the topic at hand (in this case, Oedipa thinking about whether anything unusual had happened), I was interested in learning more and was not lost in the narration. I was however carried away by it. The voice of the narrator was like someone telling a story who has so much detail they want to pack in but they are trying to keep in mind the forward thrust of the story. Because the novel becomes a sort of mystery, I wanted to re-read portions of the novel and see if this extraneous information was in fact pertinent or led somewhere. The voice of the narrator was interesting enough to make me think everything he said had meaning and import.

I have read breathless narrators before, the type who are trying to keep up with the pace of the story and the effect is “and then, and then, and then…”, but this narrator was in control of the story and was going to let it unfold at his pace. The effect was intoxicating. Despite the odd character names and the implausibility of the events, I was willing to follow this story through orgiastic sex scenes and nights spent following a bum just to see where on Earth he was going with the story.

It’s an interesting effect to have a narrator who is so in control of what’s happening. Control may be the wrong word, because it doesn’t seem as though he is orchestrating it. Rather it seems as though he alone knows what is going on. This novel would have been a mess with a less omniscient narrator because Oedipa has no idea what is going on. The reader would be immersed in her confusion and would have difficulty following the threads of the mystery. In fact, it is the juxtaposition of this compelling, competent narrator with Oedipa’s confusion that gives the reader the freedom to follow the narrative. It could and does go anywhere, but the coolness of the narrator gives the novel a semblance of order and perhaps even predestination. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the narrator in this novel is God, although narrators can take on a certain deific quality, but the narrator does provide order to the universe of this novel.

I did not use an omniscient narrator in Polska, 1994, but I can see from this novel how important it is for the voice that is doing the storytelling to be compelling. I considered using a cooler retrospective voice for the part of my novel where Magda is leading up to her regrets and then transitioning to in-the-moment narration for the remainder of the book. By starting with the cooler voice, I would like to keep a reader’s confusion to a minimum as she comes to understand the world the way Magda sees it. The retrospective voice would have allowed Magda to draw some conclusions about her life and her experience and to let the reader understand her life through those conclusions. I ended up going with something that was more raw and immediate—something that spoke to her post-rape turmoil.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of The Crying of Lot 49 from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.