Let’s explicate that piece of Carson McCullers dialog. There’s tons to learn from it, but today we’ll just focus on conflicting agendas and how she rings such a realistic, poignant note by keeping her characters firmly and clearly grounded in their separate agendas.
Doctor Copeland:
“I will not be hurried. Just let me be. Kindly allow me to sit in peace a moment.”. . .How could he leave when there was neither beginning nor end, neither truth nor purpose in his thoughts?. . .“Why have you done this to me?” he asked bitterly. “You know full well that I do not want to leave. You pressed me into saying yes when I was in no fit condition to make a decision. I wish to remain where I have always been, and you know it. . .I will not [recover elsewhere]. But I would have recovered here. I know it. Pshaw! Say what you will. You only come before me like a gnat. I know what I wish and will not be pestered into doing that which is wrong. I have always managed, and I could manage yet. Pshaw! You come before me like a gnat. And I ignore you. I am sorry. Forgive me, Daughter. I wish [you could be the one going], too. I just feel that I have failed. I do not know [how]. Just leave me be, Daughter. Just let me sit here in peace. . .”
He is crystal clear: his agenda is to stay in his home. His hidden agenda is to fight his feeling of failure. Failure over what?
Portia:
“Father, us not trying to rush you. But it time now to get gone from here.—I done all I can. He determined to sit there till he good and ready to leave.—[Father,] I reckon I going to have to dress you like a baby. Here your shoes and socks. Let me take off your bedroom shoes and put them on. We got to get gone from here pretty soon. What I done to you now? Listen to you carry on!” Portia said angrily. “You done grumbled so much that I nearly worn out. You done fumed and fussed so that I right shamed for you. Father, less us quit this here argument. Us have all done the best we know how. It entirely the best plan for you to go on out with Grandpapa and Hamilton and Buddy. They going to take good care of you and you going to get well. Who you think could pay the note on this here house? How you think us could feed you? Who you think could take care of you here? You just trying to be contrary. [Saying you ignore me] certainly is a nice way to talk to me while I trying to put on your shoes and socks. Course you sorry. Course we both sorry. Us can’t afford to quarrel. And besides, once we get you settled on the farm you going to like it. They got the prettiest vegetable garden I ever seen. Make my mouth slobber to think about it. And chickens and two breed sows and eighteen peach trees. You going to be crazy about it there. I sure do wish it was me could get a chance to go. How come you so determined to grieve? How you mean you done failed?”
She is also crystal clear: her agenda is to get him to safety. Her hidden agenda is to fight the inevitable change happening to them. What change?
Do you see how both characters’ speech is so single-minded it’s practically monologue? Only in a few places do they respond to each other. Even Doctor Copeland’s first question, “Why have you done this to me?” is rhetorical. He doesn’t really want an answer, as you can tell if you continue reading what he went on to say after that.
For the bulk of the conversation, Doctor Copeland only responds to Portia in order disagree with her and tell her he’s not listening to her. Then he goes right on with his own agenda.
For the bulk of the conversation, Portia only responds to try to change Doctor Copeland’s mind, to counter his arguments (to disagree back). However, it upsets her more to stick to her agenda than it upsets him to stick to his. She isn’t passive and bitter, as he is. She’s angry. And she’s having a terrible time controlling herself—she swings back and forth between conciliatory and angry, back and forth, without equilibrium.
So let’s talk some more about Point-Of-View. Because this is quite a sticky widget.
The simplest, commonest, most straight-forward POV is third-person limited. And there’s a really good reason for this.
Because it WORKS.
Once upon a time it was first-person limited.
However, first-person got kind of beat to death over the millenia, so now we use third-person for everything but the most specific situations. True, it’s not as immediate and intimate as first-person, but it does have the benefit of allowing the reader to feel they’re in the room with the protagonist themself, going through the protagonist’s experiences alongside them, rather than having to do it all from inside the protagonist’s own head.
Fortunately, keeping the aspect limited rather than omniscient also optimizes immediacy and intimacy. . .
The actual writing is what you live for. —Raymond Chandler
Let’s talk about plotting and Point-Of-View.
Carson McCullers was only twenty-three when she published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, her classic story of the fragility of human connection—nearly a child prodigy.
Within the amorphous struggle to understand life, as portrayed through WAY more protagonists than most novels can handle, McCullers’ structure is of necessity complex but crystalline. . .
Shall we see if I can get through a whole post about dialog talking about. . .dialog?
I follow Twitter. Not enough, apparently, to see everything that goes by, because lots of people use it as a mirror they glance into constantly throughout the day assuming—I guess—the rest of us want to see what’s there. So while I’m scanning for links to articles on writing fiction with something fresh and new to say (very rare), I’m also wading through endless post-its about what people are eating, where, why, and what they think of what each other is eating.
Let me answer all those questions for you now and get it over with: chocolate, at their desk, because they just need a little pick-me-up from reading all those peeks into other people’s mirrors. And what they think of what others are eating? Yeah, they think it’s a good idea.
Is Twitter dialog?
No, it is not. Twitter is almost exclusively monologue, which is why it’s so often unbearably boring.
IM, on the other hand, is sometimes the only thing that gets me through the day. . .
Today we’re linking to the Red Room—specifically to an interview Andy Ross, past-owner of Cody’s Bookstore in Berkeley, did with Alan Rinzler, Executive Director of the San Francisco Jossey-Bass imprint of Wiley and Sons and an independent editor. Andy has a previous interview with Alan, too.
I had lunch with Alan yesterday. Such a very nice man—conscientiously polite, considerate, approachable. Unfailingly gentlemanly. It wasn’t an interview, although I may someday ask him if he’d like to be interviewed here. But I did write a post about the experience today on Pulp Rag.
Thank you, Alan. Yes, I do like the Grand Cafe dining room. Especially those tiled pillars.
I’m Europe, baby. I sent you Dutch Elm Disease, German Measles, and Russian Roulette. You sent me World Wind Vacation Tour #225. Now we’re even. —Suzanne Pleschette movie from 1969, If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium
Hey! If it’s Tuesday, this must be Pulp Rag day!
You know what I love about the Internet? (Not everything, by any means.) I love that I can get all nostalgic about a dippy 1969 movie that made my day when I was a young teen and look it up and, hey, presto! There it is.
Which is not what I’m going to write about today. No, today we’re going to talk about reader identification. . .
They probably pitched it as one thing, and then they went with something else because, hey, nobody’s watching. —Craig Bartlett, on the phone
I did something freaky yesterday: I called up someone I hadn’t talked to in thirty years. It was my old friend, Craig, who used to stay up late every Wednesday night with me and my minions putting together our school newspaper. . .
A couple of weeks ago I finally read Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.
It turns out Angela didn’t have any ashes.
Sadly, McCourt died earlier this summer. It was in the news. Only thirteen years earlier, Angela’s Ashes had rocketed out of nowhere as a memoir without a particularly focused plotline, much less sympathetic characters, much less what is known in normal circles as HOPE.
It’s the language. It’s well-written. McCourt was a high school English teacher.
However, it’s also the genre and what it says to those of us literate readers of the industrialized world: there is suffering in the world. And, like McCourt, a middle-class educated American for almost sixty years, we do understand suffering.
Short story author Scott Warrender is a Mentoring Program client. I have done full Copy, Line, & Developmental Editing on a number of short stories for him, the first of which was his poignant fictional memoir of Africa, ''The Boy With the Newsprint Kite,'' now published in the Foundling Review.
Clients’ Books
Bhaichand Patel is the author of two nonfiction books: Chasing the Good Life (Penguin Books India, October, 2006), and Happy Hours (Penguin Books India, October, 2009). I edited Patel's debut novel, When the Streets Were Cold and Dark.
I've edited a number of nonfictionessays for my friend Lucia Orth. (Many years ago, my contribution to Baby Jesus Pawn Shop was simply a peer critique and participation in a standing ovation.)
The poet Chris Ryan is the author of The Bible of Animal Feet (Farfalla Press, 2007). He has recent stories in Pank, Anemone Sidecar, and A Cappella Zoo. I edited Ryan's novel The Ishmael Blade and worked with him on his debut novel Heliophobia and WIP Pogue.
