My reading load has dropped off the detectable spectrum of scientifically calibrated instrumentation. In the past three years, I’ve read fewer than six novels. I have, however been writing, and I purposely don’t read while I write. When I do read, my pattern generally involves trying to read something “good” alternating with a “junk novel.” i.e. Franzen’s Freedom followed by Uncle Stevie’s Under the Dome.

After purchasing the tablet, the first order of business was a Vince Flynn thriller. Followed by Girlvert, a Porno Memoir. That’s a bit like chasing potato chips with fried pork skin.

So this week I followed the peer pressure breadcrumbs and bought the book everybody is shortlisting for awards, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

And as I was breaking the metaphoric binding on this supposedly-great work, I could not shake the realization that my former critique group would have absolutely crucified the wannabe who dared put that first chapter to the membership. The first thirty pages are a reference lexicon of “Thou Shalt Not” examples.

• First person.
• The first person narrator speaks in a near-constant string of clichés.
• The non-linear chronology of events jumps back and forth in time for no apparent reason.
• Ancillary characters (characters the reader knows they will never see again) are drawn with elaborate details that burn unnecessary calories in the reader’s brain.
• The diction is as purple as a cathouse sofa.
• The conflict is soft and slow to arrive.

And of course, the open is a bucking bronco of weird European imagery. Here are the first two sentences.

“While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. [so far, so good.] I’d been shut up in my hotel for more than a week, afraid to telephone anybody or go out; and my heart scrambled and floundered at even the most innocent noises; elevator bell, rattle of the minibar cart, even church clocks toiling the hour, de Westertoren, Krijtberg, a dark edge to the clangor, an inwrought fairy-tale sense of doom.” [WOW!]

I smile, because I can see Fight Club some of my former critters shitting kittens at an open like that.  I can see one of them looking over his glasses and saying “Telephone anybody? Why ‘anybody?’ Does one telephone inanimate objects? Lose the ‘anybody.’”

The entire first thirty pages of The Goldfinch would spawn a lot of tongue-clucking and better-than-you-ness. I do not exclude myself from this likelihood.

But…

Fuck. The Goldfinch is a pocket-collapsing, scrambling shovel-pass of literary load-in, but by page forty you can’t put the book down. By page forty you can smell the characters. By page forty, the reader is a silent witness to some immersive, 4D virtual reality experiment. By page forty, you get vertigo when you close the cover and hard-shift from Tartt’s reality back to your own.

A few weeks ago, the comments section of this blog veered into “tussle” territory when a commenter laid into the first sentence of my novel Selfie with the all grace and class of a herniated marmoset. In so many ways the commenter was correct, the first sentence of my novel is too long and too burdened with adjectives. I know this. I knew this. I knew it when I wrote it, and I knew it when I pared it down, and I knew it when I changed it to a cracker-simple sentence and it got worse. I knew it when half my critique group pulled down their pants, squatted over my pages, and took a corn-and-peanuts shit on them right in front of me.

The cumbersome first sentence of Selfie is followed by a chain of super-short sentences.

In context, it balances out. In context, it delivers the payload I wanted to deliver in the most efficient way I know how to deliver it. In context. In context. In context.

In context.

The first thirty pages of The Novel of 2013 are a literary abortion.

And then, wouldn’t you know it, there’s that damn context getting in the way of my cathartic jelly ragehate.

When the aforementioned commenter weighed in on my clunky sentence, I went through the following thought process. This is as close to verbatim as unspoken thought can be:

– She’s right. You knew that sentence was too bogged down with adjectives. You should fix it.

– But we did fix it, remember? And it threw off the staccato rhythm of the rest of the first paragraph. Remember?  Remember when you moved those adjectives to page two and it looked even more forced?

– Yeah. I remember. But there’s got to be a better way.

– We thought this through. Have some faith in your voice, Dude.

– Now you sound like one of those “It’s MY art, Man!” douchebags.

– I know. But it IS your art. Sometimes being an artist means you have to say “no” and live-and-die by the plan. The nature of art is that it’s never going to resonate with everyone on a universal level.

 

Seriously. Coffee nearly came out of my nose a few minutes later when the commenter said, “Don’t be one of those ‘It’s my ART’ dicks.” I had a moment when I wondered if I had actually wrote that comment in a schizophrenic episode.

My answer: “Don’t be one of those ‘My way is the only right way’ cunts.”

Before I hit the Post Comment button, the backspace key angels prevailed. Haters gonna hate. What’s the point in punching back? I’m a veteran of critique wars. I don’t flinch at mortars landing near me unless shrapnel actually breaks my skin.

It’s MY context, man. My frequency, Kenneth. Writing is not a science. Art is not an algorithm.

Back in college, I took a screen printing elective from a weird dude who looked more like Herman Munster than a human being should look.

When we were designing our first screen print rough draft, the guy had one directive: “Make it art. Don’t make kitchy shit.”

“What is art?” someone asked.

He didn’t blink. He smiled a creepy smile. “Anything you do with sincerity.”

“So if I tie my shoe with sincerity, is that art?”

“Yes. Now let me ask you, can you really tie your shoe with sincerity?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, if you can, then it’s art.”

If you can stay sincere, you’re going to have context. Context won’t get your wannabe ass published, but at least you can live at peace with yourself and those nagging contrary voices inside and outside your head.