Thoughts on Non-Fiction

I imagine good story telling as I imagine an outstanding song.

Something about the first few seconds grabs, and then the following ones don’t disappoint. Then, perhaps, a tambourine starts to shake over top of a delayed reverberating voice. A voice just trained enough that you don’t have to work hard to listen to it, but also gruff or angry enough that it makes you move a little. Just enough so that no one really notices at first. It builds, and if it’s lucky, if it’s right, if you haven’t already, always by the bridge, you’re hooked. You don’t want it to end, but you know it will, so until it does you let it know that it did the right thing by maybe dancing, kicking a chair over, sometimes pushing your friends around, or making out on the couch.

What just didn’t occur to me before, that, like planning the pieces of a song, the intro, the verses, chorus, bridge, ending, storytelling requires a plan. I’m a firm believer that there is something about writing that can’t be taught. I think it might be either the empathy for word, or the anguish that comes with not writing. Those things I don’t feel can be found in a class room. But planning, now that’s something for the curriculum.

I can prove this thesis with the example of Tom French’s Angels and Demons. Interesting, that the class was only assigned Chapter one of this mini-novel. I spent my lunch hour finishing off every chapter before class. The first sentence “In their last hours alive” is case in point enough. This is such a simple, almost crime-scene tv drama sentence. But, I believe what justifies its’ use is just the simple fact that it’s true. If someone began a fiction novel with “In their last hours alive” would it be too base? Common? Regardless, French continues to arrest the reader. He unfolds his story as if the reader were in fact the investigator of the triple homicide, by only giving information as it becomes available chronologically. He explores every lead, analyzing the players, their faults, motives, and alibis. He deconstructs the victims, beginning with them as vibrant unique women. They never become simply bodies pulled out of water, but seem to carry a lively presence throughout the narrative. Perhaps it is true that though the common Western individual craves violence by way of the media, they would prefer in fact to read an account of brutality with the victims actually seeming alive, rather than the loom of three corpses. Perhaps with this statement I am reaching…but if I visualize Angels and Demons with an abundance of corporeal detail of the victims, I can’t imagine I would have read the entire thing.

But what to think in the event of a decent story teller covering something of no interest to them? Perhaps this is the quandary behind Death of a Playmate. Carpenter tells the tale of “the focus of the dreams and ambitions of three men.” Despite Carpenter’s wealth of detail and investigation into the players surrounding Dorothy Stratten’s death, the narrative never became humanized for me. I found it perfunctory and almost sterile, devoid of anything which drew me into the story or emotions of the characters. I found the most empathy for Hugh Heffner, who is cleverly described as a “sybarite in mourning.” Could it be possible that Carpenter just was not invested in this story, and that it comes across in the reading? She won the Pulitzer Prize for this article, so it obviously holds merit. Stratten’s story is a torrid one, involving powerful people, and an outlandish ending. It is unbelievable, it becomes more so in light of the glamorization of images Hollywood and Playboy. Regardless of the writing, regardless of the non-fictional reality of it, an unbelievable story is unbelievable. If I was Dorothy Carpenter, and handed this story, my response would have been “Oh Crap.”

And lastly, another story told, this one from the narrative including that of a judge. I found this very interesting. Often one hears of the sentences carried out, and their consequences, but for Judge Hilder to participate with Siegel’s article, as well as making the statement to the media which he did, was quite absorbing. Siegel’s article was different from French’s in that I consider it to be a slow song. A brooding, lengthy instrumental song. One that you listen to while you’re cooking or knitting, one that you appreciate for what it is. However, it doesn’t deliver the force of French’s piece, similar to an electro-dance, or grunge punk song. This particular sadness in Silver Summit, Utah, easily creates a sympathetic audience. A man’s child dies, every parent’s worst fear, and even worse, he must remain alive with the guilt that it is his own fault. A Father’s Pain is a tragedy. Is it easier to write tragedy as a non-fiction writer? Are people more likely to talk about their pain than their happiness? Open up about what made them that way?

And are there more sad songs than others? I think possibly what it boils down to, is that to tell a story, to hook, entrance and evoke, one must work hard. A carefully plotted arc and development is the thing in fact which is not easy. I’ve never held the opinion that musicians didn’t work hard, so perhaps I should take a full stop in any notion similar by way of the writer.