Devil's Night, Hal Incandenza (characterization of), scrambled eggs & beer
Happy Halloween!
Well, now that that’s out of the way—I tend not to mark that holiday these days with much more than a more intent than usual study of the characters who cross my path on subway and sidewalk. More absurdist directions have been occurring to me as viable directions in which I might take the novel: setting it in the fictional Northampton, for instance, which doesn’t actually exist but which discussions have been underway to create.
I picture a scheming cabal of real-estate developers and moguls and Hamptons town board members not unlike the Republican Party meetings in favorite episodes of The Simpsons. Monty Burns on an immense throne of skulls and lit torches.
Of course, going in this direction will inevitably swing me closer to territory covered by DFW in IJ, which, as previously blogged about, exerts a powerful influence on me whenever I think about fiction these days. Avoiding comparions to IJ and President Gentle’s O.N.A.N. / Subsidization scheming. What I need to remember of course—and any novelists reading this post will be smacking their crania in “Of course” kinds of gestures—is that these questions of character & plot boil down to remaining focused in a very private eye investigator kind of way on the motivations and inner lives of these characters. And while the utter primacy of characters is a claim I accept true, I also suspect and believe somewhat contradictorily that the plot, even an absurdist one, might be a necessary precondition for the full presentation and interrogation of a novel’s characters. Hal Incandenza, for instance, a if not the protagonist of IJ, wouldn’t be so intriguing if he didn’t have complexly described circumstances to contend with in re: the WhatABurger Invitational, his suicided-by-microwave father, and Quebecois insurgency, to name just 3 elements of the very knotty plot.
[Later.] Overshot my quota of 1200 words or so without much realizing it. Most of today’s production, happily, pertains to what’s actually happening in the EECH Kiddie Clubbers’ misadventures; while there is an extended footnote anecdote about Martha Stewart and celebrities laid low, and a smaller footnote about the home life of one of the EECH staffers, most of the action is rooted in the light-footed present. While this, too, may be brow-moppingly obvious to longtime practioners of the art, and is to me as well in theory, it is in practice a very fresh and new realization to me in terms of how to actually do it.
Phew, it’s warm in here today. I have a southern exposure, here in this room. By noontime there’s a healthy silver light lensing in the sunshine. A little black & tan takes the edge off this morning’s excellent coffee before work. I didn’t think coffee would be a wise thing this morning, considering my sore throat, but it turned out to be just what I needed. For those of you who are sick and don’t feel as though you can handle coffee—I’d always abandon it for tea—try coffee with two fingers of milk added. Or just up your percentage of creamer. You’ll get a weaker cup but it’ll go down more smoothly. Plus the caffeine will be more evenly distributed into your system—lower dosages, one might say—and the Shakes will be postponed. As for the beer, I first thought of it after having thought of scrambled eggs. If I had some whiskey, I'd have had that in honor of Hayden Carruth's "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey" - something about that sounds so hearty and homespun that it just must figure in that man's gruffly & kind longevity. Sure enough, my little imitation meal treated me well.
I wonder what sorts of costumes I’ll see today, if any. Me, I’m going as Everyman. See if you can spot me, out in the city.
Well, now that that’s out of the way—I tend not to mark that holiday these days with much more than a more intent than usual study of the characters who cross my path on subway and sidewalk. More absurdist directions have been occurring to me as viable directions in which I might take the novel: setting it in the fictional Northampton, for instance, which doesn’t actually exist but which discussions have been underway to create.
I picture a scheming cabal of real-estate developers and moguls and Hamptons town board members not unlike the Republican Party meetings in favorite episodes of The Simpsons. Monty Burns on an immense throne of skulls and lit torches.
Of course, going in this direction will inevitably swing me closer to territory covered by DFW in IJ, which, as previously blogged about, exerts a powerful influence on me whenever I think about fiction these days. Avoiding comparions to IJ and President Gentle’s O.N.A.N. / Subsidization scheming. What I need to remember of course—and any novelists reading this post will be smacking their crania in “Of course” kinds of gestures—is that these questions of character & plot boil down to remaining focused in a very private eye investigator kind of way on the motivations and inner lives of these characters. And while the utter primacy of characters is a claim I accept true, I also suspect and believe somewhat contradictorily that the plot, even an absurdist one, might be a necessary precondition for the full presentation and interrogation of a novel’s characters. Hal Incandenza, for instance, a if not the protagonist of IJ, wouldn’t be so intriguing if he didn’t have complexly described circumstances to contend with in re: the WhatABurger Invitational, his suicided-by-microwave father, and Quebecois insurgency, to name just 3 elements of the very knotty plot.
[Later.] Overshot my quota of 1200 words or so without much realizing it. Most of today’s production, happily, pertains to what’s actually happening in the EECH Kiddie Clubbers’ misadventures; while there is an extended footnote anecdote about Martha Stewart and celebrities laid low, and a smaller footnote about the home life of one of the EECH staffers, most of the action is rooted in the light-footed present. While this, too, may be brow-moppingly obvious to longtime practioners of the art, and is to me as well in theory, it is in practice a very fresh and new realization to me in terms of how to actually do it.
Phew, it’s warm in here today. I have a southern exposure, here in this room. By noontime there’s a healthy silver light lensing in the sunshine. A little black & tan takes the edge off this morning’s excellent coffee before work. I didn’t think coffee would be a wise thing this morning, considering my sore throat, but it turned out to be just what I needed. For those of you who are sick and don’t feel as though you can handle coffee—I’d always abandon it for tea—try coffee with two fingers of milk added. Or just up your percentage of creamer. You’ll get a weaker cup but it’ll go down more smoothly. Plus the caffeine will be more evenly distributed into your system—lower dosages, one might say—and the Shakes will be postponed. As for the beer, I first thought of it after having thought of scrambled eggs. If I had some whiskey, I'd have had that in honor of Hayden Carruth's "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey" - something about that sounds so hearty and homespun that it just must figure in that man's gruffly & kind longevity. Sure enough, my little imitation meal treated me well.
I wonder what sorts of costumes I’ll see today, if any. Me, I’m going as Everyman. See if you can spot me, out in the city.
posted by Wil at
10:33 AM
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