November 2011 – Snopes

Literary Allusions in The Borrower

Daniel Murray

As early blog posts highlighted, emerging novelist and established author, Rebecca Makkai, visited her alma mater W&L on October 26th. My creative writing class (also with Professor Smith) was fortunate to host the author, who is now a staple on the American Best Short Stories catalog. A month later I have finished her debut novel The Borrower, which she spoke about in her lecture and visit to class. The review in the current issue of Shenandoah and previous blog posts articulate the strengths and dominate elements of Makkai’s novel. During her time in our class, Makkai spoke of her literary influences and their impact on her work. She mentioned Nabokov and Twain among other literary greats. Makkai’s central character is Lucy, an underemployed librarian in no-man’s land Missouri; like the author who created her, Lucy possesses a vast repertoire of literary references that drives her narrative and gives validity to her character. In The Borrower, Makkai employs an unreliable narrator and a plethora of literary allusions. Appealing to both English majors and more casual reader, the work effortlessly exudes a natural love for literature, but with the expectation for an educated reader.

Like her post-modern influences, Makkai presents literary allusions, phrases and themes with some, but not all of the clues to fully appreciate her “librarian” narrative. With the story’s prologue, “Ian was Never Happy Unless There Was a Prologue,” an English major or Midwestern librarian may comprehend the purposeful placement of her allusions, but will the average reader? For the Makkai, I believe the answer is: “no matter.” The prologue magnifies a runaway, and the narrator, Lucy, makes a reference to the culmination of one of the great American novels, Huck Finn. Lucy states: “They tell me to light out for the Territory, reckon I’m headed for Hell just like them.” Comparing one’s plight with Huck Finn is quite the comparison in the literary spectrum, but Lucy does so with panache and irony as she begins to narrate the absurd events of her impromptu kidnap. She even directly acknowledges the two extremes of literary runaways: Huck and Humbert. Some critics may argue the allusions are rudimentarily overt, but she speaks as a librarian and those are her terms. With this prologue, Makkai gives the reader a Rosetta stone on how to approach the rest of the novel.

Moreover, in her discussion with my creative writing class, Makkai also spoke of her fascination with unreliable narrators, a literary technique implemented in The Borrower. As previously stated, Lucy retrospectively compares her crimes to Lolita’s Humbert Humbert, who also kidnapped a vulnerable youth and embarked on a cross-country road trip. The novel could be defined as a re-envisioning of Nabokov’s masterpiece with the dark humor and sexuality replaced with feverish wit and a love of books. Using Lolita as a map, Makkai’s novel presents Lucy as both the hero and villain. However, Makkai subtly presents the connection. The prologue encompasses the entire novel’s message of modesty and the elevation of normalcy gone wrong. She states, “regardless of who the villain is, I am not the hero of the story.” The hero is certainly Ian, but like Lolita the line of distinction is blurry.

Makkai succeeds in her allusion with the wit and poise of a writer with much more experience. But after all, she did work for Shenandoah.

Sestinas You Have Known and Loved

R.T. Smith

I’m going to do a poetry writing workshop on sestinas in about a month, and I want to offer my students more models than my usual suspects (Heaney, Muldoon, Bishop, Hecht, Plath, Kumin, Pound, Ashbery, Auden), so I’m eager to learn what sestinas you value and would be likely to offer as successful (i.e. not mechanical) examples. Since the form has long been associated with “academic poetry,” I’d especially appreciate samples of sestinas whose diction is more earthy or even twenty-first-century trendy to help them feel that the form’s requirements are friendly footholds rather than irritating challanges.

R. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.

Dedications

Lesley Wheeler

Not odes, not apostrophe, not epigraphs, not allusion, not acknowledgments pages, but those little italic tags under some poems’ titles: how do dedications rewire the writer/reader circuit? (I’m putting aside book dedications for the moment; they’re worth discussing but inflect reading much less directly, I think.) In performance the author might gloss that “for M.” or whatever it is, or even point out a smiling friend in the audience. When you’re sitting around perusing print, though, you might have one of the following responses:

Electric recognition: I know who that is! Maybe it’s the name of a musician whose work interests you, maybe you have some personal information on the poet’s family, but in any case, you now have an angle on the poem before you even start reading it. This is ekphrastic, this is a love poem, this one’s about that stupid politician. The upside AND the downside of this knowledge is a sense of command. Advance intelligence means you’re less able to surrender to surprise.
Guilty half-recognition: That’s the name of a famous philosopher, I think, or was it a historian? Now you have homework to do and just have to decide if you care enough. You read the poem daring it to be worthy.
Cluelessness. That single “M.” is only intelligible to the initiated and no one inducted you. Or perhaps the dedication gives a full name, date, place of birth, but it’s the poet’s niece or some other obscure figure. Does this make you irritable? Or do you feel cozy, invited to listen to a lullaby over the baby monitor?

Before Google, cluelessness seemed like the natural state of things, although it was problematic for a teacher-scholar. When I read “Howl” for fun at fifteen, I could care less who Carl Solomon was. In college, what wasn’t in the footnotes seemed like it wasn’t important anyway. When I was a graduate student trying to write a chapter on Gwendolyn Brooks, though, “to Marc Crawford, from whom the commission” posed a research problem—I was going to have to sift through a lot of prose before learning who Crawford might be. And in my first years as a teacher I was in a perpetual state of fear and trauma: someone would ask, and I wouldn’t know the answer, and I would therefore be exposed as an ignorant imposter. I’ve relaxed since, having learned that everyone is an imposter. I can always answer a student’s question like a psychotherapist: “How does it make you feel not to know?”

That sounds smirky but I actually want to know: how does the apparatus of a poem affect a reader’s response? There’s never a universal answer; we read for different reasons and approach our reading with different temperaments. I may feel attracted to poems by their ambiguity or difficulty, but if I can see there’s a key it drives me crazy not to possess it (Bluebeard and I would have had serious marital conflicts).

A colleague says the clubbiness of dedications puts him off. I can imagine their attractions, though—dedications reminds you that poems are instruments of communication, that language is motivated, however obscurely, by human relationships. I can’t find any literary theorist or critic who has opined about them (I was hoping for an illuminating essay or chapter somewhere, along the lines of Jonathan Culler or Barbara Johnson writing about apostrophe). So, dear reader, I pose this question—how do dedications change poems?—

TO YOU

Lesley Wheeler

Lesley Wheeler is the author of Heterotopia, Heathen and Voicing American Poetry. She is the Henry S. Fox, Jr. Professor of English at Washington and Lee University and a recent Fulbright winner..

Nonfiction… Or is it?

Isabella Martin

In one of the English courses I’m taking, we frequently discuss creative nonfiction, and what kinds of rules should be imposed on works within the genre, for accuracy’s sake. I had been planning on posting about this for a while, but today the topic came up again in the Shenandoah internship course, and it seemed timely to try to start up a discussion on the subject.

James Frey was mentioned today, and we all know what happened to him when people found out that parts of the autobiographical account of his drug addiction, A Million Little Pieces, were fabricated. He was called out on The Oprah Winfrey Show (here is what amounts to a transcript of that particular interview), lost a publishing deal with Penguin, went through a lawsuit, and readers who’d bought his book before its falsities had been discovered could even receive a refund for their purchase. Frey received an incredible amount of negative press throughout the scandal. I’m sure all kinds of people have written about whether or not all this was deserved. What I’m curious about is what people think of this issue as it applies to creative nonfiction in general, not just this one fairly obvious example.

When someone writes a memoir or a book that they describe as “nonfiction,” is it important that it’s factually accurate, or can the Truth behind the author’s impressions, emotions and memories be more important? If not, should authors have to put a disclaimer in the first few pages? Dave Eggers does so in his A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (also mentioned in class today), as did Norman Mailer in the late ‘60s when he published his account of the 1967 March on the Pentagon in The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History.

I have observed in my nonfiction class that most people, when asked directly, are not willing to come right out and say they are on one side or the other when it comes to fact and truth in creative nonfiction. There seems to be a huge gray area in which we expect creative nonfiction writers to operate. Is it possible to sift through this gray matter and draw a clear verdict on what a nonfiction writer can and cannot do?

Ralph Ellison and The Arc of Story

sadlert12

I would like to address Professor Smith’s earlier entry, which focused on the arc of the narrative and asked for a prime example. In my African American Literature class we have been discussing the architecture of the narrative in Ralph Ellison’s, Invisible Man. Invisible Man is a novel known for its groundbreaking plot and eloquent construction, with a strong narrative voice and beautiful descriptive qualities. Even though these feats seem effortless for Ellison the novel took seven years for him to complete, and due to the success made his second novel a large obstacle. Upon the first reading of Invisible Man the “general arc” of the novel is obvious from the character’s transformation from a boy to a man. Yet, in this novel it is necessary to see the internal workings of the novel in order to “feel it’s true architecture.”

Without understanding Ellison’s personal story or reading his other essays to gain a greater understanding of his political and social viewpoint, a reader misses the brilliant architecture of his novel. The development of Ellison’s protagonist depends on the architecture. Without the novels complex design Ellison’s main character cannot mature from an innocent young adult to a self-reliant man. As Ellison said in an interview titled The Art of Fiction, “each section begins with a sheet of paper; each piece of paper is exchanged for another and contains a definition of [the main character’s] identity.” Ellison views the novel as a framework in which his protagonist may develop. The smaller sections of the novel inside this framework are what develop the character rather than the plot, and for me this is what makes Invisible Man such a strong work. I believe that it is Ellison’s meticulous construction of Invisible Man that allowed the story to be such a poignant representation of America in the late 1900’s.

Poetry, Pedagogy, and Ectoplasm

R.T. Smith

I was just outed as a ghost-whisperer in Amy Balfour’s article about campus spirits. Balfour recounts several spooky stories about the building I teach in, Payne Hall, on the south end of Washington and Lee University’s historic colonnade, in a Civil-War-haunted town where garage doors are left open for spectral horses. My involvement in the local supernatural scene is entirely the fault of a certain formalist poet, friend of former Shenandoah editor James Boatwright.

I’ve never managed to shoehorn James Merrill’s whole Ouija-inspired opus, The Changing Light at Sandover, into a syllabus, but I have taught its first, best section several times. Once I assigned “The Book of Ephraim” in a first-year composition course during Hell Week. I do not recommend this. In upper-level courses, though, it works brilliantly. There’s a lot to talk about: wizardly formalism, genre slippage, occult collaboration, and all the fascinating ways U.S. history intersects with the book’s central romance, Merrill’s partnership in love and séances with David Jackson. One spring term, I threw the sequence into an island-of-misfit-toys seminar, something devised to fill a gap in our English offerings. I brought in a Parker Brothers Ouija board to illustrate the work’s structure. Pleas ensued: “Professor Wheeler! Can we have a séance?”

Dizzied by visions of parents protesting my satanic lesson plans, I agreed to a strictly voluntary spiritualist date with several students. We met after a lecture one May evening in what was then Payne 21, the spacious second-floor classroom where Robert E. Lee was inaugurated president of the college. I thought my skepticism would dampen the party but Aisha promised results. Andrea assumed the role of note-taker; she’d promised her mother never to touch a Ouija board. Eric, on the verge of academic suspension, seemed subdued. Allison, Briana, and I were giddy. As we sat on the floor in the dark, breathing loudly, our fingers touching on the planchette, I thought, This is really inappropriate.

Then the pointer started lurching around. I was surprised by everything it “said” and wondered if someone were consciously pushing it or if our involuntary movements and secret wishes might be driving the game. I never figured it out, but either we became more proficient or the spirits became surer, faster. As I told Balfour, we “talked” to a soldier who admired Stonewall Jackson’s daughter, then to Jackson himself, who grumbled about teaching cadets but who had cheered up significantly in the afterlife. I didn’t reveal that Merrill showed up and Allison asked him to be reincarnated as her firstborn (he seemed agreeable).

I also withheld information about the final voice. Someone asked if there were any unhappy spirits around and the skittering pointer landed on YES. The interrogators circled in on his identity through a series of questions: was he a student? Had he taken a class with Wheeler? Suddenly I was thinking of a young man I taught in Payne Hall years before these ghost hunters enrolled. When I learned of this student’s death, my own son had just been born. I never wrote the bereaved parents about what a bright, funny, promising kid their son was. Was the board reminding me of how guilty I felt? Maybe Eric’s struggles had jogged the memory loose?

NO, this visitor didn’t like any of the readings I’d assigned; this amused my current students, but I was indignant. I couldn’t remember what I’d been teaching that term. When someone asked the topic, the planchette zoomed around so fast I couldn’t follow it. The group broke into laughter; I looked into each of their shadowy faces, waiting for someone to tell me what he’d said. Finally, Andrea sheepishly read from her notes. “He said, ‘FAG ENGLISH.’”

You can see why I never pulled off a decent poem about this incident. That’s a lousy punchline for an iambic pentameter Merrill imitation by a straight woman. I checked afterwards and the course was a single-author seminar on Emily Dickinson. “Fag English” could refer to Dickinson’s sexuality, or Merrill’s, or it could mock our own alienated nerdiness—we were, after all, spending our evening trying to talk to a dead poet—but in any case, that’s an obnoxious answer. You can’t just leave it there. And Aisha channeling Jackson talking about Obama in the heart of the Confederacy—there’s clearly a racial current in this anecdote. I can’t write a good poem about it, though, if I can’t imagine that current’s outlet, its destination.

My spiritualists are out there delivering on all their nerdy potential, though. Eric worked hard during his suspension, graduated on time, and is in law school; Briana will soon have an M.D. if she doesn’t already; I’m pretty sure Allison has not yet procreated. Meanwhile, I disposed of the silent record albums long stored in a Payne Hall closet and we all cleared out for the building’s renovation. The building is light and peaceful now, and I’m teaching Rafael Campo in the séance room. My connection to this batch of students is a little staticky and I’m plagued by echoes of the ones who have moved on. Still, even though I’ve just been called back from sabbatical paradise, I’m happier than the ghost of Stonewall. We’re at that point past midterms when the best conversations happen—looser, but better-informed and smarter than in the early weeks. The planchette just flies around, as if I’m not in charge at all.

Lesley Wheeler

Click here to purchase a glow-in-the-dark Ouija board

Bookends

fraziera13

Ah, parents weekend. Wonderful for some, dreadful for others, impossible for anyone attempting to maneuver a vehicle in the charming town of Lexington for the past few days. Washington and Lee’s most beloved baby boomers, i.e. those people who (thank God, Buddha, Zeus and a thousand other deities) pay our college tuition, have traveled home by now. Cue chorus of relieved sighs.

As my parents asked about my classes and I happily prattled on about my academic affairs, I began to think about what part they’ve played in the creation of my existing literary vocabulary. I was left with the remembrances of lengthy science fiction novels, investigative crime thrillers, and a smattering of Oprah’s book club choices scattered through our house. There are no dog-eared Hemingway paperbacks on my father’s nightstand, no heavy leather tomes on our bookshelves, no past issues of the New Yorker or Atlantic Monthly in our overstuffed magazine rack. And I wondered, how could two people I resemble so strongly in other capacities have literary tastes so different from my own? How did I discover Jane Austen and Henry Miller (two of my favorites, and probably fodder for another blog post’s worth of head-scratching) in the midst of Dan Brown, John Grisham, and a smorgasbord of cookbooks? Whose bookwormish mutant child am I, really?

No easy answers there.

Unless, perhaps, the act of reading is more important than the words on the page. Even if I wasn’t exposed to glittering examples of great fiction at home, there were plenty of books and magazines, a daily newspaper, and a working internet connection. My parents provided me ample reading material if ever I was looking for material to read, and I often was. I was instilled with a love of words, if not of proper literature.

As American culture becomes increasingly less intellectual, maybe we’re lucky if we’re given the chance to peruse a piece of printed text, period. Or maybe we need to redefine our conception of the “literary” novel. What merits “literature,” anyway? And are the worlds of popular reading and ambitious reading as separate as the literati would have us believe? After all, The Corrections has won both the National Book Award and Oprah’s seal of approval. Then again, author Jonathan Franzen caused a ruckus when he expressed his unease with Oprah’s enthusiastic response to The Corrections, as though her selection somehow made his novel less appetizing to his existing scholarly following. Can a piece of writing earn its place as a best-seller without sacrificing its higher purpose? How many more open ended questions can I ask in one blog post? I think I’ve hit my limit. I should probably hit the books, rather than ponder their larger significance.

Caught in the Act

R.T. Smith

You might not have heard of me unless you’ve read the interview with Heather (portal.webdelsol.com/2011/10/away-you-rolling-river) by Heather and me, and we told the truth, mainly.

Exit, to Injun territory.