Thursday, May 10, 2012

the shortness of the time left me no opportunity for deliberation



Here's a quick idea: a plot is a question made larger with stories, or a story is a question made larger with plots.

The word "compelled" in the Olga Masters paragraph is a door to a side-story but that door never fully opens, which is an author's way of saying that it can't fully open, because if anything can be done in their book then they will be the ones who do it -- why does the aunt feel compelled? -- why does the ordinary desire to look at someone who is irritating you deserve this strangely powerful word? I can't get off the subject; it niggles at me.

I don't know how Masters (over years and years) came up with the tone of voice that brought her to the moment, raw and flaming, when she decided that "compelled" was going to be the perfect word to use there, with nothing else to support it in its work except hints: compelled would carry the main weight, compelled had to be strong.

There might even have been a time in her life when she would have thought about using the Charles Maturin approach to "compelled," which I've quoted before: "The precipitate vigour of Juan's movements seemed to impel me without my own concurrance, and as the shortness of the time left me no opportunity for deliberation, it left me also with none for choice." Maturin opens the side-story door wider without pretending to have opened it all the way, ie, without pretending to have explained everything about the character's compulsion, ie, he writes a long explanation but uses the word "seemed" to let you know that he isn't pretending to interpret, exactly, only to hint or sketch, or dramatise without commitment -- a tone that Gothic literature seems to like, I muse, remembering that none of the ghosts in Udolpho are genuine and that the ending of that book is a Scooby Doo or Hitchcock's Psycho, an entry in the annals of science-minded characters sitting down at the end of a tale to explain away its mysteries, because, you see, they say, sighing, strangers happen to enjoy wandering through the forest just there with sheets over their heads every night at three a.m., screaming and playing a lyre, and so everything is logical, your fear is due to ignorance, and if you knew everything down to the habits of the local amateur lyre-playing collective, then there would be no mysteries in the world; if we lived long enough to learn everything then Gothic literature would be impossible, and therefore Ann Radcliffe is uncontroversial proof of human mortality, not only in the fact that she is dead but also because she wrote as she did, with the ideas she did, and the horrors she did. Without death we would have to find different horrors.

Masters might have decided that Maturin was trying to pin compulsion down too hard, "untruthfully," she might have thought: "A person who believes they can separate an emotion into its component parts like that is not being honest. I won't play these old games," she thought, "I won't pretend that I can do the impossible, I will be honest." I think this same frame of mind could be one of the inner differences between the work of John Kinsella and Les Murray, both Australian poets, though they separate themselves onto different sides of the continent. Murray, in his poetry, often inhabits another creature, or travels imaginatively inside a mountain but Kinsella's voice tends to stay in his own human throat, he doesn't often occupy the brains of animals, or put words in the mouths of creatures besides himself -- this is my impression, although I should point out that I haven't read a lot of Kinsella.

There is rectitude in Masters, there is rectitude in Kinsella too. The novelist in her rectitude omits any explanation except hints, she writes without splurge. And Kinsella too writes without splurge, but Murray splurges, and he even wrote a poem about splurge.

Argue that Masters' "compelled" might be the result of self-doubt. Thinking she can't do it, she doesn't do it. It's a shy literature, and the hints punctured by a blurt are shyness speaking, first withdrawn, sampling the sound of its own voice, then rushing forward awkwardly with too much power. The point of Maturin's long sentence is crushed down to "compelled," which swells there like a balloon crammed with helium because it is really three lines' worth of sentence stuffed into nine letters.

Here is a fantasy story. Every word in Masters' book is the severely compressed equivalent of a sentence in Maturin's. They are the same book.

11 comments:

  1. I think you are absolutely spot on - and what an odd venture, when you think about it : choosing to write, which is not a shy act, and then doing it shyly.

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    1. I suppose you can choose to write, but you can't quite choose how to write. Which must be agony for a lot of writers. (Yesterday I was reading Christina Stead's letters to William Blake and she was wishing she could be Balzac. "If I could plunge ahead with the verse, sense and balance of B. what a good thing!")

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  2. Did I just send a response or did it just disappear?

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    1. It must have disappeared. I've checked the Unpublished Comments tray and the Spam tray and they're both empty. Is Blogger being bizarre?

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    2. I wanted to say something complicated about Murray actually being shy in social relations, whereas I'm not sure Kinsella is (although what would I know) - and possibly Murray's shy as a result of his natural tendency not to self-censor or self-protect, which leads to his having provided opportunities for jeering and so forth. So the person who guards themselves, for fear of social expulsion, and who presents themselves in the world, as I think Kinsella does and Murray does not, as reasonably suave and capable in the business of small talk and self-possession, may be the person who also guards themselves too much when it comes to writing. Self-exposure is unacceptable in many social situations, but it is probably - or at least it's cousins, integrity and lacerating clear-sighted honesty - probably vital to really interesting writing. Not entirely sure if this makes any sense or, indeed, if it is a point worth making. But, since it's the second time I've written or tried to write the comment, I'm jolly well not going to let irrelevance or lack of coherence get in my way, oh no.

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    3. I can't speak for anyone else but I'm glad you wrote it twice. And what would I know either, but Kinsella's work leaves me with a similar idea of competence, composure, a person "capable in the business of small talk," a man who can make his way easily through the world, finding friends, discovering pockets of opinion that suit him, then swimming in them with a businesslike backstroke, etc, etc. And his habit of not occupying the brains of strangers or rocks or trees, is a part of that impression. He's not standing on anybody's toes, he's not pretending to read the minds of others, he's not opening himself up to accusations -- stop colonising that Other! But Murray leaves himself vulnerable like that all the time.

      Integrity is an interesting one; it can look like so many things. Oscar Wilde was flippant: did he have integrity? "Yes but it looked like Oscar Wilde." Did Christina Stead have integrity? "Yes but it looked completely different." Are there times when self-exposure makes a writer's writing less interesting? Tolstoy's opinions on history look heartfelt but they're the part of War and Peace that people skip; the less direct lesson in the story is the bit they like. But Victor Hugo exposes himself all the way through his Shakespeare and that's what you'd read it for, the madness of him shaking his hands and shouting first gossip, then the last set of facts he read about the Egyptian dung beetle.

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  3. Hmm ... I'm still pondering your first question. Are you suggesting that some books will be one and some the other, or are you looking for a universal truth about plots and stories? What is a plot if it's not also a story? Don't feel compelled to answer this ...

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    1. I'm wondering if it's a universal truth, but "questions" might have been a better word than "plot" or "story" -- a story is a question made larger with questions, so, Pride and Prejudice would be one large question, posed at the start and answered at the end (Q: Will Lizzie marry? A: Yes) lengthened with other questions (Q: Will Lydia get into trouble? A: Yes Q: Will Lizzie dislike Mr Darcy forever? A: No).

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    2. ... little structures inside a larger structure, I mean, plots inside plots or stories inside stories, or questions inside questions, fractal things piling inside one another.

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  4. I like a story is a question made larger with questions. Reminds me of kids writer Paul Jennings who said his books usually started with the question "What if?". Of course, other writers have other questions. I like the focus not being on PLOT but on something more germane to the work.

    And yes, structures inside structures.

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    1. Structures inside structures, like human beings, who are small bags of liquid inside large bags of liquid.

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