Reading

There are things you learn or should have learned in high school Comp. Lit. class that, instead of becoming a part of you or the reader than you are, you tend to forget. Or maybe I'm just talking about myself. Anyway, sometimes paying attention to the most "basic" things is what makes a reader a good reader. These things, which are basic because they are taught in high school, concern the construction of a work of literature. Since I'm on fire today I'm gonna talk about them now.

First of all, you know how in like every novel you read there are scenes or chapters that make you think, "Oh my god this is so boring! Get to the main story line already!" Well, that always happens to me. But when I was reading "Mockingbird" I found myself questioning, "OK, why does the family have to spend their Christmas holiday out of town with their extended family?" "Why are we introduced to Uncle Jim if he's not going to appear again through the rest of the novel?" "What's the significance of the chapter with the mad dog?" It's true, sometimes these chapters mean nothing; the authors perhaps came up with them and love them so much that they can't possibly take these chapters out. But when you read a work by somebody as brilliant as Harper Lee, these chapters do mean something. So when you consider them in relations to the character development, or the theme of the story, you find the significance, and you realize how intelligently the work is constructed. The very thing you see is, in sum, the craft.

You know how in high school or middle school we do things like mapping out the story? That's when we point out the rising action of the story, the climax, the falling action, etcetera. Well, who does that outside of class? I don't, and in most works you simply can't; it's not that straightforward. Nonetheless, it is still important to pay attention to the themes and how they are explored, the characters and what they represent, and how the message(s) of the book are conveyed. These are all craft issues; as a reader you gain a deeper understanding of the story when you pay attention to them; as a writer there is no other way to learn to write better than to pay attention to these things. At least that's what I think.


This morning I read Raymond Carver's short story called "Nobody Said Anything." Already I should be asking, "What does the title mean?" I don't want to spoil the story because I think everybody should read it, but here are some of the crafty things I find while reading the story:

-The age of the narrator is never mentioned directly. But you can guess that he's a boy who has recently reached puberty by the constant reference to his sexuality, masturbation and sexual fantasies.
-It's not perfectly clear whether his brother is older or younger than him. I thought the scene in the beginning made him seem older than the narrator. However later on the narrator encounters a boy who is supposed to be about the same age as his brother, but the narrator refers to him as a "kid."
-The themes of the story, I find, is family in relations to the follow: safety, sex, shame, fishing, and pride. I can write essay on each of these things, but I won't. At least not on here.
-The story is "a day in a life" sort of story, and it goes around in circle; the narrator starts off at home, goes out, meets a woman, goes fishing, meets a boy, fishes, and comes back home; he also deals with a fight between his mom and dad in the beginning, and comes home in the end to the same thing.

So, that's kind of like something I do every once in a while when I'm reading.