I need to do this correctly. I'm writing a list of feedback I'm supposed to give back, but knowing what feedback I owe you have been difficult to discern from your posts. Given that this is not a class, it would be unfair for you to write it out again, even though that would help me tremendously. I feel guilty that this experiment is not turning out as you imagine. Do you mind restating the feedback and specific things you'd like me to discuss?
Sometimes just the act of reading teaches us about ourselves as well as absorbing, concomitantly, awareness of technique and skills. Our reading informs and transforms us. Your response to Appel's homage to sadness is well done, concise, and illuminating. It suggests to me that you have learned a great deal from the technique of the story without articulating this acquisition specifically. You might find it useful to try to elicit from yourself how Appel's craft could be informing your own technique.
I have always thought of this story as an "Ode to Sadness." I always assumed "La Tristesse des Hérrisons" was an old French saying, but so far I haven't been able to verify this. Using this as a title tends to lift the story into an abstraction. Appel's use of dialogue to advance the plot and develop character is really outstanding.
On the other side of sadness is anger. So it seems inevitable the pent-up tolerance of unreasonable demands would erupt in a violent act of seizing the hedgehog with malicious intent. To end the narrative with Adeline, Josh, and the hedgehog, whose razor sharp quills have sliced Josh's left hand to shreds, standing together on the ledge outside their apartment window, about to plunge to the street---with the hedgehog leading the way, slipping from Josh's bloody grip, followed by Josh and then Adelaide---but we can only assume, because Appel has left them framed as if in a Polaroid moment, for the reader to determine what happens next.
This story also uses sections as part of the structure. The first story also employed the same device. I asked you then, and I ask you now, how you think using sections advances or affects the narrative?
Let me conclude that I really take issue with you not engaging my comments, especially when I have asked for your response to specific points and issues.
Go back and reread my entries and give me some requested feedback. Otherwise, we don't have a dialogue, just inconsequential speeches that fail to achieve an exchange of ideas.
It's time to move on to "Strings." See you in cyberspace.
The second Story of Einstein's Beach House is set in Manhattan. The protagonist, Josh, is a former lawyer who owns and operates a relatively successful restaurant. He is in a failing relationship with a neurotic woman suffering from more than a few traumatic events. The protagonist, while not wealthy, is successful enough to afford his pet's healthcare needs, including buying medication and expensive lights for his hedgehog.
To enjoy the story, a reader must suspend his disbelief multiple times. Adeline is clearly going through serious issues and does not seem to receive any necessary treatment for her sadness or more profound dissatisfaction. Nobody, even her boyfriend, encourages (much fewer asks) her to sort out her issues. Taking care of the hedgehog grows to become the only outlet for her frustration. Despite knowing it only drives them apart, Josh keeps indulging her obsession with Orion. Josh not only buys medicine without insurance but also spends his time and treasure soundproofing and darkening the house. He only snaps when Adeline accuses him of purposefully damaging Orion with the refrigerator light. The ending is foreshadowed several times but is still unbelievable. The sight of Josh having squeezed the hedgehog to death, with him and his girlfriend on a ledge together, is harrowing. Is this a metaphor for death or the struggle of rebirth?
Appel crafts excellent sentences. Some of my favorites included his description of Adeline's mother. The dialogue between Josh and Adeline is similarly robust and cutting. Some illustrations, including Josh's lament of firing the pretty waitress after being seen sharing some calamari with her, are excellently written. I'm deeply envious of Appel's ability to create evocative images.
We each dwell within an absence of being that can be terrifying. Being present within our awareness is the journey each takes in discovery of ourselves. This is the theme of The Odyssey, and we seem to always be at the center of our quest. Your absence is not from this Blog, but is centered within your being, and it will manifest itself in many ways, but at some point you pause... and suddenly remember "I am Here."
For some strange reason, my sister-in-law decided to spend her boys' precious vacation time touring colleges in the United States. They crashed at my home for a day and a half, making it hard to read anything or reply to your last statement. I was going to ask a few questions about Walt Whitman and New York City.
I'll read the following story and write a post on it.
It's been a while since your last entry. Since that time I responded to you with a number of questions and observations that invited your attention.
I know you're busy. So am I.
I never felt this was to be a long-term project. Choosing a modest book of eight stories put a finite frame on this exchange. If we spent a week on each story, we would be done at the end of 8-10 weeks, and maybe we both might have learned something worthwhile.
Maybe you're writing your response even now, but it occurred to me that I should clarify what I was hoping might emerge from our dialogue in this space.
If you can add to Einstein's Beach House commentaries, do so quickly, because there's a critter waiting up the path that has a bizarre tale in "La Tristesse Des Hérissons." My first reading was one of disbelief. I'm still not sure what I think of this tale about "The Sadness of Hedgehogs."
Read the story, and in the meantime, I will give it another reading. I notice it is also divided into sections as was the first story. You never commented on how you thought sections function in structuring a narrative.
You make cogent observations about Appel's style. Your entry is right on target in what I was hoping to get from you, even though I was left wanting much more of your observations about his narrative technique. I appreciate your noticing Appel's similarities with Hemingway and Salter. It might be more convincing if you had offered some examples. I believe that critics have observed that Hemingway tried to be careful and sparse in the use of adjectives.
If you are writing continuously, it's hard to stay the same. Maybe style evolves as you develop more command over narrative.
Narrative is about "what happens"...and Hemingway moves slowly and deeply in allowing each of his narratives to find its own voice. If you've read The Old Man and The Sea, you encountered a deep narrative style that focused on minute tribulations of action unfolding, whether it be the sea, the old man's thoughts, his struggles with the elements, his boat, the giant marlin lashed to the side of his boat.
The Old Man and the Sea is his ninth novel. His first novel was The Sun Also Rises in 1926, ten years before I was born. The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952, when I was a sophomore in high school. I include my chronology to note that Hemingway served as a teacher for me in the way that I appropriated his work to understand my own writing process.
Some observe that Hemingway prefers verbs over adjectives, but that may be an oversimplification.
I really appreciate how much you have improved your writing with regard to this Blog. But I have asked that you acknowledge the content I wrote specifically for you because it frames a foundation for some ground rules for our mutual inquiry. None of your entries acknowledge anything I've written and addressed specifically to you. All of my entries in this Blog are addressed specifically to you. And when you have submitted your writing, I have referred to the content of your entry.
A dialogue begins when you respond to someone who presents an idea or asks a question.
Please write a more or less diligent entry in response to the several points raised for you by me in the initial entry of this Blog.
Thanks for using a title, and I'm glad you used caps so our Blog starts to take on a certain consistency in style.
Using Verdana set as a medium-sized font also provides a standard for style.
Currently I am engaged with Walt Whitman and following him on his journey walking the streets of lower Manhattan as he did every day, writing and publishing newspapers and journals and gradually establishing a new literary style. Those days were stormy days in the history of the republic, and Whitman, I think, was the Hemingway of his day because of his prolific prose and poetry was shaping a new style for a new world.
