Character Thought (technique)

Feb 282010
 

Capture2

Here’s a note on what I call “novel thought” or “character thought.” It’s an excerpt from a letter to a student.

Novelists use character thought to sew the novel together. Novel thought is very stylized and systematic, unlike real thought. Characters are 1) always looking back, always remembering where they have been and why they have come to where they are. This happens over and over, repetitiously, so that the reader is always being reminded of the past story of the novel/character and the current motivation; 2) always assessing where they are now, what am I doing, why am I doing it, why is that other character doing what he is doing, what does this look like, what does it remind me of? (Thought is action: your characters don’t have to necessarily be right in their assessments, they just have to be true to themselves in the context of what’s gone before.) 3) always looking ahead: given what’s just happened what do I want to do next, what plan can I make, what do I think the other character(s) will do next, how will I react to that?

These sorts of thought should be in the text all the time. Characters should always be connecting events in their own heads (so the reader can remember and see the connection). Every chapter should have some memory or reference to previous chapters, especially the one just before. And every chapter should look ahead, have reference to what’s coming up. All in the character’s mind. Over and over in novels you’ll find a pattern. Chapter opening, then a tiny bit of backfill connecting this chapter or plot step to the last once, maybe a summary of the steps to this point, and a clear sense of what the character plans to get out of the coming scenes, then the event/scenes, then as the chapter closes a bit of reflection on what has just happened and a moment of decision or plan-making, where do I turn next. A novel is always making connections.

For an expansion of this idea with examples from novels see my essay on novel structure  in my book Attack of the Copula Spiders and also in the relevant section of my book on Cervantes The Enamoured Knight.

—Douglas Glover

Søren & Regine & The Decline of Gesture

Feb 192010
 

Regine Olsen

A few posts and comments back, I counseled people to step back from taking sides in certain sorts of public cultural debates, to take the Hegelian approach and rise above and restructure the argument itself. I just reread Georg Lukacs essay “The Foundering of Form Against Life, Søren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen” which, as you might expect given Kierkegaard’s antipathy toward Hegel, suggests the opposite view, or at least constructs an opposite view. (Full disclosure: Lukacs was an Hegelian.)  The opposite view is that the gesture (form) can crystallize or shape life, or attempts to do so, while mostly life presents itself as a muddle of motives and options. This is the germ of the  Existentialist idea of creating value by making choices, by committing oneself. The bulk of the essay is an analysis of Kierkegaard’s gesture of renouncing his beloved Regine Olsen. Not only did he renounce her, but he pretended to be a cad, an inveterate seducer, so that she could more easily give him up in her own mind and get on with her life. If there was a chance that she thought Kierkegaard really loved her, she might wait for him or be uncertain about getting into another relationship. Kierkegaard loved her all the while. The gesture was a concrete act, a kind of heroic pose, and a choice he made. But Lukacs is cagey about tracking the uncertainties and ambiguities in the situation (this is where life beclouds the gesture). Kierkegaard performed the gesture because he thought he would ruin Regine’s life, but it seems also clear that he realized that she might clutter his life with pleasure (possibly happiness) and domesticity. So the gesture wasn’t entirely self-sacrificing. Through the rest of his life Kierkegaard waffled in his heart. He never wanted to see Regine because he didn’t ever want to remind her of the happiness they had hoped for or in case she might doubt that he was a cad and seducer; but it seems clear Regine never really quite bought his story and at least sometimes suspected that it was all a pose (Kierkegaard starts to look a bit comic). And once Kierkegaard wrote her a long letter explaining everything (was he hoping to reignite the old passion?), but Regine discussed the letter with her husband and decided to send it back unopened. So the gesture, examined in its particulars, seems less monolithic, less heroic, and less pure than when viewed from afar.

Reading this story from a contemporary standpoint, one is also surprised at the male comedy of Kierkegaard presuming to decide what is right for Regine without, um, actually talking to her. We don’t ever do that today, do we?

Also this is my sly way of introducing Lukacs who was an interesting thinker. See his book The Theory of the Novel which he tells you himself not to think of as a guide.

—Douglas Glover

E. K. Brown

Jan 162010
 

I was killing time in Saratoga Springs this morning waiting for my son Jonah who was in the library seeing his math tutor. I went to Lyrical Ballad, the antiquarian bookstore on Phila Street, and stumbled upon two copies of the paperback of E. K. Brown‘s book on Willa Cather. Brown was a Canadian critic and academic with interesting Formalist leanings. His little book Rhythm in the Novel is terrific on subplot and imagery (he calls extended image patterns expanding symbols). The book is out of print but not hard to find. dg

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