What do You Read and Why?

 Being in this English program I am looking forward to reading a lot of books that I don’t want to read. Sounds backward, but it’s true. I just finished a book by Norwegian author Per Petterson called In the Wake. I only had to read half the book, six chapters, but I hated the main character so much at that sixth chapter that I wanted to see if there was some kind of redemption for him at the end. There wasn’t. The guy is as much a monumentally self centered anal sphincter at the end of the book as he is in the middle. I hate that character and I hate that book, but I am so glad that I read it and finished it because it made me ask this question; what makes a good book?

Other people loved this book. It got rave reviews. It was nominated for some big time literary award from Dublin, an award accompanied by 100,000 Euros, and another book by the same author that features the same main character called Out Stealing Horses won that award. Some serious people with some serious money who seriously love books seriously loved this book, and I want to know why.

In all fairness, it was really well written. There were beautiful turns of phrase in it such as “…and we paid by Visa cards which were furry with insurance money,” and  “…between him and me there was a tunnel of silence,” and  “…his brain swaddled in black velvet.” There were a lot of flashbacks and times where it wasn’t clear if the main character was living in the past or present, but the bridging sentence could work in both moments. The author was able to capture bits and pieces of the human experience and explain them in ways that were new and true. The prose, despite being originally written in Norse, was entrancingly rhythmic, the structure driving the pace more than the plot. None of these positives make up for the fact that the main character was relatable without being likeable, he moved between conversations and actions without showing any real plot, climax, or falling action, and he gives no evidence of change in his character by the end of the text; it’s just that the reader knows him better.

I feel cheated. After all of those stinging metaphors and clever structure and complex character development (that was really character stagnation) I was expecting an ending, not just a place where the author stopped writing. Maybe that was the point. Maybe it was about some people being jerks and never changing no matter what happens, but the hard thing about this is that the book is largely autobiographical. The author and the protagonist share so many traits and history that the protagonist is a fictional surrogate; the author has admitted as much. Being a poor example of a human being doesn’t take a lot of nerve, but advertising it to the world does so I believe that he either doesn’t know he is a terrible person, or he altered the character to be a more horrible person than he is. Maybe that is his point; there is a latent jerk in all of us, just waiting to come out when we get stressed enough.

Maybe the real lesson is neither of these. Maybe for me the real lesson is that I don’t understand exactly what it is that makes people like books, and I need to find out. Here’s my question to you, then. What books do you like and why?

Reflection

If you haven't read the story starting with the first post in July yet, please do so now. None of this is going to make sense if you haven't read it. I am crawling into that story, pulling apart what I did and why.  This is primarily a selfish venture because thinking about this stuff helps me improve. I also hope that through learning the details in the nuts and bolts of my little tale, you will be better equipped to see how storytellers manipulate your sensitivities in movies, books, TV shows and comics.

Quick review; the assignments were to maintain a twitter persona, write one paper about the tastes, feels and smells of food, one paper about making a tough decision, one short story, one paper with a quest, and one twitter confessional. The restrictions of the class, along with my own self imposed restrictions, served to limit the kind of story that I could tell. I wanted to link all of the assignments into one arc with a twist ending; the twitter confession would be that the tweeter is not the person (s)he has been claiming to be. This meant that I had to plan all of my writing assignments from the start, which was good. The short story was stewing in my head before I began work on the first paper.

I wrote the small writing exercises from a young woman’s perspective, and the short story and confession from a young man’s. Both perspectives were in first person, something I have never tried before. The choice to do so lay somewhere between luck and intuition, but it worked quite well. First person is more immediate than third, enabling the reader to experience the actions and dialogue more closely. One of the other students pointed out that at the end of the short story, it forced him to be closer to the young man than he was comfortable with, which worked for my purposes. It also meant I never had to give the characters names, which I think is important but I don’t know why. The parameters of the first writing exercise dictated that the woman would be sensory oriented, which meshed well with the urgency of the third paper. The male, however, tells his story from the past tense, which allows him (and the reader) to reflect on the events he describes.

The hardest part to write was the short story and final confession. If you don’t know me personally, let me assure you that I am not anything like the stalker in my story, except perhaps for the wry sarcasm. It was difficult to consistently live inside the head of a narcissistic, irresponsible creeper. I had to write and rewrite paragraph after paragraph, and the confession, many times because he kept coming out too nice. I had to work to maintain his unapologetic arrogance, but I hope that it doesn’t show. If you can see the effort the writer put into his work, he’s doing it wrong.

I usually have a good idea of what I want to say in my stories before I start writing them, but I didn’t for this one . I just wanted it to be entertaining, preferably with a surprise ending. I knew I had to litter the story with clues, but I was concerned about leaving too many and giving the ending away. I was sure when I wrote that first draft that I had given just enough that when he made the move to drug and kidnap the woman, it would be a believable surprise. My instructor disagreed. I added many more clues, and then some more, but my instructor thinks that the final draft still has that twist. I think this is where the real message of this story lies.

There is a powerful urge to believe the narrator. The notion that the person telling the story is the bad guy is so foreign and remote that the reader completely ignores all the indicators. In this case the narrator was the bad guy, and he told you so time and time again. My first draft showed self contradiction, lack of morality, obsessive behavior and an absurd degree of vanity. My second and third drafts underscored the previous clues, and added a few more strong instances of stalkserish actions. I really do think that you can see the end coming a mile away, if you are cynical enough and are paying attention.

This isn't to say that my perceived  moral to the story is only applicable to other stories. Unreliable narrators are everywhere; politicians who want power, news media that want to sell ad spots, your bum of a cousin that wants to "borrow" some cash, the list goes on. Don’t trust them just because they are smart, or likeable, because they tell a good story, or a story that you want to hear. Look at the facts, frame them against other things you know to be true, and make your judgments from there.

That, and don’t cheat on your college exams. Someone might kidnap you and hide you in their basement.

Confession

This is the last installment from my first semester of creative writing. Throughout the semester we maintained fictional personalities on Twitter. The prompt for this paper was to review our Twitter posts, consider what we have learned about the character behind the posts, and write a 1-3 page monologue in which that character confesses something he/she has never divulged before.
My “tweeter” was named 3&3/4, after the number of circuits runners take around the track in the 1500 meter event. They were intended to be the tweets my not so sympathetic main character saw in the main portion of the narrative.

“Confession”

I don’t have any stuffed animals. It says that I do in my profile. It says that I am a stuffed animal collector but I’m not. I don’t own a single one. I said that I did because I wanted to look like a normal girl, and I thought that normal girls do things like collect plushy bears and giant dogs that their boyfriends won at the fair or something. I don’t understand why they would do that. I guess they are trying to achieve a specific aesthetic in their bedroom, or maybe they like to hug soft things, but I guess I don’t really identify with that. I mean, stuffed animals are an extremely inefficient use of space, and besides, teddy bears don’t even remotely look like bears.

I digress.

I don’t run the 1500 meter. I know, I know, that’s the whole point of my name, right? 3&3/4 laps on the track, 1500 meters in four and a half minutes, I’m an athlete, rah rah. Except I’m not. I haven’t participated in organized sports since that pee-wee soccer season that my mom made me do. I was an average player for my team, but we were so horrible that we didn’t win a single game. I guess PE counts, maybe, but technically I said soccer was the last thing I participated in, and you could hardly call my activities in high school PE participatory. I passed, because if they failed me for a bad attitude they’d have had to fail half the class along with me, and no one wanted to see Marvin Schumaker’s pimply face repeat a year.

Why say I was an athlete? Why track, why that event? Well, that’s what she is; I guess that’s the obvious reason. That’s why I claimed it in the first place, but when I thought about it I liked the idea for more than that. It takes a specific kind of person to be an athlete, especially on a college level. They have to be disciplined with their diet and their time and their bodies; they are in control of all of their faculties. They have ambition, a focus, as if nothing is going to get in the way of what they want. They will do anything to be victorious, they will run and wrestle and devour their enemy, and I see myself in that. That’s why I played up the athlete bit a little more than was strictly necessary.

I’m not a girl, either, that’s the biggest deception. I don’t collect stuffed animals, I don’t run track and I’m not a girl, but she is. I mean, she’s a girl and she runs track. I’m not sure about the stuffed animals, though. I completely made that up, just like I made stuff up about all the others, like the bartender I pretended was a Salvador Dali fan and hated cashews, or the DMV girl who enjoyed fishing and singing along with the radio, but couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Maybe she was those things, but I don’t know. Those were harmless details, to give them a little personality. I’d see them, they would fall in love with me, but nothing would ever come of it. It couldn’t, it was just chance meetings, that’s all. But for her, my track runner, we did meet again. That’s what was different.

After she came, it all got mixed up. At first I tried to let her come to me on her own, but she wouldn’t. I had to be her instead, to give me the opportunity to sweep her off her feet because she wasn’t letting me do it on her own, and now look what happened. She said she loved me but she didn’t act like it because she didn’t say it. I said it, but I was her when I said it which made me think that she did and I knew she didn’t but I didn’t want to know. Instead I just listened to her, I let her seduce me and I got excited. She was leading me on, and then I got upset, angry at her even, but only a little. I never meant to hurt her, I just wanted her to admit to what she should have been saying all along, but she wouldn’t. I guess, thinking about it now, she didn’t understand what was going on. I don’t know why I expected her to, she was never smart to begin with.

Now I wonder how she really felt about me that whole time. How does she feel about me now? Do you think she will understand that it was all her fault? No, I don’t think so either, and I can’t tolerate the thought of seeing the accusation in her beautiful, perfect eyes when I take the stand. I should have run the moment she did. I should have gotten out, changed my name, moved a few states away and started a new life. I should have known she wouldn’t understand, that she’d send them after me. That she’d blame me, even if it was her stupidity and stubbornness that got us into this. If she had just gone with it I could have made her happy.

Running would have been the smart thing, but I can’t now. Red and blue lights are flashing outside my window, and the uniforms are coming to my door. I have a gun. I could drop them and make a run for it, but it’s too late for that, a delaying of the inevitable. Once you kill a cop they never stop coming after you. I’m just going to get it over with, here and now. No questions, no investigation, no due process or day in court.

Goodbye, sweet Persephone. I hope you’re happy with what you’ve done.

Captive

"Write a 2-3 page story in which a strong main character is on a quest for something important and specific. The object is a given- don't explain its importance. The main character starts acting immediately. She then meets a (specific) obstacle. Finally she triumphs over the obstacle by means of a magic or supernatural element that comes from the outside. This story should be told through action and dialogue and should include a strong sense of place."

“Captive”

White light flickers around the cracks in the blacked out window, thunder rolls, and rain patters against the siding. I hope they are enough to cover the sound of the chair squeaking as I work my chaffed wrists against these restraints. My jaw aches from the gag. My shoulders and spine are sore from sitting upright, with my arms pushed behind my back. My head aches, but I don’t know if it’s from dehydration, stress, or the heavy odor of spilled gasoline and mothballs mixed with stale sweat. Wisps of hair keep falling in my eyes, tears roll down my face, and I am terrified that he might hear me, he might come back, and it will start all over again.

            The floorboards above me creak, and I stop my movement. Is he walking toward the door? Will he come down again? Does he come down at certain times or is it on a whim? I don’t know, but the footsteps overhead move left and then behind me, so I keep working. Layers of duct tape are wrapped around and around my hands and feet and arms and middle, just under my breasts that he apologetically caresses when he binds me. I’ve been struggling against these makeshift restraints for days- hours? How many times has he fed me? I’ve lost track, but I get nowhere. He removes the straps when he comes down to talk, then replaces them with fresh tape. My arms ache from straining and my wrists are swollen from the edges that cut into my skin.

            There! I’ve worked them loose just enough. I think that I can slip my hand out if I pull hard enough. I yank hard, and try to choke off a muffled scream of pain. I pause to listen, my heart riots inside my chest, adrenaline screams through my muscles and in my brain. I can get loose! Did he hear? I’m almost free!

            There are no footsteps above, but I wait longer. I will only have one chance, I don’t want to waste it. With another flash I take in a breath, I would grit my teeth if it weren’t for this gag. The accompanying clap soon follows, and I scream and pull my right hand through. The left is out a half second later, and I claw at the tape around my face. I can’t tear it off fast enough, as frantic as I am I can’t seem to grip anything, numb fingers stuttering clumsily at edges, digging, worrying, a fingernail tears and I bite my lip to suppress a yelp.

            The room is ink, only a razor of yellowed light burns above, at the top of the stairs. I have seen the room before, when he turns  on the light and comes down, but I cannot trust my memory. I cautiously shuffle forward, pawing at the empty black with my hands, but it is my feet that find cardboard boxes and gardening tools, and my shin that strikes some unyielding metal bar. If I make it to the door, then what? Slip through the house unnoticed? Try to sneak out the front door? Should I try to find some weapon in the dark? I reach the top of the steps and cautiously, gently try the knob. “Oh God oh God oh God,” I whimper, “let me get away.” The door is locked.

            Panic claws at my throat and fresh tears roll from my eyes. I am stuck here, there is no way out of this concrete prison. He will come in and find me out of the chair, and he will know that I tried to escape and it will be worse than before. I should be thinking of my next move, something else to do, but despair is eating my heart and I can’t think of anything but how I am going to die in this miserable hole in the ground, and no one will ever find me. With my back to the door, I sink to the steps and quietly sob.

            A deafening crack, like the universe tearing off its hinges, explodes on my ears without a breath of warning, followed by a groaning snap and the shattering of glass. Soft yellow light spills through a broken window, illuminating a leafy branch, an escape, an out. I’m momentarily deafened to quieter sounds, and I don’t hear the footsteps until they are almost at the door. Fumbling, slipping, scrabbling down the steps I flee, not thinking or planning, just getting away, the door opens and the room floods with light, dazzling my eyes. He shouts and I dare not look back, just thrashing my way to that window up above my head on the other side of the room. I stumble over trash bags of cast away clothes and around the free weight bench I must have hit on my way up and I’m there. I jump and grab the edge as he shouts my name and I wriggle my way up, up and over, dragging my body through shards of broken glass, out into the clean smelling rain. He grabs my heel and I kick savagely, he releases and I am free. It was God, it had to be, I think, while my feet pound the wet ground and pain begins to register in my hands and arms and knees, where glass splinters have embedded in my skin. Or was it? Lightening happens all of the time. But this one hit a tree that punched out the window that made an opening for me, right at the time I needed it. Struggling to my feet I disappear into the night, I don’t care what direction just not on the road where he can follow.

On a track I can run a mile in five minutes. This is an uneven field and I’m not wearing my track shoes, I’m malnourished and bleeding, rain is pouring down in my ears and in my eyes and through my clothes. Doesn’t matter. I lengthen my stride and pace my breathing, eating up ground, flying over grass. Running is what I do best. That son of a bitch is never going to catch me.