Picture books and intertextualiy

It's been on my mind for a while about the role of images in (modern) literature. No, not children's books with illustrations, but books like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, You Shall Know Our Velocity, and Breakfast of Champions (the former two being better examples than the third). These are adult books who use images just like they would imagery- only they're eliminating the middle-man, so to speak, and cutting right to the visual side of the brain. No misinterpretations can be made there. This method has a really interesting affect on the way a reader perceives the meaning of the text. Not only does it provide them with the actual images, making it easier for the author to convey what they're talking about, but it creates a whole new sort of sub-text by combining two mediums of expression.
Now, the reason I had the word "modern" captured between two parenthesis at the top there is because this is a fairly recent development. This is not a method seen prior to the late 20th century (at least). In fact, I'm sure the authors of before would have scorned this use of "pictures" in serious works of fiction as "juvenile" or "amateur", maybe even going as far as saying it was "uncreative". In reading and analyzing Atonement in class- I became aware of another new(-ish) development which fits alongside image-usage into this interesting category of sub-text and understanding: intertextuality. Intertextuality is a really interesting concept- it subtly implies (underlines, injects into) so much more meaning to a character, or even the whole work itself, just through the mention of a name or title. It's a way of threading together two pieces of literature to create a new significance- an acknowledgement of a connection between different people, characters, and events. It's very reminiscent of Borges' belief that all works are based on a single plot "which runs through every imaginable permutation". (after re-reading Ficciones I realized that he provided an explanation in his Prologue for the nature of his stories. He said- straight out- "To go on developing an idea for five hundred pages whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary." Slap of a palm to a forehead, Laura!)
This led me to question- is the establishment of new literary techniques (namely, the use of images and intertext) merely a product of time? After all of the books that have been written, all of the different ways in which events, people, characters, etc. have been described and used- is this what we've arrived at? No, I have no answers to the questions, and this is as far as I've come in developing my thoughts- but it's something I would really like to look more into.

Writing about Writing

From my experience, it seems that the more disorganized a person is, the more structure they need in order to function and get things done. This is most certainly true of me in my writing. Any time I start a piece, I must first have a clear mental flow chart of where the piece is going (that is, at least if I don’t want it to end up unfinished and abandoned, as they so often do). With particular regards to class essays and assignments, the flow chart must be even more detailed and well thought out to prevent my mind from wandering or just rambling. Once this is established however, the rest usually comes easily. I just let all of my thoughts flow out into the little boxes I have established for them and, viola, literary masterpiece.
Not really. After this first verbal spew, I go back and re-read what I have written a good fifty times. My word document trembles at the threat of my trigger-happy backspace bar. You see, I’m what’s known as a detail hound. Once I’ve established some sort of order for the essay, I begin obsessing not over what I’ve said in my essay (I’ve already determined that much) but how I’ve said it. Particular word choices and word order are constantly in question. That’s where the majority of my time is spent in writing. As a result though, I sometimes have a hard time seeing the big picture of how my essay reads (though not the big picture of the subject matter itself.) This is where I need help- I have to ask a third party to read the essay and point out for me any big pieces left unexplained.
When writing my exploratory essay for The Sound and the Fury, I found it fairly easy to follow my usual procedure, possibly even more so since I wasn’t constrained to the usual five-paragraph thesis driven regulation. My real troubles with the essay came in the revision. As I stated before, in order for me to get anything done, I have to have a more or less set plan in my mind, so when it came to revising, my immediate reaction is “Ok, I need to re-write this whole thing in order to account for the things I have either left or am taking out”. I had a hard time making the connection between what the comments on my essay meant, and the way I was going to apply them to my paper. In the case of some comments, I felt it was best to leave them out because to explain myself properly, I would have had to either go off on a complete tangent or insert a sort of disclaimer, which didn’t exactly flow with the rest of my paper. (Specifically, when I mentioned that my family was “typically Hispanic” and was asked to explain what made it uniquely Hispanic. To provide a clear understanding of the differences between the Hispanic culture and, say, the Italian culture, would have required a possibly (and most likely, knowing me) lengthy digression. I tried saying “typically (but not uniquely) Hispanic” family, but that didn’t sound right. So I just left it out altogether.) But other changes I did make in the essay led me to down a different path of thought than I had previously seen, causing me to remove and replace whole ideas within my paper. What I got out of the comments left to me was confirmation that, in getting caught up within my own thoughts and the writing process itself, I sometimes have difficulty explaining myself clearly and/or thoroughly to an outside reader. Through the process of writing an exploratory essay over the Sound and the Fury, it has made me more aware of the thought process that goes into understanding a concept or text. It has sort of forced me to be constantly aware of the development of a thesis, and refine its progression. My goal for my next piece is to shorten the gap between my understanding of the subject and the reader’s understanding of my thoughts through being more concise in my explanations, while not losing subtlety or my individual point of view. People (students, aspiring writers- I’m not sure what to deem the collective I’m referring to) have this tendency to fall into their “writer’s” voice when they narrate, using nice literary elements and good vocab. words just like they were taught. But what one has to remember is that there’s nothing wrong with using your own voice. In fact, learning using your own voice effectively and adapting it to the literary elements (rather than just pulling them out as necessary tools) is what differentiates between a good writer and a mediocre one. This is my over-all goal I would like to achieve in my future writing: to be able to express myself clearly without giving in to the typical narrative of “good” writing. The most important thing I learned while working on this essay is that there are still so many ways of expression I have to explore, and that I have a lot to improve on.

Atoning for my lack of blogs

I'll start off by saying that I think I passed an unfair judgement on McEwan when I said earlier that I thought he was more of a novelist than a writer.
As I was tinkering with one of my many, many, (many, ad nauseum) unfinished short stories for a writing portfolio, I was also toying with the idea of asking for some advice on where to go with the story, how it was sounding so far, etc. After a brief period of hesitation, I began to think about the way Briony described the sensation, the feeling of apprehension, she got as she was working on her stories. "Self exposure was inevitable the moment she described a character's weakness; the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself. What other authority could she have?" So much like Briony, I knew that no matter how much I had to struggle with my story, I would not risk that sort of self exposure. (Not, at least, until the story was finished).
The fact that I resonated so strongly to this passage led me to thinking that it wasn't really Briony's feeling I was relating to, but McEwan's. (Oh yeah...Briony isn't even real.) I realized that this was a sort of "confession", if you will, from McEwan, through use of Briony, about his own writing process. A "please don't judge me too harshly", perhaps. But that's exactly what I did. So now, this is me revoking my judgement (though keeping my suspicions...). Sorry, Mr. McEwan.

Anyway, like all realizations, this only led my mind down another path to be unsure of. Or rather, this one led me back to a path, because this is something I frequently think about while reading. (ESPECIALLY when I was reading You Shall Know Our Velocity!, which I'm sure I'll get around to talking about...) Actually, I'll just start off with YSKOV as an example.
Every time Dave Eggars (the author) introduced a new character- the French woman they swim with, Raymond, who is a man they meet in Senegal- they seemed to exist solely to deliver a message that perhaps Eggars, or his main character Will, could not deliver themselves. (Or at least to provide them an opportunity to do so) Maybe they were a real person, who really spoke those words. I don't know. But that's exactly my point. How much of this is coming from the author him/herself? Are they just breaking themselves into little pieces and then giving those pieces names, roles, characterizations? Sure, the situation the characters are in might be based on fact, but was the dialog really external, or more of an internal representation of how the author would have perceived the situation if all of it's participants really were only two-dimensional;-- figments of his own imagination? Or maybe how things should have gone? As a reader, I constantly ask myself these questions, along with many others.
But Atonement offered an even more challenging example. After completing the book, I was left not with one author's verisimilitude to question, but two! The reliability was twice removed from this story, and I'm left with two psyches to analyze. I could give Ian McEwan a hard time again and say something like "Maybe that was simply McEwan removing himself once more from the story", but that's just cruel, and I've never read anything else he's written, so I have no real basis for saying that anyway.

FINALLY, I have arrived at Briony and her narrative, which is in reality almost the entire book. It turns out all of those questions I've asked myself are really going to come in handy when analyzing the text, namely Robbie and Cecilia. (I say "turns out" as if I'm surprised) All of our knowns about Briony, the keys to figuring her out, so to speak, are given to us at the introduction and conclusion of the novel. The introduction allows us to view her personality before the event- the way her mind understood and dealt with the world around her- and the conclusion shows us, after all this time has passed, what remains important to her. The rest in between is all guesswork, but at least we have these two things to work off of.

This is an incredibly long post, and I've got to finish my second draft of S&F. Stay tuned for the (equally long-winded, I'm sure) conclusion.