10,588. RUDIMENTS, pt. 241

RUDIMENTS, pt. 241

Making Cars

Flat land. Land with hills

and rises. My seminary friend

Kirk used to belittle coming

'east' to Blackwood, from

Camp Hill, PA (Harrisburg),

because of how flat it was,

the big descend all the way

out. I never saw it from his

perspective. Everything was

east with me, and that was

really all I'd ever seen. It was

a difficult imagining for me.

More conceptualizing than

actually experiencing. And

then I found that to be the

case with writing too. You

can draw a flat character all

you want. It'll go nowhere.

Analogy, metaphor, comparison,

whatever you'd like to call it,

building a character can be

put on any level. I read

somewhere that what the

matter was, with the novel,

(this was British novels)

[Ford Madox Ford writing

on Joseph Conrad] was it

'went straightforward, whereas

in your gradual making

acquaintance with your

fellows you never go

straightforward.' You have

a character who seems beefy

and full of health, honest,

clear and happy  -  and then,

after some digging, you find

out he's a convicted thief, a

cheat, and a bigamist too. 'To

get such a man in fiction you

could not begin at his beginning

and work his life  -  [that would

be the 'flats']  -  chronologically

to the end. You must first get

him in with a strong impression,

and then work backwards and

forwards over his past,' [the hills].

-

Try walking headlong into that

stuff sometime. At age 13, surely,

it's enough to throw you off course.

The analysis itself isn't what

counts : it's the subtlety of the

analysis that matters. So instead

of all that careful building, after

a while I found myself skipping

words and things, grouping and

encapsulating ideas and impressions

with words that  -  instead of a

prose  -  could poetically leap over

each other, bump into each other,

and veer off wherever they chose.

To me it was a much livelier, far

less linear, means of writing, and

to better effect as well. Prose

writing people are often stuck.

They have to reflect and abide by

the real world : that butter dish

had better contain butter (unless

maybe it's a mystery and that's

where the tiny dagger goes), and

that butter had better fit the time

and mood of the character using

it  -  or will will stand out like

a bad oleo instead of butter. And,

in order to do all that, the writer

must follow suit, of the prevailing

assumptions within society  -  the

butter has a dish, it gets spread

nicely and smoothly with a butter

knife, which also has its place.

Sequential attainment of the scene

within that scene would need to

have each little object playing

its preordained, and carefully

noted, role. And the varied

characters' reactions to it

all, Only the murderer would,

later, on page 281, appearing on

page 70, be described spreading

that butter on his toast with a

flathead screwdriver. But even

as a foreshadowing that would

be a bit too much. I found that

the idea of 'Poetry' (never really

liking that term at all) disallows

all that  -  that butter can do

whatever it damn-well pleases,

as can the knife and the guy

holding it. All you as 'writer'

must do is play with the words

and think. That was the crux:

THINK!

-

In the middle of all that, too, is

always the question of 'what's

next?' I've sure gone through

a lot of that in my life. I think

I've always been one of those

operating blindly. Some people

I've met have been full of purpose,

full of familial outlook, staying

within the fine tradition of their

father or uncle, mother or aunt;

whether artist, lawyer, scholar,

whatever. That's what you did.

It never held any purpose for me,

since I'd started from nothing and

was on my end-up way to that too.

What some call waste, I called Life.

Going somewhere, while always

doing something else. All those

seminary guys, they all had purpose,

though in a family sense it would

mean a dead-end. Nonetheless, it

seemed that the sacrifice was

accepted. I only found out later

that the rich guys, the ones with

fathers in Government  -  we had

any number of boys with fancy-ass

Trenton government services types,

for fathers, Commissioner of this

or that, Auditor, Director of Public

Utilities, and more, that they were

only in it for the quality 'private

school education' aspect, and of

course their families sticking the

son away somewhere  -  to stay

off the streets and all that bad

influence. Sorry to say, a lot of

that 'religion' stuff was feigned

interest. It wasn't, at first, for me,

but as I explained, soon enough it

had all gone away. I feigned

nothing, soon enough. That

too was difficult to face.

-

Looking back now, and reading

books, such as, say, Joyce's 'Portrait

Of the Artist As a Young Man,' I

see there's a lot of all things in the

beginning portion of that book.

It rings true  -  the sleeping rooms,

the cold sheets, the meek, weak

kid, the sports guys, the play,

the roughhousing, and all those

weird, sincere, obligatorily one

way pious priests and brothers. A
lot of it just becomes too precious,
and I dislike 'preciousness.'  It has a
way of distorting everything around
it, making other things look wrong.
Besides which, it's usually pretty
stilted. I'd rather, by contrast,
go for the groin, with a quick kick
or a darting jab. See what mess that
makes and then pick up the pieces
and write around the mess. People
will remember that better, far more
than some simpering fool going on
about a blanket or mother's kisses.

'Portrait' still can almost give me the

creeps. Sometimes I sit around
re-reading it, just to see what it feels
like. Sometimes better. Other times,
not so. In James Joyce's Dublin,

using the city as the school locus, a

good lot of it is displaced by the

descriptive places and occurrences,

and all that Irish nationalism and

heroes stuff. Man oh man, we had

none of that except maybe for

St. Jude, Patron Saint of

Hopeless Cases. Supposedly.