mh-z web-log

A small comment about writing style. (I wrote this a long time ago. Found it in a drafty place.)

I read the original Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card years ago, and at the time it seemed “simplistic”. The hero (Ender) and the path he took were just too perfect. He faced his challenges almost robotically and we never had to struggle; we were never really in any doubt as to his ultimate success. The story was direct and told without flair, almost as if it itself were written by a child. What set the book apart, though, was the depth of analysis of the characters’ absolutely every action and thought and intention; the lack of subtlety and, truth be told, the refreshing departure from “show, don’t tell”, that old writers’ maxim which was drilled into me in elementary and high school English classes. Okay, I confess at this point that I don’t remember the prose of Ender’s Game all that well, but with respect to Ender’s Shadow, this commentary seems very applicable.

The boy ate the banana and was no longer hungry.

That would be “tell”.

The banana peel lay on the table, and the boy’s stomach stopped rumbling.

That would be “show”.

The second seems far more literary. Want to get even more literary? In the “show” version, I still “told” you some facts (about the banana peel and the boy’s stomach) which implied the idea I really wanted to convey. But why not show the above facts, themselves, instead? This’ll sound a bit absurd, but that’s the nature of the beast, as we go one level of abstraction further up the ladder:

If someone had walked on the table, he would likely have slipped in a classically comical way, while meanwhile in the boy’s stomach elephants were no longer on parade.

That’s a pretty absurd way of describing lack of hunger due to having consumed a banana, yet we see prose which aspires to that level of obliqueness all the time, and it’s often venerated for that. What does it add, really?

My point is that Card’s novels work because he just flat out “tells” and doesn’t pretend to be doing anything more than that. Although the reader isn’t left anything to figure out, I maintain that for the most part, making readers figure things out is mostly tiring, as is the telling of irrelevant facts (e.g., the fact that the banana peel is on the table; the fact that the boy’s stomach was rumbling) in order to be “showing” the important facts which are illuminated only by implication. In truth: take the flowery language and non-linear narrative blocks out of many books, and the story itself would compress quite a bit. Perhaps the same mood wouldn’t be conveyed, true, but sometimes “he felt sad” is just as good as “he hung his head in despair”, unless he really did hang his head in despair, but that’s just a literary cliche at this point and we don’t even know what he really did with his head when you say that, if anything (other than feel sad with it) unless more specific non-cliche actions are described.

Card just says “he felt sad” and uses the extra space to explain exactly why he feels sad, what his sadness means, what he is doing differently now because of his sadness, what he feels about the fact that he feels sad, how other characters react to his analysis of his own sadness and, in turn, their analyses of their reactions to his analysis of his sadness and their reactions to their analyses of such, and so on. And all of this is somehow relevant to the story.

That makes it atypical and fun.

Why is piracy of books in electronic format not an issue? Why don’t we find large volumes of PDFs of scanned books or cracked e-books on peer-to-peer file sharing networks? Why aren’t book publishers up in arms, suing book pirates left and right?

Book sharing isn’t rampant, but imagine if it were. Now… would we (as a society) really mind? Because people are //stealing//, fine, but also people are stealing //books//. There’s a little bit of cognitive dissonance in this.

Different but related topic: Why do book publishers get away with releasing a new edition of, say, //math// textbooks every year? My little brother at UCLA had to buy a new $100 textbook because the used edition from last year didn’t have the right homework problems or the right problem sets in the right order, or something like that. You’d think that for a subject like math, the 1950’s edition of the book would be just as good, as long as it didn’t require the use of a slide rule.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015TCML0 Kindle DX]? I just got a Kindle 2. Can’t they let me enjoy it in peace for at least a little while before a better, badder model is out?!

The Princess Bride: A clever, hard-to-put-down book. Then I saw the movie (on the basis of filling in various classics I seem to have missed as a kid), which was horrible, and I think if I were to try and read the book again I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it because I’d just be picturing the characters from the movie. After watching, I went back and read the author’s introduction to the book which was all about how “everyone’s seen the movie and it’s a beloved classic but now here’s the book, you’ll probably enjoy it too”, and how the movie was made and how pleased he was in how it turned out, and that made me lose most of my respect for the author (William Goldman, not to be confused with William Golding who wrote The Lord of the Flies). If he believes his vision of the story in the book was translated well into the movie, then his vision and mine can’t possibly match, and I read a different story than he wrote.

On the other hand, Goldman also wrote the screenplay and invested a great deal of time and effort in the movie. So my question is: could he, conceivably, publicly announce “sorry about all that, I can’t believe how horribly this movie turned out, I put so much effort into it and involved lots of other people and in the end it completely sucked”. I hope that were I in his position I could certainly do something like that on the basis of honesty and just telling it like it as and moving on, and I’m certainly critical of things I make when I believe they haven’t turned out well. But that’s because I’m working alone, and something I make is wholly mine to criticize. When you’re part of a large team, there’s diplomacy involved, especially when you’re in an elevated position within the team. So being responsible for having written the screenplay and assisted with the casting, for Goldman to publicly criticize the movie would be to insult the work of everyone involved in the, or “his”, project. Now, how much insult any particular person would actually take is based on other factors, and I’m not assuming anything about Goldman’s true feelings regarding the movie. I’m just pointing out by way of example based on idle speculation how in general politeness and diplomacy prevent us from just calling as we see it (and probably how most people see it). I can’t even say whether that’s always a bad thing, because it’ll depend on the circumstance. Based on the length and content of the introduction to the book, it’s hard to see that Goldman was disappointed by the movie in any way; based on the content of the book itself, which demonstrates the intelligence of the writer (and the fact that I enjoyed the book, from which I originally assumed that the writer and myself appreciate similar styles), it’s hard to see that he could possibly think the movie worthwhile.

["Oh bother", said Pooh, as all his carefully constructed logic dissolved in a tragic axiomatic anomaly.]

Note: I didn’t link to the earlier book because I couldn’t find the edition I have (with that introduction) on Amazon. Bought it at a run of the mill megabookstore, though. Here’s their base item with reviews.

Here’s the movie. I guess a lot of people liked it. Fine, it’s a classic, and it has some amusing scenes and memorable lines here and there… but it was something completely different from the book, and that’s probably why I was disappointed. I remember that the first 100 pages or so of the book went by in a couple minutes of the movie… all the cleverness and nuance of the writing was lost.

Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist: Let me first admit that I was biased against Mr. Feist, simply because of his name and the fact that I knew nothing about him. Like how I was biased against “Finding Nemo“. What a lame-sounding title, I thought to myself, when I saw billboards for Nemo. Then I saw the movie, and my opinion did a one-eighty degree turn and backed into the meat slicer. I exited the theater and felt like I was underwater, having gotten used to two hours (or however long the movie was) of shimmers and the wavelike motion light filtering through water and the motion of the water itself, respectively, cause.

So, Raymond E. Feist, let him not be sliced (for he is not cheese): I’ve seen his books loitering around the house, black and white and read all over by my younger siblings, but thought to myself… nah, what’s yet another fantasy cycle? I’ve read the first few books in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, and nothing can top those for blowing away the boundaries of every fantasy story I’ve encountered; I’ve been meaning to complete the whole thing. (So what’s yet another series? I have more important things to read.) And when I’m done with Mr. Jordan, I’ll read the Encyclopedia Britannica; by the way, it’s only a little bit longer (ha) than his (so far 11-book long) series. Then there’s the Sword of Shannara series and the genre-starting Hobbit and Lordses of the Ringses, which we should all be familiar with. Anyway, the point is, how much can be done within that same fantasy setting? There are always the same central themes… if I may indulge myself for a moment here, there’s: (1) an unprepossessing character who eventually gains experience points to become a hero, (2) some subset of (humans, dwarves, elves) on the side of good, (goblins, trolls, giant spiders) on the side of evil, individuals which go either way from (spirits, dragons, wizards), and of course through all this keep in mind that the striped toothpaste is swirled around a little bit, but it’s still striped, and nobody’s brushed their teeth with it, as of yet.

“Non sequiturs be damned”, said Polly as she put the kettle on. “Hold on a moment”, said Tom tightly, “I think that was, like, a metaphor”. Polly served the tea, when it was ready, with crackers and an arrest warrant, and didn’t say anything more. I picked up Raymond E. Feist’s book, and wasn’t able to put it down. Wait, that’s not true… What really happened is that I found the book in the bathroom and read the first few chapters over the course of several days. I figured I’d leave the book in there, and eventually, given enough time, I’d get through it. My goal was to finish the whole book, cover to cover, reading nowhere but the “library”, as we call it. Well, it was a noble goal, but I cheated.

As a side note, I asked my little sister this: “Think of all fantasy epics which have dwarves. Are there any of them in which the dwarves do not end up leading people through tunnels under a mountain?” I won’t give anything away about whether dwarves lead anyone under tunnels in a mountain in Magician: Apprentice, though. Because that would just spoil the whole story for you… Ha ha.

Anyway, Magician was a good story. Lots of loose ends that need toning, but I understand what I read was the first half of the first book in a series of three. It’s also the first book ever written by Mr. Feist, whom I now respect as a writer. His writing is choppy, and the story itself seems to have little flow. He’ll describe something at length (some political process the main character observed, for example, like a succession of kings and why a particular king was seemingly insane and wouldn’t allow his armies to fight for the good guys when petitioned for help, and the familial ties and relationships among a great number of royalty), and as we’re getting ready for the inevitable outcome (some sort of power struggle and last minute heroic intervention or maybe a battle of wits) the story completely changes pace (the king says “hey guys, okay sure, you can take my armies”). But that’s how life works (on our mundane little scales), so the plotting is refreshing.

That’s refreshing as in beer, not as in speech, even though I don’t find beer particularly refreshing. Mr. Feist doesn’t use big obstreperous words or throw complex, poetic, overly smooth or phrontifugic sentences at you, either. I like those, though… boldly parsing where no one has parsed before. Parse and labor. Someone get me Part Two of this thing.

Ah, an Agatha Christie book. Are these formulaic, like the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift (which I’ve mentioned before) or do they follow a specific trend or are they mostly different from each other? I don’t know; I’ve never read anything by Ms. Christie before, notorious (but not in a bad way) writer though she is. I remember back when I was in third grade, there were Agatha Christie books on the shelf in our classroom, but I never deigned to pick any of ‘em up. Preferred the “Choose Your Awn Adventure” books, which I kept my place in by means of all my fingers (to return to decision points when my character died or the story just came to an end), later graduating to paperclips. I remember reading some of those from cover to cover, even, disjointed though the story turned out. But the books were action packed so reading in orded didn’t matter. Same thing as the movie Memento (which everyone pronounces as “momento” as in “un momento por favor”, but it’s not that, it’s memento, ya uneducated fools!). “Memento: A reminder of the past”. As in, a keepsake. The main character’s tatooing his important data on his arms so that he’ll know who he is when he wakes up each day.

Is this supposed to be a review of Murder on the Orient Express in which I’ve instead said virtually nothing about the book, just random circumstances which don’t even surround the book? Was that a rhetorical question? Anyway, it was good, and that’s all I have to say. The main character is the detective Hercule Poirot, who seems small and average and unassuming until he turns his powers of intellect to the mystery itself and solves it light years ahead of everyone else. (And do keep in mind, though, that “light years” are a measure of distance and not time, so that doesn’t really apply.) Anyway, PBS had a mystery series featuring Poirot mysteries, and now I shall just have to obtain videos and watch them.

This was a quick book to read, or would have been had I not been going at the pace of about one-half page per night before I fell asleep. That’s not to remark on the quality or excitement level of the book, which I assure you is up there on the charts. Rather, just the way my body works when it comes to sleep, information which clearly has no business being in a book review. And now since this review contains more meta-information than anything relevant about the book, I’ll stop. I recommend it, that’s about all I have to say.

I picked this book up rather randomly because I like Zahn’s style based on a couple other readings, and I wasn’t disappointed here. This is pure spaceship science fiction, not too hard and not too soft, almost like an elaborate Star Trek episode. Well, a ten-hour long Star Trek episode, since the level of detail in the book is quite high and film/TV would necessarily chop out most of the plot. The story is essentially an elaborate murder mystery chase told in first person from the perspective of a starship captain who doesn’t know what his cargo is or why at least one entity is trying to sabotage the ship. The captain explains his thought processes in detail every step of the way, and unlike throughout other stories I never found myself wondering he didn’t make a certain (obvious) observation or take a certain course of action. In a manner of speaking, I “trusted” the characters.

Zahn’s style is matter-of-fact and completely plot driven; he doesn’t try to be poetic or describe anyone’s feelings in magnificently flowing metaphoric prose, like "crystalline dewdrops clutching perilously to the thin serrated knife-edge of a trumpet-like fern vibrating in the face of a quiet yet forceful breeze…" to describe someone’s feelings, of course. No, nothing like that. I don’t even know what that’s saying, and I wrote it, for… Tom Robbins’ sake.

Some elements in the world/universe the story creates are a bit silly, like a race of aliens who communicate semi-telepathically with ferret-like creatures (I picture woodchucks) that sit on their shoulders and can run off to provide an extra couple sets of senses. But the silliness wears off… The characters become real and vivid, and it’s a charming little story, continually finding new and unpredictable threads and slowly, surely and neatly tying them all together.