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

James Ellroy and Sexual Violence

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LA Confidential - James EllroyWatching L.A. Confidential again last night, I started to reflect on my long history with James Ellroy. I was young when I first started reading him—maybe eleven or twelve—and The Black Dahlia was not my first of his books. When I started with Clandestine or Brown’s Requiem, the noir voice had me, a girl who had grown up on the movie The Big Sleep but never read Raymond Chandler, hooked. The Black Dahlia was the second book of his that I read and as a burgeoning woman, I wanted to be as beautiful and as desired as Betty Short. I was young enough and immortal enough that the extreme violence committed against her didn’t even phase me. Even after reading L.A. Confidential and several other books, I didn’t key into it or how it might be affecting me.

If you know anything about Ellroy, you know that his mother was brutally murdered and that his books, especially those early ones, are places where he is dealing with that trauma. Elizabeth Short’s death was not dissimilar to his mother’s and there is often at least one Bud White in each early James Ellroy novel trying to save the girl—any girl—from harm. I believe that the resulting works show a respect for women, even if it borders on unhealthy worship.

I was still very young and unsettled when I watched the premiere of L.A. Confidential in 1997 at SIFF. I still wanted to be one of the women that the foul-mouthed writer would worship, and I still thought murder, even brutal serial killer style murder, was interesting enough to take Bob Keppel’s class on Ted Bundy.

In the last few years, maybe as I’ve begun to see myself more as a mortal person not merely a sexual object, I’ve started to wonder about the sexual violence against women we expose ourselves to through various media. I used to enjoy Criminal Minds, but now I realize that (despite some smart detectives) the stories are populated with women as victims and the violence is often heinous and sexual. The last few years, the torture rape filled horror movies have ruined for me one of my favorite film genres. The only conversations I can have about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are about whether the sexual violence is for titillation and I’m still not convinced it isn’t.

Violence happens. I’m headed to Croatia soon and one of the things I can’t get out of my mind is the rape camps of the Bosnian War and that we can barely talk about it still. Humans are animals and at times that is far too evident. I don’t think we should ignore it, but I also don’t think we should normalize it. At the same time, it can be interesting to learn about those uncontrolled parts of ourselves.

I try not to read about rape (no more Stieg Larsson for me and I’ll skip The Kite Runner, thank you). I did write about rape in Polska, 1994 because I wanted to try to understand it. I’m glad I did, because through writing about Magda’s victimization, I was able to see myself as a whole person (rather than a victim) with power in my actions. My fear is that for many people scenes of sexual violence and torture are becoming sources of excitement rather than cautionary and we are teaching our children that women are victims not people. Even James Ellroy saw women as victim-objects to be saved.

I don’t have any answers, but the long-lasting effects of the victimization of women in media is something I will continue to think about.

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

Jay Gatsby: Boat Against the Current

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the great gatsby f scott fitzgerald

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.

Embodiment and Disembodiment in The Lover

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the lover marguerite duras

Marguerite Duras throws the reader into the memory of her narrator in The Lover. By switching narration between the first person and third person limited, Duras embodies the experiences of a fifteen and a half year-old girl who takes on a Chinese lover in Saigon. She also conveys the sense of the girl as object which allows the reader to both sympathize with the character and subject her to judgment. This mimics the way the narrator is simultaneously reminiscing about a specific period in her adolescence and also judging herself.

Because the narrative voice doesn’t change when the narrative point of view does, the reader has the sense that the same first person narrator is relating the story from two angles. In one section the narrator describes her shoes: “These high heels are the first in my life, they’re beautiful, they’ve eclipsed all the shoes that went before.” This is followed by a section break and then the very next sentence is: “It’s not the shoes, though, that make the girl look so strangely, so weirdly dressed.” Three sentences later in the same section the narrator is back to first person in describing the provenance of the hat she was wearing: “How I came by it I’ve forgotten.” In each of these sections, the narrator is talking about the same girl and her possessions but the reader is encountering her as both separate and part of the narrator.

Switching back and forth between narrative points of view could be maddening for a reader, but the switch is seamless and gives the reader a much fuller picture of the narrator’s recollections than one viewpoint or the other could have done. The ease of transition is accomplished by zooming in to look at one object (here the shoes and the hat) and then zooming back out to show the same object from a different vantage point.

The key to the reasons behind the shift in perspective is in the following passage: “He answers my mother, tells her she’s right to beat the girl…The mother hits her as hard as she can.” I was struck by the poignant disassociation in the shift here as the narrator transitions from “my mother” to “the girl.”  Moments before, the narrator used the first person to describe the beginning of the incident: “My mother has attacks during which she falls on me…punches me.” “Has attacks” is habitual, not of the moment, and not in scene. But as the description progresses, the specificity of the action as the other brother flees and the mother calms down and the girl lies about her relationship with the Chinese man, makes the description seem like one particular instance. The narrator is separating herself from the girl who is the center of this action. She sets herself apart from the chaos and pain of these relationships as though it happened to someone else. This disembodiment is characteristic of someone who has undergone trauma and is particularly poignant because the character is at an age where one internalizes this type of experience and blames oneself for it.

Shifting back and forth between these narrative points of view is tricky, but Duras managed it well. As a reader, I was able to engage with the character on a deeper level and could feel the shift into third person almost as the narrator’s wince. I don’t think this could be prudently imitated except in the rarest of circumstances because it creates a very specific effect. However, it is important to keep in mind that our characters, being the astute little observers that they tend to be, are likely aware of how they are perceived. There are other ways to view even a first person narrator from the outside, e.g. conveying anxiety at how they are being perceived. In my novel, Polska, 1994, being seen and the perceptions of others is an important part of Magda’s world and I work to show this through how she thinks others are seeing her. Duras reminded me that it is important to consider how my character views herself.

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

Mr. Rochester, Mr. Rochester

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In Jane Eyre, shows the development of Jane’s feelings for Mr. Rochester by the subtle changes in the way Jane observes him each time they meet.

Tepid Feelings at First Site

The first time Jane ever sees Mr. Rochester he is preceded by a “rude noise” as his horse rushed toward Thornfield. The rude noise turns into a “din” and a dark horse approached. Jane is afraid it may be a spirit and is relieved when there is a man on the back of the horse because that means it is not a spirit. Mr. Rochester and his horse fall and when Jane approaches to offer assistance she remarks, “I think he was swearing” which is a rather coarse activity for a gentleman in front of a lady at the time. He ordered her to stand aside as he inspected himself. When Jane finally remarks on his looks, she sees “stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful” and is not put off, because if he had been heroic looking, Jane fears he could not have borne her presence. Instead, “the frown, the roughness of the traveller set me at my ease.” Jane is not immediately repulsed by this man, though his initial appearance is somewhat frightening. Because he is not handsome, she is able to meet him as an equal and offer him assistance.

A Gentle Warming

When Jane reaches Thornfield, she is as yet unaware that the gentleman she met on the road is her master who she has been anxious to meet during the long time she has already been his employee. She is told that Mr. Rochester has arrived and she comes down to meet him. She sees him “half reclined on a couch.” She observes of his physique, “I suppose it was a good figure in the athletic sense of the term.” He is brusque with her and this intrigues Jane, for “[a] reception of finished politeness would probably have confused me.” Mr. Rochester is now at ease and Jane is more at ease with him than before. Questions have been answered as to who her master is and it appears he may be someone she can relate to. He is not handsome and elegant and all of the other things Jane thinks she is not. But it is not yet love although they engage in amiable banter.

At Last, My Love Has Come Along

Weeks later, Jane retires to her room and re-observes Mr. Rochester and his behavior during the first several weeks of their acquaintance. She thinks about how much more even his temper has become and that “he had always a word and sometimes a smile for me.” As Mr. Rochester is opening up to Jane more, she is opening up to him. She goes on to think, “[T]he friendly frankness…with which he treated me, drew me to him.” More directly she asks the question of whether he was ugly in her eyes and the reply is: “gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see.” Jane likes him very much at this point, whether she is yet in love with him or not.

When Mr. Rochester brings guests into the house, Jane compares him to his company and finds a certain kind of handsomeness in the softening of his demeanor that is much more attractive to her than the easily seen handsomeness of Lord Ingram or Colonel Dent. I would posit that Jane is now fully in love with him.

It is true to this character that Jane only gradually warms up to Mr. Rochester, because she has been treated harshly in life. It is also consistent that she takes comfort in the unconventional nature of his looks. Jane could not have fallen in love with a conventionally handsome man. Because this book is narrated in a retrospective first person voice, the reader is allowed to see the unfolding of Jane’s feelings from inside her mind and it is natural to experience her observations of other characters. The reader is allowed to fall in love with Mr. Rochester at the same time as Jane does because we are privy only to her view of the world.

I worked with something similar in my novel, Polska, 1994, with Szymon. I also have a first person narrator. Magda encounters Szymon several times throughout the story and because initially he is someone she has never met, Magda examines him and reexamines him each time she meets him. The reader will get to feel what Magda is feeling without me having to explain whether she now likes him.

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

Myriad Voices in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

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I don’t know whether it was that the idea of going to the lighthouse was first proposed to six-year-old James, because the first sentence of To the Lighthouse was in dialogue, or because describes James’s “extraordinary joy” at the news, but when his father breaks in with the news (again in dialogue) that the weather will not be good enough, my heart broke for James. And then when James’s mother insists, despite the fact that James has declared his father incapable of untruth, that the possibility still remains of their going, my heart soared for him again.

Shifting Omniscient Perspective

The way the omniscient perspective in the novel dips into the mind of one character and then another with only a paragraph break for separation gives the narration an almost choral effect as character after character muses through their own thoughts and then comments on the action of the novel. The muse, comment, muse pattern in the first chapter opens up space within the novel where the characters come to life even though the action is sparse and takes place over a short period of time. On page 64, the narrator tells us Mrs. Ramsay is knitting and then gives us her thoughts as they wander to “How could any Lord have made this world….With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor” and then the narrator returns us to the image of her as she “knitted with firm composure.”  Then back to musing and back to knitting. As a reader I feel like I know Mrs. Ramsay in a way I would not if I were to see her knitting in a chair. Because the narrator consistently brings the reader back to the action, the piece still feels grounded. This is something I explored in my novel Polska, 1994. I worked to open up spaces inside the narrative where characters can be and show more of themselves.

The Voice of the House

Whereas the first chapter of To the Lighthouse is populated with the various perspectives and internal voices of characters, the second chapter is nearly devoid of them. The narration focuses on the house itself (its rooms, its furnishings, and its environment) and a result the house and the story feel empty and sad. The reader feels that the Ramsay family and in particular Mrs. Ramsay was the soul of the house. The reader feels the loss of Mrs. Ramsay to the extent that the magic of the house cannot be regained even when the Ramsay family returns in the third chapter.

Repetition

Woolf uses repetition as Lily frequently mentally notes something that Mrs. Ramsey has just noted (e.g. that Paul and Minta are engaged). Lily also comes back to the image of the tree in her painting over and over again as dinner progresses and she decides to move it more to the middle. As the tree comes up again and again, the image is more concrete in the reader’s mind. These things that are repeated take on a greater significance than if they were merely mentioned once, and Lily’s echo of Mrs. Ramsay not only enforces the general understanding of the group but it also shows the similarity in character between Mrs. Ramsay and Lily. I worked with repetition in Murmur of the River. There are a few key scenes that happen twice but in two different ways and this repetition shows how the world around Magda is changing and also how Magda’s interaction with her world is changing.

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