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

Lost in Translation: When There Aren’t Words

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lost in translation - ella frances sandersThere are a lot of reasons I haven’t blogged lately. Only one of them is that I’ve been having trouble finding the right book. I don’t have enough to say about my troubled relationship with Winnie the Pooh or a deep enough understanding of Taoism to make my thoughts on The Te of Piglet worth sharing. The random thoughts that catch my attention in Nobody’s Home aren’t concrete enough to justify me blogging about Ugrešić again. I haven’t had the attention span to properly read Mary Jo Salter’s A Phone Call to the Future yet, either. The big one, though, is that I’m wrestling with some pretty big relationship stuff with my mom and I’ve been spending most of my energy working on an essay about that.

So when I found Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World by Ella Frances Sanders at a nearby Little Free Library (I swear I still spend most of my free cash on books, but you really don’t want me to blog about There’s a Wocket in My Pocket, do you?), the idea of focusing on one word at a time seemed perfect.

This is not a new concept. I can’t tell you how many blog posts I’ve read about untranslatable words. I’m either especially drawn to them (likely) or they’re everywhere (oh, internet). But there is always something extra lovely about holding a book in my hands, and despite the fact that the illustrations sometimes occlude the words and that one of the snippets of exposition beside the words seems to fit a different word entirely, I will love this book more than I can love any blog post of the same nature.

These are the untranslatable words that speak to me…

Hiraeth (Swedish) – A homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to

Having spent a year in Chile under Pinochet’s dictatorship, a year in Poland as the country transitioned to the west, and a childhood in a strangely liberal and artistic Idaho town that’s now closing its theaters and opening up Baptist church after Baptist church, I feel more than my fair share of Hiraeth. This and the liminal feeling the exposure to and removal from places, cultures, and friends has likely shaped me more than any other thing. Hiraeth has shaped the deep, instant attachments I feel to friends and the strange way I expect almost nothing in return—simply the knowledge that my people are okay. Hiraeth also led me to settle into and create a home as soon as I possibly could after leaving high school—a home that so nourishes my sense of well-being that sightings of me outside of it (except when I’m at work) are quite rare.

Feuillemort (French) – Having the color of a faded, dying leaf

Language is ineffable. Life is ineffable. This word speaks to me of fragility and the gorgeous things that can happen to our languages and our soul when we take a moment to observe closely. Which is the only thing worth doing in art.

One of the things I enjoyed most about Lost in Translation is that many of the words themselves feel ineffable. They refer to things so momentary that we can’t quite catch them. I loved the feeling of trying to capture those feelings that I’d not yet taken the time to examine and appreciate.

Sobremesa (Spanish) – Time spent chatting over a table with friends long after the food is gone

This word is not in the book, but I discovered it recently on the internet and I used this word to change my life. Having a child, especially one who’s transitioning to solid foods, became an excuse (or created an imperative) for my husband and me to actually eat at our dinner table. Which was wonderful. But after we adults finished eating, my husband would spring from his seat and start cleaning the table and erasing all the evidence of our having cooked.

Don’t get me wrong, I love having a clean kitchen, but discovering “sobremesa” gave me the language I needed to ask my husband to linger, let the dishes rest for a bit, and talk with me. When you have a nearly one-year-old baby, any time you can actually have a conversation is a gift.

Kummerspeck (German) – Grief bacon or the excess weight we gain from emotional overeating

“Language wraps its understanding and punctuation around us all, tempting us to cross boundaries and helping us to comprehend the impossibly difficult questions that life relentlessly throws at us.” – Ella Frances Sanders

Except it doesn’t. There are some things that are still beyond language. Which brings me to the real reason I’m writing this blog today. My friend lost his newborn daughter on Thursday. When my husband spoke the words “lost their baby” as I was emerging from a nap, I thought, “How on earth do you lose a newborn? They aren’t all that mobile.” And then understanding hit me.

Feel that silence? That blow? That complete failure of language? I know I do. We reached out, like you do, like so many did. We offered love and support and love. I cringed in anticipation of the normal platitudes people send in response to loss—the things we say to reassure ourselves that there’s a reason behind such a thing and that it couldn’t happen to us. They were mercifully absent. I’d read a blog post earlier in the day about a woman whose friend lost a 21-month-old baby and her own experience with wordlessness. That post had made me sad, but it was nothing like the reality.

My husband, who is always better at translating the untranslatable feelings into words and action than I am, helped me find something to say, something to do. But language and all the love in the world cannot fix what happened.

“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.” – Eckhart Tolle

To my writing soul, language is everything. And although sometimes language just isn’t enough, I have to keep trying.

If you want to explore your own glossary of untranslatable words and feelings, pick up a copy of Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Interrogating Myself with Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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between the world and me ta nehisi coatesWhen a dear friend sent me a copy of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, he said it was because I had a son. I don’t think I would have read the book if I’d understood it was about race in American society. But that skirting of uncomfortable topics is exactly why I needed to read this book. It’s why I think everyone should read this book.

The Art of Persuasion

Because I’m white and because I (like everyone else) have no choice as to what race I am, I’ve often felt impugned by conversations about racism. I grew up in a very white town, but I’ve always had friends of all colors. I was pretty sure I’m not racist and so, while I know we are not at all post-racial, I haven’t really found a way to engage in the conversation about racism. So when I realized that this book was about being black in America, I was prepared to feel attacked once again for things that “aren’t my fault.”

Coates schooled me good. And he did it in two really effective ways.

Owning Your Own Experience

In reading Coates address responsibility, I began to understand the burden on the opposite side of my privilege:

“You are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. Indeed, you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you. And you must be responsible for the bodies of the powerful—the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. And this is not reducible to just you—the women around you must be responsible for their bodies in a way that you will never know. You have to make your peace with the chaos, but you cannot lie.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

I realized the struggle African Americans are speaking of and experiencing isn’t about me at all. Sure, the actions I take have an effect on the world and I should do the very best I can to look beyond skin color, but I need to stop putting myself at the center of someone else’s suffering. The voice saying “this is wrong” needs to be heard. And saying “this is wrong” is not the same as saying “this is your fault.”

Reinforcing the Humanness of the Struggle

We’ve all read about slavery in school. Slavery was bad. We’ve read about racism. Racism is bad. There are some icons we remember from our history books and bandy about in conversation, but it’s far too easy for all of those struggles to seem past and pat once we’ve heard the same broad stories over and over again.

Coates unpacks the experience of slavery, racism, and being black in America in such a human, visceral way that it’s impossible to ignore.

“I have raised you to respect every human being as singular, and you must extend that same respect into the past. Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman whose mind is active as your own, whose range of feeling is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in one particular spot in the woods, who enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, thinks her sister talks too loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels at dressmaking and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and capable as anyone. ‘Slavery’ is this same woman born in a world that loudly proclaims its love of freedom and inscribes this love in its essential texts, a world in which these same professors hold this woman a slave, hold her mother a slave, her father a slave, her daughter a slave, and when this woman peers back into the generations all she sees is the enslaved. She can hope for more. She can imagine some future for her grandchildren. But when she dies the world—which is really the only world she can ever know—ends. For this woman, enslavement is not a parable. It is a damnation. It is the never-ending night. And the length of that night is most of our history. Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains—whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

Wow. Re-reading that now as I type it out for you still overwhelms my nervous system with awe. Because when my son was born I saw for the first time in my life how each human was a life who should be loved and cherished. And yet it’s so easy, and I have been guilty of, failing to see that humanity in each and every soul.

It doesn’t hurt that the language is flat out gorgeous.

The Pain and Poignancy of Parenthood

As you can see from the quotes above, this book is written as a letter from Coates to his son. That hits me especially hard right now as I’m trying to shape the brain, life, and values of my own young son. I worry for his future as I can see Coates worrying for the future of his son. Although my son is white. Coates writes to his son, “The price of error is higher for you than it is for your countrymen.” And I know that my son, who although he is the most important child to me in the world is not more important to the world than any other child, is far less likely to get shot for shoplifting or walking down the street.

The most impactful moment of this book, a book that is deeply impactful overall, is when Coates takes his son on an interview with a black woman whose son had been killed by a white man because he had refused to turn down his music. She wonders, “Had he not spoke back, spoke up, would he still be here?” And then she speaks to Coates’s son:

“You exist. You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid to be you.”

This woman who had lost her son because he stood up for himself, a loss that must feel like losing everything, still had the courage to encourage another young man to stand up for himself. Because it is the right thing to do. Although it carries a danger only she could truly understand in that moment, she knows the cost of giving in is too great. I hope I have the courage to teach my son to stand up for his convictions. I know when I tried to describe the dichotomy of trying to raise the best person and at the same time wanting him never to get hurt, I ended up crying.

What it’s Like to Feel Threatened

As a woman, I’m so used to feeling like a smaller mammal that I barely even register the ways that feeling affects my behavior on a daily basis. I’m not “playing the victim card,” it’s just my life experience. I’m careful about where I walk and when, who I sit next to on the bus, and taking the risk of challenging someone. I alter my language, the strongest tool I have, so that I do not offend, because offending someone bigger could get me hurt.

So when I read about the hundreds of sexist letters. No. They weren’t sexist, they were abusive. They might have been sexist too. The language they used was certainly ugly and usually only directed at women. When I read about the hundreds of abusive letters sent to female Seattle City Council members by sports fans angry they didn’t get their stadium, I was surprised to find myself shocked into silence. For a few minutes I could not even speak. I could barely move.

I tried to explain what I was feeling to my husband, but it was so big, so new to be talking about this feeling that I tried never to even think about. I was shocked at how ugly people can be (even though I know people can be ugly). I was angry that those men (and one woman) were being so childish. I was scared that they would feel so free to do something so public (it’s my assumption that all government emails are subject to potential disclosure) to public officials. If women of stature could be treated that way in a city I love…

When the subject was revisited in Crosscut a few days later, I finally found my voice. I knew I wanted to speak up, so I went to Twitter. I don’t have a huge following, but it’s the most public voice I have (that isn’t work-related). I tweeted this:

I was a little afraid to put myself out there, but I felt stronger for speaking. I got four retweets and five favorites – both high stats for me. And then I got this response:

Twitter___Notifications_3
I’d show you the embedded Twitter post instead of a screenshot, except he’d deleted it by the next day.

The response is banal enough. Kind of aggressive and accusative, and he puts some words in my mouth, but there’s nothing overtly threatening about it.

Except that’s not how I felt. Receiving this one response, even in a social media world I know is full of trolls looking to pick fights, I felt afraid. I dreaded the conversation spiraling. I worried what might come next and if I’d be the next recipient of some of the really ugly words being bandied about. I feared that my very dear coworkers would jump in on my side and just make the whole thing flare up even worse. I started considering how public my life is—listed phone number and address, easily accessible email, every vulnerability of my soul spelled out on this blog. I considered how secure my passwords are lest they get hacked. I worried for the safety of my son. I was inside a full-on fear response.

Maybe I was overthinking things or aggrandizing my own importance because after I summoned the courage/bluster to post this self defense designed to deflect not inflame:


The conversation died out. Sometime after that he deleted his tweet. But the feeling of fear remained. And the next day I decided I would not be silenced:

It is incumbent on me to use the power of language, the power that I have, to contradict wrongs. Those are values I hold very strongly—that I want to pass on to my son. Sometimes I need to do speak softly and sometimes I need to shout, but I need to show him that I have a voice and he has a voice and that our voices matter.

How This Changed My Feelings about #BlackLivesMatter

I’d spent a lot of time thinking that the Black Lives Matter movement was an outsized response to a real problem. I watched activists shouting down people who were on their side (like Bernie Sanders) just to be heard. And one activist reshaped history at a public event in a way I felt was downright dishonest. I started to agree with the #AllLivesMatter folks. Even though I knew that second movement was deafly trying to say “hey, your struggle isn’t all that special.” I shook my head and thought about more effective ways these activists could get their point about the continued effects of racism heard. I understood the privilege that comes with my light skin color in this society, but I did not understand what it felt like to be unprivileged. All lives matter, but not everyone has to fight for the respect we all deserve as humans.

After my tiny little Twitter battle, I realized that Black Lives Matter activists are finding their voices like I was. They’re so accustomed to living in a world where they carry the burdens of our society’s reactions to their skin color that they have every reason to believe if they engage in a civil discourse about police brutality that too often leads to deaths these activists will not be heard.

I still think the movement hasn’t found the way to communicate that will actually create institutional change, but now I wonder if that’s their goal. Perhaps they’re just saying, in a world where they’re pretty sure change is impossible, “I exist. I matter.” And they do.

“I am speaking to you as I always have—as the sober and serious man I have always wanted you to be, who does not apologize for his human feelings, who does not make excuses for his height, his long arms, his beautiful smile. You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

So, Am I a Racist?

This probably isn’t even the right question, but yes, as much as I wish I just saw color as a descriptor, I am racist in some ways. I try to challenge myself when stereotypes bubble to the surface, but, no matter how much my friend group may look like a Benetton ad, I have a lot of work to do before I can even begin to consider myself post racial.

I hope that more people will read books like Between the World and Me and think deeply about how we all relate to one another. And if even one more person could write a book this excellent that taught me this much…

If you want to interrogate yourself, or even just read some really gorgeous writing, pick up a copy of Between the World and Me. Better yet, buy two copies. Give one to a friend who has a different life experience than you do. Then ask them to share their point of view with you. You’ll learn a lot by listening.

Emma Donoghue’s Room vs. Isla Morley’s Above: Two Takes on a Mother in Captivity

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above-isla-morley-room-emma-donoghueInitially, I was reluctant to read Emma Donoghue’s Room, because I’d recently read Above by Isla Morley and I was pretty sure there were only so many “kidnapped woman imprisoned for years bears the child of her kidnapper/rapist” stories this new mom could take. But I found Room in one of our neighborhood Little Free Libraries and couldn’t resist. As similar as the stories sound at first blush, the books could not be more different. Except that I loved them both.

Point of View

Above begins with teenaged Blythe’s first-person account of her kidnapper closing the door on her.

“Dobbs wins the fight easily. He shuts and locks the door. I feel a small sense of relief. With a hulking slab of metal separating us, I am finally able to breathe just a little. It is only when I hear another thump, another door closing someplace above me, that I understand: not only am I to be left alone; I am to be hidden.” – Isla Morley, Above

For the rest of the book we are immersed directly in the immediate experience of someone who has been kidnapped. At first, the world of the abandoned missile silo where Blythe is being kept is entirely new to her, and we’re with her as she discovers all the sights and sounds, writes a note to her parents telling them she’s run away, and is about to be raped by Dobbs (that particular action happens mercifully offscreen). The effect of this viewpoint is intense, intimate, and terrifying.

Whereas Room is told entirely from the point of view of Jack, a five-year-old boy who was born in captivity. While Morley is able to show us Blythe’s former life through flashback, Donoghue has created a narrator with no experience of life outside. For Jack, that one room is the entire world.

Writing from the point of view of a kid is a challenging thing to do. Creating an entire world for a reader in a compelling way using this limited voice is even more challenging, but Donoghue nails it. Not only are the cadence of Jack’s speech and his tics well-honed and interesting to read, the way he sees the world is also fascinating.

“I count one hundred cereal and waterfall the milk that’s nearly the same white as the bowls, no splashing, we thank Baby Jesus. I choose Meltedy Spoon with the white all blobby on his handle when he leaned on the pan of boiling pasta by accident. Ma doesn’t like Meltedy Spoon but he’s my favorite because he’s not the same.” – Emma Donoghue, Room

Would you believe I chose that paragraph at random? The entire book is like that with the incredible rush of child’s-view detail in a child’s grammar and mingled with reminiscences of simple moments all managing to reveal insights into the characters. We learn about the tiny room and a day-to-day schedule that feels completely composed of play until nine o’clock when Jack retires to “Wardrobe” and beep-beep Old Nick (their captor) comes to visit Ma.

Sometimes it took me awhile to catch on to what Jack meant by phrases like “I have some now, the right because the left hasn’t much in it” and the book took me much longer than usual to read, but I cherished every minute. I was astounded by how well Donoghue pulled off Jack’s point of view and if I were to re-read this book for anything, I would re-read it for this fantastic voice work.

The Kidnapper

The push-pull relationship between Blythe and Dobbs is the central conflict of life inside the silo in Above. As a result, we get to know the man and his motives relatively well. We learn that believes the world is about to come to an end and that by sequestering Blythe he’s actually saving her from imminent disaster.

For the first half of the book it’s impossible to tell if he’s mentally ill or deeply prescient, but it’s clear that he believes he’s doing the right thing. Which creates a strange but important possibility for sympathy for this character. He’s not a cardboard cutout of pure evil. He has motivations. He means well. This rounded portrait creates an antagonist who’s much more chilling because he’s much more believable and the possibility remains open that he’s saving Blythe’s life.

In Room, the kidnapper—Old Nick—is barely present. This is a really interesting choice because it makes the story almost entirely about Jack and Ma. Donoghue accomplishes this by having Ma almost entirely shield Jack from Old Nick. He knows about the child’s existence, but in their everyday life, the two are never allowed to meet. We learn things about Old Nick entirely from what Ma tells Jack which means that although we can imagine the awfulness of his deeds, our own view of him is somewhat protected. As a result, it’s harder to feel the menace of Old Nick (even though we know by the fact that he’s kept this woman caged in a garden shed that he’s a really bad guy) and the story really focuses on the relationship between Jack and Ma. And Ma is Jack’s antagonist.

The World Outside

Here’s where the spoilers start.

When Blythe finally escapes the silo, she finds the entire world changed. Dobbs may have been a lot of bad things, but it turns out he was right. And he did save Blythe’s life. As she navigates the post-apocalyptic world with Adam, the child she raised and with whom she escaped, we learn how very different the world outside is from Blythe’s childhood memories. It is still a tale of survival, but suddenly the silo seems like a haven stocked with food and free from outsiders. And a new dimension of the story emerges: fertility.

The two halves of Above really do feel like two different books, but they could not exist without each other.

While in Room, Jack the outside doesn’t even feel real. Jack relates it to television because it’s what he has to relate it to. The idea that there are buildings and other people and a whole world out there feels as real to him as his good friend Dora (the Explorer). The conflict of the story hinges on Jack’s desire to stay inside this womb with his mother and her desire to escape. Once they do escape, the conflict shifts to Jack’s desire to return to that womb while Ma wants to live in the world she once knew. One scene I related very personally to is when Jack tries to stop Ma from taking the first shower she’s taken in years.

Maternal Instinct

As a new mother, the hardest parts of Above for me to read were when Blythe’s natural born child dies and then later when Charlie, the child Dobbs brings to fulfill her maternal desires suffers. This is also when Blythe really comes alive as a mother, which was interesting for me to read as my own maternal instincts were peaking out. But what really spoke to my heartstrings was the relationship between Blythe and Adam after they escape. Watching the mutually protective relationship was extra poignant for me as I wondered what my relationship with my son would eventually be like. As I hoped he will have a life that doesn’t require protecting me.

But it was Room that really spoke to the mom in me. The womb metaphor could have been overplayed but wasn’t. I read most of the book as my son played next to me. I wanted to protect Jack like I’d protect my own son. I felt the sweetness and irksomeness of the demands of attention. I wanted Ma to be free of the room as much as I wanted to snuggle that little boy. I loved reading about the way Jack reasoned and imagining what worlds my son will invent as his brain develops. At times I felt Jack’s voice could have been coming from my son. And yes, when he nurses, I sometimes ask him if he “wants some” and wonder if the left or the right is more creamy.

As much as I resisted reading Above and Room, these are both good books. I’d recommend Above for the dystopianists and Room for the moms. But they are even more interesting in tandem.

To do your own comparison, pick up copies of Above and Room from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Living, Thinking, Looking with Siri Hustvedt

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Living, Thinking, Looking - Siri HustvedtI have no clue why I’ve been drawn to essays lately, but when I saw Living, Thinking, Looking at the bookstore, I thought “I liked The Summer Without Men, maybe I’ll like Siri Hustvedt’s essays, too.” I had no idea that I was on the verge of finding my authorial twin and a source of constant inspiration.

Spanning Disciplines and Tickling My Brain

Siri Hustvedt isn’t writing your standard, “I think this, so you should too” kind of essays. Instead, she’s bringing insights from neuroscience and psychology to fantastically thoughtful essays on creativity, art, and life. The result is a book filled with deeply personal, but also wildly open, essays on topics that matter to me and not only inspire me to think more broadly about the world around me but also provide me with new frames for seeing that world.

For example, in “Critical Notes on the Verbal Climate,” she calls out how fear-based political speech preys on our limbic systems. She discusses the need to divide, our tribal natures, and George W. Bush’s angel/devil discourse. She delves into the hypocrisy of a nation that bases itself on freedom yet “curtails civil liberties at home, defies the Geneva Convention for prisoners of war, and through ugly legalisms, sets in motion a justification for torture.” The result is a political commentary that directly pinpointed the reasons I struggle to reconcile my political ideals with our current reality, and is, unfortunately, equally timely now as it was when she wrote it in 2005.

Other topics Hustvedt helped me understand more deeply include: the tyranny of the desire to please, the nature of truth in autobiography (something I’ve been wanting to write about but have now seen done better than I could ever accomplish), and the importance of narrative not only to fiction but to life.

What She Wrought

Living, Thinking, Looking inspired an incredible storm of brain activity for me. As I slowly read through this book (something I only do with the best of books), not only was I soaking the pages of the book with ink, I was also tweeting up a storm of quotes from Hustvedt:

Best of all, Hustvedt sparked me to think more deeply. She showed me that, rather than being a scatterbrain, being interested in a diverse array of topics might actually be a strength. I realized that there are parts of my life I’ve been trying to keep separate (work and writing) that might function better if I integrate them. And she inspired me to write a manifesto to both gather my thoughts and to commit to making great work in the way that feels true to me. She also sparked me to speak out about the social media shaming that seems to happen when people express sympathy about tragic events in the western world.

About My Dad

Something else came from the inspiration and kinship I felt in the pages of Living, Thinking, Looking—I also started to better understand my relationship with my father. I adore my dad in the way that many daughters do. I’ve looked up to him and wanted to be like him and also to earn his approval. But I’ve sometimes struggled to understand the difference between things I want for myself and things I think would please him.

Hustvedt’s father is also a professor, and like me, she’s chosen to be a writer rather than following in his footsteps. In her essay, “My Father/Myself,” I could relate not only to the loving relationship that she portrays but also to the distance she sometimes feels from him. She delves into the nature of fatherhood, where that distance comes from, and how necessary it might be. It’s incredibly poignant to read how much she ached for a friendship with her father and how long in life she had to wait for that to occur.

Some of the brightest moments of my life have been when I felt that kind of friendship with my dad. Thanks to a nudge from my husband, he even reads this blog and sometimes I get the sweetest email replies about posts. Reading this book, I understood how much of my desire to be a thinker comes from that emulation of my dad, and I realized that my rejection of the life of a professor isn’t a rejection of him. Instead it’s me finding my own way to live out the values we share.

Our lives are very full and often overly busy. When my dad celebrates his birthday is in eight days, I won’t get to be there like I was last year. But I’m grateful to have a better understanding of our relationship. And I’m grateful to be able to tell him here, publicly, how important the moments we can share an adult friendship are to me. Happy birthday, Dad! I love you.

Birthday tree planting with my dad and brother, 2015
Birthday tree planting with my dad and brother, 2015

If you want Siri Hustvedt to stretch your thinking, pick up a copy of Living, Thinking, Looking from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Building a World in Wool by Hugh Howey

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Wool Omnibus - Hugh HoweyOne of the things I admire most about dystopian and fantasy novels is the author’s ability to create a whole other world. Few have done this better than Hugh Howey in Wool, the first book in the Silo series.

Capturing the First Sentence

There’s a lot of pressure on a first sentence. You have to create tension and pique the reader’s interest. You have to start the story and literally set the tone. When you’re writing about a world that’s foreign to the reader, you also have to begin immersing them in that world without alienating them.

The children were playing while Holston climbed to his death; he could hear them squealing as only happy children do. – Hugh Howey, Wool

In this first sentence of Wool, Howey creates tension by juxtaposing the impending death of Holston and the joy of the little children. He piques our interest by putting us right there in the middle of the last few moments of Holston’s life. As many writers do, he’s starting this story in medias res and it’s hard not to care that this man (even though we have no idea who he is) is about to die and Howey’s writing about it all so matter of factly, in direct, unadorned language.

Last, but not least, this one sentence is already showing us a world where a person can climb to one’s death and you get the feeling that he’s not mounting a cliff. We don’t know much but we do know that despite this desolate moment in Holston’s life, the world itself is not desolate if it’s filled with happy children.

It’s amazing what just a few words can do.

Imagining a World

What continued to amaze me is how much Howey accomplished on the next couple of pages to immerse me in this world he has created.

Holston could feel the vibrations in the railing, which was worn down to the gleaming metal. That always amazed him: how centuries of bare palms and shuffling feet could wear down solid steel… Each life might wear away a single layer, even as the silo wore away that life. – Hugh Howey, Wool

With this passage, Howey starts to show and tell us about the centuries the people of this world have been there and the effect that time has had on the place. We begin to understand that resources are limited and that the world itself is limited to the confines of this silo.

Alive and unworn, dripping happy sounds down the stairwell, trills that were incongruous with Holston’s actions, his decision and determination to go outside. – Hugh Howey, Wool

This sentence introduces a tension between the inside of the silo and the outside. In a way, we want Holston to go outside because it pulls us free of the confines, but then we remember that he’s on his way to death. Outside means death.

[H]e thought, not for the first time, that neither life nor staircase had been meant for such an existence. The tight confines of that long spiral, threading through the buried silo like a straw in a glass, had not been built for such abuse. Like much of their cylindrical home, it seemed to have been made for other purposes, for functions long since forgotten. What was now used as a thoroughfare for thousands of people, moving up and down in repetitious daily cycles, seemed more apt in Holston’s view to be used only in emergencies and perhaps by mere dozens. – Hugh Howey, Wool

Although inside means life, this passage constricts the world. This further ratchets up the tension. This is also where Howey starts to let loose some real details of what the inside of the silo is like. We understand that it’s underground, not above like we would expect. It begins to sound like a buried office building. Did it get buried? Was it built that way? What happened?

There is so much familiar in this world (the stairs, the children, the glass, the straw) but it’s all (literally) tipped over. By using all of those familiar elements and analogies, Howey’s giving us something to grab onto while he reinterprets how the thousands of people living in the silo interact with those things.

And Holston doesn’t know how the silo got there.

Two pages. Howey has written, by this point, two pages and already I’m enthralled with this new world he’s built. I have to understand how it got there. I have to understand the society and the rules. Most importantly, I have to understand what happens when Holston goes outside.

Self-published Author Makes Good

The story of the publication of Wool is every self-published author’s dream. It started as a short story and it was so popular that Howey began writing (and self-publishing) more and more segments until it was a full-fledged book and then a series. He’s sold the movie rights and now has a relationship with Simon & Schuster. It’s inspiring to see how compelling writing can find it’s way to an audience.

The book is far from perfect (there’s a villain so cardboard I kept waiting to see him twist the long ends of his mustache), but it’s a hell of a read and it’s been a long time since I was so drawn into a world so quickly.

How do you build a world? Or do you have a writer you think does it especially well? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments.

To learn more about life in the silo, pick up a copy of Wool: Omnibus from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.