On Difficulty

Sometimes—not always, but sometimes—people object to Vine because of its “difficulty”.   They claim obscure or abstruse words,  long sentences, fragmented episodes.  These are things that get in the way of the story, they claim.  Things that disrupt the pleasure of reading.

Let me make my case.

Suppose you were at a diving event.  Which would you rather see:  a lithe young Australian doing a back one-and-a-half off a high board, or a dumpy, fifty-something Irishman such as myself attempt a cannonball from poolside?  Not for the comedy, mind you.  For the sheer athletic and aesthetic pleasure of a dive.

It’s what they call degree of difficulty.  We are impressed by things exceptional, things that ordinary folks don’t or can’t do.

It’s why literature is more than writing, though we tend to forget it because of the very nature of the literary medium. Neither you nor I would expect to be playing a trumpet well enough to record if we first picked it up a month ago.  But writing is regarded as different, because we all use language.  Everyone can communicate with sentences, but to really write is to delight in the ways of communication, to juggle and manipulate them.

The story itself is part, not all, of fiction, I think.  If it were simply story, if it were the writer’s job to get out of the way, there would be very little difference between how fiction and journalism are done.  But with fiction it seems there is more emphasis on the way the story is told—on language or rhetoric.  In fact, fiction that employs transparent prose and linear, causal narrative is really basically a holdover from the mid to late 19^th century—writers like George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, Stephen Crane.  Writing before and after that relatively brief window of time is often writing that calls attention to itself, that is ruffle and rhetoric, back-pedaling  and leaping perilously from one circumstance to the next.  Look at Tristram Shandy or The Pickwick Papers or Frankenstein on one side of that window, Lovecraft or Joyce or Garcia Marquez on the other.  These are fictions that delight as much in how the story is told as in what is told.

So I will play with ways of telling.  I will offer my readers a chance to work with the story I tell, to help me make that story by their involved and intelligent work with the words I give them.  I hope that doing some work has its rewards, that the reader emerges, deepened and exercised, from something of mine that they’ve read.  If they don’t, they don’t.  If they choose not to undertake my offer, I understand:  I respect that they want something else from the reading experience, and the two of us wave and walk our separate literary paths.

But in itself, difficulty is not a bad thing, I maintain.  It is a choice, a tactic to reveal and challenge, not a posture or design to intimidate.  Indeed, I think that difficult fiction can respect the reader more; in asking you to shoulder more of the burden than to sit back and be entertained, it is asking you to undertake something that can be a different, and sometimes a better adventure.

On Mise En Abyme

I wish I’d known the term before, though at the time I was searching for it, I would probably have used it for evil instead of good.

It’s used, most commonly, to describe what I called “infinite regression” (for lack of the term) back in the mid-90s, when a character in my novel Arcady stands between facing mirrors and sees reflection upon reflection back to a vanishing point, an eternity of selves and surroundings.  To me, at the time, it was an image of what we feel when we find ourselves sliding into the depth of things, when we realize there are infinities beyond and beneath us, and reality is slipping.

The French, literally, is “placed into abyss”.  And when I found the term and recognized it, it reminded me of a line from Nietzsche: “And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. “  Not to say that the Arcady passage (or any of my later stuff) was dancing on the edge of crazy-assed French existential despair, but just that the chaos and all the layers you see outside have their counterpart inside you, which is why you see them outside to begin with, I’m guessing.

At any rate, the term is used, apparently, to describe other phenomena in the arts.  There’s that 17^th century painting by Velazquez, Las Meninas, a portrait of the Spanish royal children, in which you can see the artist at work, reflected in a mirror.  And it doesn’t always involve mirrors: literary people maintain that Shakespeare’s plays within plays—like in Midsummer Night’s Dream, or more famously, in Hamlet—are examples of mise en abyme (more of that in a minute).  Take a look at the coat of arms at the head of this entry for another  example. 

I realized that mise en abyme had been stalking me for years.  Trajan’s Arch, for those of you who have read it (all two dozen of you?  I hate to think…) contains stories within the framing story of the novel itself, and those short stories—written ostensibly by Trajan Bell, except for the last one, which may have been completed by Gabriel or Dominic Rackett—comment on the larger story that frames them, which also comments on the stories themselves.  It sounds more dizzying than it is, but the idea is to go for a kind of spiritual vertigo, to clue the reader in on the layers and complications of what we all regard as “real.”

So Vine contains a play within a play.  And people are getting how the characters are acting a larger version of Euripides’ Bacchae as they rehearse the smaller, traditional version on the stage.  I hope it makes the book fun to read, because it made it fun to write.  One of the big things that fantasy does, in my estimation, is destabilize what we consider to be real in order to brush against the mystery of what is real.  Apologies to my more philosophical friends: it’s about as abstract as I get right there, for when one of my stories brushes against mysteries, there’s no guarantee I understand them more than the reader will.  I just dwell with them, and hope to afford the reader a chance to dwell.

Which is why not knowing what the hell mise en abyme was until the last month or so might have been an advantage.  It allowed me to dwell with the phenomenon, to give it flesh, to make stories out of it.  Stories I’ve liked, and I hope you like in turn.

It's Publishing! Everyone in the Pool! (A Lament)

Since Trajan’s Arch was published back in 2010, I’ve once again been on the book tour circuit.  It’s different than it was in the ‘80s or the ‘90s, but it’s to be expected, because industries, like everywhere else, evolve.  But it’s a radical change, and at the risk of sounding like an incorrigible snob (I’m probably a snob, but probably not incorrigible), democracy is not all good.

I know, this is ‘Merica, and questioning democracy is like questioning Jesus.  Let me say up front that I like both Jesus and democracy, but when a twist in both affections leads to, say, the Tea Party, I’m still entitled (I hope) to walk it back, to question, to grouse.

So, my observation that there is a lot of crap being published—more than I ever recall seeing published—has  been met by liberal-leaning friends with the sound bite, “Welcome to democracy, Michael”.  A better response, by the way, would be, “Some of that crap is yours, Michael”: obviously, I would disagree with that, but it’s harder to argue because it might be right.  

Democracy and publishing have seldom been connected.  My friends are right that the major publishers are smothering in the tar pits of inertia and caution.  I’ve written for the big guys and for smaller presses, and one thing you’d have to say is that it’s almost impossible to imagine a major publisher saying, “Let’s take a chance with this manuscript.”  That strikes me as much more likely at a small press, for reasons that I do not fully understand beyond the simple factor that living on financial edges sometimes makes you more willing to gamble, sometimes makes you see that profit isn’t always the bottom line.

That being said, I continue to marvel at the writing panels where I hear people talking about their new “YA paranormal romance about a high-school war between secret werewolves and secret vampires.” It’s described in enthusiastic It’s never been done before  tones, when what the writer is hoping is that It’s never been done enough.  But how do they know?  They read stuff.

I can see how the caution and commercialism permeate all kinds of publishing, and the industry is straitened by a non-reading culture.  No, the flood of small, micro, and self publishing doesn’t seem to indicate an upturn in reading:  many of these writers read only themselves and occasionally their friends.  Reading only your friends is fine if your friends are, say, Melville and Borges and Philip K. Dick, but usually most are simply Gus over there with that manuscript about the werewolf-vampire wars.  To me, the downside to democracy in publishing is not that it’s letting in more writers, unrecognized writers, experimental writers, or even ego-driven or talentless writers.  It’s that I’m beginning to think that half the publications out there are being written by non-readers.  It’s like democracy run by non-voters or religion run by non-believers.  Democracy by voters doesn’t always work, nor certainly religion by believers, but the opposite is just absurd.  I don’t know what it is.

Terri-Lynne Smiles' FORESEEN: A Review

Terri-Lynne Smiles is a good writer, and this is a strong and compelling read.

Foreseen mixes coming of age with quantum foam, romance with political conspiracy, in this able science fiction story. Kinzie Nicolosi, on surface a rather ordinary college student, possesses extraordinary gifts--gifts she will discover and develop throughout the story. Accompanied by her resourceful (if often baffled) boyfriend, Kinzie comes to terms with the depths and double edge of her considerable powers, as her story widens to include community and nation.

One of the problems I sometimes have with science fiction is when its premise outweighs its people: for me to like a book, even the most intriguing concept should work its way out through believable characters. In this, Smiles succeeds unequivocally: Foreseen's protagonists, Greg and Kinzie, are drawn sharply and sympathetically, Kinzie especially so. Her gift is also her vulnerability, her strength her weakness: smuggled to a secret school in Maine, she learns to shape the decisions and responses of others, but also (and with greater difficulty) to govern her own fears, insecurities, and desires.

The book's use of quantum physics is provocative but accessible. I am no scientist, but I could follow Kinzie's experience with no difficulty, and Smiles has a talent for making her concepts visually and narratively vivid. That being said, the book expects an active reader. You are kept guessing as to whether the characters' motives are entirely their own, or swayed by some outside intelligence.

Foreseen makes you think as you enjoy. It's both speculative and edge-of-your-seat. In short, it's the kind of fiction I like and would recommend highly.

In Praise of Brittle Innings

I have always loved baseball books, and am delighted at the reprinting of Michael Bishop’s Brittle Innings by Fairwood Press.  Beautifully packaged and presented, this edition is a worthy addition to your library if you are fond of historical fiction, fantasy, coming-of-age tales, and/or baseball. 

About baseball: people who malign the sport for being “slow and boring” do not understand its character.  It is a vehicle of lore, a mythic country where the gods roam the outfield and the legends gather: the colossal home runs from Ruth to Reggie, the game-winning blasts by Mazeroski, Fisk, and Gibson, the wounded kings like Tony Conigliaro and Herb Score (figures straight out of Frazer’s Golden Bough: if you don’t believe me, check the history), the strange recluses like Koufax and Carlton, alone and retiring (sometimes literally) at the height of glory.  But it is more than celebrity, than the on-field arête: it is the sandlot game of my childhood, playing catch with Carl Williams (who was no athlete but was an all-star father), and brushing against all that continuity and lore.

We have a fine tradition of baseball novels.  Usually the good ones tend toward the mythic (Malamud’s The Natural, Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, Philip Roth’s Great American Novel), but these sometimes fail to capture the feel of the game, its tactile crouch at shortstop, the smell of neatsfoot oil on a new glove, the leisure of innings in the field.  For that, you go to Mark Harris’ Bang the Drum Slowly, but when you go there, you do it at the sacrifice of the mythic undertones and overtones so wonderful in the other books. 

What I guess I’m getting at is the ambition of Brittle Innings, which tries to do all the things a baseball novel does and succeeds famously for the most part.

Daniel Boles, our narrator, is introduced early, but not immediately; we begin with a sportswriter’s search for Boles, then launch into the focal story.  Fifty pages in, I was wondering why Bishop had begun with a framed narrative, but you should give baseball novels some slack: their best vehicle is the long, meandering 19^th-century-novel way of telling, and eventually the book comes around when you merge with the story, then, much later, come to understand the device at the book’s outset. 

At any rate, the book follows Boles and his mysterious roommate, Jumbo Clerval, through a season in the 1940s minors, when pro baseball was peopled with athletes who would have never made a career (minimal though it was) had it not been for much of the talent on the rosters being deployed to the European and Pacific Theatres of the war.  The book unfolds slowly as a kind of Huck-Finn-meets-Dizzy-Dean account, consistently entertaining and darkening effectively as the reader begins to realize that there is something about Jumbo Clerval…

No spoilers here.  As a matter of fact, the mid-book revelation did not surprise me, but I did not care in the least.  Brittle Innings is not so much heart-poundingly plotted as it is slowly unfolding, an impressive mixture of genre-crossing and simple good read.  Buy the ticket, fans:  there are box seats here with good views of both foul poles, and the players are waiting.  Brittle Innings is my pick this month, just like Rose Streif’s Bearkeeper was last month out.  Get them both.

Falling in Love Again...with THE BLUE ANGEL

It's been almost 30 years since I last saw Josef von Sternberg's Blue Angel (1930).  Based on Heinrich Mann's novel, Professor Unrat, At the time it was all about Marlene Dietrich--famous as the film's Lola, singing "Falling in Love Again" with that husky contralto.  Lola is beautiful, marmoreal and heartless, and the only thing more foolish than falling for her would be...well, not falling.

Enter Emil Jannings as Professor Unrat, a middle-aged, dumpy lecturer at the local university (I know, the possibilities for my identification with the character seem endless, right?). His surname is actually 'Rath', but he is called 'Unrat' (German for 'filth' or 'garbage') by his students, who range between deferential (standing when he enters the classroom--something I'd never expect) and shouting names at him in public (something that hasn't happened to me...yet). The film is his story--his enamored, obsessive pursuit of the lovely and much younger Lola, which ends up in his humiliation and death.  The film, or so I have read, speaks to the Weimar Republic's contempt for its intellectual class, but of course the professor is the embodiment of the bourgeois intellectual, a figure adored by the complacent middle class of the times and held in contempt by the artists, the bohemians, and (in a strange wedding of hatreds) the rising far Right in Germany at the time.

In short, Professor Unrat gets what he deserves, though we are sorry he does.   Through it all, I am struck by Emil Jannings, who made his name as a silent film star (The Last Laugh, Waxworks, Tartuffe, Faust), usually in a comic, fleshy, leering role--his generation's Sydney Greenstreet or Victor Buono, but with the chops to carry a lead actor's role.  And here he is in the talkies, wandering streets in which Dr. Caligari meets Antoni Gaudi, speaking in a strange but fitting tenor voice, running the gamut of gesture and facial expression from endearing to ridiculous to the genuinely tragic.  The Blue Angel is his film, and his performance is what I carried away--disturbing me, moving me, making me think of the passing years.

Back for the Duration

 After a long absence, I'm returning to give blogging a try.

I've always felt that this was a kind of working overtime, a spinning of wheels that took up energies and focus better used in my fiction, because I am easily distracted, drawn away from more pressing pursuits by tunneling thoughts, by issues over which I have neither control nor power, ideas for books that deflect me from remembering that damn it, I'm already writing another/  Even a song or a bright color can be enough to derail me.

So the blog will center on its new title--an idea large and broad enough to take in ramblings and distractions.And here's one:

I've been going to a lot of conventions lately.  Sitting on a number of panels, or present in the room when panels transpired.  What I'm getting is an odd shift in the focus of some writers--perhaps a reflection of the much-touted "change in the publishing industry", but ultimately, something I may be too old to buy into.  Because it seems that a lot of us are becoming marketers first, writers second.  I have even seen some writers--people I like, don't get me wrong--proclaiming that "if you think of your writing as art, think again" (yes, a direct quote!).

Well, I'm sorry, but I do.  Maybe it's not great art.  Maybe not even good.  But if I were in this for the business, I'd be trying to make money on the enterprise.  I'd be in hedge funds or derivatives, which I understand is where the money is.

Actually, I just like saying "hedge funds" and "derivatives," having no earthly idea what such things are. 

What I do know is that there is a specific craft to the kind of thing writers do and that sometimes, out of diligence and chance or grace, that craft can rise to what has been traditionally called art. Yes, I attend conventions and try to make sales, but I'll let you in on a secret: my first novel sold a million copies worldwide, and I still get small royalty surprises in the mail, but it is not my most satisfying work or experience as a novelist.  I still like Weasel's Luck and think it's a good book, but I have done work since that pleases me more and is a greater source of pride.  If I had to choose between Weasel's Luck's sales and what I believe I did in books like Arcady or Trajan's Arch or Vine, I'd rest content with the lesser profit.  Because of these priorities I must keep a day job, but I'm happy with the day job as well.  Telling stories is serious business, even if you're paid in other stories.