There should be a "love" option on Substack. "I reflect. I turn back or away." Oh, Mikhaelya - what a wonderous post.
"I turn back or away."
Maybe this raises a point about the ending in at least the two stories mentioned ("An Incident" and "TGG"): there are shown endings (scene/image with little commentary); told endings (voice-based sce…
There should be a "love" option on Substack. "I reflect. I turn back or away." Oh, Mikhaelya - what a wonderous post.
"I turn back or away."
Maybe this raises a point about the ending in at least the two stories mentioned ("An Incident" and "TGG"): there are shown endings (scene/image with little commentary); told endings (voice-based scenes but perhaps little reflecto), and reflecto endings (some combination of the told or shown with reflecto). And combinations of these. And endings are sometimes a mix: a paragraph or line of reflecto; a paragraph or line of shown or told endings.
Maybe narrative is really about finding the balance and "pattern" (however irregular) we want of show, tell and reflect. Sometimes the edges blur; sometimes the edges are sharp(er). Here is the famous opening of Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Pale Fire":
"Two leaves, two triskelions, like two shuddering three-legged bathers coming at a run for a swim, are borne by their impetus right into the middle where with a sudden slowdown they float quite flat. Twenty minutes past four.
View from a hospital window.
November trees, poplars, I imagine, two of them growing straight out of the asphalt: all of them in the cold bright sun, bright richly furrowed bark and an intricate sweep of numberless burnished bare twigs, old gold—because getting more of the falsely mellow sun in the higher air. Their immobility is in contrast with the spasmodic ruffling of the inset reflection—for the visible motion of a tree is in the mass of its leaves, and there remain hardly more than thirty-seven or so here and there on one side of the tree. They just flicker a little, of a neutral tint, but burnished by the sun to the same ikontinct as the intricate trillions of twigs. Swooning blue of the sky crossed by pale motionless superimposed cloud wisps.
The operation has not been successful and my wife will die."
This weave ("braid") of show, tell, and reflecto creates urgency and beauty. (And it blurs even within the sentences.)
I don't know how much of this should be thought of consciously in early drafting, but it can certainly be considered in revising. Maybe even a reflecto can be used as a writer's mental note as to why the character/narrator is telling the tale (what's at stake), and maybe the reflecto can be ultimately included or discarded. Nothing has to remain in the final draft. But the writer/reader can feel it.
Can you imagine - at the risk of spoilers - collecting "reflectos"? Perhaps another literary non sequitur, but here is an ending reflecto that haunts me from a novel, Iris Murdoch's "The Sea, The Sea" (do not read if you do want want a reflecto spolier):
"She came to me, she ran to me, that was no dream. That was no phantom I embraced that night. And on that night she said she loved me. My idea of her return to an 'original resentment' was too ingenious. One can be too ingenious in trying to search out the truth. Sometimes one must simply respect its veiled face. Of course this is a love story. She was not able to be my Beatrice nor was I able to be saved by her, but the idea was not senseless nor unworthy... The past buries the past and must end in silence, but it can be a conscious silences that rests open-eyed. Perhaps this is final forgiveness that James spoke of."
Mikhaelya (and George!), thank you for guiding me/us through this process of reflection on so many levels.
Nabokov - word artist extraordinaire. And I love the idea of frames within a work, bracketing individual microcosms of story and providing a lens we take with us until the next one is provided. Have you ever been to those science museums where you enter a room that's lit with a colour-filtered light and everything appears yellow or olive green or brown, and then you shine a white light torch around and suddenly everything is cerulean, and magenta, and emerald? That's what this framing feels like, except you sometimes forget you have that white-light torch and just let the author guide you through the rooms with their differently filtered lights...
There should be a "love" option on Substack. "I reflect. I turn back or away." Oh, Mikhaelya - what a wonderous post.
"I turn back or away."
Maybe this raises a point about the ending in at least the two stories mentioned ("An Incident" and "TGG"): there are shown endings (scene/image with little commentary); told endings (voice-based scenes but perhaps little reflecto), and reflecto endings (some combination of the told or shown with reflecto). And combinations of these. And endings are sometimes a mix: a paragraph or line of reflecto; a paragraph or line of shown or told endings.
Maybe narrative is really about finding the balance and "pattern" (however irregular) we want of show, tell and reflect. Sometimes the edges blur; sometimes the edges are sharp(er). Here is the famous opening of Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Pale Fire":
"Two leaves, two triskelions, like two shuddering three-legged bathers coming at a run for a swim, are borne by their impetus right into the middle where with a sudden slowdown they float quite flat. Twenty minutes past four.
View from a hospital window.
November trees, poplars, I imagine, two of them growing straight out of the asphalt: all of them in the cold bright sun, bright richly furrowed bark and an intricate sweep of numberless burnished bare twigs, old gold—because getting more of the falsely mellow sun in the higher air. Their immobility is in contrast with the spasmodic ruffling of the inset reflection—for the visible motion of a tree is in the mass of its leaves, and there remain hardly more than thirty-seven or so here and there on one side of the tree. They just flicker a little, of a neutral tint, but burnished by the sun to the same ikontinct as the intricate trillions of twigs. Swooning blue of the sky crossed by pale motionless superimposed cloud wisps.
The operation has not been successful and my wife will die."
This weave ("braid") of show, tell, and reflecto creates urgency and beauty. (And it blurs even within the sentences.)
I don't know how much of this should be thought of consciously in early drafting, but it can certainly be considered in revising. Maybe even a reflecto can be used as a writer's mental note as to why the character/narrator is telling the tale (what's at stake), and maybe the reflecto can be ultimately included or discarded. Nothing has to remain in the final draft. But the writer/reader can feel it.
Can you imagine - at the risk of spoilers - collecting "reflectos"? Perhaps another literary non sequitur, but here is an ending reflecto that haunts me from a novel, Iris Murdoch's "The Sea, The Sea" (do not read if you do want want a reflecto spolier):
"She came to me, she ran to me, that was no dream. That was no phantom I embraced that night. And on that night she said she loved me. My idea of her return to an 'original resentment' was too ingenious. One can be too ingenious in trying to search out the truth. Sometimes one must simply respect its veiled face. Of course this is a love story. She was not able to be my Beatrice nor was I able to be saved by her, but the idea was not senseless nor unworthy... The past buries the past and must end in silence, but it can be a conscious silences that rests open-eyed. Perhaps this is final forgiveness that James spoke of."
Mikhaelya (and George!), thank you for guiding me/us through this process of reflection on so many levels.
Nabokov - word artist extraordinaire. And I love the idea of frames within a work, bracketing individual microcosms of story and providing a lens we take with us until the next one is provided. Have you ever been to those science museums where you enter a room that's lit with a colour-filtered light and everything appears yellow or olive green or brown, and then you shine a white light torch around and suddenly everything is cerulean, and magenta, and emerald? That's what this framing feels like, except you sometimes forget you have that white-light torch and just let the author guide you through the rooms with their differently filtered lights...