dark moments, falling action

[asakiyume]

I read a novella and a short story recently, and I've been thinking about them and about stories and how we tell them, what we tell, etc. The novella was Iona Datt Sharma's Division Bells; super highly recommended. Love develops between two bureaucrats who are working for a minister in the UK's House of Lords. They're working on legislation, and the minutiae of that and of trying to work for good things in real life, within flawed systems, weaves together perfectly with their personal stories. It's sharply funny but also powerfully moving; it had me in tears a couple of times. But it's never lugubrious or self indulgent--it's never milking the moment. And the humor always comes in when you need it.

Most amazing of all for me, the story had what in my family we always called the Hollywood Betrayal, but what in romance fiction I've come to realize is called the dark moment, that was the complete opposite of what that plot twist usually is for me. Usually, for me, dark moments are an awful experience on a spectrum from frustrating to infuriating, a waste of time, manufactured tension to delay the inevitable. I really dislike dark moments.

But in this story, the dark moment was the culmination of one character achieving true growth, and it led the other character to see how shut down he's become through exhaustion and grief. It was remarkable. It made both characters better, it was dramatic, and it moved the story along in a believable and necessary way.

Truly floored me.

The other thing I read was "Falling Action in Hoboken," a short story by Lucy Tan in the Sun, which a friend got me a subscription to this Christmas. I wanted an excuse to try literary short stories someplace that wasn't the New Yorker, so the subscription is great. And the story was good: it wasn't as world-weary and unpleasant as some of the New Yorker stories I've tried have been. The writing was good, the characters interesting... It's what critics like to call "finely observed."

However (however however however): it was set in New York. *sigh* Okay. Fine. The viewpoint character is something of a cynic, relationship phobic, sure she's going to live alone all her life and basically fine with that. She picks up a guy she and a friend have been mocking at a distance, the sort of guy who reads Rumi at a bar. They think he's a poseur, but it turns out he's genuine. His family has a farm in Michigan. [This set-up seems a little trite. Wholesome farm boy? Really?] So they get involved for-real for-real, and then stuff happens. Every step of the way feels predictable in its generalities without being predictable in the specifics. It ends in a manner that's true to the story.

And I thought to myself, this is an all-right, not-bad story. I read it with interest; I admired the writing.

It's so distanced, though. Is that part of what makes something feel lit-fic-y instead of genre-y? Is lit-fic these days relationship phobic? Is it afraid of being mistaken as a poseur who wants to be seen reading Rumi in a bar?

In the story, the narrator thinks,

I don't trust Matt's easy, expectant attitude. To live like he does is begging for disaster. It's disconnected from reality. But there is also a part of me that wants to see what he sees, that believes a life with him could make me, if not wholesome, then some other kind of whole.

I feel like that fear and wish applies to a lot of lit fic. It craves grandeur but mistrusts it.

LOL, but what do I really know?! Not much!

Comments

[sartorias]

I think the key is the "reality" in that bottom quote. For so many of that type of writer and critic, there is only one reality: life is brutish, short, and pointless, and then you die. Fiction has to reflect that in various types of experimental voice, slice of life story, sometimes without plot, because plot is Hollywood pablum for the plebes. There have been arguments about what reality is TRULY real, context literary quality, since Samuel Johnson had much to say about the dangers of claiming a single kind of reality is the only reality.

But the New Yorker seems to stick to that type, maybe because that's what their readers want? Dunno. But I had to read A LOT of that stuff in college, but it was considered the only type of "literate" literature. Mostly written by white men, but white women who copped to that viewpoint could be permitted in token amounts.

[asakiyume]

I remember when I first had close friends who weren't American. Three of us--me, a French girl, and an Italian girl--were talking about affairs of the heart, and they blew me away with their intensity and passion. No psychobabble language, no "Well, it's probably because my dad abandoned the family when we were little," no "but actually he's a manipulative asshole" [note to readers: he was totally a manipulative asshole]--just the power of the feelings and honoring that. I couldn't believe it! It was possible to claim your feelings unabashedly, live them whole-heartedly! You didn't have to report meekly to some censorious judge who would decide whether you and your pathetic romance qualified for those feelings! ... And I feel like a lot of literary fiction is like that censorious judge, saying, "but it's not real or important, you know. You're just a boring, silly person, in a boring, silly life"--and then, chastened, all the people who want to be Serious Writers think they have to write like that--people are silly, in tiny little lives... I feel like this story wants to be about someone getting away from that, but there's an awful lot of words spent doubting that, wondering if it's really possible.

[sartorias]

Oh, yes indeed.

[amaebi]

Yes, this living through a narrative in your head, which in fact filters out smooch, imposes so many blinders. And this pings for me a think-bouquet that received a great big cabbage rose last night: that "internal monologue"* doesn't just mean thinking as you go about your day, maybe sometimes in words, but actual ever-babbling narrative of what is, what should be, what you are doing, maybe with multiple "voices," the sort of thing that's a schizophrenia marker when it's harmful. I had no idea.

I am still boggling about it. Still rolling it around toward getting more understanding. But it sounds as if it precludes a kind of receptiveness that is essential to Zen, that is essential to me. And it definitely sounds apt to embody the tropes and standards of one's own culture, another form of separation.


* In the sense of percentages of people who do/don't have them.

[asakiyume]

Interesting! I think I have both (though obviously not at the same time). I certainly mull things over in my head and argue with myself, and I tell myself stories or work through plots of stories in my head. But I don't think I narrate my own life or what I'm seeing, and I think when I'm paying a lot of attention to what's going on around me, then the internal chatter goes away--which sort of goes along with the receptiveness you're talking about.

Something hilarious

[amaebi]

I only actually;;y read that Bustle article after I'd sent it to you. I was directly amused at the author's reiteration that people who don't have a constant running internal mono/dialogue must not be very creative thoughtful, and much, much more amused to recognize my juxtaposed certainty that the running mono/dialogue imposes ex ante framing and hampers receptivity. :D

Likely either mode of reflecting through the day is valid and effective. :)

Re: Something hilarious

[asakiyume]

For sure!

[rachelmanija]

I almost always dislike the dark moment in genre romance when it's the standard Big Misunderstanding or the couple breaking up. I generally prefer to put the Big Misunderstanding, if there is one, earlier, and have the dark moment be the couple getting captured by the Big Bad.

[asakiyume]

Yes: I would vastly prefer that--and I've loved all the romances from you that 've read!

[rachelmanija]

Thank you!

"The black moment"

[amaebi]

When Courtney Milan published The Duke Who Didn't, she said that she hated the "black moment" and purposely built a novel in which it doesn't occur. (I like the novel a lot-- it's a charmer set in a mythical English village about a third of whose inhabitants are of Chinese ethnicity.)

I am now reading her much earlier Unveiled and was delighted a day ago to find that a pending "black moment" was deflated to something very much more interesting, essential, and non-standard.

Re: "The black moment"

[asakiyume]

I'm very happy to know that some writers of romances find ways to defuse, reinterpret, or just avoid them!

[osprey_archer]

Oh, I'm so glad you liked Division Bells! I really enjoyed that book too. And the detail about policy-making in Parliament was fascinating - I always love that sort of deep-dive into an environment that I don't know much about.

[asakiyume]

Riiiiight? Agree totally! Love love love all the procedural stuff.