Why Analyze Books, and Where Does an Author Start?

A friend of mine asked me a couple questions she has been struggling with lately. Answering these questions made me realize some things, and I thought that in turn, I would share what we learned together with you.

1. Why analyze books?

There are books where reading them feels like coming home. For me, some books that fall under this category include Pride and Prejudice, The Little Prince, Harry Potter, David Copperfield, Ender's Game, and Beauty (Robin McKinley). This "at home" feeling may come because I grew up with these books (Harry Potter, Beauty), it may be because they eloquently display ideas and concepts I have found to be true (The Little Prince), or maybe I just love the story and have read it so many times that it has become a sort of literary home base (Pride and Prejudice, David Copperfield, Ender's Game). A book may also seem like home because I identify with the characters (I can't think of any examples of this off the top of my head, sorry).

If some books feel like home, then analyzing a book is like going to a house and casing the joint. You go in to a book that is home for someone else and try to find out why it is home for that other person. What objects and furniture are in there that make them feel comfortable (or uncomfortable, if you're trying to figure out why it spurred change), which colors were used that make them feel like it was real, that sort of thing. It isn’t your home; you’re going in to figure out why it is home for someone else. Also, sometimes we use a book to analyze an author (though they call it analyzing the book), and that’s like breaking into a house to learn about the architect or the person who built the place. Note that it is possible to get so caught up in the house that you start to feel at home.

2. How do authors create stories?

She was wondering where writers start when they sit down to write a story. It depends on the author, but in a broad sense, stories tend to have their core in one of four areas: character, plot, conflict, and concept.

Character is when the story would completely change if someone else were used. In a character-driven plot, the plot is generally rather simple and it’s the characters who make it believable and awesome. Jane Austen and Mark Twain do character-driven plots. Huckleberry Finn is about a boy who runs away from home with a slave. Everything that happens throughout comes because of the way Huck and Jim respond to the events thrown at them, and the story is more about Huck's progression as a character than anything else (okay, you could also say that it's about modes of governing or about economic systems, but we're looking at this from a story perspective, not a message perspective).

Plot is when it doesn’t matter who is doing it, it’s all about the action. So yes, nearly every action movie is plot-driven. Books like The Odyssey belong here; anyone could have taken Odysseus's place and the story would not have changed much. He was a catalyst for the action.

Conflict is when the story is all about how people have differing desires. Take Peter Pan for an example here: Any kids could have been hijacked over to Neverland, and it really doesn’t matter what they do while they’re there. The story is about Wendy’s indecision over whether to grow up or remain a child. So it’s all driven by an inner conflict, and that’s the point of the story.

Concept is what my stories are, as far as I’ve written up to now. The Descartes Project was a story about a concept: What does a person need to have in order to still be alive and still be human? A lot of science fiction is concept-driven. What would happen if someone could be invisible, for instance (H.G. Wells says he’d become a terror to society, but would eventually be found and killed). If a story circles around one core "What if?", then it is probably concept-driven.

Figuring out the core of a story is a good place to start when told to analyze it because you’re stripping away all the other parts of the story and just looking at its essence. Every story will involve all the categories (if it’s a good one), but they tend to emphasize or find their core in just one. In my humble opinion, anyway.

A lot of contemporary literature (not "genre fiction") does not have a core at all, but I don’t happen to like it. They just seem directionless and pointless to me (but a professor of mine would say a story does not need direction or a purpose, which is the argument I believe contemporary authors use, from my experience with them).

The Final Gambit of Sisyphus

Yes, this is an original poem. Enjoy (at least, I hope you do).

I

It’s getting smaller.

I realized this a century ago or so,

when the stone fell into the great fissure the first time.

I wonder it was once so big as to roll over that rip in the earth;

during my more recent climbs, I must stop

and carry my punishment each time we cross.

Its surface is smooth, its imperfections worn away.

But this makes no difference;

I push onward

and follow as it rolls down the mountain.

II

I am rid of the stone;

Aeolus took pity and cast it away.

What was once a boulder became a pebble,

then a particle of sand.

Now I stare after it,

immobile and unsure,

learning to regret my rejection of Hades.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Goldberg

I enjoy pretty poetry, I enjoy poetry that is weird, I love poetry that makes me think, and Egypt From Space by Beckian Fritz Goldberg has all three, I am happy to report. In the "pretty" category, we get lines like, "When memory dies the bird goes on, no longer a beast of burden. / It goes on in the infinite dark you can never / contemplate without growing blank and falling back into the world again." For "weird," we get "The bird that came with memory came with a man named Ed," and for lines to make me think, Goldberg offers, "After memory there is now," and other wonderful lines. Those three examples all come from a single poem, if you couldn't tell. The first poem in the book, in fact.

Why do I like this book? Its poems are pretty, unique, weird, and thought-provoking all at once, and they do so with grace and without throwing me out of the poetry. I have a feeling most poets would not be able to do that.

Something in particular that is new (for me) about this book of poetry is Goldberg's use of sequences. A sequence is a collection of poems that are thematically linked, usually. Egypt From Space is divided into four sequences of poetry, and beyond that, there are two mini sequences inside of a sequence and three sequences that transcend the four main ones. What I mean by that is that the first poem in the sequence might be in the first official sequence, the second and third may be in the second official sequence, and so on. I've never seen that done before, and it was an interesting way to lay out a book of poetry. It connected the sequences themselves, helping to create a single book of poetry. It also allowed her to bring to mind ideas and images that she had already used earlier, giving us a canon to work with within the book itself, storing up memories she could play on later.

I've talked about thisness before on this blog, and Goldberg's poetry definitely has it. The details make the poems seem more real, and there are some solid, concrete details in here. To randomly open to a page and grab some (because they are that plentiful): "The pig, you see, was a terrible voyeur of fragrance and / he thought he smelled a truffle in there," "The hotel pool in Mexico / clogged with purple bougainvillea petals drifting from the / patio," and "So American I can almost feel GIs riding home on the bus of my tongue" (those were all from different poems this time).

So no, I would not suggest this book of poems if any of those quotes made you flinch or gag. If, however, they were a delight to your mind or your mouth as you maybe read them aloud, I would suggest the book. It is one of my favorites from the books of poetry I have had the chance to read. I can't say that it changed my life, and none of these poems made me want to print it out and stick it on my wall--I guess they didn't resonate, though they did entertain and delight--but I can say that reading this book was definitely not a chore. And if it was a chore, it was the type of chore that you enjoy doing for the sheer pleasure of the experience. For me, that's weeding. I know, it's weird, but I like how dirt smells and how plants look and grow. What can I say? Somebody's got to like it.

For those wondering about Goldberg's credentials: She teaches in the MFA program at Arizona State University and is the author of several books of poetry. I first stumbled upon her poetry while reading through Best American Poetry 2013.

National Undergraduate Literature Conference - Again!

I had the marvelous opportunity to present another short story at the National Undergraduate Literature Conference this year. The story I took was The Descartes Project, a science fiction story that stars a man who has no skin or bones and who lives in a government-funded tank system. (Note that following this link takes you to a snippet of the story that is not exactly the same as what I submitted. I've done some editing since then.)

But on to how the conference went so you can get an idea of just what this conference is. It's held at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah every year, and undergraduate students from across the U.S. submit their literary work, which includes essays and poetry as well as short stories, in hopes of being invited to present it.

Ron Carlson

It opens with a banquet. This year, Ron Carlson (a respected author) was the featured speaker during the banquet, and he was a brilliant speaker, one of those presenters where you don’t realize it’s actually been an hour when he’s done. I thought he was ending early. He talked about … geez, it was brilliant and I’m having a hard time remembering it. I think the delivery, more than the content, was what was great. The content boiled down to not quitting for the day when you first want to (while writing). “The writer is the person who stays in the room.” That’s what he says in his book Ron Carlson Writes a Story, too.

Bret Anthony Johnston

Lisa Lenard-Cook

The conference started in earnest the next morning. It is set up in sessions, and each session is filled with various options as to which student presenters to listen to, with 2-4 student presenters per room you could go to. That day ended with an Open Mic poetry event, where people performed original (mostly) poems. I mean, they could perform poems written by other people, but I don’t think anyone did. I hadn't brought my poetry with me to perform, because the group of students I was with kind of stumbled onto the location on accident while exploring the area. The majority of these poems were performed in spoken-word format, though they were usually read instead of performed from memory. The main thing I came away with was that none of the poets were actually saying anything with their poems. They would say things that were completely acceptable, popular things for people to be saying, and everyone would cheer for them once it was over. I would have enjoyed seeing someone get up there and say something more controversial, less popular, and to have seen what the audience did in response. That may be the Opinion editor in me, but it's weird for someone to pretend they're speaking up against the man when they really aren't saying anything he hasn't heard before from a million other people. It just goes to show that most people either don't have original opinions or else are too scared to actually voice what they really think without some sort of validation before, during, and after.

An example of deus ex machina

Two interesting things from that first day, from essays I listened to: Someone wrote something about deus ex machina, which is when the hero is saved by a miraculous turn of events. The student was making the argument that it’s out of style because we live in an atheistic society (her claim, not mine), and people should abandon it because it just isn't realistic. My problem: She didn't once give support for her claim that we live in an atheistic society or for her claim that people hate it when deus ex machina happens in literature. I wanted to call her out on it, but couldn't do so in good conscience. I feel like people used to use it more because everyone gets into trouble we wish we could be saved from, from which we cannot save ourselves. It’s a recognition of the role of God (one of His roles, anyway) in our lives. Usually, though, God works in less out-of-the-blue ways, so the random saving does seem less realistic to us, modernly.

The other interesting thing was the essay someone wrote about fanfiction. She said that fanfiction usually reads at a higher reading level, which I hadn't known before. I don’t read fanfiction; it's never appealed to me.

There were three speakers at the conference, total, and Ron Carlson and the second guy, Bret Anthony Johnston, were both incredible speakers. The third speaker was Lisa Lenard-Cook, and she wasn't as good, but still alright. Nothing groundbreaking from any of them; at least, nothing I hadn't heard before. Everyone has a different writing process, so I'm not even going to pass on what they said about that. For instance, Johnston said the purpose of a first draft is simply to get to a second draft. There is some truth to that, but I don't think the first draft is useless beyond that, which he seemed to imply.

Then again, they are all published authors and I'm not, so I have no solid authority in this situation. So I'll stop talking about it now.

There wasn't enough time for me to read all of my short story (a sad side effect of only having 15 minutes to present an entire short story), but I made do. The great thing was that since I went last year, I knew this was a possibility and so I didn't submit Mortal Angel, which I prefer, because that was a story I was not willing to cut down like that for the sake of a time limit. (This link takes you to a snippet of the story; note that the story has changed a bit, like with the first link, since then.)

I was pleased that during the question and answer session following my presentation (and the presentations of those presenting in the same session), someone asked about the philosophy behind the story, so I was able to talk about how it’s a story about what it means to be human and it’s asking the reader whether or not they think Descartes is actually human, even though he’s just organs and such in a tank. It means the audience was giving me the benefit of the doubt when it came to my intelligence level, which I always appreciate. They didn't approach it as "just a story," in any case.

That is how the conference went, in summary and biased toward my opinions and subjective experience. It was a great experience for someone who is working to become a published author. I came away feeling enriched.

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.