Copycat

There is something comforting about enveloping yourself in someone else's style.  People do it all the time with fashion, identifying with a certain group, sports, mimicking a touchdown dance or batting stance mannerisms, and it is really no different in writing.  When you imitate the style of someone else, it is relieving because your writing is less personal.  It isn't really your voice that is on the paper, at least it isn't if you did a good job.  Sure some of you will shine through, but the majority of your work is to make people forget that they aren't reading the author you're imitating.  Pastiches are a relatively new genre for me as a writer, I only discovered them last year in Coming of Age, but in the few that I've written, I've grown rather fond of them.  There is no doubt that they are challenging, some voices are more difficult than others, but they are a perfect mix of creative freedoms in the direction of the essay, while still providing structure of how to write it.  One of the hardest things authors say when you are just beginning to write, is finding your voice.  With a pastiche, that is taken care of, and all you are left to do is internalize the voice and produce a great story.

Looking back at both my  first pastiche, of J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, and the blog post I wrote on it, I realize that not a whole lot has changed in my approach to pastiches.  I often do write a paragraph or so and then delete it, just to get "warmed up" in the voice.  I would say it's nearly impossible to come into a pastiche cold and instantly get the voice and tone right.  Sure there are sentence examples you can use, certain words or phrases that evoke images of a character to include, but it's all the things not on the page that you have to really grasp.  Good books are more than just words on a page, and that has to be the goal in a pastiche of a good book, to get beyond the physical words and get to the next level.

This next level is the elusive part of writing pastiches that is also so enticing.  Sometimes you identify with a character and their voice just comes.  I felt that way about Holden I think, once I realized how to really write a pastiche.  With other voices, it hasn't been so easy.  I wrote a pastiche of Julia Taylor, a character most of you have probably never heard of (she's from Black Swan Green, a book I highly recommend).  She is an 18 year old girl in 1983, and British.  I was none of those things.  Trying to rebuild her voice was a more step by step process.  I had to first capture the British voice, then the female voice, and finally a dated one.  Thirty four pages later I had some parts where I think I really captured her voice, but in between I fear there were points where I only captured pieces of it.

The same can be said for my pastiches from this year, I believe I had flashes of brilliance in the pastiche, but stretches that many readers would find slightly off.  Of course my goal has always been, and will always be, to write perfect pastiches.  I would never create a dialogue with the intention of ruining narrative flow, but sometimes as the author, the tone in my head doesn't match with the tone on the page.  As a kind of added challenge to myself this year, and also to make a good study of the differences of authors' voices, I've decided that through all my pastiches I'm going to write "chapters" of the same story.  The final pastiche I do this year will end my story, and then I will put them all together and read them sequentially, in all the different voices.  It will be curious to see how much is consistent throughout them all, that would be my voice, and at that far removed point how much I associate each chapter with the influencing author.  This distance I will gain from my work will be important in the maturation of my writing, because I hope it will allow me to find my voice, ironically enough by reading my best imitations of other, more famous, voices.  I suppose ideally I won't find my voice through this exercise at all, though I do suspect my plan will work, but only time will tell.

The Best Fisherman

Brett is one of those characters, at least for me, that are so frustrating to look at because your opinion of them is so complicated.  I suppose most of the characters in The Sun Also Rises are like that (with the exception maybe of Mike).  Brett is first introduced to us very physically, "She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht" (30).  Throughout a lot of the scenes with Brett she is depicted very sexually, especially by Mike calling her things like "a lovely piece" (85).  She also lusts quite strongly, and more importantly openly, towards Romero.  Brett is about as promiscuous as they come, and in a sense I don't have a problem with it, but it's the men she chooses that I don't like as much.  She tells Jake that she didn't think Cohn would be like what he turns into-- that is, a mopey guy doggedly following Brett around-- but at least from our perspective filtered through Jake's, it seems pretty obvious that he would be so clingy.  With her fling with Romero, she seems surprised that Romero wants her to look more feminine and wants to actually marry her.  Though, as has been brought up multiple times in class, the man is the epitome of tradition in his dedication to the art of his craft, so it makes sense that he would want a traditional relationship.

It seems to me that Brett is looking for special notches in her belt.  It isn't satisfying for her just to say she's been with some number of guys, but that she's broken their hearts.  Notice how the only guy she doesn't pursue is Bill, probably the one guy who could have a casual relationship.  He wouldn't fall in love with her, so he really isn't interesting to Brett.  She is trying to play the masculine role in all her relationships.  Look at how Jake mocks Cohn for him being dominated by his two previous women, essentially that he isn't being masculine enough.  Men are expected to control relationships, so part of Brett's identity, as well as looking masculine (though maybe androgynous is a better descriptor) is to also "be the man" in the relationship.  It's not that I don't approve of Brett because she is upsetting traditional relationship roles, it is that she goes to the extreme end of the spectrum, hurting a lot of men in the process.

The one relationship that I don't really feel Brett does anything wrong with is her one with Jake.  They talk about how his injury keep them apart, but it is the only thing that brought them together.  They met in a hospital in London, so if he hadn't been injured specifically in that way they never would have even met. While maybe Brett takes Jake's devotion to her for granted, she clearly cares for him.  She's more emotionally vulnerable with him than any other character, and with the little we learn about her past, that is really hard for her.  I can't expect her to be with Jake and remain celibate, if their fortunes were reversed I don't see Jake giving up sex to be with Brett.

The first time we met Brett I described her as intoxicating, unknowingly ironic as she drives so many men to drink, but that description of her still fits even to the last page.  Maybe some of this is part of her subconscious character, maybe some of it is an act she puts on.  No matter what the split is, even knowing her behavior as well as we do, I still want to meet her, not to yell at her, certainly not with a blank slate, but she is still intoxicating to me, even living on the page.  As I'm writing this I'm saying to myself, "You don't really like her, why do you want to meet her so badly?"  The answer is that I don't know why, like I said at the beginning my feelings towards her are complicated, I can't condone who she is but I also can't condemn her, kind of like Jake I suppose, she ties me into knots.  

In The Beginning

The Hours is a very good film.  I really was engaged by it, so much so that my mood afterwords was acutely altered for the next half an hour or so.  The most interesting thing about the film from a stylistic sense for me was by opening with Virginia Woolf's suicide.  It is much in the tradition of Greek drama, telling the audience from the outset what the ending will be.  Yet it is such a dark mood for the film to take from the first seconds, here is the author of Mrs. Dalloway which gives birth to the "main" setting in New York, ending her life before the title placard has even come up.  It's not as if audiences would enter the film expecting to see a happy film, but such a beginning seems an odd choice all the same.  It shocks the viewer before they have even settled in their seat, so why did Stephen Daldry choose to do it this way?

I think the answer lies in the three heroines themselves.  The three of them know what is going on with themselves, and yet others don't accept that they know themselves.  This is most clearly shown with Virginia and Leonard at the train station.  It's clear that Leonard cares for his wife, and honestly wants the best for her, but he is convinced that the doctors know best, that Virginia is forgetting the bad times she went through.  Clarissa Vaughan finds herself to be the only one who can understand Richard, and also the only one who has a vision for the party and its guests.  Sally seems doubtful of everything coming together, and she clearly seems to resent Clarissa's near obsession with Richard.  Louis seems to make light of Clarissa's breakdown much like Leonard, again not out of a place of spite but more from taking things at face value, Clarissa said she's okay after a few minutes, so she's just okay in his mind.  Laura is confined to housewife status, clearly something she neither wants nor excels at, but everything around her is screaming that not only does she need to do it (housewife life) but that anyone can do it--the cake is very emblematic of this.

So by showing us that Virginia kills herself right away, and telling us that it isn't until 1941, viewers are stuck in the same place the heroines are.  We know what is going to happen, so when the other characters don't seem to recognize the severity of the matter it is frustrating to us.  Suicide for many viewers is probably a relatively foreign concept in that they themselves haven't seriously considered it.  This shared frustration helps viewers identity with Virginia and through her the other two main women.  And this connection is what ultimately drives the film, you don't want Clarissa's party to be spoiled, you want Laura to have a great birthday party for Dan, and probably most of all, you want to see Virginia happy.  Even though from the beginning it seems clear that nothing is really going to go well for any of them, you're still cheering for them because a piece of you deep inside probably has felt or feels like them.

Loving to Feel Hatred

Who do we want in life, friends or enemies?  Enemies inspire you to defeat them, friends support you when you need them.  Enemies are the antithesis to your life, friends are people to model.  Perhaps for those of us lucky enough to be able to motivate ourselves to action without an antagonist, an enemy isn't necessary.  For Clarissa Dalloway, it is.  "She hated her: she loved her" (170).  That her is Miss Doris Kilman, and her reasoning is simple, "Hot, hypocritical, corrupt; with all that power; Elizabeth's seducer; the woman who had crept in to steal and defile" (170).  Clearly the feeling is mutual, Miss Kilman certainly is no fan of Clarissa, which is unsurprising as they are both after the attention and affection of Elizabeth.  Maybe even more so is to leave an impression on Elizabeth, as they both fixate on whom Elizabeth's behavior resembles (or doesn't resemble).

It seems strange that Clarissa would ever say she loves Doris, really it seems strange for Clarissa to say she loves anyone, even Elizabeth or Richard (of course Richard can't say it at all).  But maybe that's just it, she makes Clarissa feel something—feel something in a way that her mind doesn't have to tell her how to feel, like when she straightens up as the car passes to feel more dignified, or when she feels her party isn't quite right because there isn't dancing.  This is an intense feeling, and really the only one I notice ever being described by Clarissa.  Put in this way this seems like a stark similarity to Septimus to follow from one of the panel presentations from my section today.  Septimus can't feel and he tries anything to feel, marrying Lucrezia hoping she can make him feel again.

So now comes the question: if Clarissa could, would she get rid of Doris, even though she "loves" her because she makes her feel something?  I would say the answer is no, because as Elizabeth is not independent, Clarissa really could stop Elizabeth from seeing her.  I think she chooses to allow her to stay, so as they can continue to have this war over Elizabeth.  To some extent I buy that the fear that if ever forced to choose, Elizabeth would pick Doris over Clarissa, does play a role in allowing Doris to stay.  Still though, I believe that Clarissa will do anything to keep the one feeling she has, even if it is hatred.

What Time is it?

Mrs. Dalloway takes place on one day in June 1923.  It is a character-centric novel, not a plot based one, so that short time frame works perfectly well.  Yet surprisingly, there is a common focus on time.  Often times Woolf stops her characters in the middle of thoughts to give us the time.  It is only on the second page that we first hear mention of Big Ben, by far the loudest clock Clarissa would hear in Westminster.  She says, "One feels even in the midst of traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense...before Big Ben strikes" (4).  It is a consciously understood that people pause when they feel the time has reached a significant milestone.  Clarissa doesn't elaborate on this behavior, indeed characters don't seem to pause before the impending "leaden circles" dissolve in the future, but I find it interesting that so early on, in fact in the same sentence we learn where Clarissa lives, time (a very important part of plot based stories) is mentioned.

For Woolf, it makes more sense structurally to keep bringing up time.  It gives readers a sense of proportion (one Sir William would no doubt approve of) as to how long different thoughts or conversations take place.  Peter and Clarissa's conversation is almost exactly thirty minutes, Clarissa questions who would interrupt her at eleven in the morning (39) while Peter steps onto the street from Clarissa house as the leaden circles dissolve after the half hour chimes (47).  It also allows her to swap between character's points of view very quickly, all while maintaining a linear line of movement in the story.  After we see Septimus and Lucrezia leave Sir William's office and read of Lucrezia's dislike of the man, it is the chiming of clocks that switches us to Hugh and Richard (100).  It is a quick and easy way to create a more traditional element to her story without compromising her intentions to make this about the people.

Then of course there is the idea of physical passing of time.  A lot of the characters think back to a different point in time in their life.  Clarissa and Peter (and Richard to some degree) think incessantly of what once was at Bourton.  Septimus and Lucrezia think back to their time in Italy, for Lucrezia the Septimus she fell in love with then, and for Septimus Evans and his ability to feel.  Time is something they all wish they can control, and can have more of, but of course time is constantly moving at a consistent rate.  I have no doubt time will continue to play a role in the remainder of the novel, especially at the party when the characters will probably spent most of the time reminiscing, though in general I still find it interesting that it has a large place in the novel at all.   

The Name Game

Howie fixates on a lot of little details.  That's what makes Howie Howie.  From the modernist design of staplers to the inefficiencies of air dryers in bathrooms, no object or task is too small for lengthy discourse. Yet there is something seemingly large and important that is almost completely ignored by our observant protagonist of The Mezzanine: the names of people.  It would seem appropriate to discuss names in The Mezzanine, after all, a few letters are often all that represent us on the written page, people judge us for what our name is and how we spell it.  Names have deep roots in culture, reflecting a family history as well as contemporary culture.  It's no coincidence that generations will often have a lot of...Johns or Alices or Stephens...names are shown to go in trends, the more people hear about a name becoming popular the more they use it or a variant.  So why is it that Howie doesn't discuss names, and goes so far as to almost completely ignore them?

Let's take the case of his own name.  Howie, the diminutive form of Howard, is a pretty average name, at least in my own head it doesn't evoke any strong images, if anything the only thing that stands out is how unremarkable it is, neither common nor rare, not specifically from any given culture or time period.  Perhaps Howie doesn't mention his name because it is just that--his name, since it's his story he doesn't need to remind himself of his main character.  I normally don't think of myself in the third person, and if this were a stream of consciousness style book I would have no quibble with only seeing his name once (in the bathroom of all places).  Looking at a different example of a book with a similarly styled first person narration from a somewhat removed version of the narrator who is authoring the story, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield manages to slip his name into the narrative often.  Granted, Holden is more specifically writing to the reader, though Howie clearly talks to us through his footnotes (something Salinger chose never to deploy). Think about how many times in conversation (either in real time or revisiting in your memory) someone says your name.  Maybe not as much as "you" but my bet is that it comes up every now and then, enough that if you were to write to the detail that Howie did, it would probably be included many times.  This would lend to the idea that Howie is intentionally editing out his name in his depiction of his lunch hour.

The other person's name that stands out to me would be L.  In class people brought up that we never really get a description of L., what she looks like, who she is, what she does, we see only fleeting glimpses of her in relation to one of Howie's observatory stories.  Forgive me for going to a different novel for comparison, but I immediately saw the connection to E.C. of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  In that, she is the romantic interest of the protagonist Stephen Dedalus.  E.C. who the reader later finds out is named Emma, has minimal contact with Stephen, with little more actually taking place between the two of them than glances during different scenes.  Emma is one of the key pieces that Stephen fails at during his maturation that ultimately drives him from his native shores of Ireland to seek a new country to achieve his potential.  We don't quite see the same thing from Howie and L., they seem to be in a long term relationship.  Though she is a seemingly large part of his life, perhaps Howie's reluctance to name L. derives from her importance in his mind that ultimately does not fully fit with her place in reality.

So now I will finally attempt an answer to my question initially posed above.  I suggest that it is in response to Aurelius that Howie chooses to ignore names.  "Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spices and ashes."  If we do not live meaningful lives as Aurelius argues, then what in death are we remembered by if not our actions and mannerisms?  Our names.  For millenia humans have carved the names of the dead onto rocks so that if nothing else, that singular description will survive.  Is there any way Howie could have refuted Aurelius more, then by focusing on all the trivialness of mortal life, while ignoring the one thing of relative permanence?    

Here Lies

Here lies the end of my coming of age, and the beginning of my journey in the 20th century.