Joshua Malbin

Late in Book Two Günther Grass builds one of his novel’s main climaxes. World War II is ending and Oskar Matzerath, the narrator and protagonist, attends his father’s funeral. There he plays horseshoes with a metal wreath and a cast-iron cross until he finally rings the post and makes a momentous decision: he will put down the tin drum he’s been beating since he was three years old and allow himself to grow for the first time since then.

Two small lessons here. The first is, don’t worry too much about making your symbolism heavy-handed. Oskar’s father literally chokes to death on his Nazi Party pin when the Russians arrive in Danzig, and as a result Oskar stops his incessant toy drumbeat and begins to emerge from an infantile state.  (Though we soon learn he doesn’t make it all the way to normal adulthood but only to a slightly larger but now somewhat deformed midgethood. Presumably so too did Germany.) Not subtle, still satisfying.

The second is, the impact of a climax is heightened if you let the reader relax for a few pages afterward and absorb it. The climactic chapter “Should I or Shouldn’t I?” which ends with “Leo proclaiming to all the world: ‘He’s growing, he’s growing, he’s growing…’” is followed by this flash-forward to the mental institution from which Oskar narrates his life story:

Last night I was beset by hasty dreams. They were like friends on visiting days. One dream after another; one by one they came and went after telling me what dreams find worth telling; preposterous stories full of repetitions, monologues which could not be ignored, because they were declaimed in a voice that demanded attention and with the gestures of incompetent actors. When I tried to tell Bruno the stories at breakfast, I couldn’t get rid of them, because I had forgotten everything; Oskar has no talent for dreaming.

While Bruno cleared away the breakfast, I asked him as though in passing: “My dear Bruno, how tall am I exactly?”

Bruno set the little dish of jam on my coffee cup and said in tones of concern: “Why, Mr. Matzerath, you haven’t touched your jam.”

This goes on for three more pages, in the course of which we learn one or two more things (Oskar’s height at the time of telling the story, for example). For the most part, though, this is dialogue and description meant to be forgotten. Look at how that first paragraph says exactly nothing. It is filler, meant to register as filler and give the reader time to digest what came before it.

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“Canalized” is a useful synonym for “channeled.”

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Edgar Allen Poe says: You can never be too rich, or too thin, or have too much foreshadowing.

…I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sulilen waters of the tarn.

Old, rotten family, externally appearing sound. Check. Fissure all the way through the house, wonder whether anything will happen with that? Oh yeah. Check.

In other words, use physical metaphors for underlying themes, make them strongly visual, and don’t be afraid to beat your reader over the head with them.

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As it turns out, it is possible, through the injudicious use of commas, among other marks of punctuation, the endless repetition of certain idioms, and the convolution of sentence structure, to so flatten one’s narrative, as to make even a ghost story boring.

Why one would choose to do such a thing, is beyond me.

My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora, and through nothing could I so like it as through feeling that to throw myself into it was to throw myself out of my trouble.

Or:

“The man. He wants to appear to them.” That he might was an awful conception, and yet somehow I could keep it at bay; which, moreover, as we lingered there, was what I succeeded in practically proving. I had an absolute certainly that I should see again what I had already seen, but something within me said that by offering myself bravely as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting, by surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim and guard the tranquility of the household.

When a friend was in graduate school at CUNY, he asked André Aciman if he could study James with him to prepare for his comps. “James!” Aciman said disgustedly. “Henry James wrote as if English were a dead language.”

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When I taught writing, one of the main things I wanted my students to learn was how to steal. If you can’t steal from other writers you’ll never go anywhere. Ask Shakespeare.

This inaugurates what could be a regular series of posts discussing moments, scenes, or turns of phrase worth ripping off. It may or may not be limited to books. Today’s victim: Nathaniel Hawthorne.

They are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled to adjust those preliminary measures, which steal from the people, without its knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers. The popular voice, at the next gubernatorial election, though loud as thunder, will be really but an echo of what these gentlemen shall speak, under their breath, at your friend’s festive board.

In case there’s anyone in the world who cares about spoilers for The House of the Seven Gables, I’ll put my brief discussion below the fold.

(continue reading…)

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