Murmurs of the River Archives - Page 4 of 5

Tagalog Words, Filipino Flavor in Dogeaters

April 28, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I’m thinking a lot about the feel of foreign words on the tongue and in print lately, so I want to talk about Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters. She uses Tagalog and Spanish words throughout this novel set in the Phillipines. Most often these phrases are used in dialogue and consist of exclamations, family designations, or food. Hagedorn sets aside the words for the reader by using italics, but it is clear that the intermingling of these words would occur naturally in the characters’ speech. These words lend the story authenticity, but they can also interfere with the reader’s understanding of the story.

Spanish

The Spanish words Hagedorn uses are easily intelligible and familiar, I imagine, even to many readers who don’t speak Spanish. Words like “abuelita,” “hija,” and “prima” are all family designations and are used with varying regularity in novels set in America. Hagedorn uses the Spanish “abuelita” to differentiate between Rio’s two grandmothers. Both women are Filipina, but one has moved to Spain and considers herself more Spanish. Rio’s Filipina grandmother, Narcisa, is addressed as “Lola” while her grandmother with Spanish pretensions, Socorro, is addressed as “abuelita.”

Tagalog

Some of the Tagalog words Hagedorn uses are easily understandable based on the context clues around them: “[i]t is merienda time at the popular Cafe España.” It is clear that “merienda” has something to do with eating. As the novel progresses, Hagedorn uses the word over and over and the reader’s understanding of the word is enriched. Although I never fully understood the word, I came to understand “merienda” happens in the morning and may be akin to brunch. I was able to substitute “brunch” for “merienda” and at least understand what was going on in the scenes. A similar thing happened with “tsismis.” At first I had no idea what the characters were talking about, but by the time I read Rio’s father saying to her mother: “what do you do all day for exercise, except move your mouth up, down, and sideways, making tsismis with your queers,” I understood it meant gossip.

Defining Words in the Text

There were two instances where the non-English words were described by the characters themselves. In the first, Rio is describing her family and says: “Uncle Cristobal flies a Falangista flag above his front door to show his allegiance to Franco.” While I have no idea what the flag looks like, I completely understand its meaning and how it might pigeonhole Cristobal politically. The second instance is while Rio’s mother and father are discussing the difference between “putok” and “spiritik,” both of which mean fake. Rio’s father says: “Congressman Abad spiritiks when he plays golf, but General Ledesma rewards his army with cases of putok liquor.” I learn the nuance of the connotations of the two words, but Hagedorn also weaves in some of the flavor of local politics at the same time.

There are phrases that I never even quite got the gist of throughout the novel. Many of these seemed like interjections. One of these was “di ba” and another was “puwede ba.” They occurred frequently in conversation, often followed by an exclamation point, but with context clues. I interpreted them as exclamations, and I didn’t feel like I lost a major point of the sentence by not understanding them, but I never did get the full flavor of the sentence.

I am used to understanding even foreign words in novels, and it was a switch for me to not be able to understand exactly what was going on at all times. Hagedorn’s use of Tagalog made me more conscious of my use of Polish in my novel, Polska, 1994. Because Polish is, like Tagalog, not widely spoken outside of its native country (and expat communities), Hagedorn is teaching me to use context clues to help the non-Polish speaker understand the words. These foreign words and phrases need to be at least intelligible to an English-speaking reader, even if they convey a deeper meaning to a Polish-speaking reader.

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

The Language of Culture in Their Eyes Were Watching God

April 27, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston writes in a language so rich it is sometimes nearly unintelligible. The dialogue is expressed in dialect and the imagery is culturally specific which immerses the reader into a fully-realized world.

Appreciating the Small Things

When the protagonist Janie is leaving the home of her first husband, a man she never loved, to follow smooth-talking Joe, the narrator observes: “The morning road air was like a new dress.” The image is striking in that it pulls together two simple but disparate items, air and a dress. This simile gives the reader a completely fresh image which is difficult to do, and the originality is intoxicating. The image also gives the reader a better understanding of Janie’s world. These are not rich people and a new dress is a fine, rare thing. The newness of the dress also points to the possibility that lies ahead for Janie as she leaves what was a stifling relationship. In passing through that morning road air, she is shedding her old clothes and moving into a new life—maybe even a life where she can have new things.

After Janie has spent years of her life as Joe’s wife working in his store and stifling herself when he wants her to, the narrator comments: “The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul.” This reminds the reader that fight was once in her face and that she was a spirited woman. It also implies that submission is a bad thing and that Janie had to give up a part of herself, even if only temporarily, to be with this man. In Janie’s world submission equals being worn down which means that the fighting spirit is something of value.

Local Vernacular

The characters are African American and large portions of the story are set in Florida during a time when segregation was de rigueur. Most of the people are poor and barely scraping by and they are not by and large educated. This is reflected in their dialogue as in this segment from a conversation between two peripheral characters: “‘Ah’m uh bitch’s baby round lady people.’” For a white, educated, northern ear, it takes a concerted effort to completely understand the meaning behind the sentence. A bitch’s baby would be a puppy. Does that mean the character is lagging around behind women like a puppy? And although this imagery is less fresh that the new dress, it is colorful and descriptive. I didn’t necessarily understand everything the characters spoke of during the dialogue in the novel, but Hurston’s way of rendering speech gives insight into the world Janie lives in. I could hear the characters in their native tongue. Because the diction is unusual, I understood more fully the differences between the world in this novel and my world.

Free Indirect Style

Hurston also uses free indirect style, breaking away from the narrative slightly to slip into a comment that sounds like it is coming from Janie. This happens as Janie is considering Tea Cake’s advances: “Must be around twenty-five and here she was around forty…Fact is, she decided to treat him so cold if he ever did foot the place that he’d be sure not to come hanging around there again.” For a moment we are inside Janie’s head and she is sassy. She is judging herself but she is also intrigued by this young man. The sentences are not complete and the syntax is Southern with the “if he ever did” and the “treat him so cold.” This gives the reader a fresh take on the inner workings of Janie, but it is also a bridge between the dialect of the dialogue and the clearer diction of the narrator.

Language is specific to culture and reveals everything that is important about everything worth talking about. For my novel, Polska, 1994, I worked with the language of my characters to denote their backgrounds and their experiences. Language can also be a barrier to understanding. I used some Polish words in my novel and I thought long and hard about each one. In some cases, the Polish was the best possible word because there is not an English equivalent. In others, I wanted the feeling of the Polish word, as with Jacek. I used more Polish in introducing Jacek than I had with other characters because of his intense nationalism. In either case, I rarely translate the word and some understanding will be lost for the non-Polish reader. Hurston’s rich language easily sucked me into her world, but often, especially during passages of dialogue, I was lost in terms of what was going on. I had to spend additional time looking at the language and it took me out of the story and took away from my experience of it. I personally have difficulty understanding novels written in dialect, but I understand is different for every reader. Some readers will find my novel more difficult too. But I hope even in the difficult reads they can love it as much as I loved Their Eyes Were Watching God.

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

Family Secrets in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!

April 21, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

William Faulkner hit on a truth about Southern families in Absalom, Absalom! Through both the story and the way he tells the story, he demonstrates the ways sensitive information is withheld and talked around but never fully concealed. As Mr. Compson said, “’It just does not explain. Or perhaps that’s it: they dont explain and we are not supposed to know. We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature.’”

Controlling Information

It takes a lot of control for a family to create secrets and there is often tension with the human desire to reach out and share one’s experience. Because of this there is often double-talk around the secrets and moments of slippage where you can’t maintain the secrecy anymore. Faulkner shows this beautifully when he has Judith give her letter to Quentin’s grandmother. She speaks of it like sharing the letter makes it like something happened, “something that might make a mark on something that was once for the reason that it can die someday.” Judith is reaching out and trying to communicate. She is trying to “make a mark” of her own and write her own history outside the history that is prescribed by her family.

After rambling about herself and her relationship with the family, Rosa slips in the vital piece of information that something is living in the Sutpen house only when Quentin’s attention has slipped away from the conversation. It is as though she was trying to get at telling him that all along but he wasn’t getting what she was saying. She then calls his attention directly to it. This is similar to what Faulkner is doing with the structure of the novel as the reader is immersed in oceans of details and familial relationships that are difficult to pin down. Eventually at the end he turns the story over to Shreve and Quentin and their conjecture to sort out the details and tell the reader the “truths” that have been obscured by the many layers of detail that drip from the story like Spanish moss.

Calculated Slips

Faulkner reveals only small dribbles of information at a time. For example, he has Mr. Compson tell Quentin, “’Henry had to kill Bon to keep them from marrying,’” but gives no hint as to why Henry would want to kill Bon. It’s enticing but maddening to read and puts the reader in the position of Quentin who has enough information to be fascinated with this family but not enough information to really understand what happened to them.

We see Henry acting like Bon’s younger brother well before the reader is told this truth. Mr. Compson says, “’Bon who for a year and a half now had been watching Henry ape his clothing and speech, who for a year and a half now had seen himself as the object of that complete and abnegant devotion which only a youth, never a woman, gives to another youth or man.’” Everything has two meanings because while Faulkner is telling the reader that Henry looks up to and adores Bon, he is also telling the reader that Henry looks to Bon like an older brother. He is simultaneously building the character of Henry and conveying hints about the truth of their relationship.

I come from a Southern family and am astounded at how well Faulkner captured the “I’m not going to tell you but the information will slip in anyway” way difficult information is conveyed in the South.

Polska, 1994 revolves around one central family secret: why Magda’s mother left the family. Magda has one answer that she believes to be true, but her instincts are leading her to dig deeper into the story. I found writing around important information to be difficult in terms of knowing how much to withhold and when and am working on my own relationship with doling out information to maintain suspense.

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

Unreliable Notes from Underground

April 21, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is strangely constructed. The narrator, who seems to have logorrhea, goes on about the laws of math and nature and why he could never be an insect and really every other thing for the first half of the novel. It isn’t until the second half of the story that a more conventional narrative develops, by which point the narrator has so discredited himself as a reliable narrator that I didn’t know whether to believe what he said or not. Except that he portrayed himself in such an unflattering light as he insults everyone from schoolmates to a prostitute; it seems unlikely he would have been lying. He often contradicts himself and sometimes out and out says he was just lying. As a reader I felt afloat with nothing to grab onto because I didn’t know what to believe in except my own judgment of this man’s character.

Sound of the Text

The initial sentences of the novel are made of such short clauses that they take on a staccato sound and it is somewhat jarring to read. Dostoyevsky writes, “I’m a sick man…a mean man. There’s nothing attractive about me. I think there is something wrong with my liver.” It isn’t just that the sentences are so short, it is also that the subject matter seems to wander. I wondered at times whether the narrator was mentally ill. This wandering subject matter contributed to my afloat feeling. I was exhausted just trying to follow his train of thought.

Drafting a Manifesto

The first section reads like a manifesto or a confession. The narrator keeps addressing an audience (who later turns out to be imaginary) as in, “Do you think I’m trying to make you laugh?” or sometimes as ladies and gentlemen. This second person plural address gave the effect of him being in an institution, whether mental or correctional. I loved the way Dostoyevsky implied questions and comments from this audience within the narrator’s ramblings. He took the words right out of my mouth when he said, “if you’re irritated by all my babble (and I feel you must be by now).” In that way Dostoyevsky turned this monologue into a dialogue. At times he goes so far as to provide a counterargument for what the implied audience would have said, as in, “’Ha-ha-ha! Strictly speaking there is no such thing as will!’ You may interrupt me.” I’m still trying to decide whether to use the second person address in my second novel, but I found the use of implied dialogue much more engaging than when the narrator was talking to himself and I would borrow that for certain.

Allegorical Insertions

There is one point in this first section where Dostoyevsky seemed to be making a point about free will through his narrator that could be taken as a larger commentary on Russian society, “Now you scream that no one intends to deprive me of my free will, that they are only trying to arrange things so that my will coincides with what is in my own interest.” It seems harmless enough because at this point I was convinced the narrator was quite mad and a few sentences later he retracts it saying, “Of course I’m joking, my friends, and I realize my jokes are weak.” But the point is made. I liked the way Dostoyevsky slipped in information that could ostensibly be recanted but couldn’t really.

The transition between the first section and the second was lovely. A few sentences before the actual shift from manifesto to story, the narrator says, “Today for instance I am particularly oppressed by an old memory.” He then intersperses ramblings with lead up to the story until the changeover. It made for a very nice transition because he alerted the reader that the subject was changing but also interspersed the logorrhea with the more narrative quality of the next section which tied the two together. I used a lot of white space between my sections for Polska, 1994, though I thought for a long while about looking for ways to better transition between them like tempering eggs before adding them to a batter.

The second person address and the blurts continue into the second section but what is really interesting is the note at the end of the novel, “Actually the notes of this lover of paradoxes do not end here. He couldn’t resist and went on writing. But we are of the opinion that one might just as well stop here.” This note simultaneously validates the second person address and brings into question the whole meaning of the story. I’m still thinking about this. I like that the story has given me something open and unfinished to ruminate on.

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

Still Waiting for the Barbarians with Coetzee

April 20, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

At times in Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee, I found myself wondering if the barbarians were ever actually coming and maybe that was the point. The more often the barbarians were rumored to have done evil things and threatened the outpost, the less I believed they were the real culprits. Crops get ruined and the reader knows the barbarians exist because the protagonist meets them and the crops are ruined but it is spurious to say that because the barbarians exist and the crops are ruined then therefore the barbarians must have ruined the crops (and every other little thing). By the time the narrator says, “The barbarians come out at night,” I was fully convinced that the barbarians were being used as a diversion of some sort. Of course it is difficult to separate myself from a post-Bush reading of this novel although when Coetzee writes, “I was the lie that Empire tells itself when times are easy,” I think he was getting at something else.

Stretching Time

Coetzee does a beautiful job of stretching time in the scene when the narrator is hunting the ram. He writes, “His hooves touch ice with a click, his jaw stops in mid-motion, we gaze at each other.” Second by second I was with the magistrate as he met eyes with this ram. It was one of the moments when I was most engaged in the novel. He goes on to write, “He chews again, a single scythe of the jaws, and stops.” Word by slow word and phrase by comma-separated phrase I was completely trapped in this moment and waiting to see what happened next. By ending the sentence with the word “stops” Coetzee both emphasizes the stop and cuts the paragraph. The sentences that follow are about the magistrate’s train of thought as he himself is “suspended in immobility” but these sentences are longer and less focused and my own train of thought started to wander. I found myself longing for that heartbeat by heartbeat pace of his description of the ram.

Practicing Concision

There are other times in this novel where Coetzee conveys a lot of information with very little language. When speaking of the barbarian girl before he decides to return her to her people he says, “I have not entered her.” The sentences that follow are more graphic but somehow they say less than this one sentence. The magistrate could “enter” her—he apparently has the power and freedom to do as he wishes. The mere fact that this sentence mentions nothing about her willingness or interest or anything really besides her existence shows the character’s complete disregard for any of that. Entering her or not is one more decision he will make in his day. At this point in the novel it is no more and no less. Except that she is the only one he seems to have not “entered.” He is saying that she is different in that she is around and available to him and he has touched her intimately, for some unknown reason she is different.

Later Coetzee writes that the magistrate (who is now merely a prisoner) “cannot be sure that the roar (of the mob) is not simply in my eardrums.” This uncertainty on the part of the magistrate as to his own senses conveys a very different man from who he was at the beginning of the book. Coetzee goes on to write about the torment he is enduring and how he has to “keep myself from screaming, tearing my clothes, clawing my flesh” but somehow although this language is more descriptive and I would expect the first person experience of pain to be more compelling, this says less about the character than his inability to accurately gauge the world around him.

In Polska, 1994, I worked on how to convey to the reader both the nature of the teenaged character in all of her angst and also the nature of her experiences without overdoing it. I was interested in how to convey Magda’s experience and her emotions in a way that the reader can engage with and not just witness and in a way that gives some insight into her as a character perhaps beyond the insight she has in herself. With a first person narrator, it is difficult, but Coetzee did it and did it well.

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