9780415317856_the_routledge_creative_writing_coursebook

More documents

Recommendations

Info

www.ATIBOOK.irFiction 109everybody knows everybody, a writer might have an easier time of it. Thecarpenter might let him come out on some jobs with him. A lawyer friendmay let him sit in his office. I once took a job during Christmas rush at adepartment store in Manhattan. Here was a scene chaotic with detail,sounds, people, and a new tempo—pretty hectic—an unending stream oflittle dramas that one could observe in customers, fellow workers and themanagement I used this new scene in my writing. A writer should seizeupon every new scene that comes his way, take notes and turn it toaccount.(Highsmith, 1990:96)In Pierre’s novel Vernon’s version of events never gets heard by the jury, doesn’t evenseem to have been investigated. Can this be how the legal professions operate in Matirio?His is a trial by television—guilt equals the number of times your face appears on TV asprime suspect. And then, later, the jury having delivered its bogus verdict, prisoners onDeath Row are eliminated by popular votes in a grim parody of reality television. IsPierre attacking the US criminal justice system for the real faults within it, or for absurd,impossible ones? In one sense his hero complains about such liberties in films, suggestingthat it matters how public worlds are represented:Where TV lets you down, I’m discovering, is not by convincing you howthings really work in the world. Like, do buses stop anywhere along theroad, to pick up any kind of asshole, or do you have to be at a regular busstop? You see plenty of movies where some crusty dude stops a bus in themiddle of a desert or something. But maybe that only applies in themiddle of a desert. Or maybe only the drivers who saw the movies willstop.(Pierre, 2003:148)To raise this issue in the novel itself makes it a point of debate in the reading experience.Which comes first—the movies or life? Also, do bus stops matter? Or any real-worldsetting? Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections shows us love, work, illness,parenting, marriage, ageing, travel, fraud, homo- and heterosexual sex, in scenes thatknow about ‘how things really work in the world’. This knowledge, once required ofnovelists, is rare among his contemporaries. McEwan’s Atonement contains no trialscene, yet we are expected to believe that Briony’s evidence at trial standsunquestioned—convenient for the story, but conceivable? It may be that fiction nowtakes us on excursions; all might seem comparatively familiar, but sooner or later wecross a threshold into the comic absurd, a world with no clues. As Vernon Little himselfadmits, ‘I guess it’s ironic, when someone passes off total bullshit as reality’ (Pierre,2003:179). Few would describe either this novel or Atonement in such Vernon-likelanguage, yet in contemporary fiction there is a debate about the idea of passingsomething off, at the expense of how things work in the world.
www.ATIBOOK.irThe routledge creative writing coursebook 110Close Encounters: Short StoriesAbout the short story, Nadine Gordimer wrote, ‘how the characters will appear, think,behave, comprehend, tomorrow or at any other time in their lives, is irrelevant’. Forwriters, especially novelists like herself, the luxury of short story writing lies in its closeattention to the moment, rather than to the continuous, complex life history. But shorterfiction can give a sense of significant change in the life-direction. What characters doafterwards will be affected by what happens to them on the day of the story. Becausesomething has happened, they will be different, a trace will have been left, even thoughwhat has happened may be no more than a phone-call (or the lack of one), or anunopened letter. The time period in short stories generally is shorter than in a novel, butwe have to be clear what we mean by time and period and the treatment of time. Withthat and some other issues in mind I want to look closely at two short stories: ‘TroutFriday’ by Jackie Kay, from her collection Why Don’t You Stop Talking, and ‘Whoeverwas using this bed’, from Elephant by Raymond Carver.Kay’s story contains almost no dialogue, while Carver’s is built out of dialogue fromthe beginning. In spite of that ‘Trout Friday’ does have polyphonic qualities. In it we hearthe voices of advertising, the popular media’s self-help and personal health guides,internalised by its single protagonist Melanie, whose recent and distant family history istold to us by the third-person narration. This voice, though, and Melanie’s (and the advicecolumns) overlap, so that we get a vivid example of free indirect speech (see Chapter 1,p. 6). Here is the opening of ‘Trout Friday’:If you want good teeth you must brush your gums as well. Gums causemore tooth loss than tooth decay. That’s what the paper said. Melaniewent straight to the chemist and bought a brand-new toothbrush. She’dlost too much already and she was only twenty-three and she didn’t wantto lose her teeth into the bargain. She lost her mother when she wasnineteen. She lost her Uncle Barry. She lost a baby she was carrying. Sheliked it if she could read some fact and act on it. Like she read fish wasgood for your brain. So now she had salmon Monday, prawn Tuesday,cod Wednesday, haddock Thursday and trout Friday. Weekends she hadfish-free because she only really needed her brain during the week.Weekends she splashes out and has takeaway: Peking duck with pancakes,lamb with spicy leaves and nan bread, or Kentucky Fried Chicken withlarge fries.(Kay, 2002:67)In Chapter 1 (Story, p. 27), I indicated how time is shaped for us by kinds of experience.Loss is an obvious one of these, but Melanie has her own way of putting time back inplace, making it regular and routine. This story is about someone who avoids story.Bluntly speaking, a new toothbrush compensates her for the loss of her mother, even forthe loss of her child. As we follow the unfolding narrative, these losses will be hardlymentioned, while the details of Melanie’s routines—in particular her eating habits, butalso her work at a travel agent—take up a huge proportion of page space. This is because
Page 1 and 2:
www.ATIBOOK.ir
Page 3 and 4:
www.ATIBOOK.ir
Page 5 and 6:
www.ATIBOOK.irFirst published 2006
Page 7 and 8:
www.ATIBOOK.ir
Page 9 and 10:
www.ATIBOOK.irPREFACESomewhere betw
Page 11 and 12:
Miroslav Holub, ‘The Fly’, from
Page 13 and 14:
www.ATIBOOK.irThe routledge creativ
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
www.ATIBOOK.irCHAPTER 2PERSONAL NAR
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70: www.ATIBOOK.irThe routledge creativ
Page 119: www.ATIBOOK.irThe routledge creativ
Page 143 and 144: www.ATIBOOK.irCHAPTER 5CHILDREN’S
Page 165 and 166: www.ATIBOOK.irCHAPTER 6DRAMADrama a
Page 171 and 172:
Page 173 and 174:
Page 175 and 176:
Page 177 and 178:
Page 179 and 180:
Page 181 and 182:
Page 183 and 184:
Page 185 and 186:
Page 187 and 188:
Page 189 and 190:
Page 191 and 192:
Page 193 and 194:
Page 195 and 196:
Page 197 and 198:
Page 199 and 200:
Page 201 and 202:
www.ATIBOOK.irGlossary 190a piece o
Page 203 and 204:
www.ATIBOOK.irGlossary 192Point of
Page 205 and 206:
www.ATIBOOK.irBIBLIOGRAPHYTitles re
Page 207 and 208:
www.ATIBOOK.irBibliography 196McCul
Page 209 and 210:
www.ATIBOOK.irBibliography 198Penn,
Page 211 and 212:
www.ATIBOOK.irIndex 200Bible 4, 107
Page 213 and 214:
www.ATIBOOK.irIndex 202‘WHAM’ (
Page 215 and 216:
www.ATIBOOK.irIndex 204in the creat
Page 217 and 218:
www.ATIBOOK.irIndex 206O’Brien, T
Page 219:
www.ATIBOOK.irIndex 208and persona
show all

9780415317856_the_routledge_creative_writing_coursebook

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?