What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Ben Okri

Ben Okri's The Famished Road ... where to start. How about the genre? I kind of think this book is what would happen if Poisonwood Bible went native, lost Christianity, and had a love child with Men in Black. However, if you want to make sense of it, just pretend it's a video game narrative. With that mindset, all the three-headed spirits dressed up like humans dancing in a bar will be a lot easier to grasp. I think. This really is a weird book, and it's just common courtesy for me to try to give you a leg-up (even if it's onto a precipice you will want to leave ASAP). I enjoyed the book, once I let myself just go with the flow and quit trying to see commonalities between this and nearly every other book I've ever read.

The Famished Road is about a famished road. It may seem like it's about a boy who finally chooses to stay alive or about his father, who fights back against the hand destiny has dealt him, but it's really about a road. The road is both literal (there is a road that goes through their African village) and figurative (life's journey, the people we meet as we go through life, that sort of thing). "Famished" is all about how we have to make sacrifices in life and fight hard for what is good (if I read it correctly). It is also about cycles and how are life itself is a cycle between good and bad. My goodness, I'm using parentheses way too much. I should quit doing that.

The first thing I noticed when I started reading was that the narration is maximalist and the dialogue is minimalist. To show you what I mean, I just opened to a random page and found an example for you. If it matters to you, know that I've ignored the paragraphal formatting this originally had (it's easier to do it this way with Blogger). The exposition at the start is one paragraph, then each line of dialogue has its own paragraph.

The landlord looked round, saw the semi-broken window, and began, explosively, to rage. He was thoroughly incoherent and he only made sense when he calmed down a little and demanded that the window be repaired before his next visit. He moved dramatically up and down the room, reserving, as usual, his loudest voice and his most dramatic gestures for when he was nearest the door. The compound people had gathered outside and some of them were looking in. Waving his hands, whipping the voluminous folds of his agbada this way and that, he turned and said: "Is your husband not in?" "No." "What about my rent?" "When he comes back he will give it to you." "He didn't leave it?" "No." Striding as if he were on stage . . .

 SO much detail, without it being too much most of the time, in the narration, and little to no talking throughout. This is not a book with big speeches or long conversations in it. Everything is visual.

Some problems I had with the book: The narrator emotes little emotion. He is, for the most part, an observer who doesn't reflect much on what is happening. I guess I just like to see a narrator react to what's going on around them. My assumption is that the way it is told, and the personality of this narrator, reflect the culture of Nigeria on some level. I also didn't appreciate the scenes involving people nearly sexually molesting this poor kid.   . . . He stumbles into the wrong party, let's say it that way. That's personal taste, though. All of this is personal taste. This whole book is about personal taste. Want to expand your mind a bit? This is a good book to read.

Finishing The Famished Road felt like I was finishing a journey. That may sound like I'm trying to be poetic or something, but I'm not. The feeling I had was the same I get when coming home after a long drive. Luckily, I went to bed soon after, so I didn't have to struggle against it all day long.

One last thing, because it was my favorite moment in the book: The narrator's spirit is being kidnapped, so he cries out to the Great King of the spirit world he is from. The Great King does not respond, so he begins to call out for his mother. Mom shows up and saves him. It was a wonderful shout out to mothers, the likes of which I haven't seen since Molly Weasley screamed at Bellatrix Lestrange, "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU B****!"

Continual Acceleration

At this moment, you are tearing through the day

at the incredible speed of one thousand miles per hour.

So say the scientists, their quantification of Earth’s spin

(and that’s ignoring the fact that we’re also hurtling in orbit around the sun,

with the 67,000 miles per hour that adds on).

We’re also speeding up — continual acceleration,

courtesy of the laws surrounding circular motion.

But despite the frightening speed of this single day,

tendrils of hopeful daffodils still emerge

above the ground, the red-breasted robin

flies without worry of being left behind by his nest,

and you, instead of absorbing the impact

of sheer velocity by standing at an angle to the ground,

you maintain perfect perpendicularity

and balance.

What Makes a Great Poem

I typed that title for this blog post and thought, "Dang, do I really think I'm qualified to write something with that title?" Well, probably not, but I have some things to say on the subject, so I'm going to express them.

I was once asked to define "poem." It's surprisingly hard to do, it turns out. For me, a poem is any piece of writing that places musicality and imagery over every other item that might be on a writer's agenda. I know that is a terrible definition, it really is, but it's the closest I can get right now. I could say a poem is anything written that isn't prose . . . but then there's prose poetry, so there goes that idea.

With this rough definition in mind, then, the thing I think makes a poem great is thisness. James Wood defines the term in his book How Fiction Works: ". . . Thisness is palpability; it will tend toward substance . . . the wax of a bathroom floor, the calendar for 1808, the blood in a boot. But it can be a mere name or anecdote." He goes on to say that thisness is detail that brings a piece of writing to life.

Without details like this, a poem is just "meh." If the details (and through them, the ideas) resonate with me personally, I consider the poem to be a great poem. This makes it a highly personal thing, whether or not a poem is actually outstanding. If a poem does not make you nod while reading it, doesn't make you want to stow it away somewhere for future reading, doesn't make you pause and say, "This," then it didn't do its job, frankly. Maybe the issue is you, maybe the issue is the poem. For me, if a poem doesn't resonate, I figure it's either good/fine, bad, or (and this is the worst option) "meh." "Meh" (think "bland") is the worst option because it means the poem incited no emotion or response whatsoever, and poems are supposed to make you respond to the text. I would consider that the function of any poem.

I'm okay with reading good poetry. I prefer great poetry. Thisness helps a poem to hit home, and that's why I use it as my main criteria for what makes a poem amazing. Here's a poem that resonates with me. Feel free to disagree, but I'm going to use it to illustrate my point. It's by Memye Curtis Tucker.

This poem has a lot of technical thisness (12 centuries, fear of leaving the king prey to evil spirits, the glaze, etc.), but that's not what hit me. It's more like the arm that's behind the fist that hit me, with the fist being the ideas the thisness conveys. I feel truth in this poem, and that is why I consider it a great poem. It isn't in my face, telling me I need to learn something; it seems more like an unassuming observation, and the thisness makes it real. The poem would not have half the power it does were it not for the thisness involved.

Lessons from Stephen King's "On Writing"

It has been some time since my last blog post (nearly two weeks, if I remember correctly), and for my lapse in writing I offer the justifications that it was midterms, the book I was reading was nonfiction and thus took me longer to get through, and a friend of mine passed away. So no, I'm not apologizing.

The nonfiction book I was reading was Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Now, I have to admit to never having read any of King's work. Horror has never appealed to me. It is as surprising to me, then, as it probably is to you that I was reading writing advice from the guy. My reasoning (I'm explaining myself a lot today. Geez): I had to read a nonfiction book for my contemporary literature class, so decided it may as well be a book on storytelling. I have a friend who recommends books about writing to me relatively often, so I turned to them and said I wanted a book that was more about story than writing. This is the book that was recommended.

It is a lot more about writing than about storytelling, but oh well. I wanted a book that was more about storytelling because my education has been in writing, but I've noticed that the story side of things has been largely ignored. So I'm starting to focus my self-education on it. Or trying to, anyway.

This book was not a waste of my time, however. For your edification and mine, I've collected the things I learned from this book:

• " ... Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shove s**** from a sitting position" (pg. 69).  I'm going to have to try this, but my usual approach to writing when it's just not coming is to edit instead. I will go back a few pages, or to the beginning, and spend my writing time editing. My hope is it will get my creative juices flowing or else help me think over things.
• People hate what they are afraid of. I think I knew this before, but it was good to identify for myself so I can possibly use it in the future. Nietzche says people only learn things they already know, and I think this snippet falls under that category.
• Too much detail takes the fun out of writing. That's not prose, that's an instruction manual. First off, I loved that he phrased it this way. Secondly, he went from there into an idea of giving only key details, such as his example of a number 8 on a rabbit's back. The details included should be unique and should stick in the reader's mind, or at least give them a feel for what is going on. I think this should help me find a balance on how much detail to add. Currently, I have no idea how much detail I tend to include. I need to start paying attention to it.
• Always write with passion. I liked this idea; King says that if the writing does not entertain or connect with me on some emotional level, it will not entertain or connect with someone else. I have not noticed the idea of writing as entertaining others being taught in the creative writing program I am in right now, and it was an idea that was novel when it should not have been. I'm not saying I've been told to be boring, but I've been taught a "who cares?" mentality. So your characters aren't likeable, my professor would tell me. So what? Thanks to King and a recent lesson in my contemporary lit. class, I'm realizing that stories and characters should incite emotion, whether that be positive or negative emotion. A story or character that is just "meh" is the worst sort of story or character.
• Writing is a form of telepathy. This was such a cool idea. King argues that if I tell you about the weather outside right now, where I can see yellow-green grass and a white sky setting boundaries on the light flakes coming down in haphazard fashion, some going down and some bouncing along for a while before finally settling on the ground and some actually floating upward instead of coming down, that you get an image very like the one I am looking at. To see my snowfall, I am looking through a narrow window at a wooden banister with a short, but full, pine tree beyond. See it? It probably does not look exactly like mine, yet I was able to transfer an image from my mind to yours via words on a screen. You aren't even here now, and you'll be reading this at some future point in time, which means I'm grabbing this image and sending it to you not only across a physical distance, but also through time. Incredible.

• "Use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful" (pg. 110). Usually, the first word is the least complicated and most precise option available. When I help people to write, I like to type while they say whatever comes to their mind, even if that is, "I have no idea what to say, I haven't eaten since I woke up this morning, and that was only a leftover biscuit from the night before. No, there wasn't any butter. Just a cold biscuit." Usually, I can write all of what they have to say and then work with them to delete everything but the stuff that sounds good, and you know what? When people write that way, pretty much everyone is a good writer. Maybe good writers are just the people who don't overthink things?
• If there is no play-time with a talent you are working to develop (you practice and that's it), it probably isn't for you. Exhibit A: I am typing this blog post in my parents' living room. I failed to notice that there were clothes to be folded (none of it mine, but I try to help out when I'm visiting). I also failed to compute the fact that their dog was outside barking. It's an inside dog, a mutt that is mostly shih-tzu, I think, and here I was talking about how it was snowing outside. When my mom came to fold the clothes, she looked out the window, saw that it was snowing, and connected that with the barking into an "Oh my gosh, the dog's outside in that!" I was too engrossed in my writing to put two and two together . . . and this was just a blog post. That's just one of the many reasons I can tell this whole writing thing is for me.
• None of the bells and whistles are for use in telling story. Only story is about story. I've been focusing on writing and the correct use of bells and whistles. It was nice to be told I could put that to a rest when it comes to telling story; that the story is what comes first, not the writing. It was a suspicion I had, but I'm glad to have it affirmed by someone else.
• Consider the theme of the piece ... later. For King, "theme" is the ideas behind a story, such as environmentalism being the idea behind Dr. Seuss's The Lorax. I've learned that when a person tries to be profound, they end up sounding stupid. I like the idea of thinking about being profound after the story has already been set up, so that it is a side note instead of the main focus. I am a firm believer that a story gets the most stage time. To go look at the other stuff later makes sense to me.
• Concept of an Ideal Reader. King says that when he writes, his first draft is written without giving a thought to how it will be received. During the second draft, he focuses on his "ideal reader." For him, that's his wife. This ideal reader is the person who will love the concept and want to read the story, the person whose sense of humor complements your own, the person who will say "that is so right," when you get a detail spot-on. I think my ideal reader changes per story and its intended audience, but then, I've never really thought about it. The purpose of the second draft is to provide maximum entertainment and value for this ideal reader; this is when the writer needs to keep their audience in mind. It's a method I will have to try.