Adam Johnson’s Use of the Unreliable Narrator

Adam Johnson’s masterful writing in his latest collection of stories reveal some very interesting twists. One in particular, “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine,” uses the unreliable narrator as a way of exhibiting a psycho-social disconnect between generations in East Germany.

I think it’s interesting how we find great storytellers. In the fall of 2016, I went back to Louisville for another residency with my MFA program, only I was no longer a student. As a residency assistant, I didn’t think to ask ahead of time what the book in common was (program required reading). I found out when I arrived that it was Adam Johnson’s Orphan Master’s Son, a Pulitzer winner in 2013. I had never heard of him, but that’s not a surprise. There are so many great authors out there that I am still trying to read, popular or not. During this residency, Mr. Johnson spoke to a packed crowd of literati from several writing programs. It took place in a converted, old warehouse, more cave-like with few windows and blacked out doors, located west of downtown near the Ohio River. Very edgy place for an author’s reading, which usually take place in book stores, auditoriums and galleries. He stood in the middle of a stage overlooking rows of listeners and read “Nirvana” from start to finish, then answered several poignant questions from the crowd about writing and theory. I was awestruck by his intellect and approachable demeanor.

After the reading, I purchased his latest book, a collection of short stories called Fortune Smiles, containing the story he had read to us and five others. I also borrowed “Orphan Master’s Son” from a friend, consequently reading it before I started on the collection. Brilliant in so many ways, I was hooked. It’s not an easy read. Nor are many of the choices on the Pulitzer list. But, it does help to read the transcripts from interviews and essays littered about on the internet to get a better understanding of the complexity and where the mind of the author wants to take you. Fortune Smiles is much easier to wrap your head around, wonderfully written with poignant humor and socially significant themes.

While reading “Nirvana” I was taken back to his excellent reading. As fun to hear as much as it was read, Johnson is deft with creating interesting juxtapositions of character, objects and situation. When I made it to “George Orwell was a Friend of Mine,” I had to think about the title, having read several of Orwell’s works, and wonder about the connection to this story. The story had me right away. Johnson’s ability to pull the reader into his work was mesmerizing. Best of all, I saw the intention of an unreliable narrator building as each page passed.

The story comes to us through the narrator, a former prison warden during the communist controlled era in East Germany. The prison was used by the secret police to interrogate political dissidents and torture them. Now retired and the prison an atrocity museum, the warden simply lives in the shadow of where he used to work. The story really is simple, at first, because the warden tells us in a matter-of-fact way what he does, and why he does it. He walks his dog. He sees some old coworkers and has watched the changes taking place after the fall of the Soviet Union. All of it seems so perfunctory for Hans, the Warden. But, there’s a slow buildup of the psychological structure to this man.

The unreliable narrator’s perception of events are often askew, not aligned with current mores. The reader, however, discerns between what is right and how messed up the narrator is, because they are given textual clues. The first of many alarming clues begins when Hans carries his wife to bed, after she passed out from having had too much to drink. “That’s why, when her faint snoring came, I’d open her robe and slowly, tenderly begin making love to her.” (145). That’s not love. That’s rape. His sense of morality is obviously messed up. Through this technique, the reader can be drawn into the story even more, because they have invested their opinion and beliefs.

Another scene early in the story places Hans in direct confrontation with a group of people, comprised mostly teens and their tour guide from the atrocities museum, venerating a significant commemoration, a tree for a famous GDR playwright. Hans showed no regard for the memorial and let his dog to shit at the base of the tree while the guide gave a description of the memorial. He was never sympathetic toward the playwright. And, he didn’t like what the guide said, so he started to interject with his own opinion of the man; “Herr Wexler was a pervert and a drug addict who embezzled money…” The tour guide asks, “If Klaus Wexler’s crime was embezzlement, why did he not go through the criminal courts? Why did the Stasi bring him here, to a secret interrogation prison?” The scene continues with Hans explaining in great detail the reasons for the prison, the solitary confinement, and torture chambers, the reason to force confessions out of political dissidents for the good of the state. He speaks with pride in the work the Stasi did, because they were protecting the state.

It’s from these early scenes that we see Hans and his misguided beliefs—his complete ignorance of the horrific events that occurred underneath his nose—his inability to understand the machine he was a part of. It only gets better, but I won’t spoil it for you. The story progresses with more about Hans’ twisted, almost brainwashed view of the world, still holding onto this belief to the very end. He gives us the details to why he thought that way, but never comes to realize, even at the very end, that it was wrong. In a way, if he had confessed during his own torture, he would have been guilty of a crime, but he never does confess and we are left to wonder what will happen as the water chamber continues to fill up.

This type of character, as a narrator, allows us to think about how authority figures can be myopic and dangerous. Plus, we gain insight into ourselves through how we react to each step in the story. What does it say about the reader when they fail to react to criminal events? Using the unreliable narrator is an excellent tool for all writers if they want to capture the reader’s emotional investment, but to get there the writer needs to think like someone who is diametrically opposed to their own moral fiber, which is not easy to do.

August 28, 2018 0

Attention Grammar Police! Just Relax

Great writing bends the rules and grammar has a lot of rules to bend.

After finishing Bob Shacochis’ The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, I read some online reviews at Goodreads and in blogs, both personal and professional. I was surprised by the comments made by very intelligent and persuasive writers and critics. Many of them were dogmatic about the need for punctuation, as if their mental faculties could not reach beyond the omission of quotation marks and commas. Some remarks were scathing enough to suggest that the author needed “A real editor,” because the “syntax felt disjointed at times,” and “missing commas and containing long, descriptive sentences.” Regardless of these critics, this book was nominated for a Pulitzer. Yet, Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men did not receive the same demerits from its audience (and was never nominated for a prize, gaining wide-spread notoriety only through film). Sure, there were many who sarcastically mimicked his southwestern dialog, but did little to comment on his use of syntax and punctuation, which resemble in many ways those of Shacochis. I wonder if these people felt the same way after reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

Several arguments can spring from this interesting problem, such as the Goodreads community and the credibility in their comments. Also, the popularity of a writer seems to lessen the barrage of criticism. What really is at stake here are the stylistic concerns for two incredibly talented writers of our time. The artists chose to omit much of the typical punctuation, handling punctuation as a painter deals with color selections and placement, in order to convey two very different stories.

Our eyes rise and fall on the written page, following the channel markers provided by commas and quotation marks. These are some of the most common marks in a book. Of course, the period plays a major part, as does a hyphen and the dreaded semicolon; however, between the first letter of a sentence and the period, commas are frequent, as well as quotation marks.

Both Shacochis and McCarthy forgo the open and closed quotation marks in all of their dialog. Yes, this can be confusing at first, like adjusting your eyes in after the light has been turned on in a dark room. The blending of narration and dialog made my thoughts jump around, never stalling, trying to figure out the speakers. If it frustrates you, then you can skim beyond and hopefully retain some of the meaning of what was said. Or, you can go back and learn the voice of the speaking character and know who is talking without the use of quotation marks. Sure, it takes a bit of work, but so does looking at an amazing painting (there are so many, just think of one), in order to analyze the depth of intention each brush stroke presents. Shacochis’ characters’ voices present themselves brilliantly, with singularity, from a master of the craft. Eventually, I noticed that the omission of quotation marks sped up my progress through the novel, which is a very nice thing considering Shacochis’ work exceeds 750 pages, travels two continents, and has all the trappings of an international spy thriller.

McCarthy’s work is more terse, masculine, and brief, reflecting the simplicity and emptiness of the landscape. Whether it’s third person or first person narration, the character’s voice is clearly heard and understood. The reader understands the frustration of Sherriff Ed Tom. Moreover, the reader feels the tension of what is not said. Hitchcockian tension from the omitted. Following Chigurh’s almost quixotic, definitely crazy, dialog, the rapidity of exchanges heightens the need to slow down and read them closely. Moments that take place, such as the coin toss to decide a potential victims fate exemplify the cold, dark reality of irrational violence, a violence without empathy, the sociopath on display.

Standing firm with grammarians is important, and many omitted marks can confuse a reader. But, think of these artists like they are Pizzaro or Monet, trailblazers into new dimensions of writing theory, like the impressionists, who “Impressionism was a style of representational art that did not necessarily rely on realistic depictions. Scientific thought at the time was beginning to recognize that what the eye perceived and what the brain understood were two different things.”* These books are a form of impressionism. They provoke a sense of feeling. Are Chigurh or Jackie Scott real? Possible, even probable, but not real. They are representational of evil, chaos, fate, and the unknown. All are powers beyond anyone’s reckoning, yet we strive to try and control them as best we can.

If you’ve already taken up the banner of contemporary techniques in fiction, then this essay has very little to do for you, other than possibly introducing something partially enlightening. But this essay is more for those who would believe that sentences need to be tight, always, and precise, forgetting the nuance of a narrator’s voice, their cadence toward highlights in a story, sometimes building the journey that leads to their feeling excitement or dismay. It’s all there for the reader to feel. And, yes, omission of punctuation does this.

May 3, 2018 1

The Unreliable Narrator in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”

(10 min. ~1400 wds)

Raymond Carver influenced my writing way back in undergrad. His blue-collar, American themes reflected my upbringing in a Midwestern industrial city. Added to this is his style, a terse, minimalist prose that empowers the reader to enter the story—to invest their thoughts and opinions, sometimes testing them, like he does in “Cathedral,” which uses dramatic irony to make his narrator fallible and unreliable. Carver uses the narrator’s character flaws as an unreliable narrator in a way to create a dramatic effect that employs the reader’s perceptions about morals and propriety.

The story of “Cathedral” is about a brief visit from the narrator’s wife’s longtime friend, an elderly blind man who recently lost his wife. In the opening paragraph, the narrator let’s the reader in on his thoughts, “And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies.” Almost immediately, the narrator in “Cathedral” shows his ignorance and myopic opinions to the reader early in the story and never breaks character. Best of all, he is a character in his own story, one that is often bigoted and vulgar toward others. What he sees and thinks cannot be reliable for the telling of this story.

sunset rearview mirror 350x350.jpg — Warning: Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear

From the beginning of the story, we can see the narrator’s insensitive opinions. And it’s only one of many ignorant statements littering the story. The reader quickly sheds any sympathy for this narrator, because the reader knows more than the narrator. According to Wayne Booth in “The Rhetoric of Fiction,” if a narrator depicts facts and opinions that do not coincide with those of the other characters or commonly held beliefs or theories of the time, then the narrator is no longer a reliable source, because their perspective is skewed to the point of being misleading. The following excerpt from “The Rhetoric of Fiction” explains this very well:

When the novelist chooses to deliver his facts and summaries as though the mind of one of his characters, he is in danger of surrendering precisely “that liberty of transcending the limits of the immediate scene” – particularly the limits of that character he has chosen as his mouthpiece… it is enough to say that a fact, when it has been given to us by the author or his unequivocal spokesperson, is a very different thing from the same “fact” given to us by a fallible character in the story (Booth, p. 174).

This follows Henry James’ insights on dramatic narration through a narrator who is a character in the story. James concluded that because the narrator is a character they are fallible, and this fallibility questions the reliability of the narrator’s perceptions about the story, social constructs, and many other issues surrounding the narrative. A good example of this would be having a Flat Earther tell a story about scientific discovery and fact.

There are many instances where Carver’s narrator shows his ignorance. One place in particular is where he describes the blind man’s dead wife, and criticizes her name, “Beulah! That’s a name for a colored woman.” His use of the word “colored” construct the mentality of a person stuck in the 60s, before the civil rights movement, and proves his ignorance. The narrator is a bigot.

Later in the story, the narrator offers no condolences or sympathy for the blind man’s loss of his wife, who had recently passed away. Upon meeting the blind man for the first time, the narrator describes the blind man’s physical disability:

“But he didn’t use a cane and he didn’t wear dark glasses. I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind… Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it. Creepy.”

Why would glasses be “a must” for someone that is blind? He regards the disability as a defect, making him “Creepy,” something unapproachable, not human, a freak. Carver’s narrator is an immature man, an ignorant man, his juvenile sensibilities incapable to understand the world around him.

Then, this jerk of a narrator describes his wife’s attempted suicide in a perfunctory manner: “But instead of dying, she got sick. She threw up.” His thoughts are ambivalent and without compassion. No love or sympathy about her depression, and subsequent cry for help.

His wife and the blind man exchanged voice recordings for many years. She became a good friend when she was a caretaker and assistant. The narrator recalls listening for the first time to one of the blind man’s recordings. They are interrupted at the critical moment when the blind man was about to offer his opinion of her husband, the narrator, who thinks, “Maybe it was just as well. I’d heard all I wanted to.” He doesn’t care about what others feel or think. Lacking empathy for others, the reader can continue to disregard any feelings they may have toward the narrator.

The final scene in “Cathedral” has the blind man together with the narrator, watching TV, sharing beers and pot. The blind man wanted to know what the cathedral looked like on TV and the only way was through the narrator drawing one for him. They hold hands while working together to draw a cathedral on paper. “It was like nothing else in my life up to now,” explains the narrator. The reader feels this may be a poignant transformation for the narrator, because he is starting to understand what it is like to be blind. He is finally walking in someone else’s shoes. Yet, I would argue that Carver maintains his narrator’s inability to understand what it is like to be blind in the penultimate sentence: “But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.” In the end, the reader understands more about the narrator and the environment surrounding him, than the narrator can comprehend. We want the narrator to change, but he doesn’t; he is incapable of change and remains as closed-minded as he was in the first paragraph. The shock and surprise comes from within the reader, not the character—a type of person already known for his ignorance and unreliable insights. In the end, Carver is looking at you, and asks What did you expect about this guy? That he would change? Now, that’s just impossible. Carver intended to build dramatic irony through his narrator’s ignorance, which according to Booth he becomes unreliable, because his facts don’t jive with the other characters and the reader’s preconceived notions. This is a skillfully used effect to create dramatic irony for the purpose of that famous final scene at the end of the story.

Quotes pulled from Raymond Carver’s short story collection “Where I’m Calling From” published by Vintage Contemporaries, 1989.

March 7, 2018 0

David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” and How Futuristic Words Create Authenticity

When I first began reading David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, I was transported to my days as an undergrad. The University of Iowa offered a class in 16th and 17th century English works written by Swift, Defoe, Johnson, Wordsworth, and many others. During that time, our class also read journals written by ship’s captains, traders, and other world travelers. Because I was transported, I renewed my love affair with the language of that time. Their language was undeniably highbrow, necessitating the use of a dictionary for unfamiliar words that are very different from the ones we use today. For example, this excerpt from Laurence Stern’s A Sentimental Journal; Through France and Italy:

I have something within me which cannot bear the shock of the least indecent insinuation; in the sportability of chit-chat I have often endeavored to conquer it, and with infinite pain have hazarded a thousand things to a dozen of the sex together – the least of which I could not venture to a single one, to gain heaven.

Sterne has just described his amazement and reaction over the remarks from Monsieur le Count. This is the speech of an educated person, trying to describe in great detail what could have been described as: “I was shocked when he asked if I had sex with a French woman. It wasn’t the first time I had this kind of conversation and to tell the truth all of the French women I have been with weren’t that great in bed.”

As I read Cloud Atlas, the changes in language from narrator-to-narrator became quite pronounced. A bit jarring at first. But, over time, I saw how it created character and place. Over the centuries, the English language has built a foundational code through Geek and Latin stems, onomatopoetic words describing actions and things, and anglo-saxon roots. These and many more constructs create the DNA of our language that evolves over time and unequivocally represent each period of writing.

Mitchell’s novel is a series stories, connected like nesting dolls resting within each other through tidbits of commonality. Mitchell develops temporal leaps through his use of language. His use of physical and sentient cues attaches his characters to future worlds. He begins with a journal written by a beleaguered American attorney that is found by a rascal musician and apprentice composer, who mentions finding it in letters to his lover. These letters are passed to a reporter decades later. After the reporter, Mitchell introduces Mr. Cavendish, a publisher on the lamb from underworld thugs. Cavendish is an educated man living in the present decade with a penchant for cussing and slang. The lives of these characters span over a hundred years. These narratives are realistic and indicative of written works during their time. Each speak English, and, as should be expected, a substantial difference in language between each one.

The next story, An Orison of Sonmi ~ 451, is about a clone set free only to be captured and terminated, is an oral history of her life that occurs in the distant future. Mitchell brings the reader into the future with this fifth chapter, because Sonmi – 451 is called a fabricant. Her orison, another word for prayer, takes the shape of a personal account of major historical events that are recorded by an Archivist. She is not talking to a priest or a historian or reporter. The Archivist explains right away that they (no gender specified) ask “prisoners to recall their earliest memories to provide a context for corporatic historians of the future.” (p. 185). The Archivist collects data to be sorted through at a later date by historians. Furthermore, the word corporatic appears and technically means nothing to the reader, yet. To come upon words like fabricant and corporatic makes a sudden break from the present day, slang-rich language coming from the Mr. Cavendish.

Other words appear in the text to denote a change in time. Stimulin is a chemical used to wake fabricants from resting periods. Logoman is a god to the fabricants, who recite catechisms to him every morning. Logoman and corpocratic are indications of purely capitalist society, which the reader is given textual facts of how the government functions as the narrative progresses. This society is very different from today’s, futuristic, one of many possible scenarios if corporations continue with their current growth.

Another interesting detail and fascinating construction of a future language is the exclusion of the letter e from its stem of ex, such as Xultation (p. 186) and xactly (p. 187). Logic seems to have excised the need for a silent letter at the beginning of a word. A good example of this is occurs when writing a series of numbers. The zero before the first number in the sequence is never written (as convention would dictate, but sometimes a zero precedes a series of numbers for PINs and passwords).

Today, there is substantial evidence for the evolution of the English language. These new words, made up words, bear the roots and stems of common words, yet appear to have evolved over time. These constructed language words are not as jarring to the mind, nor as obscure and unrelatable.

Following Sonmi’s orison, the evolution of the English language continues to shape characters, imagery, and settings. In Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After, the reader is sent forward in time to Hawaii, but it is a very different place. Zachary, the narrator, gives an oral history of his people using English, as well as eye dialect and dramatic grammatical changes. It would seem that his speech patterns would put him in the distant past, taking place before the first story. His words are vulgar and guttural. Clearly seen in the title of this story, everything reads like dialog, heavy in slang, which is called eye dialect. The name, eye dialect, is a form of writing for the eyes, as opposed to writing for the ear. The spelling and grammar work together to show how a character’s speech is vulgar. The reader is given enough words and textual clues to discern what is being said, but is not sure exactly what it means until Meronym appears, a person from the cultured and educated future. She uses grammar and syntax. She also speaks in Zachary’s language, showing how Zachary’s people live an uneducated and primitive life in the future. Having a dramatic change in language at this point in the novel indicates a dramatic change in time. Through textual evidence, the reader is led to believe that this story takes place hundreds of years beyond Sonmi – 451’s time.

In a NBC News article written in 2014, an expert linguist had some issues with Mitchell’s evolution of language. The linguist pointed out some more logical and fact-based assessments, providing the world went through these fictional changes. Mitchell may have failed to take certain linguistic issues into consideration, but his work remains authentic. To write about a future world takes speculation and risks. I believe many writers forget the nuance of using eye dialect to portray characters. They also fail to take risks with creating new words. Because of these simple word choices, their stories lose depth and authenticity. Mitchell’s choices in language for each of the stories told in Cloud Atlas have the veracity and authenticity of character. That’s exactly what we as readers demand is to be transported into character and setting. We want to take part in the events—feel them happening—and Cloud Atlas performs brilliantly.

#cloudatlasbook

#howtoforwriters

February 14, 2018 0

First Blog Post

Technically, this is not my first blog post (http://premodays.blogspot.com/), but it is a great starting point for my new site. Over the years, I will be adding my accomplishments and musing on writing and the writing life. Please, feel free to send me an email with any questions or comments you have along the way.

In 2014, I earned my MFA in fiction while working full-time as a senior researcher and dissertation consultant (primarily within the social sciences and business administration). I continue to refine my work and submit to literary journals, agents, and publishing houses. I will also frequently post blogs about my work, essays on other works, and anything else that deals with writing. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter.

As a business writer, I create research based articles to foster intelligent brand messaging. I enable companies to become a source of information for their clients. I continue to learn about new ways to deliver business narratives. For more information on this, please visit my LinkedIn page.

September 17, 2017 0

Category: Writing