The end of the English Patient, and I cannot stop shaking. So beautiful an ending...
....People fall in love with her. She still remembers the lines of poems the Englishman read out loud to her from his commonplace book. She is a woman I don't know well enough to hold in my wing, if writers have wings, to harbour for the rest of my life.
And so Hanna moves and her face turns and in a regret she lowers her hair. Her shoulder touches the edge of a cup and a glass dislodges. Kirpal's left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkled at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles.
--The English Patient, p302
So the book ends. This way. Each grows old apart, in two worlds.
Implosion of time and space: This is one of the most beautiful thing that Ondaatje does time and again. He takes bold leaps across place and time. The first time I read this passage, I had to read it again... because it was confusing. But then one realizes that he has compressed distance, not time, in this last passage. A glass falls in Canada, and a fork is picked up in India. Wow. I really can't find the words to discuss this any more other than the fact that it is an act of genius to compress distance like this.
There has been many other occasions when Ondaatje compresses time. but this time, this is rare, this compressing of distance. The time is unified. It is simultanoues, it is the distance that is imploded. Two characters, two places, two incidents, linked only by the will of the writer, and this compression carried through by the weight of the entire book that came before it.
I can't talk anymore. Whatever else I say is futile. It is too beautiful to dissect. I just wish I can write like that too.
Labels: Writing Lessons on BART
By: Nippy | Thursday, October 28, 2010 at 2:16 PM | | 
She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.
She returned to her husband.
From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.
--The English Patient
Quotation marks: The Absence or presence of quotation marks. Quotation marks give emphasis. There is an immediacy and a very strong sense of hearing it immediately. Right there and then. The lack of it gives a feeling of distance, mutedness, like volume turned down.
The difference between the two sentences below is that of a sense of distance and volume.
I wish you had called me back, she said, I would have gone with you.
"I wish you had called me back", she said, "I would have gone with you."
It is amazing what a difference something as small as a quotation mark would make to a passage. The lovely passage I quoted, once again from The English Patient, The last sentence Ondaatje chose not to use quotation marks:
From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.
Labels: Writing Lessons on BART
By: Nippy | Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 10:29 AM | |
I've been dying to write this all day. Finally found the time.
Flashbacks: A writer can do amazing things with time. Even more amazing then what a director can do with movies on screen. And all of this simply depends on something as simple as grammar. That is why if I ever have children in the future, I will teach them to love grammar. I wish I had learnt this earlier, that they are not just rules, they are tools. They are things a writer can use as part of his storytelling arsenal. Study, for example, the passage below from The English Patient.
A few months later he had escaped to Italy, had packed the shadows of his teacher into a knapsack, the way he had seen the green-clothed boy at the Hippodrome do it on his first leave during Christmas. Lord Suffolk and Miss Morden had offered to take him to an English play. He had selected Peter Pan, and they, wordless, acquiesced and went with him to a screaming child-full show. There were such shadows of memory with him when he lay in his tent with Hana in the small hill town in Italy.
--The English Patient, pg 197
Astonishing. In this short paragraph, that is actually only made up of three sentences, Ondaatje takes us "a few months later" the 'he had escaped" tells us that we are still in a flashback even though we are told a few months later Kip went to Italy. Then in the same sentence, we get a flashback within a flashback, to the green-clothed boy he once saw at Christmas. from there we go into the play. And the last sentence brings us back to the present as he lay in his tent with Hana at the Italian villa.
In three sentences, we have travelled so much in time and so seamlessly. That is the amazing thing with sentences and grammar. You can't do a time shift in a single scene in a movie, but this can be accomplished in a sentence.
What's even more amazing, is that writing allows the writer to move into the future, something that would not make sense in a movie. But which I will talk about some other time, because I'm tired.
Technique: The Key is to have a strong anchor in time first. The anchor in time is the Tent with Hana in the Italian villa. ONdaatje often returns to that throughout his novel. That is the base from which past memories and future fates springs. It is the temporal space he has chosen to set his story. And he needs to return to it.
But grammar tells us everything else. "Had seen" "had offered" "had selected" tells me how far into the past we are launching into as readers.
Ondaatje doesn't strictly follow grammatic rules. Notice the last sentence. "There were such shadows of memory with him as he lay in his tent..." "were" is used with "lay" in the same sentence.
This is my own theory, but I think it creates a sense of something before both in the past and happening in front of our eyes. A strange mix of something that has already happened but captured in an old video perhaps?
By: Nippy | Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 2:56 PM | |
Sigh. Even though I always long for a poetic, imaginative and romantic lover, I'm beginning to think that what I truly need is someone literal, factual, and simply indestructible (like Lee). How can I describe it? I have the hands and the temper of a child. Lee is like tupperware--practical, unbreakable. I guess this is not a very flattering description of him. But he is simply immune to my destructive tempers. Maybe I should resign myself to this fact. I dream of the delicate; I fantasize about it too much, but only someone as stoic, as unmovable like Lee can tolerate me. Sometimes it annoys me. I wish Lee wasn't such a block of stone. I just can't budge him, I rave and scream, but he just stands still until I get tired and nestle in the face of rock in exhaustion.
By: Nippy | Monday, October 18, 2010 at 1:47 PM | |
It is so much easier to read and dissect, than to write and build.
I am thoroughly frustrated with my own writing.
By: Nippy | Friday, October 15, 2010 at 2:17 PM | |
Today I only got through one short section, but I learnt...
Revealing character: There is nothing more effective in revealing characters than through what other people say about them. Take the following section from The English Patient, for example. This short section tells more about these characters than pages and pages of descriptions. There is nothing quite powerful as nicknames, and what people say about the other characters. Best if it is revealed casually.
"Who was your teacher?"
"An Englishman in Woolrich. He was considered eccentric."
"The best kind of teacher. That must have been Lord Suffolk. Did you meet Miss Morden?"
"Yes."
...."What was he like, Kip?"
"He worked in Scientific Research. He was head of an experimental unit. Miss Morden, his secretary, was always with him, and his chauffeur, Mr Fred Harts. Miss Morden would take notes, which he dictated as he worked on a bomb, while Mr Harts helped with the instruments. He was a brilliant man. They were called the Holy Trinity. They were blown up, all three of them, in 1941. At Erith."
The English Patient, pg 177-178
I am so impressed by the amount of information packed into this short little dialogue. We know not only who these people are, but we know their relationship. We know what people thought of them. "The Holy Trinity" is just pure genius.
Technique: The last sentence of the above passage is especially powerful. Punctuation is the key. Notice the pacing and pause.
They were blown up, all three of them, in 1941. At Erith. The punctuation tells me how this sentence ws said and where the emphasis is. The "At Erith." is especially poignant. An almost unimportant detail, less important than being blown up, but emphasized so it tells me the state of the character's emotion as he says it.
Labels: Writing Lessons on BART
By: Nippy | at 12:36 AM | |
All good writers leave tips on writing. They discuss the act through their works and sometimes directly in the stories.
Point of View:
"Glued into the book--giving himself only the voice of the watcher, the listener, the 'he'." --The English Patient p 172
The third person voice creates distance and places the reader in the position of the listener. Ondaatje experiments with this movement with reader's distance. Occasionally putting us in the first person voice, occasionally throwing us off with the third. I found one section slightly jarring. It is a matter of personal taste, but I am not one for challenging my readers with such movements. The hand of the writer is too obvious. Perhaps this comes from Ondaatje's background as a poet? the effect, I feel, is akin to watching an experimental film. One can be in awe of technique, or one can be in awe of story. I don't think both can be achieved. I think of all the great experimental writers, story is not a strong hold in their works--it is the beauty of their language, their structure or other such technical things. From here, I would like to suggest that perhaps, there is a slight bias in the literary world. Experiment also seems to receive higher merit than story.
Technique: Framing shifting sections. Even with the constantly moving time and places and nararative points of views, there is still a solid frame to ground that movement. Before launching into this experimental shifting spot in the novel. Ondaatje has also set up a solid frame of the villa and the solid characters to surround the faceless English patient whose memory we would dip into. And he reminds us where we are constantly. So perhaps, we can say, that the more shifts, the greater the experiment, the more solid framing we need?
Labels: Writing Lessons on BART
By: Nippy | Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 4:44 AM | |
Found this on Wikipedia on the last passage of Joyce's
Ulysses, Molly Bloom's soliloquy:
"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "
I haven't read it yet. I'm not kidding, I'm really afraid of reading it. I am intimidated by a book. Seriously.
By: Nippy | Tuesday, October 12, 2010 at 2:05 PM | |
Today I learnt...
Suspense: Is a diversion of a dramatic sequence of events. A dramatic event is split up. In The English Patient, the sapper is defusing a bomb, then the camera switches to a different scene: Hana brings a mirror to her patient. This is something that movies have already learnt. There is always a missing segment. It heightens the suspense, because readers do not know what happens, although they anticipate that something would happen. So a good writer makes a reader wait, distract them with a trick, then bringing their attention back to the drama, the stakes already raised. So they do not see the drama unfold, but rather is thrown right into it. So then, the art of suspense is to divert, and return in the moment right before the hieght of drama.
Technique: The long sentence, linked by commas, pushes the sentence along, heightening suspense,pulsing with one's quickening hearbeat, leaving a feeling of breathless excitement, a feeling of catching up to a run away action. A short setence creates emphasis. If used in conjuction, it can heighten suspense on a sentence level, making your readers' eyes do catch up in a long sentence, followed by a sudden break, like an exclamation point, or a crash upon a rock by the waves.
Labels: Writing Lessons on BART
By: Nippy | Saturday, October 09, 2010 at 1:15 AM | |
What I thought about today, reading The English Patient
Narrative: There are limitations to the first person narrative that I am using. It is exceptionally hard to show the character from a different angle. Say from another character's eyes. It is like switching the camera. The effect is quite wonderful, but it takes more delving into the other characters. It is amazing how well Ondaatje knows everyone of his characters. So it is a payoff. The first person narrative, what it allows though is commentary. What seems really cheesy in third person narrative and would read like rhetoric is acceptable in the first person narrative. I guess what I mean to say is that the first person is allowed to make judgments and commentaries about his world view. This becomes very strange in a thrid person narrative. Even the best writers, have trouble I believe stating a character's worldview in third person, because it is at these moments, that the reader is so aware of being spoken to by a writer. Those valuable thoughts, perceptions,and observations about the world clearly come from the writer, and for a moment, the reader feels that he is being talked to. Or worse, talked down to.
Technique: Technically, I also notice the pause. There is also a pause at the end of a section, that feels close to how one would feel at the end of an excellent short story. A sense of completion, a coming to an end of sorts. But in a novel, every section gives this kind of a punctuation. Not logically but emotionally. The event occuring may be broken into two sections and is logically the same section, but emotionally, the breaking off into a new section is like a kind of emotional turn.
It is this kind of turning that is sustained and threaded throughout a good novel.
The art then, is not just learning how to tell a good story, but also learning how and when to pause.
Labels: Writing Lessons on BART
By: Nippy | Friday, October 08, 2010 at 4:49 AM | |
Haven't been writing. Inspiration--dry.
Reading THe English Patient again.
I will never be able to write like that
am convinced, there must be visions. I wait for those moments. I tear up because those words can only come from visions
I wait for those moments that thread a book together.
In awe of floating tenses
now past, now present, now future
By: Nippy | Wednesday, October 06, 2010 at 3:21 PM | |
I made Lee upset last night.
I met up with my Japanese friend and we went to a really nice little Mexican restaurant. After dinner, we were both bored and didn't want to go home. We walked to the cinema to check out the movie selection but nothing interested us. So we wandered around, looking for some place with live music where we can get a drink. We stumbled on a blues bar, where they were playing live blues and went in.
The music already started and the place was packed, so my friend and I settled down on the high stools at the bar. My friend got herself red wine and I choose something sweet with little alcohol content, being such a lightweight. We sat there watching the band. Perhaps, it was the darkness, the blue, red, yellow, pink stage lights and the mirrors. Perhaps, it was the drink I had, Or perhaps it was the sensual music, I don't know. But for some reason, I just didn't feel quite grounded in reality.
It was a small jazz bar, the really intimate kind where you can see those on stage clearly just as they can see you. I was looking at the middle age bassist. He was not handsome, not exactly, but very very attractive, in the way mature and experienced men were. He was wearing a light blue shirt, unbuttoned in a causal way. And he was sweating, the entire band was, I could see in the colored lights.
My friend and I were just chilling at the bar, enjoying the music. Until intermission, the band members stopped playing and went for a break. The bassist came over to the bar and sat down next to me. I thought he was cute and smiled at him, which was very wrong in hindsight, because bars are not places where you can smile innocently at someone. A smile becomes an invitation to who knows what? Anyway, he got his beer and left.
A couple of times I actually looked around for the guy. One time our eyes met, and then I knew that whatever I did, and will do from that point on, would not really be that innocent, and something could possibly happen and that possibility was very exciting.
He came back to the bar after talking to his friend. He was old, not some young guy. He was already thinning on the top, but it was very easy to tell that he had been very handsome when he was young, and part of that quiet charm was still there. And he was silent, (always a killling point for me, I can't help being attracted to the quiet guy), and in the midst of his loudmouth jazz members, that was so I can't-even-explain-now.
He sat next to me, smiled at me, and made a passing comment about something irrelevant. I smiled back at him. I felt right then, that if he invited me to anything, I would accept. The sheer weight of possibility was such an exciting and dangerous thing.
But I left before the end. I must still have some sense in me left.
The thing though, was that I was not drunk. I was not.
It has happened before, my desire for adventure and this falling away of the old and the rising of possiblities and my pushing for something I myself wasn't sure I wanted. Was it the setting? Is it something in me that is dark, and hiding during the day? I just thought, how easy, how easy it is for something to happen. All it takes is a couple of glances, and not-so-inocent smiles in a dark place with live music and drinks.
I'm not pretty. Glasses, geeky hairstyle, sitting in the back. I said nothing. All I did was smile, and was open. But I would have been willing--which is very wrong and very dangerous, and which now I am very painfully aware of. I want bad things sometimes. I have a dark destructive part in me that every so often rears its ugly head, and reminds me that it is still there.
And you don't need to be pretty, you just need to be willing and foolish.
I told Lee later, because I was shaken. This was not something that would happen to me, not imaginable. My point is not that the guy was necessarily interested in me ( I don't really care about that), but that I was willing to go somewhere, and do something dangerous. If I was asked, I most probably would have said yes.
I don't believe that I am attractive. I am not the kind of girl that can have guys falling at their feet, but I am the kind of girls who might say yes to the worst of things if the circumstances are right. I just thank heavens that those circumstances are rare, and I still have some sense in me.
I told Lee, which was, of course, another big mistake. He freaked out. And reasonably so, if he told me he was at a bar and would have followed some girl home if asked, I would too. He said he need to be wary of me, and questioned if I am really to be trusted.
I still feel that the answer is yes, afterall, I went home, didn't I? Nothing happened.
But, I also found out about myself. That it is not hard to turn into that girl who followed some stranger home. And it was not the first time I had wanted to. But I never did.
So what am I really? The good girl who went home? Or am I the girl who wanted an invitation and would have said yes? It is not so hard to turn from one into another. And I'm not moralizing, or judging, but it is easy. Oh it's so easy.
By: Nippy | Saturday, October 02, 2010 at 3:05 AM | |
