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Thursday, November 09, 2006
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Scathing Online Schoolmarm [A Regular University Diaries Feature] Two Formulaic Writers: Which is Better? I  [thanks to whitehouse.org] Here we have a passage from a Wild West romance novel. When judging prose that means to be formulaic, prose that wants to follow the conventions of an established and popular genre, we need to ask about its adequacy to our generic expectations. The writing, judged in this way, has certain strengths. The antediluvial cliche, "wave of revulsion," is excellent, as is the Snidely Whiplash dialogue: "feisty, ain't she... that kind's the most fun..." We get our money's worth here. But there are problems, in particular with the scab. The convention, in scenes like this one, is that the woman is repelled not really by the grossness of the man, but by his overpowering masculinity, with which, as a mincing little belle, she's unfamiliar (see Rhett, Scarlet). Thus she initially, defensively, proudly, hypocritically, reads this authentic rough maleness as grossness and pushes it away; but the man's insistence that she take sex on his terms changes her from Miss Prissy to Natural Woman. The scab, however, really is gross, so none of this works. It can only work if this novel means truly to depart from romance conventions and be, as Lynne Cheney's novel, Sisters, seems to want to be, a lesbian Wild West romance. Then it makes sense to make men scab-ridden dogs who deserve to be dumped for women. Yet in making its case for homoeroticism, the novel shifts genres, from bodice-ripper to Louisa May Alcott. Here, it evokes the utopia that awaits: "Let us go away together, away from the anger and the imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you do your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl. . . ." This formulaic novel fails not only because it wavers between formulae, but because it fails to make lesbianism competitive even with scabby heterosexuality. Cross-stitching in retirement is an unattractive option for someone who has bought a book that presents itself -- as Cheney's does -- as a hard-breathing romance novel. II "[He] could see Jawbone and Ashley Asthmatic [two guards at a Vietnamese prison camp] napping together in the grass. They faced inward, their arms entwined. It looked like they were masturbating each other. It didn't surprise him. … It was common to see men holding hands, embracing, playing with each other. Some of them [the guards] had wanted him. He could tell in those evanescent moments between his bao cao bow, the obligatory deference when a guard entered his cell, and the first word or blow that followed it… Quick, grinding voices, turgid with repressed passion. An exploratory reaching of the hand near his groin…” This second formulaic novel lies squarely in the rigors-of-war genre. Its rough, tell-all disposition is directly opposed to the oblique and sweet romance. We expect -- I think the cliche is "searing honesty" -- as such novels place young men in bloody and bizarre settings and follow them as they survive, changed forever. In the scene above, we have, instead of female eroticism, male, in the context of a Vietnamese prison. In order to fulfill our expectations, this scene must ring true; it must feature exoticism; and it must convey a lack of fear on the part of our hero. And this it all does, quite nicely. My only complaint is the use of the word "turgid." Turgid, an absurd-sounding word, is used to name the insane superstud in Dr. Strangelove (General Buck Turgidson). Along with satire, pornography is turgid's natural habitat, and it is best to leave it there. "[Fogarty] has been thinking of the firm, springy skin and the sweet smells of a young Filipina woman named Maria in whose bed he had spent three nights almost twenty years ago. . . . She was a deliciously bad young woman. . . . On the second night, he had brought her a box of Godiva chocolates . . . . he had awakened to find her in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet with her knees underneath her chin, eating chocolates and counting her rosary beads as she prayed." This is actually quite good, although "deliciously bad" sounds suspiciously like G.B. Shaw's "deliciously low" in Pygmalion. Again, it's got what we went to the book for: exoticism, reality... And even a little bit more, for that final image of the girl on the toilet eating chocolates is spectacular. I've never imagined a scene like that before, so it's got a provocative freshness about it... the sort of thing we go to far more ambitious novels for. I'd rewrite the last sentence, though, by taking out "as she prayed." We know that's what the beads are for, and the sentence is punchier without those final words -- ending on "rosary beads" is stronger. These, of course, are among the scenes from James Webb's novels that George Allen revealed to Virginians, in order to prompt their moral disgust and get them to vote for him. Now that that shabby trick has failed, UD considers the passages as writing, pure and simple, and finds them really not bad. Not good... But as formulaic fiction goes, better than respectable. In the contest, then, between the Vice-President's wife and Senator Webb, it's Webb by a longshot. Labels: SOS |