The Fire in Fiction

by Donald Maass

  That's my opinion and, you know, whatever, I'm fuckin' sticking to it.

  DETAILS AND DELIVERY

  Some novelists imagine it is best to have a narrator as neutral as a TV news anchor, a universal American into whom all readers can project themselves. I wonder. Is it a commercial strategy or an avoidance of the work of making a hero truly different? Even the most ordinary people have a life that's unique. The details that make it so are a secret source of what critics glibly refer to as voice.

  Take me: I had the most white-bread upbringing imaginable—in the 1960s, in East Coast suburbs with brand new housing subdivisions and schools with trailer-park temporary classrooms for the Baby Boom overflow. My childhood memories are of scorching summers without air conditioning in just-finished houses where the lawn was still topsoil; stubby trees in the yard held up by thin cables; moving boxes in the garage; the afternoon jangle of the Good Humor ice cream truck bells; the hot rubber taste of water gulped from a garden hose; the new plastic smell of blow-up wading pools; the shriek and riot at eight o'clock in the evening (the sky blazing orange) when the can was kicked and fifty neighborhood kids were all at once freed from jail.

  See? It isn't hard. Details are plentiful. If you don't have them in your head, the library has them in books. Details are an automatic voice all by themselves. They might seem to limit a novel's appeal, but in fact they bring it to life.

  Jonathan Lethem broke into the mainstream with his memory novel Motherless Brooklyn (1999), in which Lionel Essrog, an orphan

  with Tourette's syndrome, recalls his Brooklyn childhood and in particular his relationship with neighborhood tough guy and fixer, Frank Minna. As adults, Minna and his minions become a de facto detective agency and limo service, until Minna is killed and Lionel himself must turn detective. One Christmas, Minna brings Lionel to his mother's apartment:

  Carlotta Minna was an Old Stove. That was the Brooklyn term for it, according to Minna. She was a cook who worked in her own apartment, making plates of sauteed squid and stuffed peppers and jars of tripe soup that were purchased at her door by a constant parade of buyers, mostly neighborhood women with too much housework or single men, young and elderly, bocce players who'd take her plates to the park with them, racing bettors who'd eat her food standing up outside the OTB, barbers and butchers and contractors who'd sit on crates in the backs of their shops and wolf her cutlets, folding them with their fingers like waffles. How her prices and schedules were conveyed I never understood—perhaps telepathically. She truly worked on an old stove, too, a tiny enamel four-burner crusted with ancient sauces and on which three or four pots invariably bubbled. The oven of this herculean appliance was never cool; the whole kitchen glowed with heat like a kiln. Mrs. Minna herself seemed to have been baked, her whole face dark and furrowed like the edges of an overdone calzone. We never arrived without nudging aside some buyers from her door, nor without packing off with plateloads of food, though how she could spare it was a mystery, since she never seemed to make more than she needed, never wasted a scrap.

  Bocce, OTB, sauteed squid, and a mother with a face baked like a calzone ... this can't be anywhere but Brooklyn. What creates the narrator's unique voice is not his grammar or outlook but the details he chooses to convey. Elsewhere in the story, Lionel's Tourette's gives

  him a different perspective than normal, but for the moment his unique voice is made up of nothing but the particulars of Brooklyn in 1979.

  Sometimes it is not the details but a manner of expression that creates a sense of voice. In a departure from earlier novels such as Reservation Road (1998), John Burnham Schwartz turned in The Commoner (2008) to the cloistered and crushingly formal world of Japan's Chrysanthemum Throne. In 1959, a young woman, a commoner who in this novel is called Haruko, was asked by the Crown Prince to be his consort. Although she was well raised, the gulf between Haruko's life and that of the court causes her father anxiety, which he expresses to the Prince's representative:

  "There is in the Imperial Palace—how shall I put this— the old guard. The nobility. You yourself are such a worthy man. It is my understanding that such people make up nearly all of that world, and certainly all of the positions of relevance. Now, I'm the first to admit that I don't know much about any of this. I am a simple businessman—which, I suppose, is precisely my point. If I myself, out in the world fifty years, don't know anything about the ways and customs of imperial life, then how could Haruko? She would be utterly lost, humiliated. More than that, and I mean this sincerely, Doctor, she would be a humiliation to the Crown Prince and the entire Imperial Family. She would be a humiliation to Japan. And yet here you are—honorably, respectfully, on behalf of His Highness— asking us to agree to give her up for a role for which we sincerely believe her to be unfit. A problem that, of course, has little to say about the other kind of loss being asked of us, one that you yourself, as you say, would feel only too painfully. To lose a daughter to another household is comprehensible; to lose her to another world defeats the mind, to say nothing of the heart. And, once she has committed herself, it is for life. She will never be able to leave that world. She will be sealed in forever."

  Such strained formality. Such depth of humility. How very Japanese. But take another look at that passage. Except for the words "Imperial Palace," "Imperial Family," "Crown Prince," and "Japan" itself, what words, images and details in this speech are specifically Japanese? Well, none.

  The cultural authenticity here comes from the father's extreme self-effacement. Also consider, if you would, although I may be pushing too hard, I know, the number of commas, of parenthetical phrases, and the high and noble language in this passage, which so exquisitely—to a point of painfulness—expresses a father's anguish; and, perhaps, his duty, which of course is to refuse the high honor on the basis of his family's low position, as is expected of him.

  In other words, a character's voice, and by extension your own, can arrive through syntax as well as through the details you deploy in what he says, does, observes, and experiences.

  DIFFERENT WAYS OF RELATING A STORY

  There are many ways to tell a story, many points of view from which to look. What sort of storyteller are you? Are you a benevolent observer, reporting what happens to your characters with objective neutrality? Or are you an active participant: pulling strings, stacking the deck, letting your reader know how you feel, and calling attention to your themes?

  What about point of view? Do you lurk in the third person or vocalize in first person? Do you stick to your protagonist's point of view, widen to others, or explore unexpected perspectives?

  There is nothing wrong with any particular choices. What bugs me is that many writers do not seem to have made a choice in the first place. Most manuscripts wander along in the way that it first occurred to their authors to write them. They do not confront me, insist that I listen, or seek to surprise me with a different way of seeing. They feel flat.

  Choices of first vs. third person, or present tense vs. past tense, are fundamental to how a novel reads. There's no right way, just the way that works best and feels best to you. The subject has been covered in many other books.

  What concerns me more is the straightforward and chronological approach of virtually all manuscripts. That's not bad in itself, but it does make for a certain sameness. Stories gear up, get going, plod dutifully through the middle, and finish. Getting to the end can be more a duty than a necessity.

  There are so many ways to relate what happens and so many perspectives to bring. Why not take advantage of some of those options?

  Matt Ruff s genre-bending novel Bad Monkeys (2007) centers on Jane Charlotte, a member of an evil-battling organization named The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons (or "Bad Monkeys" for short). They kill nasty people. The novel is Jane's personal story, related after her capture in a long psychotherapy session at the Las Vegas County Jail. Early on she tells how as a kid she sought out the school janitor for drugs but instea
d discovered that he was a serial killer:

  You thought you might have better luck with the janitor?

  Sure. I mean, four o'clock in the afternoon, the guy goes into an abandoned part of the building. What for? Not to mop floors. And he wasn't carrying any tools, so he couldn't be doing repairs. So what's that leave?

  Any number of things, I'd imagine. But I take it you were hoping for vice?

  You bet I was. And we're talking about a young guy with long hair and a Jesus beard. So what kind of vice was he likely to be into.

  But it wasn't what you thought.

  No, actually, it was what I thought. It's just, it was also more than what I thought.

  The question-and-answer pattern of Ruff s novel not only allows him to add extra layers of tension to Jane's highly suspect account of herself, but also gives him a chance to convey more of Jane's personality. There are long stretches without interjected questions, allowing

  the story to gain momentum. Over time, though, the therapist interjects doubt about Jane's account. Unreliable narrators are a staple of postmodern fiction, but the transcript format that Ruff employs undercuts his antiheroine in a fresh way.

  Another striking narrative strategy introduced itself in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). The narrator of this post-9/11 novel is Changez, a young Pakistani who is thoroughly Americanized, a Princeton graduate, a highly paid employee of a New York valuation firm, a social success with a rich and beautiful (though damaged) girlfriend. Then the towers fall. Changez's reaction is the opposite of most: he sympathizes with the attackers. His alienation is instantaneous and made no easier by his slacking, his visit home, or his beard, which he insists that others accept.

  What makes Hamid's novel especially unusual is that Changez relates his story in one long monologue delivered to an American stranger (an operative?) whom he approaches in a cafe in Lahore:

  Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America. I noticed that you were looking for something; more than looking, in fact you seemed to be on a mission, and since I am both a native of this city and a speaker of your language, I though I might offer you my services.

  How did I know you were American? No, not by the color of your skin; we have a range of complexions in this country, and yours occurs often among the people of our northwest frontier. Nor was it your dress that gave you away; a European tourist could as easily have purchased in Des Moines your suit, with its single vent, and your button-down shirt. True, you hair, short-cropped, and your expansive chest—the chest, I would say, of a man who bench-presses regularly, and maxes out well above two-twenty-five—are typical of a certain type of American; but then again, sportsmen and soldiers of all nationalities tend to look alike. Instead, it was your bearing that allowed me

  to identify you, and I do not mean that as an insult, for I see your face has hardened, but merely as an observation.

  Come, tell me, what were you looking for?

  This direct-to-the-reader address gives Hamid's novel an immediacy and intimacy that a simple first-person point of view would not accomplish. It is urgently important to Changez that the man to whom he is speaking understands him. More to the point, it is important to Mohsin Hamid that his readers understand why even an Americanized Muslim might feel something other than horror and outrage at the actions of terrorists. There's more than one way to see 9/11, Hamid is pointing out; to reach us, he tells his story in an alternate way, too.

  Is your focal character someone sort of like you? That's not a bad way to go. It certainly makes the writing easier. It can also give heroes and heroines a numbing familiarity. Why? I'm not sure, but as I've noted before, a great many protagonists do not come alive as distinctive people.

  Perhaps authors are afraid to make their characters stand out, appear foolish, look exaggerated, or in some other way put off readers. That can be especially true when protagonists are heavily autobiographical. Who wants to portray oneself in a light that is anything but kind and flattering?

  That's a shame because paradoxically heroes and heroines can be the most winning when they are the most different. Mark Haddon in his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) chose as his narrator Christopher Boone, a boy who is autistic. Christopher has a savant quality. He relaxes by doing math problems, but he cannot understand other people's cues or use intuition. He fits the world and the way it works into formulae and physical laws.

  When he is falsely accused of killing a neighbor's poodle, Christopher undertakes to learn who actually did the deed:

  This is a murder mystery novel.

  Siobhan [a social worker at his school] said that I should write something I would want to read myself.

  Mostly I read books about science and maths. I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like, "I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which those clench who do not depend on stimulus." What does this mean? I do not know. Nor does Father. Nor does Siobhan or Mr. Jeavons. I have asked them.

  Siobhan has long blond hair and wears glasses which are made of green plastic. And Mr. Jeavons smells of soap and wears brown shoes that have approximately 60 tiny circular holes in each of them.

  But I do like murder mystery novels. So I am writing a murder mystery novel.

  There is no mistaking Christopher's literal and linear mind for a normal boy's. He writes things down as he sees them, focusing on details and missing the context. He cannot interpret, he can only observe, which in a way makes him a perfect detective and successor to Sherlock Holmes, one of whose famous remarks is the origin of the novel's title.

  You would think that seeing the world from the perspective of an autistic savant would be exhausting, but instead it is exhilarating. Granted, Haddon gives us a structure, a mystery, onto which to hold and through which to filter Christopher's unfiltered narration. As solid as that strategy is, it's not a gimmick. Christopher is more than accessible; he is alive and so is Haddon's novel in ways that it would not have been had he chosen a safer way to write it.

  When thinking about voice it is easy to focus on words, as if painting pretty pictures, capturing moments, and building metaphors is all there is to it. I'm not opposed to any of that, but the more I read the more I feel that skillful use of words and an author's ability to get down a fleeting illusion of reality can cover up a novel's core emptiness.

  Not all beautifully written novels have a voice, or much of one. Potboiler plots may be exciting, but also may have little flavor. It is when the words on the page demand that I, the reader, take notice that I begin to hear the author's voice. It isn't words alone that do that, I find, but rather the outlook, opinions, details, delivery, and original perspectives that an author brings to his tale.

  Above all, a singular voice is not a lucky accident; it comes from a storyteller's commitment not just to tell a terrific story but to tell it in a way that is wholly his own.

  Do you believe in vampires? No, seriously. You don't, right?

  Here's another question: Do you read vampire novels? Whether or not you do, a great many readers enjoy them. To do so they suspend their disbelief. They must. How do authors get them to do that?

  The same question can be asked about novels in which justice is done, love triumphs, and lone protagonists save the world. In real life those things don't always happen, or at least not easily and despite the high odds posed in a well-plotted novel. Even character-driven stories such as sagas, coming-of-age novels, and women's and literary fiction present events that are not everyday occurrences. What happens in all fiction is to some degree preposterous and yet readers go along.

  Or not.

  Have you ever felt that a novel you were reading got ridiculous? When fiction feels far-fetched we cease to enjoy it; indeed, we may even hurl it across the room. Then again, there are those novels in which the very premise defies lo
gic and yet we breathlessly turn the pages. Even realistic fiction can put its characters through things that would send ordinary human beings into therapy, yet we identify with those characters and praise the author's powers of observation and ability to capture the "truth" of human experience.

  How do those authors pull that off? We may speak of them getting away with something, but I do not believe that any fiction writers get a free pass. When novels work, they build a feeling ofbelievability. For us to enter into the story and experience it, they must. For us to buy in we must be sold.

  What, then, are the methods by which a story is made to feel real? More than that, how can we construct the high level of dramatic events that make a novel a powerful and transformative experience—and at the same time do so in a way that has our readers never doubting and even cheering all the way?

  To find out what makes the impossible feel real, let's absorb lessons from some of the most outlandish stories on the shelves today: thrillers built around conspiracies, cloning, killer viruses, genetic engineering, and the supernatural.

  THE SKEPTICAL READER

  Are you paranoid? No, I mean seriously and deeply paranoid to the point that your friends think you're obsessed and you've wondered if you might need professional help? Do you know way too much about the grassy knoll, Skull and Bones, the Masons, Majestic 12, or MK-Ultra? If so, congratulations. You have the makings of a conspiracy novelist.

  You're in good company, too. Michael Innes, Graham Greene, Don DeLillo, Richard Condon, Robert Ludlum, and Dan Brown are just a few whose conspiracy-driven novels have entertained millions. Margaret Atwood, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, and Philip K. Dick also have given conspiracy fiction a literary pedigree.

  Whether your purpose is commercial or high-minded, clearly it pays to believe that the cartoon character Pogo got it wrong when he famously declared in 1970, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Oh no, no. It's actually us against them! There's a lot to be paranoid about, too. Just watch the news.