Authors: William H Gass
Life Sentences (41 page)
There are many things to observe about this early moment in the text. The lane in which Magister Udall is standing, wondering where to go to get dry, have a bite, and enjoy a wench, is suckafoot muddy. “He stood in the mud” puts him there quite firmly, but he is not unventuresome as a stick-in-the-mud would be. After the colon, there is what is commonly called a description—the man at this juncture—though not a complete or even extensive picture, for oncoming passages add that he has two books beneath his arms, and that they “poked out his gown on either side.” Moreover “… the bitter cold pinched his finger ends as if they had been caught in a door.” So there he is—with his learning and his loins—in a sack of wet fur.
The sentence is divided into two roughly equivalent parts (plus a metaphorical addendum), each announced by the verb phrases
he stood
and
let out
. Each contains a list of attributes that ends in a long mouth-shaping line. The most important word is possibly the preposition
in
. The context tells us that the magister is in doubt, and then that he is in the mud, in his doctor’s gown, and in his black flapped cap. Not only is he inside, so are his books, warily peeking out. The repetitions of
out
only increase the importance of being “in”—inside, out of the elements, in an inn (if we may be permitted the pun), quaffing some mead, eyeing a maid. Once within he may look out at the weather as he now peeks out from his fur and his cap.
Clearly this sentence is part of a story and contributes to it, but what is the point of suggesting that it contains incipient narrative elements, especially when it possesses obviously contrary qualities? Narrative runs from its words, and it does so in two directions: first,
it leaves the word for the actions and events the words, it believes, are there to designate; second, it looks forward to the words (and events) that are about to arrive. It does not like to dally over a meal; it bolts its food: salad only delays the steak that may itself be valued principally because its final swallow signals the onset of dessert. In music one would say narrative was “voice-led.” Listen, however, to this masterful prose speak its piece: the magister stood in the mud, yes—“brown in his doctor’s gown,” “with his black flapped cap that,” or should we revel in the movement of the vowels: ‘on’ ‘in’ ‘ow’ until the ‘o’s end in ‘oc’ and ‘or’ to be softly closed by ‘ur.’ “He stood in the mud: long, thin, brown, in his doctor’s gown of fur.” Hurrying on—is anything happening?—to the second
brown
, we read of “his brown, lean, shaven and humorous face,” that has been “let out” like you let out your dog, or … And at this point we can stop to admire the woodpecker image at our place before the hole in the tree.
It is a sentence shaped and sounded, its words selected not merely to get the magister’s boots muddy, or be obedient to syntax, but to have its own singular integrity, its own metaphored and modulated, its own rhyming, formally balanced, brown leather binding. Its plot is its own performance. Yet it is one of many like it in its paragraph, upon its page, well within its fiction. Just another little stroke of genius.
Prose cannot describe without beginning to narrate. Unlike events which succeed one another when we read (and only when we read, for the reader is the mover), features, properties, conditions stay awhile to be named one at a time as though the round faced and footed alarm clock were its ticks. We are aware that one tick does not cause another, that they are independently produced, but the word
tick
does cause the
tock
to appear, just as
brown
and
gown
become related, and, in balanced prose, one clause calls for its companion.
[2]
Sir Walter Scott. From
Waverly
(1814).
Waverly found Miss Bradwardine presiding over the teas and coffee, the table loaded with warm bread, both of flour, oatmeal, and barley-meal, in the shape of loaves, cakes, biscuits, and other varieties, together with eggs, reindeer ham, mutton and beef ditto, smoked salmon, marmalade, and all other delicacies which induced even Johnson himself to extol the luxury of a Scotch breakfast above that of all other countries.
We cannot always find perfection, so we shouldn’t linger over third-grade grammatical errors such as giving to
both
three choices (a vulgarity the dictionary reluctantly admits), or the awkward juxtaposition of
oatmeal
and
barley-meal
, or the foolish arrival of
marmalade
at the end of a list containing
beef, ham
, and
salmon
. We can be confident that our hostess, Miss Bradwardine, has not randomly
belabored her table, but has placed the marmalade nearby the breads, where it belongs; nor has she placed crocks of flour there to identify ingredients, though poor Scott has—why not yeast and baking powder, or perhaps a rolling pin? I’m being a bit unfair to make a point: the contents of the table are spread out before Waverly, but for Scott the same situation requires a narration of nouns, ordered like events with a forcible forward thrust, and containing closure. Phrases like “and other varieties,” and “all other delicacies …” trail off lamely, the last in an allusion to Dr. Johnson’s well-known aversion to the Scots.
Rhythm is the principle propulsive agent, but sound patterns also serve to bind words together, to make us feel that
gown
is oddly the cause of
brown
, so that
brown
is no surprise. Just to prove I do not have it in for Sir Walter in particular, here is an example of what not to do from the aforequoted Ford:
[3]
Ford Madox Ford. From
The Fifth Queen
.
She wore a long dress of red velvet, worked around the breast-lines with little silver anchors and hearts, and her hood was of black lawn and fell near her hips behind.
Behind
is a disaster, both in meaning, position, and reflexivity (if Scott can
both
it so may I), and grows worse as the years pass and usage puts even more behind in
behind
. At the end of a phrase, a clause, a sentence, a paragraph, a scene, a story, the reader needs to feel she has arrived, or at least that she is about to transfer immediately from train to bus or car. These ends, in short, may be modest and not sound the last trump, but an end is an end is an end. Notice that one more
end
than the three
ends
used already would be one
end
too many, a rule which also holds for the rose.
In a recent essay, I distinguished story and storytelling from fiction and its narration, an arbitrary and somewhat prejudical bit of name-calling, perhaps, although the distinction named is not. Stories exist
outside any particular medium and can be filmed or played or told or inscribed. Moreover, there may be multiple versions, siblings, if you like. Copyright might get in the way; otherwise the story of Mrs. Wiggs and the Cabbage Patch could reappear as “Bela Lugosi and the Nightshade Bed.” Or, in my version of Mrs. Wiggs’s garden problem, I speak on behalf of the cabbages, and begin my recitation in the mournful middle of things, working forward and then back, back and then forward, leaf before leaf after leaf.
However, if I wish to change the three magic rings that motivate some fables into three gifted Frisbees, I shall have to retain the number three, and the Frisbees will have to perform quite analogous functions—do as the rings did—otherwise we won’t be able to claim it as a version. I thought that at least six characteristics of the ur-tale would have to be retained if identity were to be claimed: (1) scale—the temporal size and sense of the events that make up the fresh version would have to harmonize with those of the original; (2) the causal or productive connections between those events would need to be parallel; (3) all patterns and repetitions, since they are so fundamental for form, must find the same place and role in both; (4) the aim or direction of the stories must mesh; (5) their principal meanings as well as the significance of those meanings would have to jibe; (6) and lastly, the justification for the existence of both tales as well as their telling need to coincide, or, in terms popular with earlier critics, the moral … the wisdom … the warning that attaches to each cannot diverge. Perhaps I should have added a shared rhythm to my list of essentials.
[1]
In long passages, even grotesqueries of scale can be disguised, but in a single sentence such ill-assorted company becomes glaringly evident.
[4]
The dam broke, and on the very next day so did the elastic on my bat-a-ball paddle.
[2]
The causal or productive connections of the artful sentence should not be left to logical or grammatical form alone. As in the example just used,
and
is sometimes consequential. “The dam broke, and” is politely propellant.
[5a]
The dam broke, broke the bridge in half, halved the city hall on party lines, and lined all our roads with tarps on top of the drowned.
[3]
The patterns in a sentence like this seem a bit playful at first, so that, in addition to the expectations raised by “broke, broke” and “half, halved” a little lightness can be looked forward to, an assumption dashed by the rudeness of “tarps on top of the drowned.” We can ease that somewhat.
[5b]
The dam broke, broke the bridge in half, halved the city hall along party lines, and lined all our roads with tarpaulins to cover the drowned.
Or “with tarpaulins of a size sufficient to conceal the drowned.” We are aware that every word counts, but we rarely act as if that were so. Well, the shadow cast by the sentence knows.
[4]
The drowned are indeed the end of the sentence. Like water through the burst dam, it has been rushing in that direction.
But we can change the ending in a few words. “… with tarpaulins of a size sufficient to conceal the drowned from relatives now guiltily aware of what their vote against repairing the dam had cost.” This is the story:
[5c]
When the vote was lost the damage was done, since the dam soon broke, broke the bridge in half, halved the city hall along party lines, and lined all our roads with tarpaulins of a size sufficient to conceal the drowned from relatives now guiltily aware of what their vote against repairing the dam had cost: wet basements, waterlogged cars, and missing dogs.
[5]
Quite similar things can be said about meaning as are said about story. I—not Ford—could have written: “Magister Udall’s feet were planted in the mire; he was tall, not ‘long,’ skinny, not ‘thin,’ and generally furzy.” To a story, and for most ordinary usage, these changes will not matter, because stories are as softly coarse as oatmeal, and in a story Magister Udall’s stature can resemble any tall thin guy’s; okay, he’s thin, he’s tall, he’s fur coated; so what next? Get on with it. But to a fiction—an artful fiction—it should matter.
Here is a sentence, with its introduction, that can serve as an emblem for the art.
[6]
D. H. Lawrence. From
Sea and Sardinia
(1921).
“Our bus-mate came and told us we were to sit in the bus till the post-work was done, then we should be driven to the hotel where we could eat, and then he would accompany us on the town omnibus to the boat. We need not be on board till eight o’clock; and now it was something after five.
So we sat still while the bus rushed and the road curved and the view of the weird, land-locked harbour changed, though
the bare masts of ships in a bunch still pricked the upper glow, and the steamer lay away out, as if wrecked on a sandbank, and dark, mysterious land with bunchy hills circled round, dark blue and wintry in a golden after-light, while the great, shallow-seeming bay of water shone like a mirror.”
We, readers as viewers, sit in our seats. It is the bus that moves, and so, most immediately, does the view, but clauses arrive from places farther off: the bare masts of ships, the steamer that seems to have run aground, the circle of land that defines the bay; and they are as fixed in the scene as we are in our vehicle, while what we both frame acts as a mirror that holds its own motion motionless—the momentary pause of a twilight sky.
Kafka is plain as pie. His prose is as straightforward as a spear. It is the significance of the story, the meaning of the meaning, that both alludes and eludes us.
Difficult texts are rarely hard to read; they are hard to understand. This—may we call it a paragraph?—from Samuel Beckett’s
Worstward Ho
can be hard to get a grip on:
[7]
Samuel Beckett. From
Worstward Ho
, (1983).
“Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A place. Where none. For the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into. No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. Still.” But it is not because we don’t know the words
say
or
place
or
move
. It’s not a case of, “Strike the crossjack, we’ve struck a swarm of desperate Hesperioidea.”
Similarly, the literal sense of a story—its “gist”—can be so evident its presence is never felt. Meanwhile, the significance hides. Parables are supposed to be plain to the ear and dark to every mind but an adept’s. In Kafka’s
Metamorphosis
there is a deadly tug-of-war between Gregor and his sister, Grete, for
dominance, growth, and freedom. The passages that describe Grete feeding the family’s resident bug with table scraps are easy enough to read; the meaning is clear, as is Gregor’s gratitude; but the significance of this act, since it accepts, indeed insists on, Gregor’s pitiful condition (unlike his parents, who are horrified), is far from a benevolent one, and, in the end, it is Grete who is described as spreading her wings like a butterfly. Be it noticed: another kind of insect.
The meaning of the Cinderella story is just what it says. The moral is that if you treat people badly you’ll end up paying for it. The significance suggests another moral: we must look beyond the trappings of things to find values that are often hidden. But we should not forget that the wicked sisters were ugly and the ill-treated servant-sister was beautiful. Beauty will burst every stay it’s confined by; the loser is never as handsome as the winner. If Miss Beauty falls in love with Mr. Beast despite his beastliness, is she rewarded for this mistake by his living a long hairball life? Not on yours! The Beast that Beauty loved is changed into a handsome prince whose hair is only where it should be. Is Miss Beauty so fond of the fur she fell for that she is dismayed by the change, wants her gorilla back, and falls out of love with the changeling as if she’d fallen out a window? Not a chance! She marries the fine fellow and gives him ten kids who resemble the head of their father artfully stamped on a gold coin.
Sentences are rarely so duplicitous. Their narrations are gestural. Sometimes one of them seems to be so wonderfully summary, nailed to the end of the story like a sign that serves as a cemetery marker. For closure, that is hard to beat. Moreover, the concluding moment must overcome its own awkward entrance.
Incalculably
, from a visual point of view, is perfect:
in calc ul a ble
, because the word breaks apart into channels that have no great significance by themselves; but from an audible angle,
incalculably
is unpronounceable.
[8]
George Eliot. From the conclusion of
Middlemarch
(1872).
Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you or me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
