Punctuated Equilibrium, Evolution of the Literary Voice and the Return of the Golem

I have recently reverted to an old manuscript, a dug up fictional narrative penned decades ago…born of a youthful pen; a novel bound and intertwined with all the exuberant enthusiasms and awkward mis-managements of a newly empowered voice. The first novel! The vibrancy of fresh growth is there, the seedling that carries within its cellular structure, within its convoluted nucleic coils, the recipe for a mighty oak. I approach this early work with some degree of trepidation; gingerly handling the pages, and perusing sections with a dubious eye, with all attendant winces and grimaces…but there are parts that capture me…that hold me enthralled and keep me coming back to this early work.

The trepidation stems from my intent to modify and modernize; to bring my early narrative up to present modes and manners of expression, to take the literary voice of a youthful me and upgrade it so to speak. My resident Golem, of course, is doubtful that such a thing can be accomplished. "Modify the voice?" his sibilant wheeze echoes through the dark neural cavern in which he resides. "You may as well start over....a juxtaposition of literary sensibilities, a hodge-podge of writing styles...a narrative mess!" He emits a disdainful snort, shaking his head in impatient irritation at such foolishness. Then a head cock to one side, a slow insidious smile and a gleam of delight in those large luminous eyes - his volley has struck home: he sees my hesitation, my fear that he may indeed be right.

[A whispered aside in regard to the Golem (despite unerring night-vision he remains auditorialy-challenged) - he made his unwelcome debut several musings back, lurking in the dark recesses of my literary mind, hovering protectively over his cultivation of all things rank and gross in nature: the stringy weeds of suspicion, self-doubt, mistrust and fear. And whilst I do my best to tend meticulously to the internal garden, I oft turn unawares to catch a gleeful Golem tending a thigh-high weed gone to seed. While, you dear reader, have only just become acquainted with the irascible fellow he has been an unwelcome tenant of mine for as long as I can remember.]

To revert to the conundrum of conflicting literary voices: musing upon the evolutionary trajectory of one's engagement with verbiage, upon the uniqueness of our literary vision - does it progress smoothly onward in a crisply linear fashion? Indubitably improving to some degree with each pondered literary phrase whether read of another or of ourselves composed? Is it a process of accumulating certainty, the gradual acquisition of narrative deftness? And indeed what precisely is meant by voice? My academic focus in early years primarily encompassed science and history, but it was literature that has consistently sustained and nourished the emotional heart…the after-hours haven, the door-firmly-closed to all intrusions: Dostoyevsky accompanied by the exquisite strains of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik comprised my rapture.  As such I am not well-versed in conventional definitions for certain literary phrases….and in my ignorance make instinctual assumptions that may very well fall far from the appropriate mark. I will rely upon my more informed readership to warn me of any grievous errors in this regard. But it seems before one can postulate the growth of a thing, one must first define it; so my untutored description of the literary voice: the subtle nuances of expression, the manner in which the writer transcribes the mental processes of their mind be it with a paucity of words or an elaborate sentence construction, a turn of phrase, or a certain stylistic manner that renders the narrative particularly unique. Perhaps voice simply denotes the manifestation of a unique literary style.

Given this particular definition – and the assumption that an author at any given time possesses only one expressive voice – how is it shaped and affected by time? I find myself pondering biological theories of punctuated equilibrium, whereby evolutionary forces act with accelerated velocity, perhaps in a time of tumultuous environmental change, upon a particular organism to promote rapid speciation subsequently followed by a long hiatus of genetic stability. One of the most dramatic examples of expeditious evolutionary change took place 500 million years ago as evidenced by the Burgess Shale fossils. Various organisms survived while other more complicated, and seemingly much better suited to their environment, died out (Gould introduces his theories in his book The Wonderful Life which are intriguing if not uncontested). And the majority deck of evolutionary cards were replaced by another and the rules of the game altered to accommodate a novel paradigm; a dramatic shift followed, perhaps, by a indeterminately lengthy period of lethargic status quo. An equilibrium punctuated by fits and starts, a surge of frenzied activity followed by a longer interval of quiet quiescence….

I wonder whether our own literary voice evolves in such a manner. Certainly at times I feel the focused intensity of the craft, immersed and embroiled in the literary endeavor heedless of passing time or needful sleep….and subsequently, inevitably drawn away from the page, and the pull of the narrative by not always unwelcome quotidian demands. Years of snatched interludes here and there, a writing hour or two squeezed between obligatory duties....then abruptly a glorious expanse of opportunity presents itself and the literary work consumes us with a ferocity of guarded time and growled admonishments for all to stay away - a weekend closeted away with the laptop and piles of books, the quiet of uninterrupted time - where the narrative flows, the plot takes shape and the characters breathe upon the page. Time to muse, time to ponder, or in T.S Eliot's immortal words: 'time to murder and create, time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate...and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions..' (although the latter probably less to be wished for!) Time simply to write. And does not then our literary voice benefit from such focused attentiveness? Would it not, like the environmental upheavals that can escalate the evolutionary process, contribute to the fine-tuning development of our own expressionistic form?

So why the terror of imminent immersion in a youthful work? Why has the Golem successfully induced such skittish apprehension? Is it because to re-write such work, to edit it, one must inevitably regress, re-occupy the space and time in when it was written? One must perhaps find a certain resonance between the lines, a murmur regained, the pulse of the piece, before proceeding. And then there is the singular conundrum of reconciling one voice with the younger version to the final manifestation of something indubitably improved upon. I am afraid that the process of molding and refashioning an earlier work will prove more intractable than writing fresh from the shining expanse of undemanding white – where no words have gone before and no images remain ingrained upon the recesses of our authorial mind. My Golem peers over one shoulder, and hisses with unmitigated jubilation: “It will become a jangled confused thing!" And I worry that this early novel, this rather simplistic piece that I have some affection for, that retains some intermittent literary merit, will be transformed in the fire of my evolving literary haste – that in this current focus on writing, on producing, on crafting, on working the words, wringing each poetic nuance from them until they seem to hang dry and exhausted on the page – into something it was never meant to be.

But my creative literary voice, relatively dormant in early adulthood, will now bide by no constraint.  It  is perhaps personified by the opposite of the skeptical Golem: a boundlessly optimistic, fast-moving thing that yearns above all for completeness of expression. It will be heard, and it will take pursed lip and narrowed eye to the early novel, it will trace through paragraph and plotline and it will flood all with red editorial ink. To be improved. To be tweaked and coaxed into some semblance of literary betterness. To reflect itself as it currently feels itself to be –  a more worldly perspective (albeit perhaps a tad life-tarnished and unduly cynical), a broader slightly elevated literary sensibility born of countless books read and writers encountered…

Which begs the question: is the older voice indubitably one improved upon? Is there nothing in the adolescent version with which to recommend itself? Perhaps there is a fresh innocence in that unlined exuberance of expression - one in receipt of which literary agents, critics and publishing firms might smile condescendingly over their pens, shake their heads in collective sorrow at the ineptitude of novice writers….too much too soon, verbiage overshadowed by a descriptive generosity that mires one down, characters that tend to caricature or a certain narrowness that inhibits transition to three-dimensional expansion: to that feeling of inhaling the same literary air or traversing the same landscape in glad literary company! So what is there in that early voice but the alluring promise of what is to come? If the voice is nurtured, encouraged, fed a well-seasoned diet of literary greats, engaged in intellectual exercise of focused phraseology, in the deliberate coupling of words and phrases that together evoke something else entirely, combined with all the multi-dimensional vibrancy of an imaginative mind - what is not possible indeed? And the youthful voice hides its own treasures - a literary reflection of a different kind of perspective - perhaps imbued with a simplicity that resonates with a power of its own. Perhaps my younger voice might prove instructive to the wearied, and at times, convoluted laboring of the older (this muse being a case in point!)

So the Golem is consigned to his dark corner,  grumbling and muttering dire predictions of abysmal literary failure; I pay him no heed. I have a book to work on.

[Golem-related postscript: I have recently exchanged correspondence with a gentleman of philosophical persuasion who is mired in his ninth year of a profound treatise on the meaning of life, wondering with some dismal futility whether this errant literary child of his would ever grow to maturity, and indeed whether he is keeping fruitless company with Sisyphus and his ever-laboring stone.  Perhaps he too habors a dark-lurking Golem nourishing a garden of nasty nettles. I have, however, discovered a wily weapon effective against Golem-intrusion: he can be quelled by a look. A direct gaze of compelling conviction accompanied by the stern proclamation: "I can do this and I will!" - will indubitably send him scurrying. The Golem, I have found, also cannot abide salty rain (which also does wonders for inhibiting weeds) so sweaty exercise of any persuasion is highly to be recommended.]

Dragon-Tamers, Dante's Inferno and the Writer as Literary Navigator

What is an author? Not merely a penner of fancies, a fabricator of fairy-tales, but, in the greatest of literary traditions, a navigator of the reader-trodden byways of their own fictional work. One who has not only traveled this way before but possesses an intimate acquaintance with each slight curvature of road, and with far-seeing omniscient eye winks at our fresh innocence; navigator and map-maker who holds the world in the palm of his hand. Uncharted regions were, in medieval practice, inscribed with the phrase hic sunt dracones (here be dragons) referring to claw-footed beasts of ferocious intent, horned men and monstrous serpents that lurked beyond the horizon; mythical miscreants expressive of the disquietude associated with the dark unknown quarters of things.

The author, however, has not only plumbed the depths in the intimacy of literary creation but has tamed the dragon that slumbers in the far-reaches. For like Virgil who guides Dante through the nine circles of hell he possesses vast knowledge of all things; yet we the reader are struck to the marrow by each new revelation, tentative explorers of a bright new world where all beyond the page remains, for a time, shrouded in the dark expectation of yet-unread.

In present-day versions of the Inferno particular punishments may have been reserved for the compromised writer: one selling without soul, the mindless purveyor of literary tripe (and doubtless for this narrator who arrogantly assumes the prerogative of judgement!) The Virgil-author accompanies us through the turn of page, through the concentric circles of punishment, and the accumulation of gathered understandings. In the sixth circle lies the city of Dis, entrenched and entombed within the Stygian marsh; here the epicureans are trapped within flaming tombs. The linguistically wily, the users of flattering verbiage occupy the ninth circle to which the two poets descend on the back of the winged monster Geryon. These misusers of language are mired and steeped in human excrement, evocative of words utilized in life. These escalating bands of  inventive torture function not merely as a form of divine retribution but serve as the warped gratification of a destiny readily chosen during life. That is not to say all fictional works find analogy in the grim shadows of Dante's inferno - merely a mechanism expressive of the dramatic human plight that lies at life's core, and the oft-times torturous trail that we follow passing through it.

So perhaps writers, manipulators of words, guide the Dante-novice as well as occupy the rings through which they pass. They themselves inhabit the narrative, permeate the prose, breathe beneath the skin of each character, infiltrate the landscape just as they draw us through it. The author occupies all spheres simultaneously: the disembodied voice, the Absent One whose perspective filters through the prose like an incarcerated divinity behind a gossamer veil; the omniscient repository of wisdom particular to this literary journey. They are the one who take us to the brink of some hitherto unimagined literary expanse, whether it be the moons of some fantastical world or the prosaic routine of white-collar modernity - but there is always something under the surface. The placidity, the comfortable conformity, is inevitably disrupted. For the ongoing narrative is a dramatic one, and our guide will see us through the pitfalls and the predicaments. This, after all, is the furious admixture of life - the convulsive tempestuousness of character interaction set amidst a vividly imagined panorama.

Conrad's The Secret Agent opens with a simple description of a rather dilapidated storefront, Balzac's Lost Illusions with the antiquated tools of printing-presses that will prove so instrumental to Séchard's trade, Dickens' Oliver Twist in the grim workhouse located within the town of Mudfog, but with each one feels the authorial hand taking our own, astutely aware of the journey in its entirety; but for us the path ahead is darkly shrouded - just our ever-present attendant beckoning us onwards, pointing out environmental features, providing the contextual immediacy within which the plot will begin to unwind like Theseus' thread before us. As Virgil guided Dante, so Lord Krishna counseled Prince Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita - an epic narrative that like the Iliad formed a battleground allegory for the ethical and moral struggles of life. The text itself is designated smiriti or 'that which is remembered' as opposed to texts divinely revealed - thus diminished by its mortal origins but to my mind imbued with the poignant wisdom and courage that escapes Gods of Old, the Immortals who intrinsically comprehend neither courage nor sacrifice in the face of impending death. For the writer a text remembered is perhaps the most sublime achievement of all, implying a centrality of collective pertinence if you will, a literary representation of humanity's most prevalent of themes: a reiteration, a recognition, a renewed awareness of the central questions of what it means to be human; a literary echo that, like Jung's archetypes, resounds through subsequent reading generations.

Dante and Virgil escape Hell by climbing down Satan's ragged fur, passing through the center of the earth and emerging in the opposite hemisphere beneath a star-studded sky. Just as we traverse the literary peaks, precipices and verdant valleys of a narrative work, the author travels a path beside us, resides within the characters we encounter along the way, and imbues all with a feverish expectancy for that which is to come. He (or she) is a whisperer of wisdom, a distant parent, a conjuror of magic, a God...a revealer of uncomfortable truths; or perhaps merely a silent companion, a shadow glimpsed in peripheral vision...of substance so intangible as to be barely there - a ghost in the literary machine.

The Writing Self: Love Letters and the Unadorned Intensity of Prose

It has been suggested to me as of late that the written word was merely a poor cousin to the declared equivalent, that the spoken variation was indubitably to be preferred when the choice existed between the two. I beg to differ; indeed remain convinced that there are particular circumstances in which the inscribed phrase reigns supreme. Kafka offers intriguing insight: "I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness." In this analysis manifested modalities of the expressive self reveal disparate attributes, with the written variant being quite distinct from verbalizing or ruminating corollaries.

Words, written or pondered, jostle through my veins hitching a ride with the haemoglobin in the swirl and stream of red blood cells, or cascade through the neural network like the flash and fire of a storm-lit cloudbank; they are an integral component within the context of a writer's life, as essential to intellectual nourishment as water is to the sustenance of the physical self. Perhaps I might take Kafka's rumination and add a caveat of my own: for the laboring writer a pondered word oft-becomes a written one...unspoken perhaps, but for all it's muteness encapsulating a powerful intensity that can, in certain circumstances, achieve an absolute pinnacle of expression.

With this in mind I have been musing upon the emotive force of simply written words; contemplating most particularly the powerful phrase and the manner in which the deliberate aggregation, clustering and recombination of letters can produce a sequence of words so imbued with an emotional intensity that they can bring us to tears. Love letters convey a message more fervent than the spoken equivalent could do - they are unadorned by material trappings, literally a congregation of ink on paper that somehow envelops and conveys a broader impassioned ardor: a metaphorical life-blood spill, a tremulous heartbeat defined in ink.

Imagine, if you will, the lover's utterance at the other end of a scrawled declaration: pronounced with all the attendant nervousness of uncertain reception, or with the languid smoothness of an accomplished Lothario - and almost immediately your mind's eye is assailed with distractions - the appearance of things, the oily sheen of hair, the twitch and murmur of restless limbs, the thrum and clatter of ambient bustle. One must force a certain attentive focus to the spoken words and even then a sentence is pronounced and the previous forgotten....that within the confines of breathless moment, the uttered words fly and disperse like mist in the warmth of the rising sun. Writing these words, however, I am reminded of Eliot's Love Song and the shallow digressions of indifferently languorous women denigrating onset baldness and lanky limbs. I do not disparage the declaration of affection, quite the contrary - but simply admire the stark intensity of the written equivalent.

Jack London writes to Anna: "You elude me. I cannot place you, cannot grasp you. I  may boast that of nine out of ten, by their word or action, I may feel the pulse of their hearts. But of the tenth I despair. It is beyond me. You are that tenth." Or Balzac to Evaline: "My beloved angel. I am nearly mad about you, as much as one can be mad: I cannot bring together two ideas that you do not interpose yourself between them." Or Kafka:."for hours on end my head hums with the desire to hear the name Felice..." I cannot help but feel that love letters achieve a certain ascendency; perhaps it is also the implied nakedness, the laying bare of the soul, the revelation of vulnerabilities and the poignantly yearning hope.

When reading these ardently eloquent letters, so utterly private in their intended audience, I abhor the very notion of another reading them aloud - a misplaced intermediary that squarely positions themselves between myself and the narrative. One cannot get lost in the content with such physical impediments to the imagination; but then I  have never been inclined to books-on-tape: infinitely preferring a self-directed pace, the flexibility to read and re-read, the prerogative to formulate my own perceptions of the narrative sound and rhythm. But it is a context-specific preference - literary prose of the descriptive kind, the lush gorgeousness of depicted environment, or the particular predilections of a well-drawn out character - these works I invariably prefer to linger over, to read and re-read passages of delighted appreciation....relying for interpretation upon my unique imaginative landscape that colors the literary hillside and imbues it with the most pungent of flavors.

It may also be a nostalgic thing - for indubitably the love letters of the kind referenced above were of a different age, one of letters ink-penned and stamped, where lipstick marks, coffee rings, smears and blotches provided visual clues to the writer's state of mind. Love letters now tend to be of an electronically transmitted variety, formulated in the relative sterility of binary code and instantaneously sent and delivered through the dark obscurity of cyberspace. Sans wineglass rings, tear-stains and inky flourishes. The words are the same, they are simply draped in a more blandly uniform garment - generically typed as opposed to the flamboyance of unique penmanship. Certainly, contemporary penned letters of love are not unknown - but what treasures they are indeed! Denoting the painstaking care taken, the implied patience in post and receipt - they are a rarity in the rapid-fire age of electronic immediacy.

For the writer, it is not simply the romantic allure of love, but the written expression of the innermost emotional self - the laying bare of what lies at the center. It is the labored work of focused emotional intent transcribed by all manner of men and women - writers and otherwise. Missives that were intended to be read, fraught with the stops, starts and stutters, the scrawls and start-overs, the crossed out bits and the smeared corrections, they are a literary testimonial (from the fluttering paper to the faint lingering fragrance) of a profound emotional connection. Reading them I can readily imagine the eager haste with which the envelope is torn and discarded, the anxious rush over words, the fearful crescendo of a heartbeat slowly subsiding...' they are alive - they love me still.' With an intensity all the greater for the lack of all else - simply the eloquent loneliness of ink-clustered letters that fill a page or two...

Linnaeus and the Literary Affliction of Genre-Confusion

I am afflicted with a persistent case of genre-confusion, the primary symptom of which is the inability (or reluctance) to appropriately classify a completed literary work within the accepted gamut of genre allocations. The heart of the matter is perhaps not the specificity of the genres themselves but the fact that they appear to be largely mutually exclusive. 'Literary' forms a distinct publishing category from 'historical' and in good Kipling tradition "never the twain shall meet."

This literary segregation is initially encountered when seeking an agent for a work freshly-completed; or perhaps prior for those writers comfortably established within the known confines of a particular genre. I cannot claim such literary snugness. My novels seem more an amalgamation of disparate things: while indubitably set in the past they incorporate strains of the suspenseful, the literary, the political and the romantic. They are, perhaps, representative of the literary mongrel as opposed to the purity of a genre-thoroughbred; incorporating all the diverse elements that together infuse the narrative with a particular personality that somehow eludes ready classification.

Certainly there are a profusion of reference books to assist in this process, that define and classify works in very specific ways; many of which are then themselves imbued with specific genre-expectations in regard to length, character formation, and nature of prose contained therein.  Unfortunately for the literary mongrels among us (and I do not mean this in a derogatory sense - rather works encapsulating a multitude of literary expression that defy tidy categories) the placement of ones work is a prerequisite to agent-acquisition. My recent novel The Goodwin Agenda is set in 1803 which seems to immediately presuppose its inclusion in 'historical' (although that also begs the question, when does historical end and modernity kick in?) These distinctions seem more useful in marketing applications; a preliminary expediency insofar as agents and publishing houses are concerned, engaged as they are in the selling and branding of a particular kind of novel. For the intended readership there is an 'expected' element analogous to the offerings of franchise restaurants: the product tends to be unvarying and satisfaction, for those who prefer literary consistency, more assured. Certainly there are a profusion of well-written novels that fall neatly and conveniently within one genre-category or another, but what of those that do not? And indeed is this genre-classification broadly useful or even broadly accurate?

This general application of literary codification seems somewhat reminiscent of Carl Linnaeus' system of classification as applied to biological organisms. He established a binomal nomenclature that specifically defines a plant or an insect within a readily identifiable taxonomy based on physical attributes (Mammalia, for example, was subsequently defined with ever greater specificity according to the number, structure and arrangement of teeth). The literary process of genre-appraisal examines a narrative with the expectation of squeezing it into some specific category or other. The scientific endeavor serves to define, compartmentalize, and order according to genus or species - which not only enables scientific inquiry in regard to specificity of ecosystem in a rapidly-changing world, but offers insight into the dizzying array of diversity to which the earth is home. Of course they are not the same: literary genre-application comprise a broader brush with vastly different intent, but perhaps the thought-association is an intriguing one.

So having reluctantly designated a particular genre (as ill-fitting as the garment appears to be), how is the literary fate of that piece then narrowed and preconceived through the filtered perspective of that particular genre-judge? Romance novels are notoriously specific in regards to inclusion criteria - characters and plot-lines adhere to a predominately predefined formula which are then packaged up (all of suitable length) and inevitably covered with a sensuously posed woman in scanty-attire with a broadly muscled chest in attentive proximity. For the avid reader of such works (and there are indeed many) there is a warm satisfaction in the duplication of what has become a most successful narrative formula; the literary equivalent, for many, of comfort food.

I wonder, however, whether for some writers a specific genre-formula is more honored in the breech than the observance, and that the very best of novels elude such prescribed, predefined allotments. For there are indubitably fine works of science fiction that examine the human predicament, that might in fact be characterized as literary if the protagonist physiognomy was a little less elven; works set in the past, that might more readily be classified political thriller if they had taken place fifty years later. Is there not also a timeliness to genre classification? When does a classic become a classic? Does it require a certain amount of intervening time, removed from our familiar age and issues? A degree of chronological resiliency? A wide readership ubiquitously assenting to a level of achieved excellence? The bestowal of literary awards? There is a prevailing genre-ambiguity which narrows the reading demographic, and condenses the glorious variety of literary threads to simply one - irrespective of fit.

I continue to write in utter oblivion to genre-classifications (which may very well be to my detriment in procuring a literary agent) but the work within me, like the complexity of life I seek to convey, is a rather motley assemblage of diverse elements that seem to ignore, span, encompass and bridge conventional categories. My next novel will similarly, inevitably, tinker with genre-expectations; endeavoring to create a historical fiction work of literary bent, with suspenseful interludes, political reference and romantic escapades - thusly encompassing elements of numerous genres within the confines of one: historical fiction, literary, thriller, romance. So is there a trump card? Do all these contributory threads defer to one? Does historical fiction then emerge as the dominant genre in this regard? Can the novel then be submitted to agents interested in all these above genres? Does that not then defeat the process of classification, and the initial attempt to constrain and define? And indeed should such works should be subject to such narrow rigidity?

For art, unlike Linnaeus' particular subjects, often elude classification - they are of the more incorporeal kind, comprised of dark whispers and faint suggestions of a subliminal world, of profoundest impact in the provoked effect rather than the ink-printed solidity of the novel itself; literary works find their most powerful definition in the neural cascade of an emotional receptivity, the intangible impressions of the imaginative minds' eye, in the ability, like magic, to conjure up, with all vibrant veracity, that which does not intrinsically exist outside of our own mind.

To quote the great Swedish taxonomist himself: "Of what use are the great number of petrifactions, of different species, shape and form which are dug up by naturalists? Perhaps the collection of such specimens is sheer vanity and inquisitiveness. I do not presume to say; but we find in our mountains the rarest animals, shells, mussels, and corals embalmed in stone, as it were, living specimens of which are now being sought in vain throughout Europe. These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence." Perhaps the key for literary genre-allocation lies within Linnaeus' eloquent words - that like the ever-expanding multitude of species that are defined as they come to biological light, literary works (due to their innate complexity) also need a similarly limitless genre-array in which to place themselves; a classification defined by membranes of a more permeable kind. But of course this impractical entreaty results in a genre-blend, a literary soup in which one type can hardly be differentiated from another. The solution? Perhaps simply an increased flexibility with the Linnaeun option of establishing a hierarchical arrangement: with a major in historical and a minor in thriller, literary and romance. I have also become aware that greater genre-flexibility is accorded to writers of proven publishing performance - the implication being that genre-mixology remains the provenience of the literary adept, at least insofar as traditional agencies and houses are concerned.

So I remain singularly unable to postulate a practical solution, but obdurately committed to my particular kind of writing that eschews ready genre classification: resigned to the allocation ambiguity of my own literary mongrels. Like the author that penned them, they are a product of a diverse number of influences and accumulations of thought; they are indubitably their own complicated literary endeavors, and any placement-complex or misfit-anxieties that they might experience once fully-fleshed is met by a twinkle in the authorial eye. There is a certain pride in the authenticity of a work (whether it can be readily classified or not) that perhaps, at the end of the day, is indeed all.

Hamlet, Onset Personality Attributes and the Literary Threshold

When a literary character arrives on the threshold of chapter one I am oft reminded of a house analogy; the residence itself comprising the entirety that is the novel, with the front door opening into the literary preliminaries, the prologue, the initial chapter if you will. The fictional individuals themselves are itinerant drifters, nomadic adventurers, wayfarers of the fictional world, and this house, this narrative, is one stop upon their own literary journey; they arrive on the doorstep bedraggled and travel-worn, burdened down by the various accoutrements which they tow along with them.

Some are singularly somber, scarred by a darkly particular past, others are freshly-unlined and exuberant, naive and idealistic; all, however, spring into the narrative fully-formed like Minerva from the brow of Jupiter, encased in their acquired armor made necessary from the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune to which we, the reader, have yet to become acquainted. While these whips and scorns of time might belong to an obscurely undefined past, that fictional character has, in some way, been shaped by them: the weight of past experience etched within their physiognomy, formed in furrows between the brows or in the whitened whiskers of a balding mane. Each character emerges from the literary darkness in the full-timbered resonance of complicated three-dimensionality, and perhaps there is just as much to be designated, decided and mulled over in the precursor: in the preceding narrative of this particular character's life prior to their arrival on the doorstep of one's novel. Or perhaps I am plagued by procrastination and will ponder and pontificate on all that precedes the palpable process of putting pen to paper! Say it is not so!

In the meaningful formulation of a fictional individual, one must not only ruminate upon the manner in which they develop throughout the written narrative, but the complicated matrix of their personality at the onset. This process comprises extricating the elements that have unduly influenced them, the encumbrances that weigh them down; postulating some notion of childhood, of the geographical, political and social milieu that comprised this early time of youth, the instilled parental perspective and predispositions; the hiccups of young adulthood and the obdurate opinions of the old - until the character is fixed, like an insect in amber, pinioned in a literary freeze-frame, formulated at a specific chronological age. Just as the players within Hamlet cover a gamut of lifespan, from the doddering Polonius to the youthful Laertes, each comes to the game with a complex set of assumptions and life experiences that quintessentially define their particular personality, proclivities and the manner in which they interact with others. This is where the preliminary authorial work lies: in the back-narrative, the initial formulation that establishes character credibility.

Hamlet is, from the onset, much troubled: afflicted with his father's demise and his mother's precipitous marriage he finds the world a 'weary, stale, flat and unprofitable' place. Having 'lost all [his] mirth, forgone all custom of exercises,' and clad 'in nighted color' Hamlet is but a shadow of his former self; his attire a deliberate criticism of the colorful court who assume 'the trappings and suits of woe.' Ophelia refers to this lighter past of courtier, soldier, scholar and lover: a prince with a tendency to deep rumination and intensity of thought, but one traversing his designated path of seeming complacent happiness - before the smiling villain succumbed to his own ambitions for Crown and Queen. Very early into the play, as Hamlet barely crosses the literary threshold, we become aware of the particular transformation that has immediately preceded his arrival: this melancholic disposition, (prior to ghostly revelations of murder and mayhem) this agitated reflection upon his father's death and his mother's 'o'erhasty marriage.'

As the play proceeds Hamlet's tension heightens and spirals, his despondency transmuted into the agonized rage of a son denied both father and throne with all matter bent to revenge: 'I'll wipe away all trivial, fond records, all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied there, and thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter.'  These trivialities, this baser matter, that hitherto occupied Hamlet's mind might be fairly construed to be the quotidian occupations of any particular Danish princeling, the engagements of mirth and exercise from which he now abstains. The distance traversed from the 'expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of fashion and the mold of form, th' observed of all observers' is all the more dramatic to those unaware of Hamlet's deliberate intent, of his assumed 'antic disposition' which evades and perplexes the scrutiny of the capricious court. The quintessential dramatic tension contained within the fictional frame of Hamlet is born in the inevitable juxtaposition between what he is now (an admixture of dark melancholy and tortured fury inflicted on self as well as others) and what he was before (mirthfully engaged in princely pursuits sheltered by the cheerful triumvirate of an intact nuclear family.)

Before they even traverse the literary landscape the characters are multifaceted complications; only after the formulation of which can one then propel them through the action with a clear understanding of how these back-narratives will predispose them to certain responses, how the intricacies of interactions with others will color their forward action. Little of this might be revealed to the reader; there is, after all, a certain amount of uneasy ambiguity that encompasses Gertrude's marriage of unseemly haste. What prompted this alliance? Can she be subsequently implicated in the death of Hamlet's father? Is she much maligned by Hamlet's hostility or is she receiving her just deserts?

Perhaps Shakespeare had, within the confines of his creative cranium, the answers to these questions. He is, after all, the omnipotent deity of this fictional world: the 'divinity' that Hamlet declares 'shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.' Whether the Bard chooses to reveal these literary undercurrents is another thing. Just as we, the writer, must hold all the cards, shuffling and jostling within our grasp, only a select few are displayed on the table, the rest remain shrouded within the mists of the authorial mind. But I think it critical that these character attributes are formulated (whether or not they are demonstrated or utilized within the subsequent narrative they still comprise the quintessential particulars of that fictional individual) - and it is this precursor construct, this pre-formulated familiarity that breathes vitality into the character that navigates their way through the subsequent pages of one's novel.

Yet as I wade and mire through drier treatises of American intellectualism (engaged as I am in research for my next novel), through the whys and wherefores of western expansionism, and the knotted entanglements of slavery and cotton, I increasingly find that my characters have already experienced much that is interesting before they even deign to grace my narrative: a  Parisian physician devastated by the 1848 Revolution and circumscribed by the conservative medical establishment seeks a new start in the Land of Opportunity; a young Chinese girl lured to the New World under false pretenses and forced into prostitution; a garrulous miner bemoaning hard times and hard prices, hankering after the heady egalitarianism of gold-rush days; a fiery female journalist seeking to forge a literary path for herself in what is still yet a male-dominated frontier.

These characters are shadowy remnants still, partially-formed ideas of themselves, skeletal and shallow, awaiting the literary brush that will define the flesh and provide the thrum and quiver of life-bestowed. But as brilliantly evidenced by Shakespeare's Hamlet, I am intrigued by the juxtaposition of what went before and, fashioned within the literary maelstrom of plot and heated forward-action, what comes after; how this piece of work which is man is contorted and shaped by the subsequent narrative, by the house that is one's novel, and how he emerges at the end of it as something else entirely. For myself, however, the humble architect of this particular abode, I merely hold open the door, beckon the weary travelers across the threshold, echoing as I do so Hamlet's greeting to the actors: 'You are welcome. masters; welcome all!'

Marx, a Faustian Bargain, and the Novel as a Literary Commodity

I was told recently to write a different kind of novel; a fiction more readily marketable to a broader demographic range, with prose less intense, genre less marginalized, plot less convoluted and subsequent economic success more assured. Invariably the financial wherewithal of this or that romance author came to the fore, with skyrocketing sale-success dangling in tantalizing proximity...if only you would...??!!

My immediate thought is of a Faustian bargain. Will I sell my literary soul for potential monetary and bestselling-list acclaim? Now this purveyor of insidious intent is not a Mephistopheles, the devilish intermediary of Goethe fame, but one born of the utterly sincere desire to improve my literary and economic fortunes...and most decidedly, like Faust, the temptation exists; at least the lure of acquisition, the pinnacle of all supposed coveted literary goals - fame and fortune! Who would not want the monetary liberty to write at will, unconstrained by the grinding encumbrance of making-ends-meet-employment, the tedium of necessary engagement that pays the perpetual bills but inhibits and constrains writing time?

This train of thought, however, cast my mind along Marxian lines, with the essential assumption being that the literary work was a commodity that could be arbitrarily replaced by another in the authorial minds eye. The novel, at the end of the factory line, is indubitably a commodity in the sense that it is a product of human labor that is intended for consumption within the broader literary landscape. We write so that we may be read do we not? For a writer without an audience (irrespective of size) is, to my mind, a meaningless thing: an empty vessel which despite an attractive exterior lacks the substance which gives it functional purpose, a deprivation that stunts not only the work itself (unfiltered, unaffected, undiscussed by an engaged readership) but also the literary proclivities and passion of the author - for how does one write feverishly and fervently without the hope of reaching a minority, a minimum of few? Do we not all desire our penned-labors to make some modicum of impact? The ripples need not be widespread nor impressive of size - but we must feel that we are writing for a singular purpose.

But if the novel is (once transcribed in ink across the page, packaged and shipped, virtually available on all possible e-forums) indeed a commodity it was not always so. Before it becomes an item that is purchased for a sum, it is a living and breathing thing; a snugly intimate companion within the darkly pulsing neural framework; a fanciful invention of whimsical threads, a fabricated reality that has no roots in commodity, or use value, or economic imperative - produced instead by an immeasurable emotional engagement, by a painstakingly meticulous attention to words, to phrases, and the torturous need to depict the fluidity of action that is cast across the internal screenplay of the writer's mind. This commodity is birthed in passion, in the unmitigated desire to string words together in a meaningful way. For the toiling writer the subsequent manuscript is a soulful heartsong given literary wing; an improbably bejeweled insect in delicate flight.

Before emerging as 'commodity' this winged one is necessarily encased, confined, stamped, packaged and distributed. It is a version of solidity, a dragonfly immobilized in amber that is no less beautiful in the translucence of wing and the ambiguity of molten gold - arrested in the ethereal elegance of winged flight. But the novel is no longer the same as it was - it is now a collection of pages, stamped in ink, a series of like-spines on a bookseller's shelf, a meandering association of binary bits for sale at kindle prices. It is now subject to all the vagaries of the reading public - to be damned or elevated on the whims of the occasional reviewer - to be consigned to publishing oblivion or thrust forth into the spotlight of orchestrated literary applause.

But it is the beginnings that most intrigue me. I am after all a writer of prose; a fashioner of literary dreams; an avid collector of dragonflies before their flight is stilled. I do not merely write to demand, not do I construct with one eye to commercial viability, I write the lyrical song that thrums through my blood, that reverberates across the rhythmic thud of heartbeat, that echoes from the polished cavity of bone. So to the earnest interlocutor, to those who do not labor over ink-stained manuscripts as the darkness fades into dawn, to those who do not birth literary passions, but whom indubitably mean well - I simply smile and thank them. For as with a leopard's allocated spots, we as writers are just as indubitably bound by the uniqueness of our particular resonating theme; one that moreover seems to choose us more particularly than otherwise - a statement more readily comprehended by the scribbling ilk than not I fear. For this is not something I would say to my well-meaning interlocutor. They would gaze at me with irritable perplexity - as if I was deliberately choosing an obscure literary fate deprived of economic succor simply to spite them - but this is an understood thing. How could it be otherwise? Because they see only the commodity! It is one and the same; this book or that, this well-run theme or that commercial-success formulaic, and our obdurate refusal to comply is simply a self-defeatist masochism for which we should, at the end of it all, be thoroughly chastised!

For I believe that great writers are possessed of an inward-gaze; utterly focused on the literary endeavor (ofttimes it can be said to the utter detriment of subsequent marketing efforts). But it should be so. For that is where the wellspring lies, the much-belabored creative source, the seedlings that give rise to mightiest of literary oaks. So when tempted by the easy incline of commercial formula, of the 'guaranteed' publishing success of this other genre or that, or by this kind of writing or that, the writer must carefully consider their own internal imperative and whether or not they are utterly impassioned by the harmony of the literary song - to the point that they will expend an untold accumulation of time, each page hard-won and stained with the residual trails of blood and sweat. For at the very least, at the end of such Sisyphean labor (for does one not then begin again?) do we not want to look upon our literary offspring with maternal pride? To feel it an exercise glorious and an endeavor instilled with a meaningful truth?

For once the Faustian bargain is struck payment indubitably comes due - years or decades later, when all  those delicate threads of potential literary marvel have become knotted and entangled, accumulating in acidic discomfort like a hard bellystone of unrelenting regret - yes one might achieve monetary wealth from novels frequently-churned, but is one's writing accompanied by a frisson of utter delight? Is the manifestation of the literary thing, commodity or otherwise. a piece of work of which one can proudly say "yes, that one in all it's imperfections, yes, that one is mine" ?

Haffar, 'Leah' and the Literary Intangibility of Mood

I am ruminating upon the theme of literary mood; that overarching fluidity of nebulous things, defined and captured not in the solidity of word or specificity of phrase, but a prevailing emotional connection that enthralls, entangles and ensnares...that keeps one riveted to page after page. In short not only the beckoning power of a given work but the hypnotic tendrils that tighten and hold, maintaining beguilement once the reader is singularly immersed.  Leah by Dana Haffar is just such an evocative pleasure.

This novel is centered on the island of Puerto Franco, of uncertain geographical location, set apart from the world in its wild isolation, shaped and buffeted by tempestuous winds. The narrative is depicted predominately through the eyes of Mar, a mainlander encumbered by grief for the death of her father and stillborn child, neglected by a selfish spouse, and consumed with fear for the safety of her surviving daughter Lemay; she seeks, on this apparently idyllic island retreat, to regain a sense of her stable self and to reconnect with the painting that sustains her. Despite her name (suggestive of the Latin mare meaning sea) Mar, who cannot swim, fears the turbulent swell of sea and the treacherous riptides that swell and pulse beneath the most placid of surfaces; she is an awkward addition to the island, distinguished from the bare-foot abandon of its inhabitants in her long linen, sunglasses and wide-brimmed hat.

Gradually entangled in insular affairs, Mar becomes aware of the dark tides that surge beneath the apparently amiable façade and the terrible secret that dwells at its depth. The evocativeness of the weather, and manner in which it eerily parallels the inclinations of the Puerto Francan residents reminds me of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights; deaths and accidents coincide with uncanny precision to the gathering of stormclouds, the lashing of rain on roof, and the ferocious winds that drive the crested waves to fury. Hushed mutterings of spell-casting and dark curses thread through the narrative, and Mar herself is the recipient of repeated visits by the ghostly Leah who had drowned thirty years previously under darkly uncertain circumstances. Typically I am wary of the supernatural element within literature, while entertaining a relish for dark drama ghostly apparitions tend to leave me skeptical…Haffar, however, manages this thread masterfully, with a deft subtleness that is indubitably perfect within the confines of this novel. Leah is nuanced rather than manifested in the tread of footsteps in shifting sand, the skin-tingling deliberation of words formed in condensation, and the haunting sound of a child’s weeping. Just as Leah’s enigmatic brother Sebastian (a fisherman to which Mar is increasingly drawn) is defined by his physical solidity, his drowned sister is revealed not by her appearance but by a delicately eerie sensory imprint drawn in gossamer threads.

While the island mists seem to both reveal and conceal, a recurring motif throughout this marvelous novel is the ability ‘to see,’ to penetrate what lies beneath. Mar, plagued by vision difficulties that result in white blurred patches on one eye, learns from El Ciego, the elderly blind man, of devious doings; these are intimated rather than communicated, expressed in riddles that Mar must still decipher for herself; a Tiresius-like seer, El Cieglo ‘sees’ what others cannot.

The island itself is more than just a backdrop to the action that takes place upon its shores, it infiltrates the narrative, permeating the individuals who reside there (reminiscent of mid-nineteenth century physicians who thought geological outcrops the source of virulent disease) and in the process presents a distinct personality of its own: the rocky outcrop of terra firma, detached and withdrawn from the bustle of the larger human society, itself enveloped by a deep watery expanse; representative perhaps of the individual self: with the forbidding ‘Wild Side’ where few dare venture and vegetation is sparse and wind-bent, expressive of both tumultuous ferocity and the placid serenity of calm, with dark undertows scarcely seen beneath.

This vivid depiction of the island reminds me also of the evolutionary thread of island biogeography where uniquely exotic species thrive in isolation; protected by their watered moats, secure from the predatory tooth and claw, they develop to gigantic (or diminutive ) size, with lush cascading feathers or bizarre anatomical protuberances; suggested not only by the New Zealand kiwi and the Australian platypus, but even the version on the human evolutionary tree, the dwarf-sized Homo floresiensis (nicknamed the hobbit) discovered on the Indonesian island of Java. The general tenor of island biogeography essentially is the manifestation of the wild abandoned and insulated, of a circumscribed gene pool that gives rise to new strains of possibility and a secluded environment in which to nourish them. With the human animal however, the secluded isolation of island life tends to the macabre, to the ominous, and one reflects on Lord of the Flies or the ratcheting despair of the Pitcairn Island castaways. Puerto Franco is neither of these, the inhabitants have intermittent access to mainland amenities that are brought in by boat but they are, by and large, characterized by the rigid independence that has become necessary for their survival. The dramatic edginess of confinement, however,  the heightening tension of a circumscribed landmass encapsulated by an unforgiving sea, where the darkest threads of human nature are unleashed; this is a drama most particular to an island setting, and one Haffar ingeniously exploits to dramatic conclusion.

Leah is imbued with mood, with a literary-generated atmosphere of a wind-swept landscape peopled with characters vividly-drawn; where the reader accompanies Mar, a stranger to the island, as she unravels not only the dark enigma, the wellspring of curses, that lingers and stalls over the island like a gathered cloud of evil portent, but rediscovers her own inner strength. She learns to swim.

Mood is an elusive literary element that resists definition of any determined kind. It is a sweeping pull, much like the riptides that plague the coastal shores of Puerto Franco; or a mist, pervading a given work, that reaches out to encompass you within its swirling obscurity. It is a sustained emotional connection to a work you cannot put down, that evocative need for resolution that keeps you riveted to the page. Something intangible, ethereal, but nonetheless palpable, felt in the quickening of heart and the focused intensity of mind.