An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

I doubt I have ever read a worse book than this. Let me make myself clear. This is not irony. I will not, with some intellectual pole dancing, reverse this judgement and reveal that this is, in fact, a great book. I mean An American Tragedy is a dreadful book.

A book can be bad for many reasons: paucity of ideas; clumsy characters; psychological shallowness; bad writing; lumbering self importance; unjustifiable length. An American Tragedy combines all these features in a positively indecent display of literacy ineptitude.

The story is simple enough. Clyde Griffith, a young man from an impoverished background, attempts to improve his lot by attaching himself to a wealthy branch of his family. Initially successful, his dreams of social advancement are compromised when he gets a naive young girl, from an even less socially auspicious background, pregnant. Faced with the destruction of his hopes, he murders her. He is caught and brought to justice.

That is the story in a hundred words. Dreiser stretches the tale out to almost a thousand pages. He manages this feat by practising redundancy. This is a writer who never found an idea idea so banal or obvious that he didn't think it worthy of repeating at least three times. The novel, with this repetition cut out, would be significantly reduced in size. I'm not suggesting it would be improved: there is an abundance of other flaws to be addressed. But at least the ordeal would be reduced.

So, what can the reader who ignore my warnings expect? Sludge. Dresier writes in a style that combines of plodding prose with hysterical hyperbole, outlandish metaphors, and occasional descents into complete incomprehensibility. Here's a taster, from the crucial central section, where dim Clyde schemes the murder of bland Roberta:

Indeed the center or mentating section of his brain at this time might well have been compared to a sealed and silent hall in which alone and undisturbed, and that inspite of himself, he now sat on thinking the mystic or evil and terrifying desires or advice of some darker or primordial and unregenerate nature of his own, and with out the power to drive the same forth or himself to decamp, and yet also without the courage to act upon anything.

Say what? Is it really necessary to specify that this brooding takes place in the "center or mentating section" of his brain? Why resort to the crudely anatomical "brain" at all? The whole first section could be reduced to "Clyde's mind might well have been compared ..." But no, even that's too redundant. "Might well have"? Don't shilly-shally, Theodore, might it or might it not? Assuming it might have, we now have "Clyde's mind was like a sealed and silent hall ..." But does it need to be "sealed and silent"? Let's just call it silent. In fact, let's forget the hall altogether. It's a clunky and cliched simile and, worst off all, pointless. It says, in effect, that Clyde's head was like a place where Clyde sat thinking. Now maybe I am just a Philistine, but I'm not convinced such a revelation merited such torturous phrasing, nor am I certain that this too-long novel would have been significantly weakened by excising the passage altogether.

Dreiser's genius is that he can produce sentences like that on almost every page. Here's another one:

And this, while not producing a happy reaction in her, had the unsaisfactory result of inducing in Clyde a lethargy based on more than anything else on the ever-haunting fear of inability to cope with this situation as well as the certainty of social exposure in case he did not which caused him, instead of struggling all the more desperately, to defer further immediate action.

It is worth noting that this occurs on page 423-4, and the earlier quotation on page 483. After sixty pages, Dresier is still hammering home his point with a manic obssession that betrays either contempt for his readers, or a lack of confidence in his ability to create characters. Okay, Theo, Clyde's a procrastinator. We get it.

Dreiser is no one-trick pony, however. He can do all kinds of incompetence. He specialises in sentences that wander all over the place, from stale metaphors to bland insights to pointless comment, insufficient punctuation and absolutely no point. He can also be a useless writer in very few words at all:

Clyde's hair-roots tingled anticipatorily.

Is it possible to imagine a five word sentence that combines more literary gaucheness and pretention? Not for Dreiser the common place 'in anticipation.' He must demonstrate his mastery of language with the clumsy, pretentious 'anticipatorily.' And the almost creepy precision of 'hair-roots.' What's that all about?

Dreiser also indulges his penchant for metaphors of the stalest and most trite type. Example has already been made, but, in the manner of Dreiser, I won't stop with one instance. Rarely has an author demonstrated such an enthusiasm for figurative language, with so little originality, or discernment:

But just the same, shameful as it was, here were the stark, bald headlands of fact, and at their base the thrashing, destroying waves of necessity.

There are some metaphors that really, really don't deserve to be extended. And sometimes he just stops making sense altogether:

And so he was about to repeat his customary formula in such cases that all could be told to him without fear or hesitation, whatever it might be, when a secondary thought, based on Robert's charm and vigor, as well as her own thought waves attacking his cerebral receptive centers, caused him to think again.

"Her own thought waves attacking his cerebral receptive centers"? What are we to make of this pseudo-scientific balderdash? The whole book is a sustained exercise in bathos - Dreiser's attemtpts to wring us, move us, puzzle us, inflame us, suceed only in boring us, or providing us with occasional unintended amusement.

Well, beyond the writing itself, what else have we? A story that should have been idiot-proof. The sumary I gave above may have struck some as interesting. it is. But Dreiser is such an inadequate writer that whatever intrinic tension, pathos or interest in the tale is crushed by his ponderous style and his insistence on telling us everything at least three times, in progressively more awkward sentences. The characters are hopelessly two dimensional. Clyde is bland and unlikeable, and - as he is rapidly tracked down by the forces of the law - shown to be stupid as well. We find it hard to care for him because his passion for the superficial and silly Sondra Finchley is so unconvincing. Note, not misplaced - part of Dreiser's Big Idea is that Clyde sacrifices Roberta's true love for Fickle Sonra's fancy - but unconvincing. Similarly, we don't care overly much for the feeble Roberta. It might seem mean, but rarely has a damsel been so distressed without inspiring any pity in the reader, who can only long for the chilly waters of the fatal lake to close over her.

Now, in fairness, there is one bit - just one - where An American Tragedy generates a modicum of interest. This is during Clyde's trial. The trial is a gift to Dreiser, who can't resist his urge to reiterate what we've already read, and has various witnesses tell us things we already know. But the cross examination of Clyde by the bitter, angry district attorney, Mason, does generate some power. For once Dreiser's compulsion to leave nothing out is some sort of a virtue. Reproduced virtually verbatim, the cross examination runs to thirty two pages, and it is grueling read as Clyde is slowly broken down. It lacks tension, because Dreiser is such an idiot he tells us precisely about the fatal trap Mason sets, well before it is sprung, but the relentlessness of the cross examination stands at odds with the rest of the book. Just two men, one questioning, one answering, almost word for word, without the continual flat footed authorial showing off that ruin the other 824 pages.

Dreiser is a mediocre writer who attempted to tackle a big idea in a big way and came hopelessly undone. Unwittingly, he provided his own epitaph, describing the luckless Clyde as an "inadequate Atlas," trying to endure the weight of his troubles. Dreiser is a similar figure in a similar predicament - like Clyde, he is incapable of carrying off his project successfully, and to foolish to abandon it.

NO STARS

Bloomsday

From the Independent, a likeable Twitterstunt for the 16th of June, the day when the action of Ulysess takes place:

Twitterers take on Ulysses

The decline of Western civilisation in 140 characters or less

AP

Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Forget about Ashton Kutcher. James Joyce's Ulysses, one of the most difficult novels in English, is on Twitter.

Two devotees of Ulysses have adapted its 10th chapter to Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters per post.

Called Wandering Rocks, the chapter is especially well-suited to Twitter because it follows 19 Dubliners going about their daily business.

For three years now, Ian Bogost, a Georgia Tech professor, and friend Ian McCarthy, a product manager at LinkedIn, have commemorated "Bloomsday" on Twitter on June 16.

That date in 1904 is when the entirety of Ulysses takes place, chronicling the experiences of a man named Leopold Bloom.

Bogost says using Twitter "for literary performance art might help shift perspectives on the service" and get people to use it for more than self-centered musings.

"Perhaps in so doing, we can shift people's interest in social media technologies from egomania and immediacy toward deliberation and cultural reflection," Bogost wrote in an email from Australia.

Bogost and McCarthy have dubbed their performance Twittering Rocks, a play on the chapter's title that could also mean Twittering is awesome.

They have registered 54 of the novel's key characters as Twitter users, and Bogost built a software program that tweets their first-person utterances at the correct moments in the chapter.

"The result is a complex web of timed interactions between many characters," he said, "precisely the effect Joyce was aiming for in the novel."

Tim Clare's five rules for getting published

From the longer article describing Clare's own experiences, published in The Independent:

1. Don't believe you dilute your vision by reading others' work.

2. Don't be afraid to lose faith in your original draft. To edit is not to scorn your infallible muse.

3. Don't submit your work with supporting material. Self-portraits in green crayon do not scream "I am creative".

4. Don't approach editors somewhere they could not reasonably be expecting to field submissions. Catching them off-guard will not get you a better deal.

5. The Writers' Handbook and Writers' and Artists' Yearbook are both produced by publishers. Ignore them at your peril.

10,000 words

The new project, provisionally titled 'Honeybees,' breached the 10,000 words mark. It's going fantastically well, 2,000 words a night without too much struggle. And - most strangely - I seem to be sticking to my plan, more-or-less. Though it's a bit wordier than I envisioned. But Phase 1.5 was meant to be a tense night time excursion in a town under curfew, and that's what I wrote tonight.

Film Review: Knafayim shvurot / Broken Wings

Knafayim shvurot (2002) D: Nir Bergman. Starring Orly Silbersatz Bana, Maya Maron.

This is a generic, but likeable family drama set in Israel. It describes how a woman and her children struggle to cope with the death of their husband and father. Each caught up in their own grief, they fail to recognise each other's pain until a second, jarring crisis jolts them out of their self-absorption.

The film's main strengths are its setting and its cast. It is set in Haifa in Israel, and this makes it slightly more interesting than it might have been if it were set in Anytown, USA. The use of authentic urban Israeli locations gives the film a realistic feel, and makes it simultaneously drab and exotic, which is helpful as the action and conflicts brought out in the script are fairly predictable. The script eschews any mention of the region's wider tensions, which is probably a good thing - if the lost father had been killed in a terrorist atrocity,or kidnapped by Hamas, it would have given the film a ridiculously melodramatic edge. As it is, his death is touchingly futile, underscoring the (mercifully) lightly stated message that people's true value should be appreciated when they are around.

The small cast are very good, particularly Orly Silbersatz Bana as the mother, Dafna, still reeling from the loss of her husband and so locked up in her own grief that she can't help or support her children, preferring to escape to the numbing urgency of her job as a nurse. Maya Maron is also very good, though her role, as the elder daughter who's dreams and hopes are being crushed by the weight of responsibilities suddenly dumped upon her, is a bit too pat and cliched. Maron makes you believe in her character's grief and resentment, even if her budding career as a singer is not as convincing. Some likeable, non-cutsie child actors help as well.

The film's significant weakness has already been indicated - it is very generic. Tropes established early on are revisited at the end in time honoured fashion. The tensions, while given some bite by the cast, are predictably laid out, and the combination of Maya's nascent pop career with the crisis overwhelming the family is straight out of Scrpitwriting 101. But that's all bearable. What's more annoying is the too-quirky brother, Yair, who responds to his father's death by withdrawing into childish behaviour, cod-philosophy and wearing a gigantic mouse. I suspect there is meant to be some significance intended here, but if so, I'm refusing to see it as it would spoil what was otherwise a likeable enough little film.

*

The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy

I read The Cold Six Thousand hoping to answer a question, which was whether James Ellroy was developing from the writer of breakneck but clunkily plotted pulp crime novels to something bigger. As often happens when you look to literature for answers to a question, I only got more questions. I still don't know if Ellroy is developing from something good to something great. He has developed a style of writing immediately recognisable and unintimable. He has secured himself a place in American crime writing that is unassailable. Whether he's going to move beyond that into the world of really great writing, is unclear.

My previous form: the Dudley Smith Trio (The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz). American Tabloid. And now The Cold Six Thousand. Each one of these novels follows a very similar trajectory. They start brilliantly, sweep you through first half of the novel at a breakneck pace that may even leave fainthearted souls with heightened pulse rates, before reaching a conclusion that is somehow unsatisfying and questionable. Of them all, American Tabloid is the best, in that it sustains it's berserk pace to the end and its plot lacks the sense of doubt that weakened the Dudley Smith novels.

The Cold Six Thousand is a sequel to it, literally picking up just a few staggering minutes after Tabloid left off. The opening chapters are Ellroy at his brutal, electric best. Here's a sample:

1:50 p.m.
They touched down. Wayne got off first. Wayne stamped blood back into his legs.
He walked to the terminal. Schoolgirls blocked the gate. One girl cried. One girl fucked with prayer beads.
He stepped around them. He followed baggage signs. People walked past him. They looked sucker-punched.
Red eyes. Boo-hoo. Women with Kleenex.
Wayne stopped at baggage claim. Kids whizzed by. They shot cap pistols. They laughed.
A man walked up - Joe Redneck - tall and fat. He wore a Stetson. He wore big boots. he wore a mother-of-pearl .45.
"If you're sargeant Tedrow, I'm officer Maynard D. Moore of the Dalalas Police Department."
They shook hands. Moore chewed tobacco. More wore cheap cologne. A woman walked by - boo-hoo-hoo - one big red nose.
Wayne said, "What's wrong?"
Moore smiled. "Some kook shot the President."

Ellroy's style is immediately identifiable, like a (bloody) fingerprint. No-one else writes like this. It turns some people off. It works for me. If it doesn't work for you then don't read James Ellroy. The Cold Six Thousand is seven hundred pages long, and - apart from a few 'document inserts' (letters and telephone conversation transcripts) - it is all like that.

The novel picks up the story of American Tabloid immediately after that novel's culmination - the assasination of JFK. Wayne Tedrow arrives in Dallas to do a hit. At the same time, JFK is assasinated. The first part of the novel deals with the aftermath of the killing - the capture of Lee Harvey Oswald, the subsequent killing of Oswald by Jack Ruby, various unpleasant actons taken by various characters to disguise The Truth - for this is conspiracy theory heaven, kids - while Tedrow botches the job he was sent to Dallas to carry out. Scene shift to Las Vagas. Howard Hughes wants to own it. The mob want to bilk Hughes. Pete Bondurant and Ward Littel - characters from American Tabloid - are involved in various dealings and operations. A lot of people get hurt. A lot of people get dead, rarely from natural causes. The first half is brilliant. Vicious, cruel, blood soaked, racist, misogynist, preposterous, but brilliant.

There are, however, problems. The first is one of scale. Ellroy decided to bookend his novel with the murders of the Kennedy brothers - JFK at one end, RFK at the other, with Martin Luther King thrown in as a 'Whack two, get one free' bonus. This means the novel is covering a period of about five years, with a long hiatus in the middle. Ellroy's compulsion to have three main characters - every book of his that I've read features three major characters - exacerbates the problem, as it means there are a lot of character hours to be filled. So he thinks about what else is going on in the 1960s, and packs his characters off to Vietnam in the novel's major mis-step. Yeah, it fills up a couple of hundred pages and a few inconvenient years in the middle. And yeah, it lets Ellroy tick off a few boxes on his list of Things That Need To Be Included In The Definitive Novel Of The 1960s - Vietnam, tick, CIA, tick, Heroin trafficking, tick - but it doesn't add to the story proper, it just kills time.

And then at the end, it is Kill Time again - MLK and RFK get bumped mighty quickly, plus a couple of other bonus deaths. It should be a stormer of an ending, but it feels a bit disappointing. The victims don't mean much within the confines of the novel - none of the main characters are emotionally invested in them, and Ellroy's attempts to convince us that Ward Littell cares, don't convince - so in the end it is just another couple of high profile tap jobs, and the main characters aren't directly involved. It leaves the conclusion feeling curiously underpowered, like you've started a race in a Ferrari, and ended it on a bicycle.

Another problem is that the novel relies heavily on coincidence at key moments. Some of this is just lazy on Ellroy's part - it is coincidence that Littel fails to spot a crucial tail, it is coincidence he sees a revealing photograph - and the feverish police work that made parts of The Big Nowhere exhilerating is replaced by vague freferences to various minions doing the hard work of actually finding and doing, for the main. The much sought Wendell Dufree isn't tracked down by vengance-ridden Wayne's detective work, but by a tip from some off-stage characters.

Even then, there is a power in Ellroy's crazy vision of America in the 1960s that's hard to resist. At the risk of sounding repetitive, Ellroy writes like no-one else, and no-one else writes like Ellroy. Every page contains almost random moments of technical brilliance. Randomly, from page 488:

Truce.
They split the Stardust. They moved into the Cavern. They bought a new TV. Barb sulked and judged. He ran the biz. He ran dope. He ran guns.
Barb worked the Cavern. Barb wore go-go gowns. Barb showed off skin-plus. Dig it: No pinholes/no bruises/no tracks.
Truce.
They lived. They made love. He travelled. Barb flew then. He knew it. Barb flew white powder air.
They lived the truce. He nailed the Shit Clause:
Barb was right - the war was fucked - we couln't win. Barb was right - they had big love - they'd stick and win. Barb was wrong - white horse had teeth- white horse bit to win.
White flag/ceasefire/truce.
He conceded points. He owed Barb. He brought her to Dallas. The truce held. The clause held. The ink ran.

There aren't many current authors who could write a passage like that. Technical experimentation is considered to be dead, rejected by readers and writers alike as Too Hard. Too Hard to write, Too Hard to read. Instead, we get anti-literary sludge about ideas and feelings, identity fiction written in comfort zone prose. But Ellroy's managed to make a lot of people read his technically demanding, anti-comfort zone, Too Hard prose - which shows that failure isn't on the part of the readers as much as the writers. There are people out there who will read stuff that stretches their ability to understand, that doesn't make it easy. For proving this, if nothing else, Ellroy's a significant writer.

Perhaps Ellroy tries to hard. Perhaps 800 pages is 300 too many. Perhaps Vietnam was too big to be worked into The Cold Six Thousand as a diversion. Perhaps it deserves its own distinct treatment by Ellroy. He isn't perfect. He might not even be great. But he is important.

SoCNoc 2009

Um ... okay. So I wasn't gonig to do it. But I will.

The SOuthern Cross Novel Challenge (SoCNoC) is the southern hemisphere's version of NaNoWriMo, scheduled to fall in our winter, as there are no warm summery distractions to pull us away from our keyboards. 50,000 words in the month of June.

I have done SoCNoC before. Just like NaNo, it is a useful learning experience, but one I felt I had out grown. Hell, I'm 35,000 into Traces, 19,000 into Scratches, and making steady progress. I don't need a kickstart or an artificial deadline to motivate me. I'm doin' it, man, already.

But I'm also wearied of Traces and a bit stuck on Scratches. And I've had this really cool idea in the back of my mind for a couple of months. I've even got a title for it. And - important bit - it's not a murder-mystery. It's Alternate Present/Near Furture fiction aimed at teenagers. So completely different from what I usually write.

So I decided it would make perfect material for SOcNoC. I'd be aiming for 80,000 words, so a savage burst of writing in June would see me near almost finished. So I roughed out a plan - it is a fairly schematic story - based on seven major phases, each containing seven minor phases. At 12,000 words for each major phase, that would get me to 84,000 words. And each minor phase would be about 1,700 words - a sniff over the daily minimum to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

Planning is something alien to me, but it seemed appropriate fro this story. It is strange to think that - in theory at any rate - I can identify where in the stroy the 50,000th word will fall - in Phases 5/1, provisionally titled 'The Tough Guys,' where the group of major characters find themselves trapped in a small town menaced by a motorcyle gang.

That said, Phases 1/1 - 'Bread' - took me 2,000 words, with space for more if needed. But having too many words is not a problem.