. Spinning .

After forcing my way through this, I must say that there was no great Ahah! moments that pulled me to the keyboard to share and had there been, I think I would have held off out of spite.

I’m just not into the garbled silliness that the story attempts to unravel. For one thing, I never got friendly with the protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Her tendency towards self-reflective rather uncaring attitude failed to grab me. For another, her name–as well as all the other characters in the book–were so obviously symbolic and unreal that they started to make me grit my teeth as soon as I hit them.

There is a jolly romp through California as Oedipa, named executrix along with a lawyer named Metzger who comes across as rather mindless (this part was believable) run into all sorts of schemes and characters that would more likely fill a lifetime rather than mere months (or however long it was–I lost track). It’s a story meant to provoke thought (another problem I had here, the used book had copious margin notes in a cramped writing I could not decipher so they were merely distraction) but one of intrigue as well. I just didn’t like the mishmash style of Pynchon’s writing and so there really was nothing but pure determination to keep me reading through the end.

The end, which didn’t finish the adventure nor the question of characterization in its final sentences. I will pull out Thomas Pynchon’s “V” some day, but not real soon.

Was coming down the homestretch this afternoon, going through the last twenty or so pages at a fairly steady pace since something was actually happening now. In the middle of this action, while the end is in sight with a big secret revealed and the whole Sutpen clan history ready to be finally laid to rest with a bang, I catch this:

“Wait,” Quentin said. “Let’s drive up to the house. It’s a half a mile.”

“No, no,” she whispered, a tense fierce hissing of words filled with that same curious terrified yet implacable determination, as though it were not she who had to go and find out but she only the helpless agent of someone or something else who must know. “Hitch the horse here. Hurry.”  (p. 365)

Leave it to Faulkner to drag out that final end to the story by making Quentin and Miss Rosa–who is an old 65–abandon the buggy and walk a half a mile to the mansion. Faulkner adds to the drama by having them walk the distance, tire, stumble in the dark, and add to the anticipation of the reader as to what they will find there, simply by extending the span of time it takes them to get there. Almost a movie ploy, Faulkner manages it within pages of a novel.

Overall, the writing is eloquent and yet almost to the point of overwriting. There is the repetition of the main story by several different characters (as well as told to and by other characters to them) so that we get a different slant on the story and something different is revealed in each telling. Whether it be fact or feeling, the characters are the focus of Faulkner’s story. The narrative is the story of one man who comes to town, buys up a lot of land to build a mansion because he’s learned late in life not only the difference between black and white but between rich and poor. Then he finds a wife–though we find out he already has a wife and son hidden away and abandoned but taken care of with money because she had an eighth of Negro blood. Well, this son grows up and meets the established son, is pushed into an engagement with his own sister, but retreats because the acknowledged son loves him and refuses to believe his own father when he tells him the truth. Except that part about the Negro blood…

Typical also of Faulkner is the passing down through generations the secrets and often the repeated acts that add drama to a Southern family during the war years. The stories are loaded with sex but not for sex’s sake but more importantly, the aftereffects of each coupling that causes the problems.

Faulkner writes with passion and emphasis on detail. He wants the reader to feel, to comprehend the trials of his characters. Faulkner requires a patient reader who understands that even under the worst possible circumstances, the most horrific scandal, the most important part of the story is within its characters.

While it is the at the core of his style, Faulkner’s use of metaphor and simile are weird. The purpose of these elements of writing are to give the reader a quick, readily recognizable, usually visual, word or phrase that will explain a statement by the comparison: sharp as a razor, flat as a board, a body of steel, etc. But here’s what Faulkner does with simile:

“(…) and he said how he thought there was something about a man’s destiny (or about the man) that caused the destiny to shape itself to him like his clothes did, like the same coat that new might have fitted a thousand men, yet after one man has worn it for a while it fits no one else and you can till it anywhere you see it even if all you see is a sleeve or a lapel”  p. 245

Quentin is recounting his father’s words of his grandfather’s conversation with Sutpen, and so, describing Sutpen’s thoughts on destiny. Comparing it to the fit of a coat is appropriate for Sutpen wore the same clothes for years and the explanation makes the reader make the connection between Sutpen’s opinion and his actions–though Faulkner takes care of doing that for us as well.

What intrigues me is that many find Faulkner so difficult to follow, yet here he is explaining even his similes.

Faulkner does tend to like a small crew as his protagonist personality–perhaps a makeup of the raw textures of each that bring together a specter of a main character that is an extension of each, and a representative of man.

Each is defined by interaction with others, reaction to events, and in this particular novel, by another character’s version of a situation in which the character played a part. Notably unusual is the retelling of the whole background by Shreve, a college roommate of Quentin’s. Faulkner is giving us more information via this path, put in the way that a listener (or reader for that matter) might recount what he has heard to insure that he has understood it well. But so much more is revealed in the retelling, new facts, new perspective, even as Faulkner follows the story in time and allows for side trails while reinforcing the history already laid out.

It also is telling of the characters. In Chapter Six, we’ve gotten a bit more background on Quentin himself; back to his childhood investigation of the Sutpen homestead in decay. Pieces come together from what he remembers and what he has been told.

The characters in a Fulkner novel are always strangely tied together through blood, loyalty, environment. In this case, Judith, who was only engaged to marry Charles Bon before he died, takes in the child of his common law wife and while keeping him there at the estate, still does him no favors in the way he is treated for he grows up resentful of both his Negro and his white background.

Faulkner uses his characters as links to each other. Particularly with the offspring of affairs versus marriage, the lines are traced through the years to braid into new generations. The use of a college roommate of Quentin’s to retell the story brings to mind the college friendship of Sutpen’s son Henry, and Charles Bon, where so much of the drama has started.

This one’s amazing:

“(…) a wife after three years to scrutinize, weigh and compare, not from one of the local ducal houses but from the lesser baronage whose principality was so far decayed that there would be no risk of his wife bringing him for dowry delusions of grandeur before he should be equipped for it, yet not so far decayed but that she might keep them both from getting lost among the new knives and forks and spoons that he had bought–” (p. 178)

This is still Quentin’s roommate’s assessment of understanding, this being about Sutpen’s choice of Ellen, daughter of a shopkeeper as his wife when he first comes to town. The first part, simply saying that with nothing but dreams and ambition, Sutpen wisely avoided seeking a wife who would be comfortably ensconced in a status he could not yet afford. The second part, the one about “getting lost among the” cutlery is priceless: simple a reference to proper etiquette about knowing which spoon to use on the custard.

In Faulkner’s style of using different points of view to reveal both attitudes of the characters and to give another insight that may be unknown to the other characters, I stumbled upon a nugget of information that I’m not sure whether I missed in reading or if Faulkner indeed has employed the process to inject this surprise:

“if he hadn’t been a demon his children wouldn’t have needed protection from him and she wouldn’t have had to go out there and be betrayed by the old meat and find instead of a widowed Agamemnon to her Cassandra an ancient stiff-jointed Pyramus to her eager though untried Thisbe who could approach her in this unbidden April’s compounded demonry and suggest that they breed together for test and sample and if it was a boy they would marry;”  (p. 177)

The speaker here is Quentin’s roommate who is reciting his understanding of what Quentin has told him regarding Miss Rosa and the Sutpen history, so the story here defined once again by an outsider, is based on Quentin’s understanding of it as he received the information from his father and Miss Rosa directly. Now besides the allegory of mythical couples, Faulkner drops in the bit about Sutpen’s rather blunt and unromantic demand that Miss Rosa first provide him with a male heir before any nuptials need be taken.

In the previous chapter, which featured the story from Miss Rosa herself, it seems she did not reveal the horror which had her racing from the mansion back to her own father’s house in town. There was bitterness, yes, but is this the first time I’m reading of the actually insult? Did I miss it before, perhaps sleepy-eyed and dense and lost in Faulkner’s prose? If not, it is sheer genius to startle the reader this way.

If I missed it, my apologies to William Faulkner.

There is lots to love about Faulkner’s choice of words and way with the language, but this was just perfect:

But Quentin was not listening, because there was also something which he too could not pass–that door, the running feet on the stairs beyond it almost a continuation of the faint shot, the two women, the negress and the white girl in her underthings (made of flour sacking when there had been flour, of window curtains when not) pausing, looking at the door, the yellowed creamy mass of old intricate satin and lace spread carefully on the bed and then caught swiftly up by the white girl and held before her as the door crashed in and the brother stood there, hatless, with his shaggy bayonet-trimmed hair, his gaunt worn unshaven face, his patched and faded gray tunic, the pistol still hanging against his flank: the two of them, brother and sister, curiously alike as if the difference in sex had merely sharpened the common blood to a terrific, an almost unbearable, similarity, speaking to one another in short brief staccato sentences like slaps, as if they stood breast to breast striking one another in turn, neither making any attempt to guard against the blows.  (p. 172)

First thing to note is that this is all one sentence. How much else does it bring into itself however, than the simple face to face confrontation? There are the two different timelines, that of Quentin considering the scenario of Judith and Henry, and the scene itself. He brings in as subtle metaphor what they are wearing: Judith holding up her unfinished wedding dress, white and innocent (as well as telling the story by its design composition of what she’s been through the last four years) while Henry is dressed in his military uniform, tattered as well (and telling a tale) but intimating that he is both aggressor and defender in this personal battle just as he was in the war.

There is also Faulkner’s tendency towards redundancy which simply would not be tolerated in today’s publishing world: “the two of them, brother and sister, curiously alike as if the difference in sex had merely sharpened the common blood to a terrific, an almost unbearable, similarity…” two, brother and sister, alike, difference, common, similarity” all saying pretty much that the two appeared almost as one.

The best part of all is the almost metafictional statement that the pair is “speaking to one another in short brief staccato sentences like slaps (great simile here) though Faulkner chooses never to say in three words what could be said in a paragraph. And earlier in the sentence, “the running feet on the stairs beyond it almost a continuation of the faint shot” that seems to tell the reader that as many times as he emphasized this particular action in the chapter, if you didn’t, you should have caught this intentional continuation of the bullet flying through to destroy lives.

Amazing, when you really look into it deeply.

Just finished the wild ride of Chapter V wherein Miss Rosa takes over the narrative and repeats what’s happened, yet shows a different slant because of her own mental baggage.

One thing that I read a bit warily is the drama that Faulkner puts into his work. There are several pages of Rosa describing how she entered the mansion and attempted to fly up the stairs where her niece is waiting, having just found out that her fiancee has been shot by her brother (why is a short story, but Faulkner has managed to write it up to half a book already).

There is more that one can infer from this drama and the length of Rosa’s recital of an event that would take only a paragraph if written by other than Faulkner. It is how she says it, more than what she tells; it is that Shakespearean “methinks she doth protest too much” attitude that speaks footnotes into the actual text. I myself am suspicious that Rosa felt that Judith’s fiancee, Bon, should instead have been presented to her as a possible suitor with marriage the ultimate goal. Rosa feels put upon, feels she has gotten the short end of the stick from her family, particularly since her sister Ellen who married Sutpen and mothered Judith and Henry (while Sutpen additionally fathered Clytie in bedding a slave) was so much older than Rosa that her niece is actually younger than her.

It’s a nice tool, giving the characters each their own voice, and Faulkner does it flawlessly. It’s what drove me nuts in The Sound and The Fury until I accepted him into my soul.

Again on Faulkner’s style, his description of aging and the normal gaining of weight is done with a flourish:

He was not portly yet, though he was now getting on toward fifty-five. The fat, the stomach, came later. It came upon him suddenly, all at once, in the year after whatever it was happened to his engagement to Miss Rosa and she quitted his roof and returned to town to live alone in her father’s house and did not ever speak to him again except when she addressed him that one time when they told her that he was dead. The flesh came upon him suddenly, as though what the negroes and Wash Jones, too, called the fine figure of a man had reached and held its peak after the foundation had given away and something between the shape of him that people knew and the uncompromising skeleton of what he actually was had gone fluid and, earthbound, had been snubbed up and restrained, balloonlike, unstable and lifeless, by the envelope which it had betrayed. (p. 81)

Holy guacamole. That’s some process, no? One of the things I noticed is that while the aging encompasses years, Faulkner employs several short sentences to step up the pace of his emphasis on the speed of this in Sutpen (of whom he is speaking).

There is also the bringing in of a whole lot of characters–Rosa, Wash Jones, the negroes, the people–as if to attest to this physical change. Perhaps this is a grounding technique, a base of reality and thus credibility.

There is the mixing in of time, of eras: “not portly yet, though he was now getting on toward fifty-five. The fat, the stomach, came later.” “the year after whatever it was happened to his engagement to Miss Rosa and she quitted his roof and returned to town,” and “one time when they told her that he was dead.” There are even more, but this seems to illustrate something that Faulkner does quite a bit in this work; he hints at things, large events, big drama, and continues with little references that grow into a story. It’s as if he is giving pieces of the puzzle–though this is not a mystery story–while focusing on the characters in the story and not letting us forget the story line.

Then of course there is that textural ending: “the uncompromising skeleton of what he actually was had gone fluid and, earthbound, had been snubbed up and restrained, balloonlike, unstable and lifeless, by the envelope which it had betrayed.” How visual, how real to the touch. The transformation of hard bone into liquid, the taut sausagelike feel of a well blown-up balloon, the paper skin or envelope, which holds it all together even while this exterior has been a bit of a liar to reality.

Very nice.

Getting used to Faulkner again, and his interminable sentence structure that bathes a scene and character in mood with words that wrap around and spiral into sumbigdeal.

They would be seen together in the carriage in town now and then as though nothing had occurred between them at least, which certainly would not have been the case if the quarrel had been between Bon and the father, and probably not the case if the trouble had been between Henry and his father because the town knew that between Henry and Judith there had been a relationship closer than the traditional loyalty of brother and sister even, a curious relationship: something of that fierce impersonal rivalry between two cadets in a crack regiment who eat from the same dish and sleep under the same blanket and chance the same destruction and who would risk death for one another, not for the other’s sake but for the sake of the unbroken front of the regiment itself.  (p. 79)

Sentences–yes, that’s a single sentence employing both a semi-colon and a colon amid the sprinkle of commas–like the above make me wonder why I fell in love with Faulkner and wonder if the bloom is off the rose.

In the example above which describes the changing relationship between Sutpen and his daughter Judith, Faulkner brings in the other characters to contrast the scenario had it been other characters involved. Then he brings in the example of “two cadets” to complete his explanation. Simile here seems stretched way above and beyond the necessary. But Faulkner wants to involve the reader so deeply into these dramatic family situations that he pulls out all the stops. Is it overwriting? According to today’s standards, most definitely. I’m guessing that about three-quarters of the verbiage of the sentence could be dumped with little meaning lost.

But then, I don’t find myself weary of the words, as I did with Styron’s Nat Turner. I find myself reading, reading, reading; a bit breathless before I stop to consider what I’d just read. And that, I suppose, is the magic of Faulkner.

As with all fiction based on historical fact, I approached this novel by William Styron warily and come away from it pretty much in the same frame of mind.

Extremely well-written, beautiful language, dramatic arc–yes, even as Nat’s condemnation is fairly well established immediately. Styron solves the “letdown” problem for those readers who insist upon an unrevealed ending by cleverly introducing the one murder that Nat Turner has actually committed by his own hand, a lovely young empathetic character named Margaret Whitehead. With this knowledge at the beginning of the story, and with further scenes between Nat and Margaret, Styron not only emphasizes the relationship but maintains the biggest question that seeks an answer throughout the book: Why did Nat kill her?

What bothers me about historical fiction (and Styron states his intention is less to produce a historical novel than a meditation on history), is still the speculation rather than knowledge of the central character of Nat Turner and what made him not only stir up such a bloodthirsty revolution but to follow in this first person narrative his innermost thoughts and dealings.

Then I must remember that it is only that; speculation. And in no one’s words but Nat’s alone (the “confessions” are fact, as are some of the events) could we ever truly know the character of Nat Turner and the day by day accounts offered within the story. Had the book been written by a contemporary of Turner’s, it still would be interpretation rather than pure fact and so with this in mind, I can read the narrative of the events of 1831 and the story of this man’s life as a “possibility” that is close to truth.

I’ve since read elsewhere that Styron’s book was viewed as racist by many but without finding the specific claims of offense I would have to say that I find much in the depiction of Nat Turner’s character that would apply to human nature and tendencies towards bigotry and superiority that we find in ourselves. It is clearly a great injustice that was done to a people, but there is honesty–I think–in Styron’s implication that there were indeed many Negroes who at the time felt they had it pretty good in comparison to others, even free whites. The whole idea of “freedom” however, is what rankled the most. And this, I think, is again something that is deep inside all of us.

No where is this more clearly illustrated than the answer to that question that plagues us of the killing of Margaret by Nat. Turner has already realized that he can no longer claim God and the Bible as a direct exhortation to go on the murderous rampage. Margaret is heartbroken by the ill treatment of blacks and yet it is the manner in which she feels free enough to speak of it with him that emphasizes the difference between them and inspires the hatred that burns within him. He himself uses the sore points of others to inflame their own feelings to get them to kill. Nat Turner, I think, recognizes the sameness in each of us.

As Nat makes his plans and recruits a small band of friends, this passage stops me cold:

One of these, an older man named Joe, has told me that he wants to be baptized and I look forward to the rites with satisfaction. (It is rare enough that I encounter a Negro with spiritual aspirations, much less one who also might become, potentially, a murderer.) (p. 320)

It is historical fact that religion and violence are inextricably entwined, that much evil is done in the name of faith and yet Nat appears to be more than just affected by spirituality (his original direction from God could be attributed more to the weakness and hallucinatory effect of a five-day fast) than by pure hatred and cunning. He handpicks his followers based on their degree of strength as well as depth of anger and hurt. He looks down upon his own even as he builds to a bloody rage against those who look down upon him.

It’s interesting. For me, it goes beyond cultures and offenses, but goes to the heart of all argument; human nature.

Lord knows it didn’t look like I was ever going to keep on this book, but even though it was tough for me to enjoy reading–and I’m still not sure whether it was the story thus far or just my own overdose to reading–I hit a new pace with it today, determined to either read it or shelve it.

The story begins with the days before the trial of Nat Turner, so we are immediately made aware of what he’s accused of, what he admits to, and the ultimate and likely effect of that being his condemnation to death for the crimes. Once this happens, we are then left with Nat’s reflections on his life and this is in fact where the story became more interesting.

There’s a lot going on with this, the writing style is beautiful, the story bothers me both for its view of pre-Civil War plantation life and (for me) the concept of its being based on historical facts yet a work of fiction, and how we then view the character of Nat Turner in this work. If we trust the author, William Styron, to have kept to the basic facts, then we have a Negro child who is a slave with same privilege based on his mother’s position in the house, the luck of being in the “possession” of a kindly and sympathetic master, and having the intelligence to grasp opportunity and learn to rise above what for other blacks was a horrendous life.

First, the writing:

It was a Saturday, one of those dusty, ocherous autumnal days whose vivid weather never again seems so sweet and inviting after that youthful time of discovery: wood smoke and maple leaves blazing in the trees, an odor of apples everywhere like a winy haze, squirrels scampering for chinquapins at the edge of the woods, a constant stridor of crickets among the withering grass, and over all a ripe sunny heat edged with feathery gusts of wind smelling of charred oak and winter. ( p. 182)

There is a beauty in the description, in this, as Nat is about to hear from his owner, Marse Samuel, that he is going to eventually be freed. Yet Styron is just as precise in his imagery when Nat is sitting awaiting his own execution.

There is a natural distaste for the word “nigger” as we have come to know it, and yet it is contemporary to the time and natural in use in this book, as is true of many novels set in the time span of the American South. What I find more discomforting is the image of the human nature of man that goes deeper than color; it is instinct to want to feel superior to someone, and thus, Nat is repulsed by the black laborers who do not share the benefits that he enjoys in his place in the family.

This is also where I wonder how much of it is the truth about the man, Nat Turner, himself, and what is inspired by him but interpreted by the author.

In the same section as the excerpt above, we go into another area of both Nat and again, human nature itself, in seeking love and sexual bonding as Nat and his friend Willis explore their friendship.

Getting back to writing style, If find Styron to be expertly skilled in transitioning story as he plays within the various time spans of Nat’s story. And this, in foreshadowing, as what would seemingly be a perfect day comes to a close:

Yet as I say, whenever I reflected upon that eighteenth year of mine and that day and the events which quickly followed, it was clear to me that this promontory had been not a restful way station but an ending; beyond that place there was no gentle, continuing climb toward the great hills but a sudden astonishing abyss into which I was hurled like a willow leaf by the howling winds. (p. 204)

Yes, I’m STILL reading Confessions of Nat Turner and will post on it soon, but it’s obvious that I haven’t been the twice-a-day poster girl here for a while. Well, there are some good reasons for that. I’m writing. And, I’m getting quite a few stories published.

So in this age of me-me-me, I’m focusing on my own writing more than reading someone else’s–though I am reading about fifteen stories a day on the writers colony site fictionaut. There’s a sense of enthusiasm and support from the writers gathered here that I’ve not found elsewhere at this high a level of quality writing. These people aren’t wannabes, they’re for the most part, published authors and editors so they have that burning fire and unrelenting drive that makes writing a big part of their lives.

In the past few months, I’ve realized my own ambitions of being published or forthcoming in literary journals such as The Blue Print Review, elimae, Bewildering Stories, The New River Journal, fourpaperletters, metazen, Litsnack, Istanbul Literary Review, and others. A Valentine’s Day Challenge turned into a group of 25 stories and poems that will be published in chapbook form and I’m glad to say that my story is included. But it’s taken me a long time to get to this point and I can’t sit and rest on my laurels. What pleases me very much is that a couple of the stories were written in hypertext and that I’m finding publishers willing to work with me on this and include it in their journals.

So that’s where I’ve been and that’s where I’ll be for a while, particularly now with many of the submission deadlines closing before the summer. I’ve got a whole batch of new stories that need endings, and a long way to go before I can rest, but Spinning and its sister Hypercompendia are not dead, just holding their breath while I play on the railroad tracks.

Mary Ellen, taking a course called Electric Literature (ain’t that cool?) at Trinity College in Hartford, CT recently brought up the question of defining literature beyond the restriction of the written word.

I’ve just started reading Richard A. Posner’s The Little Book of Plagiarism and found this:

“But “plagiarism” turns out to be difficult to define. A typical dictionary definition is ‘literary theft.’ The definition is incomplete because there can be plagiarism of music, pictures, or ideas, as well as of verbal matter, though most of the time I’ll assume that the plagiarist is a writer.”  (p. 11)

Now Posner is not a literature professor; he is a judge on the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School (and I took that pretty much straight off the book jacket). It appears that to him that literature is separate from music, pictures or ideas and verbal matter. Obviously ideas can be expressed in literary form as well as any other.

So, in this day of new media, when novels are written in hypertext and read online, how will the definition of literature be affected?