The Critic in Spite of Himself

In which he confronts his own, worst self

It is sometimes a terrible thing to look into the mirror.

It can be an even more terrible thing to look into the mirror, and see yourself as you once were.

These thoughts had begun to haunt Bardelys as he transcribed via dictation his old and juvenile essays on literature, art, and criticism. He cringed every time he found his ancient self proclaiming ex cathedra upon matters of art and storytelling that the child Bardelys could not have known, for sheer lack of experience. He groaned aloud every time he had to repeat some idiotic and most extreme statement. He suffered enormously every time he had to say out loud his younger self’s pronouncements on how despicable all critics were, and how worthless all criticism, and are ignorant and foolish all theories of criticism.

And he had to wonder: was he any different now?

(He would like to hear from his readers whether they think that is true or not – and yet he also fears those answers!)

At least, he reflected, the young Bardelys had admitted in so many words that he was himself the target of his many jibes. The problem – the great fear and horror – was that neither Bardelys the younger nor the elder had enough experience (enough practical experience) to know the things he claimed to know, or to give anyone any advice on any matter pertaining to talesmanship, criticism, or art in general.

He was so far only half way through the process of transcribing the old notes and essays. He noted with chagrin the first line of one of these:

I cannot write, therefore I think.

It was so true, and it stung him to the quick, and made him so sad that in reading it his eyes refused to leave the words upon the page, and even afterward the words on the page hung in the air before his vision, prompting almost tears.

The very blog that he had been working upon so assiduously for three quarters of the year now, was it any better or more advanced than the childish ramblings of the over intellectual enfant terrible that he had once been? He wondered at the validity of almost anything he said it was not merely repeated from his teachers – and even those sayings were perhaps only repetitions of things those teachers had once heard from their teachers in turn.

Bardelys was reminded that the three most instructive and most useful books on writing that he had found at all three been written not by writers, but by literary agents. Those men all wrote about something very simple and mechanical: the kind of story, the kind of literary prose, that these agents had noticed would be most likely to be accepted by editors, publishers, and book buyers.

As for Bardelys himself, he really only had one thing to say:

I cannot write, therefore I think.

(Composed by dictation Sunday 5 October 2008)

Be Ware

Looking to his own past, he wonders how he could ever have been so pompous an Ass.

Bardelys was transcribing old essays he had written in decades past. And reading them as he dictated them, he became acutely aware of two things:

1. He had been an insufferable prig and ‘expert’ on matters of which he knew practically nothing at all

2. He had no assurance to offer himself (or anyone else) that his present proclamations amounted to a whit more substance or truth.

Here is one of these glimpses into juvenile nonsense.

Fantasy Art

If as I have affirmed, writing deals with the manipulation of the mechanism of memory, then this has particular importance for anyone writing fantasy. Because these things (fantasy creatures, worlds, events – the ultimate Other) nobody has experienced. How then can we ‘remember’ them?

There are five possibilities I see now: atavistic memory – the memory of contradictions – other forms of fantasy art – childhood memories – ESP.

Possibility one. Atavistic memory is only a possibility, as yet unproven to exist. Yet if neo-hatched chicks will flee the shadow of a cardboard hawk (as has been shown in studies), yet not flee the cardboard cutout when its shadow does not represent a hawk, and some knowledge might be passed from generation to generation among humans just as easily as among chickens.

Possibility two. ESP assumes we can somehow ‘tune in’ to events happening elsewhere in time and space. Again, this is only a supposition and speculation and is as yet unproved.

Possibility three. Memory of contradictions. Since we can manipulate memory – not just in whole but in the smallest parts – we should be able to ‘cobble’ memories of things which never occurred. This is called ‘imagination.’ A greeting giraffe – a horse with wings – and all the legendary monsters are examples of this. Still, this remains rooted in reality: we cannot imagine a giraffe whose color we have never seen.

Possibility four. Other forms of art. As I have written, only writing has no external objective existence – just the notations to indicate its existence, as if we wrote notes and had no instruments. But other forms of art do have objective existence. So it is possible to draw creatures and worlds which never existed; and this forms the basis for our memory. Thus perhaps the importance of illustration for fantasy literature. (But, as Professor Tolkien has affirmed, the finest fantasy literature is hurt by this.)

Possibility five. Childhood memories. The existence of a child is filled with wonder. He sees things adults do not; he has not yet understood that all things are different in their own way, and that the expectation of existence is formed by the statistical database of past experiences. In addition to this, deeply-felt and repressed emotions manifest themselves in various seemingly-unconnected. So traumas can give rise to terrors and joys beyond the normal run of existence.

...

In addition to old days, we appreciate fantasy literature based on past fantasy literature we have read. Yet this cannot go back forever and must ultimately rely on one of the mechanisms cited above. Still, it shows why fantasy literature tends to run in cycles, and why tradition in fantasy literature is so important.

The Weighted POV

Another variation on point of view

Bardelys had deemed himself familiar with all the forms that point-of-view could take in stories: the original first-person, which represents what ‘I’ have lived through, but knows no more of what other characters feel or think than anyone knows who is not a mind-reader; the later omniscient, which sees events and characters as though through a seer’s or god’s eyes, able to peer into any character’s soul at any moment; third-person, which is like first-person except that ‘I’ is replaced with one particular ‘he’ or ‘she’ (and does not vary from that character throughout the tale); third-person serial, that switches from one particular ‘he’ or ‘she’ to another, but never varies it within any particular scene; and objective, that is unable to see within any character’s mind or heart, and relates only what a camera and microphone might pick up from any scene.

But in listening to the Baroness Orczy’s The Elusive Pimpernel (in the http://www.librivox.org edition read by the marvelous Karen Savage) he realized there was a form of point-of-view that no one, so far as he knew, had mentioned.

And yet this was the form most often used. (He guessed.)

In this form, which he called ‘weighted third-person,’ the talesman prefers to peer into one character’s soul, but will occasionally dip into another character’s soul as needed, briefly, or as the talesman finds convenient.

The result is that we in the audience are ‘positioned’ nearer to one character, as in the first-person or third-person points of view, but the talesman reserves to himself the privilege to let us know, efficiently in a ‘tell, don’t show’ sort of way, what somebody else feels or thinks.

So long as the dips into ‘alien’ characters are brief and restrained, they should not overly intrude upon our appreciation or identification with the preferred character. It remains a sort of ‘insurance policy’ the talesman holds onto, so as not to lose all chances of glimpsing into other hearts where, at some point in the tale’s progress, we might be interested, and find greater drama.

Here is the particular chapter of The Elusive Pimpernel that gave Bardelys his insight. (It is taken from the version available at http://www.gutenberg.net which has many of the Baroness’ Pimpernel yarns:

Chapter VIII : The Invitation

It was in truth a strange situation, this chance meeting between Percy Blakeney and ex-Ambassador Chauvelin.

Marguerite looked up at her husband. She saw him shrug his broad shoulders as he first caught sight of Chauvelin, and glance down in his usual lazy, good-humoured manner at the shrunken figure of the silent Frenchman. The words she meant to say never crossed her lips; she was waiting to hear what the two men would say to one another.

The instinct of the grande dame in her, the fashionable lady accustomed to the exigencies of society, just gave her sufficient presence of mind to make the requisite low curtsey before His Royal Highness. But the Prince, forgetting his accustomed gallantry, was also absorbed in the little scene before him. He, too, was looking from the sable-clad figure of Chauvelin to that of gorgeously arrayed Sir Percy. He, too, like Marguerite, was wondering what was passing behind the low, smooth forehead of that inimitable dandy, what behind the inscrutably good- humoured expression of those sleepy eyes.

Of the five persons thus present in the dark and stuffy booth, certainly Sir Percy Blakeney seemed the least perturbed. He had paused just long enough to allow Chauvelin to become fully conscious of a feeling of supreme irritation and annoyance, then he strolled up to the ex- ambassador, with hand outstretched and the most engaging of smiles.

“Ha!” he said, with his usual half-shy, half-pleasant-tempered smile, “my engaging friend from France! I hope, sir, that our demmed climate doth find you well and hearty to-day.”

The cheerful voice seemed to ease the tension. Marguerite sighed a sigh of relief. After all, what was more natural than that Percy with his amazing fund of pleasant irresponsibility should thus greet the man who had once vowed to bring him to the guillotine? Chauvelin, himself, accustomed by now to the audacious coolness of his enemy, was scarcely taken by surprise. He bowed low to His Highness, who, vastly amused at Blakeney’s sally, was inclined to be gracious to everyone, even though the personality of Chauvelin as a well-known leader of the regicide government was inherently distasteful to him. But the Prince saw in the wizened little figure before him an obvious butt for his friend Blakeney’s impertinent shafts, and although historians have been unable to assert positively whether or no George Prince of Wales knew aught of Sir Percy’s dual life, yet there is no doubt that he was always ready to enjoy a situation which brought about the discomfiture of any of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s avowed enemies.

“I, too, have not met M. Chauvelin for many a long month,” said His Royal Highness with an obvious show of irony. “And I mistake not, sir, you left my father’s court somewhat abruptly last year.”

“Nay, your Royal Highness,” said Percy gaily, “my friend Monsieur … er … Chaubertin and I had serious business to discuss, which could only be dealt with in France. … Am I not right, Monsieur?”

“Quite right, Sir Percy,” replied Chauvelin curtly.

“We had to discuss abominable soup in Calais, had we not?” continued Blakeney in the same tone of easy banter, “and wine that I vowed was vinegar. Monsieur … er … Chaubertin … no, no, I beg pardon … Chauvelin … Monsieur Chauvelin and I quite agreed upon that point. The only matter on which we were not quite at one was the question of snuff.”

“Snuff?” laughed His Royal Highness, who seemed vastly amused.

“Yes, your Royal Highness … snuff … Monsieur Chauvelin here had--if I may be allowed to say so--so vitiated a taste in snuff that he prefers it with an admixture of pepper … Is that not so, Monsieur … er … Chaubertin?”

“Chauvelin, Sir Percy,” remarked the ex-ambassador drily.

He was determined not to lose his temper and looked urbane and pleasant, whilst his impudent enemy was enjoying a joke at his expense. Marguerite the while had not taken her eyes off the keen, shrewd face. Whilst the three men talked, she seemed suddenly to have lost her sense of the reality of things. The present situation appeared to her strangely familiar, like a dream which she had dreamt oft times before.

Suddenly it became absolutely clear to her that the whole scene had been arranged and planned: the booth with its flaring placard, Demoiselle Candeille soliciting her patronage, her invitation to the young actress, Chauvelin’s sudden appearance, all, all had been concocted and arranged, not here, not in England at all, but out there in Paris, in some dark gathering of blood-thirsty ruffians, who had invented a final trap for the destruction of the bold adventurer, who went by the name of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

And she also was only a puppet, enacting a part which had been written for her: she had acted just as THEY had anticipated, had spoken the very words they had meant her to say: and when she looked at Percy, he seemed supremely ignorant of it all, unconscious of this trap of the existence of which everyone here present was aware, save indeed himself. She would have fought against this weird feeling of obsession, of being a mechanical toy would up to do certain things, but this she could not do; her will appeared paralysed, her tongue even refused her service.

As in a dream she heard His Royal Highness ask for the name of the young actress who was soliciting alms for the poor of Paris.

That also had been prearranged. His Royal Highness for the moment was also a puppet, made to dance, to speak and to act as Chauvelin and his colleagues over in France had decided that he should. Quite mechanically Marguerite introduced Demoiselle Candeille to the Prince’s gracious notice.

“If your Highness will permit,” she said, “Mademoiselle Candeille will give us some of her charming old French songs at my rout to-morrow.”

“By all means! By all means!” said the Prince. “I used to know some in my childhood days. Charming and poetic. … I know. … I know. … We shall be delighted to hear Mademoiselle sing, eh, Blakeney?” he added good-humouredly, “and for your rout to-morrow will you not also invite M. Chauvelin?”

“Nay! but that goes without saying, your Royal Highness,” responded Sir Percy, with hospitable alacrity and a most approved bow directed at his arch-enemy. “We shall expect M. Chauvelin. He and I have not met for so long, and he shall be made right welcome at Blakeney Manor.”

(Composed on keyboard Friday 3 October 2008)

Spoke Bespoke

More troubles with reciting dialogue.

Bardelys remained staunchly impressed, nay, in awe, of Karen Savage and her reading of the Baroness Orczy’s The Elusive Pimpernel. And yet he found a problem – not indeed with the performance, but with the writing from 100 years before.

In short, dialogue written for the page presents grave difficulties to the oral reciter.

In person, the oral talesman has several tools with which to substitute for the clever punctuation marks developed over the centuries to represent and mark off dialogue. The oral talesman when he stands before you, can turn to the right when he gives one character’s lines, and to the left when he gives another; he can vary his facial expression; he can alter his poster and bearing; he can play tricks with his voice.

When the oral talesman recites over the radio, or on record, he is left with only his voice. And so it is with voice alone that the redoubtable Ms Savage must represent the distinctions between speakers. In the following passage, reprinted from the fourth chapter of the book, several speakers are discussing the mysterious figure of the Scarlet Pimpernel at the Richmond Gala fair.

Bardelys did have a couple of moments listening to the passage where he wasn’t entirely sure who spoke what. To remove all the punctuation distinctions, he set it all down as it must be spoken:

Say what? commented Johnny Cullen, the apprentice. Who this mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel is. Perhaps he isn't, said old Clutterbuck, who was clerk of the vestry at the church of St. John's the Evangelist. Yes! he added sententiously, for he was fond of his own sayings and usually liked to repeat them before he had quite done with them, that's it, you may be sure. Perhaps he isn't. What do you mean, Master Clutterbuck? asked Ursula Quekett, for she knew the old man liked to explain his wise saws, and as she wanted to marry his son, she indulged him whenever she could. What do you mean? He isn't what? He isn't. That's all, explained Clutterbuck with vague solemnity. Then seeing that he had gained the attention of the little party round him, he condescended to come to more logical phraseology. I mean, that perhaps we must not ask, who IS this mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel? but who WAS that poor and unfortunate gentleman? Then you think, suggested Mistress Polly, who felt unaccountably low-spirited at this oratorical pronouncement. I have it for a fact, said Mr. Clutterbuck solemnly, that he whom they call the Scarlet Pimpernel no longer exists now: that he was collared by the Frenchies, as far back as last fall, and in the language of the poets, has never been heard of no more.

You can see the difficulty. Had the Baroness Orczy written with radio (or podcast or audiobook) in mind, she would have, and should have, interjected a lot more ‘attributions’ to the lines.

Each and every line of dialogue must be clearly marked off, in the text itself, in words, to let the audience know who said it.

The only exception comes when a scene is presented in which there are only two speakers, and the lines are quite short. When each speaker gives no more than one line, in rapid alternation, the result is a lyric, a sort of poetry or song of chant and response, whose rhythm (so long as it remains unbroken) leaves no doubt as to who says what.

It also can help in an interrogation scene: where only one party asks, and only one answers, then the audience can rely upon the form of the sentence to identify the speaker.

Also, as a sort of sub-set of the interrogation scene, Bardelys had to add the scene in which one character knows a good deal more than the other.

Finally, Bardelys was minded of dialogue that was written ‘in dialect’ – a practice much used in 1908 and before, but currently out of favor. But in oral talesmanship, where the lines are to be performed, such dialectical differences can mark off the different speakers. And it is not to be thought of, Bardelys imagined, that an oral talesman, a mountebank performer, should deliver lines of servant and master, townsman and country-man, foreigner and native-born, in one and the same manner for all.

(Composed on keyboard Thursday 2 October 2008)

She Sings Sweet

He tries another audiobook, and is as delighted as he was erstwhile disappointed.

Bardelys sometimes felt as though he were a visitor from the future; he wandered through the events of his own time with a slight sense of distance, of alienation. He saw events as through a distorting, somewhat smudged lens.

These football circuses, these happy people driving their huge tanks down the roads toward their distant, isolated houses swimming in lawns seething poisonous chemicals, were to Bardelys as the walking dead. ‘They move and speak, and live their lives,’ he thought, ‘and they don’t even know that their lives ended long ago this year. This year of 2008 is the last year of America. And yet they know it not. And yet, it is so clear.’

He had listened to the next chapter of the LibriVox recording of a reading of Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk on the previous night, but could not hear it out. For a new twist had been added to this reading: the original man continued only to read the description lines, but the dialogue was read by two young women. What made this disconcerting, in the case of the first scene of this chapter, is that the dialogue records the conversation of two men. So Bardelys in his mind as he listened, could only picture two women in drag, dressed up like dandies of the early sixteenth century, with swords and baldrics, and painted on mustaches.

Not to mention the fact that the whole thing had apparently been recorded in somebody’s bathroom. Echoes abounding, the voice of the tub vies with the voices of the performers.

He hated to make such judgments. After all, these people were not professionals, and had offered freely him and the world their services. And they had assuredly done a far better job of it than he would have been capable of doing.

All the same, he found he couldn’t listen to any more of it. He couldn’t.

So he picked out another recording from http://librivox.org/ (he had however found the recordings from the vast trove at http://www.archive.org/) – this was of a Pimpernel adventure by the Baroness Orczy – The Elusive Pimpernel as read by Karen Savage.

Ah, what a difference!

Savage is British, to begin with, and so her voice suits an Anglocentric tale of Sir Percy and his doings in naughty revolutionary France. In the second place, Savage is fluent in French, so her pronunciation of the French terms and names that pepper the tale are as good as her pronunciation of the King’s English. And finally, she seems professional – and indeed her blog confirms she acts.

Her enunciation was clear and compelling, enough to put Bardelys in awe. More, she spoke at a lightning pace, enough to make Bardelys envy her in the extreme. Ever since he had begun attempting to use voice recognition software, Bardelys has learned to appreciate how great an achievement it was to declaim and read naturally, clearly, and with gusto.

Ms Savage did all this, and more.

(The only pity was how badly the dear old Baroness opened her tale; three chapters in and it wasn’t much better, but here the note that the Singer can be more important than the Song itself is proven: Bardelys wanted more, even of this mediocre tale, so long as it was the divine Ms Savage who recited it.)

(Composed on keyboard Wednesday 1 October 2008)

The Singer, Not the Song

In oral storytelling, the performance of the talesmen is just as important as the tale that he tells.

Bardelys had begun to listen to recordings of volunteers reading classical, public domain books. He had begun with a reading of Rafael Sabatini’s famous novel, The Sea Hawk.

Sabatini had been one of his favorite authors when Bardelys was a lad. Imagine then his chagrin when the person who had volunteered to read this book had so much trouble performing the tale. Groups of words and phrases were not spoken together as they should have been; and odd, archaic phrases were pronounced strangely (at least in the ears of Bardelys).

The result was a tale just barely worth following – indeed it was just barely able to be followed.

It struck him then, just how important the performance of an oral tale is. It seemed to him now that the performance was perhaps even more important than the tale that was to be told.

And yet he had to consider the Sabatini had written his book in order for it to be read, and not spoken aloud. Sabatini’s talesmanship is so good that the tale could very well stand a good recitation. However, that was not the author’s primary intention when he wrote it, and Sabatini’s love for archaic phrases and words of the historical period would make it difficult for any modern reader to read the tale aloud. Moreover, it was twice the challenge for an American to read archaic British phrases, such that Sabatini loved to employ in order to give his readers more of an authentic flavor of the time and place of which he wrote.

It is also true, that the true oral storyteller does not read his tales – he performs them, he does not recite them. He does not read off a page, nor does he recite from memory. Instead, the true oral storyteller knows very well in his heart the key signposts of his story, along with side trips and alternative choices along the path to the eventual end. He then adjusts his performance (both in his manner, his tone and the words he uses and the exact shape of the story) according to the audience as he finds them, and as he sees them reacting to his tale.

Who among us, Bardelys wondered, could not tell immediately the difference in tone of voice in the matter when an amateur reads something off a page and when he tells you something in conversation?

Bardelys followed this line of thought to its ultimate conclusion: for it meant that in the future, talesmen who want to record their stories in radio or podcast form, ought not to read them as they are written, but rather, holding the story events firmly in mind, these talesmen should simply tell us the tale naturally, almost conversationally.

Bruno Bettelheim mentions this in his wonderful analysis of fairy tales – how important it is for a parent to tell his children fairy tales, rather than for him to read the tales. Bettelheim, of course, was at least in part interested in the parent engaging with the child rather than sticking his nose in the pages of a book in the mumbling out phrases as he found them, or even sticking the book in front of the child’s face and reading the phrases with a finger functioning as the bouncing ball of old time musical movies.

And yet, the same applies to a real oral storyteller, whether he tell his tales face to face with his audience, or whether he record his tales to be distributed.

The oral tale is a performance, and not merely a transcription or recording.

(Composed by dictation Tuesday 30 September 2008)

Short and Long – Happy and Sad

One structural difference between folktales and modern genre novels

Bardelys was thinking on the Russian folktales, when he realized something new: they were backwards. Not only did they have happy endings (and sad beginnings) but the inflection point was only about one-third of the way in, rather than one-third of the way from the end.

In standard screenplay and playwriting schools, he had been taught that if the ending was to be a happy one, the Second Curtain must be sad. This is the ‘black moment’ that many screenwriting teachers harp on, that had been drummed into Bardelys’s very soul in his tutelage in Southern California. It had now become an elementary notion in his approach to talesmanship.

But the Russian folktales had a different plan. Their structure introduced the hero, and quickly brought him to a dire passage. From this point the fate turns kind, and we follow the hero’s long ascent, enjoying every turn along the way.

Another difference is the simplicity and smoothness of the descent and ascent. In screenplay and modern novel, the rise and fall are both jagged, and more natural or even, Bardelys thought wryly, ‘organic.’ In a general rising movement, there are subordinate ups and downs; they also appear in a general falling movement.

Part of the difference, Bardelys was convinced, lay in the relative lengths of the tales. The folktale can be told in an evening – even an hour – even a half-hour. The novel is a somewhat more filling and substantial meal. Indeed, the novel developed in its heyday as a serial, published daily or weekly, and written in instalments. It might take a full year for a long Dickens tale to reach its final periodical instalment.

Thus, the oral tale must quickly get to its point and move on to its end. But the novel must undulate, variegate its pitch and movement, must rise and fall and rise again, must play with its readers’ emotions.

Bardelys remembered one description of the writing of a novel: like walking from Barcelona to the Pacific coast – on your knees. Something of the sort was also the experience of the one reading the novel. It is a long passage.

This also plays its part: the struggle must be won, if a happy ending is to eventuate, but it must be won honestly and at some effort, some cost. The reader must feel a real danger that the happy ending might not come to pass.

Here again, Bardelys saw a difference, not in the forms, but in the wider context of the different audiences for the folktale and the novel. Novel-readers have become an awfully jaded lot. And a sophisticated one. We all know the patterns, for we have met them all many times before. Thus it takes great skill and cleverness, and earnest effort, on the talesman’s part, to (at least in part) convince us that the hero might not get his just desserts at tale’s end. This requires a long struggle on the hero’s part, and it needs that things get worse for him, worse and worse, and more and more dire, until, at last…

The folktale is like a cookie.

The novel is like a banquet.

(Composed on keyboard Monday, September 29, 2008)