A Picture’s Worth 250 Words

A bit of shameless self-promotion today, dear readers, but hold on, the fit will soon pass. Jason Evans, proprietor of The Clarity of Night, is running an online flash fiction contest called "In Vino Veritas." With the picture to your right as inspiration, contestants must craft a short short no longer than 250 words. There's a whole bevy of worthwhile narratives up for your perusal, including "Claret" by yours truly, which may or may not be worthwhile but somehow didn't get rejected outright. You can access the entire list of entries here and "Claret" here. Comments, critiques and revilings are always welcome.

Middle Shelf Selection: William Golding's Lord of the Flies

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.

Categories ossify. Sure, they seem helpful at first. But soon enough they harden, and all you see is the name you've applied instead of the thing itself. Nowhere is this more evident than with literary fiction. To many, it's something with which teachers bore students, a stultifying sort of story that you ought to know about but don't actually need to read. More vexing is that quite a few of these ignored works have genre roots. Take William Golding's Lord of the Flies, a novel whose bloodlines contain post-apocalyptic, war epic, survival story and horror.

“How does he know we're here?"

Because, thought Ralph, because, because. The roar from the reef became very distant.

"They'd tell him at the airport."

Piggy shook his head, put on his flashing glasses and looked down at Ralph.

"Not them. Didn't you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They're all dead."

The Communist assault on England has become so ferocious that Royal forces are evacuating children from the mainland. But soon after a flight of young boys lifts off, a nuclear strike decimates the airport. Then enemy fighters shoot the plane down, and it crash-lands on a deserted island. A tropical storm sweeps the wreckage (and a good number of the passengers) out to sea, and the survivors, a motley crew ranging in age from six to twelve, must fend for themselves in a world newly stripped of adults. They gather tropical fruit and hunt pigs with sharpened sticks. They start a small signal fire in hope of rescue. Soon a rumor begins to spread among the littlest boys about a bloodthirsty beast that slithers through the jungle, looking for what it may devour. The older boys scoff at such tales, though. They have more concrete troubles. Envy, rivalry and conceit have begun to fissure the bedrock of their new society.

Jack listened to Percival's answer and then let go of him. Percival, released, surrounded by the comfortable presence of humans, fell in the long grass and went to sleep.

Jack cleared his throat, then reported casually.

"He says the beast comes out of the sea."

The last laugh died away. Ralph turned involuntarily, a black, humped figure against the lagoon. The assembly looked with him, considered the vast stretches of water, the high sea beyond, unknown indigo of infinite possibilities, heard silently the sough and whisper from the reef.

Literary fiction has earned the reputation of having fascinating characters that do absolutely nothing. But not Lord of the Flies. It moves, constantly and inexorably. Also, repeated readings reveal the delicacy of Golding's composition. He wastes nothing, nearly every sentence playing a needed part. A description of three boys rolling a boulder down a hill foreshadows a cataclysmic future confrontation. An older youth's willingness to pick fruit for the tiniest children reveals his unusual sensitivity, a sensitivity that may save or doom the island's inhabitants. And a fat kid's perpetual complaint of "What's grown-ups going to think?" over the group's immaturities adds a chilling irony to the novel's main theme, namely that, left to themselves, societies splinter.

In panic, Ralph thrust his own stick through the crack and struck with all his might.

"Aaa-ah!"

His spear twisted a little in his hands and then he withdrew it again.

"Ooh-ooh --"

Someone was moaning outside and a babble of voices rose. A fierce argument was going on and the wounded savage kept groaning. Then when there was silence, a single voice spoke and Ralph decided that it was not Jack's.

"See? I told you -- he's dangerous."

Though plot, setting and character hardly get short changed, theme really is Golding's primary focus. He wants to explore the problem of evil, the main reason for the world's suffering. It's a lofty goal, an easy one to blunder. Yet the depth of Golding's insight impresses. There is a beast the prowls the earth, but it isn't economic inequality or racism or sexism or any of the other isms. No, the beast is very near to us -- as near as breath itself.

Fragment No. 2

Dread Cthulhu, nameless terror from beyond the stars, knew he was in trouble. He had no way to hide what he had done, no way to cover over the awful reality. Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath would be peeved, no doubt, but Azathoth ...

The tentacled Great Old One, who until very recently had lain dead and dreaming at sunken R'lyeh, shuddered at the thought. It wasn’t his fault, really. I mean, what else could you expect after a couple of strange eons under the sea? But he had to do something. A note -- that was it! A preemptive apology might help.

Dread Cthulhu, nameless terror from beyond the stars, dug up a scrap of paper and a pen and began to write ...

I have consumed utterly
the humans
that were in
the pit of madness and cosmic despair

and which
you were probably
saving
for tea

Forgive me
they were delicious
so salty
and so warm

Holloway on Distinctive Style

Dan Holloway, author of the serialized online novel The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes, argues at How Publishing Really Works that distinctive style (or voice, in his parlance) is more important than fine diction, tight plotting and memorable characters. He makes his case by appealing to something that any fan of live music understands -- the difference between an opening act and the headliner. Excerpts:

I’ve seen … lots of support bands this year. They all perform excellently. The songwriting is uniformly exceptional. The frontmen have real charisma. But when you hear one song, then a second, you realise if you heard a third song, in a different context, you’d have a hard time saying whose it was. Any number of people could have written them.

On the other hand, every headline act I’ve seen writes songs that couldn’t have been written by anyone else. Within a bar (a note, even -- just the tuning of their guitars is often enough; or if you prefer your music older and more German, think “Tristan chord”) you know exactly whose music you’re listening to.

And that, in a nutshell, is voice.

Read the whole thing. Perhaps we should, in addition to voice or style, call it distinction, that odd quality of someone sounding precisely like himself and no one else. It’s possibly one of the most difficult things to do when writing – and one of the delightful things to read.

(Picture: CC 2008 by susieq3c)

Authors Matter

The deadline had come, and I hustled over to the editor's desk with my piece in tow. I'd just reviewed Switchfoot's The Beautiful Letdown, unaware that it would become the San Diego band's breakthrough album and that top-40 radio would plug its singles into such heavy rotation that, in time, its songs would nearly make me physically ill. Bleary-eyed and riveted to his monitor, my editor grunted thanks. A little later, he called me back over. "Not bad," he said, rustling the page, "but let's lose this lyric here where it sounds like they're talking about reincarnation."

I examined the part he pointed at, two lines from the song "Meant To Live": "Dreaming about Providence / And whether mice and men have second tries." Okay, I could see it. The "mice and men" part could refer to coming back as an animal in another life, and Providence had something to do with divinity. Hold on, though, the rodent bit sounded an awful lot like Robert Burns' famous aphorism. ("The best-laid plans of mice and men / Go oft awry.") And didn't Providence have a very specific meaning? (Webster would later reveal it to be "God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny.") Looking at the rest of the song, reincarnation seemed like a strange fit, particularly since the other verses referenced struggling with failure. A different interpretation began to emerge, one of wondering whether or not God, in His guiding of history, would be willing to give the world's screw ups another shot. In fact, it seemed like what the songwriter wanted me to get.

As I opened my mouth to respond, my editor said, "Okay, thanks," and thrust the review in amongst a stack of papers. I clacked my teeth together, turned and went back to my cubicle. We were looking at the same text, but our approaches were worlds apart, one of us building significance out of phrases and sentences, the other looking for the meaning that had put them there. Sure, the reader is important, as is the historical milieu in which a work was birthed and the form in which it's couched. But none of these are the primer mover, the word spoken into darkness, bringing order from chaos. That's the author. He has something to say. We should listen to him. He matters.

(Picture: CC 2007 by Darny)

Pow! Promotes the Unexpected

I couldn't figure out whether or not my writing friend liked the story I'd sent him. Yes, he'd praised the characters as "interesting," said the plot had grabbed him and wholeheartedly approved of its themes. But it hadn't quite won him, and I could tell. Finally, the truth came out. "All the pieces are there," he said, "but it just doesn't grab me. It's predictable. There's no surprise in it." That sense of surprise is exactly what Andy Nulman wants to encourage in Pow! Right Between the Eyes!

A note right off the bat: Pow! isn't a writing manual. No, Nulman's intended audience is marketers, those folks who throw up billboards beside the freeway and insert commercials into the middle of our sitcoms and interrupt our Web surfing with pop ups. About as far from the business of narrative writing as you can get, right? Well, not really. Nulman does indulge in some of the excesses typical of his field. (Consider his over-the-top definition of Surprise -- the capital "S" is his -- as "the constant expansion of the boundaries of delightful extremes.") But the core of the book is a series of techniques intended to break you out of routine observation, to help you see the everday as, well, surprising. And that's exactly what writers need to do.

Suggestions to strip away preconceived notions, use great verbiage and become a time-bomb thrower (Nulman's neologism for little actions in the present that have an outsized impact in the future) are all welcome. But what really caught my eye were examples of his philosophy in action. An author slapping a sticker reading "Take this book home, it's free!" on his own titles and then surreptitiously slipping them into retail stores. A donut company selling a voodoo pastry that bleeds raspberry jam when stuck with pretzel pins. A District of North Vancouver posting a "bilingual" park sign urging people to pick up after their pets, the first half in English -- the second in Dog ("Grrrrr, bark, woof"). Pow! also notes something that authors ought to heed, namely that too much surprise can paradoxically become boring. Using M. Night Shyamalan's oeuvre as an example, Nulman shows how anticipation of the twist ending or the beast about to pop out from the shadows renders both stale and boring. Surprise is about subverting expectations, not screaming louder and longer than everyone else. It's an idea one wishes more marketers took to heart.

(Picture: CC 2009 by JasonRogersFooDogGiraff eBee)

Phraselet No. 90

The largest tax increase in history, an excise tax on petroleum, by being deceptively named, has lulled the American people into acceptance. However, the zeal with which our elected representatives are burrowing into this enormous pile of money (roughly $140 billion) -- it was certainly a windfall for them -- reminded me of something I had read recently ..., the cover story of the November 1979 Scientific American: "Ecology of the Dung Beetle." This fascinating article described in detail what happens when an elephant dumps its load on the African plain. Three different kinds of beetles show up in minutes. The little ones burrow into the pile, others bury little pieces on the spot, and the third kind, the big ones, scoop out big balls and roll them away. Once you read this fine article, the Senate Finance Committee will never look the same.

- Ralph Wagner on windfall profits taxation, quoted in John Train, The New Money Masters