AlissaNielsen

• Rated 3 stars

““Downpour Raked the Asphalt and Gurgled in the Ruts” : The Harsh Prose of Jesus' Son
review by Alissa Nielsen

Jesus' Son
Denis Johnson
Harper Perennial, 1993

Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son shows the harsh world of a struggling addict through startling prose, contrast and narrative distance. These eleven short stories are all told by the same nameless narrator, a man who drifts from one bad situation to another, passively reacting to car crashes, abortions, overdoses and murders. The distance of the narrator coupled with ferocious prose and deranged wit make these violent stories complex and realistic.
In the first story, “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” Johnson uses contrast, describing horrible events through lyrical prose. “Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead...What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined and eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere”(11). This paragraph is not only well crafted (poetic and symbolic) but really defines the protagonist/narrator. Instead of focusing in on the brutality of death, Johnson hones in on the survivor through the eyes of a passive, messed-up stranger. This distance engages readers in a unique way -- it allows them to have their own feelings about the situation and shows the desensitization that the narrator has due to alcoholism and drug addition.
Johnson evokes the emotion and thoughts of an addict through setting, “I looked down the length of the Vine. It was a long, narrow place, like a train car that wasn't going anywhere. The people all seemed to have escaped from someplace – I saw plastic hospital name bracelets on several wrists”(36), through character description, “His eyeballs look like he bought them in a joke shop. It doesn't occur to me, as I pity this extraterrestrial, that in my life I've taken as much as he has”(77) and inner dialogue, “They ran a few syringesful into me, and I felt like I'd turned from a light, Styrofoam thing, into a person” (129). It is clear, from the above quotes, that the narrator doesn't feel alive in his sober life. Johnson shows this brilliantly by using, as Ellen Bass would say, “metaphors outside the garden,” or metaphors that have less to do with being alive and more to do with the deadness the narrator feels when he's not using.
The narrative distance is very close at times (reflective, lonely, pained) while other times, during very severe situations, the narrator is distance and apathetic. In the story “Emergency” the narrator nonchalantly watches people dying in the ER, sees a man come in with a knife in his eye, and all he can think about is pills, “I stood around looking at charts and chewing up more of Georgie's pills. Some of them tasted the way urine smells, some of them burned, some of them tasted like chalk” (75). The narrator uses distance, passive language when talking about rape and murder, then intimate and active prosaic feelings after surviving these events. Through this the reader sees this is a character whose only validation in life is through the highs and lows of survival.
When writing about really messed-up situations there is always a tendency for a writer to go too far. Too much description can cause the reader to feel victim to the incident, thus they stop reading. Other times an author might try to sentimentalize, trivialize or moralize the situation, which again, causes the reader to feel awkward and put down the book. I think there needs to be a balance, there should be enough description to feel real, but enough distance to allow the reader to develop their emotions on their own. In Jesus' Son, Johnson succeeds in providing this delicate balance.”

AlissaNielsen wrote this review Tuesday, October 9 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Dybek, Minimalist Fiction and Turkeys
review by Alissa Nielsen

The Coast of Chicago
Stuart Dybek
Picador, 1981

“I never give any of them names. We don't know an animal's name.
A name's what we use instead of smelling.”
-from Strays by Stuart Dybek

My Mom never let me say the name of the turkey we'd caught. Every time I acted as if I might say its name aloud she'd cover my mouth and say, “Hush”. Later, in High School, I wrote down this quote from Sartre, “To speak is to act, and everything we name loses its innocence becoming part of the world we live in.”
I think most people would agree that all really good stories aren't read, they're felt. Special attention needs to be given to making the story real, but the most powerful point in a story must not be written or the story dies. Like naming a turkey on Thanksgiving day, if a writer gives name to the underlining purpose of the story it becomes part of our too-real world. It loses its magic.
The reason I adore Stuart Dybek's short stories (particularly his short, short stories) is because he has such a keen understanding of tone, lyricism and wit. But most importantly, he knows how to hint really well, framing the empty space enough to give the reader a faint understanding of something deeper.
In the story “Farwell,” the protagonist is reminiscing about his old friend, Babo. The tone of this story starts out somber, “Tonight, a steady drizzle, streetlights smoldering in fog like funnels of light collecting rain”(3). Though the story is mostly about Babo, it tells more about the narrator than his friend. The narrator is someone who is excited by new people, is sad when his friend leaves and wonders if he himself will ever manage to leave the city. He is drawn to Babo because Babo is different. “He'd lived in England, Canada and said he never knew where else was next, but that sooner or later staying in one place reminded him that where he belonged no longer existed”(6). But despite their differences, they both connect because of loneliness, which is the underlying emotion of this piece, though it's never stated. The emptiness and sadness of the main character comes out in the last paragraph, “I reached the building where I lived, the hallways quiet, supper smoke still ringing the light bulbs. In the dark, my room with its windows raised smelled of wet screens and tangerines”(6). The smoke at the end echoes the fog at the beginning in a sad, ghostly way, a reminder of the rut this character is stuck in.
In the two page story “Outtakes” an usher in a movie theater is teaching himself to become invisible. Again a tone is set immediately, along with spare word and poetic language.“The usher scans the credits for his name. His profession is a hush.” The trouble is stated in the second paragraph where the usher daydreams (or perhaps plots?) out how he will burn down a building so his story can become legend. Where the usher in this story becomes invisible, so too are the words about his loneliness invisible, but still very present. This story almost seems like a commentary to minimalist fiction, especially in the last lines, “but like outtakes remained part of the movie” (73).
Dybek cuts out all unnecessary information in his short fiction down to a sliver of detail that implies emotion. In the story “Lost,” where the protagonist reminisces about an old radio show where kids called in with their lost object or pets, the reader infers that the narrator is missing something very important. It's not quite understood what is missing, but the emotion is felt strongly at the end where the character admits recalling, “if it would work to phone in and report something I'd always wanted as missing. For it seemed to me then that something one always wanted, but never had, was his all the same, and wasn't it lost?” (166).
The shorter the story the more each word counts. Each word becomes a repressed or compressed emotion resounding just below the surface. As Amy Hempel says, “A lot of times what's not reported in your work is more important than what actually appears on the page. Frequently the emotional focus of the story is some underlying event that may not be described or even referred to in the story.””

AlissaNielsen wrote this review Tuesday, October 9 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Magic Eye : The Slow Reveal in The Inhabited World
review by Alissa Nielsen

The Inhabited World
David Long
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006

David Long's novel The Inhabited World is the revealing of a life after the protagonist has pulled the trigger. Evan Molloy has been dead for ten years and is slowly beginning to understand his life through observing Maureen, a woman who recently moved into his home. Long's carefully crafted prose is testament of the old Hemingway quote, “If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.”
I have to be honest, Long is so good at this slow reveal of character it's hard for me to grasp how he does it. Similar to staring at a magic eye painting, Long's words slowly, unnoticeably, mysteriously reveal a picture. Clearly he knows what to show the reader and when and how, but it's so subtle and seemingly natural I really have to look hard to see how the guy does it.
For such morose themes as death, regret, loss of love and suicide Long's writing is not sad. Evan is not simply depressed or simply in love, he has a very real and, again, his subtle complexity resonates in every word. Even though Evan suffers, Long never sentimentalizes or romanticizes his suffering.
Long avoids sentimentality by using words that contrast Evan's state, “But he'd offered Claudia nothing grander than her own hurt to hold onto, no vision of their future, no reconstructed vow so ablaze with confidence. She couldn't turn her back on it. Absent that, he let her be dazzled by the wrong done to her, let her believe that being intractable was the only virtue in the world” (162). These contrasting words help add dimension and perspective to Evan's state while showing that people don't exist in a dualistic world of sad or happy, good or bad, life or death. Long does this brilliantly. Long truly shows the beauty during these difficult times, “Their words have no carry in this room – they circle like moths, gray on gray” (140), “Coils and coils of talk looping back on themselves like razor wire” (156). Long continually plays just outside of the blessing and the curse, “If not the avenging angel, Evan thinks, let him be the angel of mercy. One touch, one breath like spring water. But as Rilke said, Every angel is terrifying. Even the angel of sudden beauty. Even the angel who releases you from torment” (253).
Throughout most of the book the reader only knows Evan's thoughts and memories. It is rare, until the end, that Evan is given voice. Just as Evan had no voice toward the end of his life, so too is he stuck in his mind throughout afterlife. But then Evan begins to speak to Maureen. The fact she cannot hear him doesn't matter, the point is Evan has finally found his voice. Evan says to Maureen, “I remember a woman on the radio saying it was as if something had entered her room when she was only months old and pressed itself onto her like a coating of lead, and after that nothing delighted her, no song of her mothers, no bright toy. She'd already been stolen, she was already working for the enemy” (268). Then Evan says to Maureen, “I never had that irresistible hunger for oblivion, not the way some people do. Mine was a surmountable despair. I just didn't. Surmount it”(268).
Just as the character Evan discovers that in life “certain events didn't grow fuzzier over time – if anything, they got sharper as the clutter around them fell away” (68-69), Long shows through his writing how sharp language can be.

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AlissaNielsen wrote this review Tuesday, October 9 2007. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 4 stars

“Reach the Quixote
by Alissa Nielsen

Labyrinths
Jorge Luis Borges
New Directions Publishing, 1964

Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet be a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious.
-Jorge Luis Borges from “Partial Magic in the Quixote”

Jorge Luis Borges took a particular interest in time, infinity, mirrors, labyrinths, reality, philosophy, and identity. He was a writer who explored, within the confines of story, those whom he was influenced by (Dante, Cervantes, Kafka, Wells, Kipling, Schopenhauer) while simultaneously understanding that he too influenced readers. Borges writes about story within a story -- he turns the story inside out, examines from above and below, probing the real and surreal. What is so compelling, to me anyway, about Borges' writing is his relentless passion to put order to things, especially with the understanding of identity through character.

In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” Borges protagonist Menard wants to write Don Quixote, not by copying, but by becoming Cervantes. “The first method he conceived was relatively simple. Know Spanish well, recover the Catholic faith, fight against the Moors or the Turk. Forget the history of Europe between the years 1602 and 1918, be Miguel de Cervantes” (40). Like in Don Quixote where the protagonist Alonso Quixano has read so many stories of chivalry that he descends into fantasy and becomes convinced he is a knight, so too does Menard (and Borges)embark on a new world of imaging himself as Cervantes.

In Borges essay “Partial Magic in the Quixote” he states, “Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality; Cervantes takes pleasure in confusing the objective and the subjective, the world of the reader and the world of the book” (194). In the story “The Circular Ruins” Borges plays with the objective and subjective worlds in a creepy Kafkaesque way. The protagonist's goal in this story is to dream a man into reality. Borges is very particular with description of his character, “He was a silent boy, sallow, sometimes obstinate, with sharp features which reproduced those of the dreamer” (47). Every night, when Borges' character goes to sleep, he dreams of body parts. “On the fourteenth night he touched the pulmonary artery with his finger and then the whole heart, inside out. The examination satisfied him”(48). In the end Borges' character does in fact create the boy from his dream into reality. But the terror soon sets in, “he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another” (50).

In the essay, “Borges and I” he explores his identity as author, as person and as character, though it is unclear which is the narrator. “The other one, the one called Borges is the one things happen to...I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature and this literature justifies me...Little by little I am giving everything over to him...I do not know which of us has written this page” (146-147). Borges tries to put order to his existence (as a human, as a writer, as a character) while also trying to create order to those who came before him and those who will come after him. “Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conceptions of the past, as it will modify the future” (201).

In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” Menard continually uses the phrase “reach the Quixote.” But what does it mean to “Reach the Quixote”? I'm going to be bold here and try to actually answer this. First a writer must be driven passionately by influence (reading and then copying, plagiarizing, what have you), second she must genuinely become “character”(not like Menard or Alonso Quixano, who simply copy, but like how Borges' character of “The Circular Ruins”dreams his boy into reality) and third she must understand that “what is good belongs to no one, but rather to the language and the tradition”(246).
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AlissaNielsen wrote this review Thursday, September 6 2007. ( reply | view 1 replies | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“A Bug’s Room: Setting in Kafka’s Metamorphosis
review by Alissa Nielsen

The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
Schocken Books Inc., 1946

It’s been over twelve years since I last read The Metamorphosis. Now, I sit at my desk in a large closet of my Portland apartment with hot tea steaming next to a laptop reading Kafka once again, this time looking more at the form of writing than the content. And while re-reading the same book, analyzing words, paragraphs, translations, theme, the annoying irony strikes me – I have changed so much since my last reading of this work. The thing about change is that often times what is most difficult is how the ones we love are affected by it. The real metamorphosis of the book isn’t Gregor turning into a bug, but the change Gregor witnesses in his family. The realization that his family does not accept him and does not love him.
What I noticed this time around was how well Kafka manipulates setting to represent the depression and isolation Gregor experiences. Immediately Kafka sets a mood with setting within the first page: “Gregor’s eyes turned next to the window, and the overcast sky–one could hear rain drops beating on the window gutter”(1). Despite the weather being gloomy the window is significant because it represents life outside the room: “In such moments he [Gregor] focused his eyes as sharply as possible on the window, but, unfortunately, the prospect of the morning fog, which muffled even the other side of the narrow street, brought him little encouragement and comfort” (17). Later, when Gregor’s eyesight starts to fail, not being able to view the outside world foreshadows the worst, “and if he had not known that he lived in Charlotte Street, a quiet street but still a city street, he might have believed that his window gave on a desert waste where gray sky and gray land blended indistinguishably into each other”(63).
Slowly, the setting changes as Gregor slips into his isolation. “The electric lights in the street cast a pale sheen here and there on the ceiling and the upper surfaces of the furniture, but down below, where he lay, it was dark” (45). Kafka sets up how the furniture itself becomes an extension of Gregor’s identity, “But the lofty, empty room in which he had to lie flat on the floor filled him with an apprehension he could not account for, since it had been his very own room for the past five years–and with a half-unconscious action, not without a slight feeling of shame, he scuttled under the sofa, where he felt comfortable...”(49). But soon even the furniture is taken from Gregor when his sister and mother decide to move everything out including his couch, bed and writing desk, leaving Gregor without comfort or a place to hide.
Towards the end the cleanliness of the room changes as the maid and family refuse to go into Gregor’s room, “Streaks of dirt stretched along the walls, here and there lay balls of dust and filth” (95). And even when Gregor is at his wits end he has to “push his way through a junk heap” to be able to lie on his back. Just before Gregor dies there is light from the window again, “The first broadening of light in the world outside the window entered his consciousness once more. Then his head sank to the floor of its own accord and from his nostrils came the last faint flicker of his breath” (119).
Finally, after the family finds out they are rid of Gregor the mood and setting changes drastically. “The tram, in which they were the only passengers, was filled with warm sunshine” (127). Gregor is gone and now his family can live their sunny happy lives. The striking contrast that Kafka uses with setting here truly makes Gregor’s fate tragic.
Nancy Huddleston Packer says, “It’s the job of a writer to create a world that entices you in and shows you what’s at stake there.” In The Metamorphosis the setting is Gregor’s room and Kafka certainly succeeds in showing Gregor’s depression and isolation through symbolic setting. ”

AlissaNielsen wrote this review Wednesday, August 22 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Lyricism: The Fine Line between Singing and Screaming
by Alissa Nielsen

Ellis Island and Other Stories
by Mark Helprin
Dell Publishing Company, 1976

It is always very interesting when I read an author whose attributes are the same as his flaws. I think this happens when writers are too aware of their strengths and rely a bit too much on them as a crutch. This is the case in Mark Helprin’s short story collection Ellis Island and Other Stories. I like Helprin’s stories fine, but what makes them really resonate for me is his use of language. There are so many beautiful sentences that I just devour in this book. But there are times where Helprin goes a little too far with the “poetry” and it makes my guts clench.
When done right, Helprin’s sentences are not only lyrical but accentuate the story and character. In the story “The Schreuderspritze” the protagonist has decided to drop out of his comfortable, happy life and dedicate himself to climbing a dangerous mountain. The importance of this journey, which Helprin does a excellent job leading the reading through, is: when everything that matters is stripped away, what can one physically endure? Many of the lyrical lines in this story enforce this underlining theme. For example, “If the storm continued, he would die. It would whittle him into a brittle wire, and then he would snap”(29) and “The zippers on his parka, the harness, the slings and equipment, all gave off musical tones, so that it was as if he were in a place with hundreds of tormented spirits” (29). Both of these sentences have a certain lyricism to them that describes what the character is feeling and what is going on, each reinforcing the theme of isolation and endurance.
The story “Ellis Island” is full of examples of overly-lyrical, too-poetic lines. The story is written from a first person POV of an arrogant writer, so I assume many of these phrases are intentional, but it really didn’t work for me. I think writing from an arrogant character POV can work well for certain stories, Catcher in The Rye, for example, but it has to be done pretty obviously and with the right tone. If Helprin is going for this, which I’m not sure he is, I don’t think it’s being done successfully.
The setting of the story is turn-of-the century New York and the protagonist arrives at Ellis Island along with other Jewish immigrants. When he is inspected, an agent labels him as an anarchist and he is sent off with other undesirables to be deported. He is saved from his situation by a red-haired Scandinavian beauty (p.s. all women are “beauties” in this book). “An endless file of immigrants moved slowly on the stairs, but then, as the line progressed, I saw the flash of warm color – the long and beautiful red-blond hair of a young woman in a group of Norwegian immigrants. There was something so steady about her bravery in ascension that everyone who saw her took courage...This was an angel to follow, and follow we did”(133). There are times, like the above quote (which is even cut a bit in the middle), where if Helprin stopped it would be fine, but he just keeps going and suddenly these singing lines become obnoxious screams. “Snow batted down against the ship’s windows and white dragons leapt into the air as breakers struck the bow. When lightning bombarded the waves through the driving snow, its fractured light illuminated the shadowed snowflakes and made them seem like endless numbers of angels propelled and directed in a dreamlike war”(129). Some of the worst kind of telling is “poetic” telling, somehow it feels even more insulting to the reader.
Aside from some sentences/metaphors feeling a little off in this book, I mostly enjoyed Helprin’s use of language. I also think he has a great grasp on leading a reader through a story and introducing time and place in a subtle way. It was interesting to dissect the sentences that I loved and the sentences I loathed in this book, I feel like I learned a good deal from both. ”

AlissaNielsen wrote this review Wednesday, August 15 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“First Impressions: Ron Carlson’s Story Openings
by Alissa Nielsen

The News of the World
Ron Carlson
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1987


“A solid opening must ask something of the reader, must get the reader involved somehow, must give the reader something to do.” William Gillard writes in an article titled “Well-Begun is Half-Done” in The Writer’s Chronicle (Vol 40, #1). “Whether it is through mystery, vague yet potent language or images, or simply by placing the reader in a strange and compelling new setting, the reader should be asked to play a large part in the creation of the story right form the beginning.” I believe this all to be true, the trick, I think, is to write an opening that is compelling, but not obviously a hook. Ron Carlson’s collection of short stories The News of The World has many compelling openings along with others that, to this reader, feel a little too much like a hook.
The News of the World is divided into three sections: the first being stories about common folk, the second being outrageously told minimalist stories about common folk and the third section being something that lies in between. Personally, I liked the last two sections of this book best because those stories seemed to encapsulate more of the heart of what Carlson was going for in the first part, but not really reaching.
So lets just start with the first story “The Governor’s Ball,” which is a story about the everyday hassles of life, and you know that from the first sentence: “I didn’t know until I had the ten-ton wet carpet on top of the hideous load of junk and I was soaked with the dank rust water that the Governor’s Ball was that night”(15). Immediately there is a problem, as well as tone, voice and scene. As readers we want to know, what’s he going to do now? We want to follow this sad sack and see what happens. And in this story, the voice follows through until the end where the guy loses his mattress on the side of the road and doesn’t even come close to making it to the ball. Funny thing is, we knew that was going to happen, from the first sentence, the reader knows enough about this guy to figure he aint making it to the ball tonight. Still, the reader lingers, the reader wonders, the reader cares – what will happen? This was my favorite story in the first section.
My least favorite story in this section was “The H Street Sledding Record” where the first line seemed too much like a hook: “The last think I do every Christmas Eve is go out in the yard and throw horse manure on the roof” (25). The story continues, mostly exposition, memory with very little scene, which makes the story feel far too happy-nostalgic. At the end Carlson swells, “Now the snow spirals around us softly...The conditions, as you know by now, are perfect”(35). It wasn’t the first line of the story, though it did seem like a hook because of the too-convenient contrast between Christmas and well, shit, but the follow-through, the end voice feeling so different from the beginning.
In minimalist fiction each line has to be outstanding, especially the first couple sentences. Here Carlson succeeds in stories like “Bigfoot Stole My Wife” and “Madame Zelena Finally Comes Clean” where each start with strong, compelling sentences and continues throughout the story. I really enjoyed the first couple lines in “Phenomena”– “First of all, I’m not one of these people who ever wanted to see a UFO, an unidentified flying object. I have never wanted to see and unidentified anything. The things in my life, I identify, that’s good with me” (116). The story is all about identity. The protagonist, a sheriff, tries to identify criminals, his wife, his son and of course, himself. Identified/unidentified plays throughout this piece ending with the same voice, “My son is Derec. We’re going to Palo Alto, California. We’re going to fly out there” (132).
In the third section the story “Milk” starts with immediate tension – “They almost fingerprint the children before I can stop them. Phyllis is making a rare personal appearance in my office to help me with a motorcycle claim, and I want to squeeze every minute out of her, and I’m taking no calls” (150). There is so much information in this first sentence: voice, tension, insurance office, wife, kids and ... fingerprints? Huh? Immediately the reader needs to know, why fingerprints, what’s going on? Again this first sentence succeeds because the voice and conflict stated carries on throughout the piece.
Ultimately a great opening is necessary, but the voice must follow throughout the story for it to succeed. Carlson’s strong first paragraphs certainly help flavor his stories about the mundane lives of men moving carpets and women who like to read into a much richer understanding of the complexities of everyday life – but the most successful of these stories are the ones where the voice from the first paragraph resonates throughout the piece.”

AlissaNielsen wrote this review Monday, August 6 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Characterization in Fantasy [br/]by Alissa Nielsen[br/][br/]Coraline [br/]Neil Gaiman with illustrations by Dave McKean [br/]Harper Collins, 2002[br/][br/] In Brian Moore’s book The Magician’s Wife the magician says, “Fear mixed with awe and reverence for the unknown, for something we don’t understand. That’s at the heart of all magic.” I think this is an apt quote when talking about characterization within the context of fantasy and horror. An author, much like a magician, must show a reader enough to peak her interest, but not too much as to spoil the magic. I think tension within literature is at its best when the author isn’t afraid of mystery and uses only enough description which is meaningful to the story. In a story like Neil Gaiman’s young adult novel Coraline, there is just enough description of character and setting to get the reader interested, but not too much as to distract or limit the readers own imagination. [br/] Gaiman does an excellent job of unveiling creepy characters. After Coraline unlocks a secret door, she discovers another house just like her own and stumbles upon two people who claim to be Coraline’s other father and other mother. “She looked just like Coraline’s mother. Only...her skin was white as paper. Only she was taller and thinner. Only her fingers were too long, and they never stopped moving, and her dark red fingernails were curved and sharp” (28). As readers we are given just enough information about what the other mother looks like, but Gaiman doesn’t emplane any back story about who the other mother is or how she got there. This is part of the mystery, part of the suspense. The other mother character is complex because, though she says she loves Coraline, she also wants to imprison her. We know that the other mother is scarey, but her motivations aren’t completely clear to us or the protagonist and this creates suspense. [br/] Another interesting aspect of characterization in this story is the emphasis on names. In the beginning Coraline is frustrated with the characters Miss Spink and Miss Forcible for confusing her name with “Caroline.” Later in the story Coraline meets three children who, stolen by the other mother, are missing their souls. “‘Who are you?’ whispered Coraline. ‘Names, names, names.’ said another voice, all faraway and lost. ‘The names are the first things to go, after the breath had gone, and the beating of the heart’”(83). In this story, name is identity and without a soul you have no identity, you have no life, hence characters named the other mother, the other father. [br/] Coraline soon learns that the other world was created by the other mother and Gaiman does a good job in describing this strange new place through Coraline’s eyes. “Outside, the world had become a formless, swirling mist with no shapes or shadows behind it, while the house itself seemed to have twisted and stretched. It seemed to Coraline that it was crouching, and staring down at her, as if it were not really a house but only the idea of a house – and the person who had had the idea, she was certain, was not a good person” (105). Again, Gaiman peppers the story with enough to let us get the idea, while still allowing for mystery. [br/] In addition to text, Coraline has some nice illustrations by Dave McKean at the beginning of chapters. Although the drawings are well done, I felt as if they took away from the creepiness of the story, adding too much visually and not enough was left up to the imagination. I don’t think it helped to have these illustrations at the beginning of the chapter, before the scene actually happens. This took away a lot of the suspense.[br/] The only issue I had with Gaiman’s characters is that I think he relies on his creepy descriptions too much at times and the other characters (Coraline, Mother and Father) get over-looked. I understood Coraline’s motivations well enough but didn’t get a good sense of the mother and father we are told she loves so much. However, overall I think Gaiman balances his character description nicely within the context of this story. ”

AlissaNielsen wrote this review Monday, November 19 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 1 stars

“Faceless: Lack of Character Development in Blackbird House
By Alissa Nielsen

Blackbird House
Alice Hoffman
Random House, 2004

Blackbird House is a series of stories about the various characters who have lived in the same house on the outer reaches of Cape Cod from late 18th century to modern day. Written from different character’s points of view, each chapter reads more like a short story then a longer-length narrative. Although I enjoyed the creepy tone of the stories and the structure, I really struggled with this book because of the lack of character development as well as the overly-obvious imagery/symbolism.
The first chapter is written from an omniscient point of view and the distance made it feel more like a summery than a story. The description in the first chapter, and throughout the book, felt sparse and tacked-on, barely giving the reader enough of an idea of place and character. Consistently, Hoffman tells the reader what to think of the characters: “John Hadley felt a deep love for his wife, Coral, more so than anyone might guess” (3), “George felt closer to Lion than he did to any of his natural children” (103), “Violet West was not one to keep her opinions to herself, especially when it came to her grandson” (115). Instead of taking time to develop these characters for the reader to see, Hoffman prefers just to tell the reader.
I was very unimpressed by Hoffman’s character description: “Corel was a good woman, and John was a handsome man, tall with dark hair and darker eyes...(6)”, “My Father had a beautiful face, with strong features” (153), “Dean was an odd kid, and as he got older, he grew odder still” (174). I felt a very distant, surficial understanding of each character by the end of a chapter and, though many times the story itself was compelling, it all fell flat because the characters and their motivations were underdeveloped.
The setting seemed underdeveloped as well, especially for stories all centered around place. Occasionally there was mention of radishes, pears, salty-air and waves, but the landscape lacked personality and there was surprisingly little description about the house itself...the physical linking element to all the characters.
Maybe it was because many of these stories lacked personality that the use of symbolism stuck out as far too obvious and convenient. The one reoccurring image of the white blackbird, which appears in all of the stories at the “pay attention reader!” times really underestimated the readers intelligence. Birds as symbolic of creation and death is already overused, but Hoffman has to go so far as tell us what the symbol means, “Everyone knows a white blackbird is nothing more than a ghost, a shadow of what it ought to be” (154). Other overused metaphors such as the color red and fish are done at exhausting length in this book.
This book was recommended to me because it is a creepy fairy-tale like story that takes place near the ocean. It is possible that Hoffman is going for the vagueness used in many fairytales and ghost stories as a means of creating more universal story, or possibly as a way of building suspense and tension. For this reader, it didn’t work however. I don’t want to read a universal story, I want to read about individuals. In Blackbird House the characters really lacked the visceral and sensual qualities of being human and, to me, if the characters feel false, then the entire story feels false. ”

AlissaNielsen wrote this review Monday, August 6 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Keeping the Lid On : Tension in Charles Baxter’s short stories
Review by Alissa Nielsen

A Relative Stranger
Charles Baxter
W.W. Norton & Company, 1990

Jerome Stern says, “If you want to build pressure, don’t take the lid off the pot.” Meaning, when the unspoken or hidden subject remains unspoken, tension builds. In Charles Baxter’s collection of short stories, A Relative Stranger, tension arises within characters when a unique problem is presented.
In the first story, “Fenstad’s Mother” there is a scene that defines the “unique problems” many of Baxter’s characters face. Harry Fenstad, a conservative college teacher whose only solace is ice skating, struggles with his elderly liberal-minded mother. After listening to his mother berate him, Fenstad decides, on a whim, to bring his mother to class. In class Fenstad asks if anyone can give him an example of a unique problem and when no one can, his mother speaks up. “ ‘That’s because problems aren’t personal...They’re collective...And people must work together on their solutions’”(10). Here Fenstad’s mother is speaking to the class, but as readers we know she is also speaking about many collective problems: with her son, with the world, her son’s relationship with his ex-wife, her son’s relationship with the new woman, her son’s relationship with the world. In this story the tension lies in both characters inability to understand where the other is coming from.
In the story “Westland” the tension builds around the theme of violence. While working at the zoo, Warren meets Jaynee, a teenage girl who is threatening to shoot a lion. Warren takes Jaynee home to her father, Earl. Earl, entertained by Warren’s British accent, befriends Warren and gives him the gun Jaynee had found in the house. Warren’s semi-depressed life changes after he gets the gun, “I felt better than I should have because the gun was on the floor... I was a fiery angel of patience” (31). Here the tension builds because we realize that there is something inside Warren, something’s wrong, but we’re not told what. Warren becomes increasingly disturbed by world violence and the damage done to the land in Southern Michigan, “This goes beyond being tamed. The land has been beaten up”(34). Warren decides to drive to the nuclear reactor facility with his gun. “I fired four times at that building, once for me, once for Ann, and once for each of my two boys” (35).
Afterwards, Warren feels dangerously ecstatic, “I felt I had done something in the spirit of Westland. I sang, feeling very good and oddly patriotic. On the way back I found myself behind a car with a green bumpersticker. CAUTION: THIS VEHICLE EXPLODES UPON IMPACT! That’s me, I said to myself. I am that vehicle” (36).
This scene is strong because Baxter has effectively shown the transformation of a friendly, docile man into someone whose feelings of powerlessness with his job, his country, his family and friends escalates into rage, anger and finally hopelessness. In the end Warren is in a crowd of people. “I remember my mother’s first sentence to me when I arrived in New York harbor when I was ten years old, she said, ‘Warren, look at all those Americans.’ I felt then that if I looked at that crowd for too long, something inside my body would explode, not metaphorically but literally: it would blow a hole through my skin, through my chest cavity. I don’t know how I managed to get out of that place, but on the fourth try, I succeeded” (41).
Baxter has a good grasp on tension within dialogue, but even in a piece such “Silent Movie,” a five page story consisting of only one line of dialogue, he pulls off an enormous amount of tension: “She was tired of men’s voices, of their volume and implacability. She would try to spend the day inside images, instead ”(113). “The talk was supposed to be about the problem, but the talk was the problem”(114). “Only a man, she thought would invent the X-ray...to see not only in but through the body, past the flesh” (116). “Leaving a man, calmly and peacefully, looks like this. It looks like soap and fingernail clippers and emery boards and tampons one bottle of perfume placed in a yellow plastic kit” (118).
The only way an author can write tension effectively is by writing realistic characters. In writing tension the goal is to intimately understand the characters struggle, then discreetly hide certain aspects in favor of the story. Baxter’s succeeds in crafting realistically trouble people who have something boiling just below the surface. ”

AlissaNielsen wrote this review Tuesday, July 10 2007. ( reply | permalink )