The Review Club Forum Discussion for Rob's The Sound..

This is the place to respond to reviews and for further discussion of Rob's The Sound of the Dying Universe Ch.3.

Hey Loekie, excellent review. Brilliant comments. Yes, it meandered quite a bit. I wanted to explore character a bit more in this one than theme so it wandered around a bit more than usual. Not as tight a chapter. You are right that this needs more tightening with respect to theme and tossing out extraneous material. I can definitely use those comments to get this chapter where it needs to be. Free beer all around, bartender. Cheers! Rob

That is a load off my mind. As I copied my review from notepad into the review space and checked it out, I stopped and thought I was being a bit too harsh. And free beers, I won't say no to that, as long as it is good beer, Canadian or American. And yes, there are some good American beers out there but that is a new, different thread.

And as per say to your email, I'm glad you are thinking of mentioning that in 1976 we had the Olympics. There is a massive block of people down south that don't know anything about the delightful country named Canada, where most people do not live in igloos and actually have electricity in our homes :-) That is why I liked your putting in some of our folk legends in as part of your story.

Canada, huh? Where's that, eh? ::biggrin::

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lol. No offence. In my view I won't lose audience if my story takes place here, in the Great White North, if the writings good. A sense of place was the one thing Eli Mandel hammered into my brain as one of the most critical elements of good fiction. Location, location, location. And how the environment impresses on the characters. ;-)

Sigh! What are we going to do about these Americans?

Anyway, I agree with you, Rob. The locale should not be an impediment, but at the same time, too much loses the reader. I love using Montreal as a setting for my sci-fi stuff but have to be careful because of the familiarity I have to my city. A couple of my stories generated more questions about landmarks or city things than the actual story.

So, for me, I am finding I use my Canadian sparingly, to give it a "different" feel but not "foreign". A good example, I had in one story people talking in a place eating steamies and poutine. That generated many a "huh?". Then again, the same terms would do the same thing about Canada ::smile::

Hey Bill, thanks for the review on this piece. I appreciate it. You're right I've given this a memoir quality to this. In this chapter, realizing how much territory I need to cover, I started floating away from a tight grip on theme to explore character more -- especially secondary characters. As a result it floats through a number of scenes, some less relevant to others. It will have to be tightened up along the themes more, and exposition to make it flow more, so your comments are very welcome. Cheers!

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So I guess you can't have them eating smoke meat sandwiches at Ben's anymore, eh? Now that it's closed -- a landmark. Where else could you get really bad service from 70 year old waiters, who forget your order. Having coffee and walking the Main is still my fav, or souvlakis and B.Y.O. in the Ghetto. My In-laws are Montrealers. lol

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Actually, Rob, I've gotta agree with you here too. My only suggestion would be to name the place ASAP so your non-Canadian readers know that they arent dealing with, say, standard US city. Otherwise, I think using the Canadian details gives your work a great sense of place, one that may even seem exotic to us Americans.

And, gasp, Loekie and I agree AGAIN! What is the world coming to!

-cc

Thanks Julie. You're right about each chapter being a separate short story. Intentional design for two reasons: (1) it helps me structure the chapters; and (2) I recently read Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, winner of the 2006 Giller Prize, and that was basically the way he structured his novel -- a series of short stories. I thought that was clever, but I intend to tie it up tighter than he did with his (his stories had the same characters but no common story -- just the theme of medical students and young interns).

With that said, that was one of the reasons I let this chapter loosen up a bit; so I can grasp threads to weave a whole as the story moves forward. If the chapter is too tight, there are no questions at the end of the chapter and it is really a short story.

One thing that needs to be considered is proper tension in moving this one forward. However, I've struggled a bit with that on considering Yann Martel's first novel, which was a runner up for the Chapters First Novelist Prize a few years back. Now, he wandered around pretty aimlessly, waxing and waning in a cluttered narrative, so I thought -- well, I can do that a bit too, so long as I keep it interesting and tie up as I move along.

If I'm not being effective here with this, let me know. I still stand to learn tons from all of you.

Thanks for the comments.

Rob

Rob:

Hey if it works more power to you. It's just not the standard novel format, so I wondered about a common thread. I look forward to reading the connections.

Julie

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lol I look forward to the "connections" too. Now, damn, were did I leave them. Thanks Julie.

Hey CC. Thanks for the detailed, thorough review of this piece. Very nicely done. Yeah, I think the consensus is to link these pieces tighter. In my mind I wanted to roll out the 5 memories as distinct entities and tie up going back into present tense at the end of the first part -- Memory. I thought it might work to be a bit disjointed, because, afterall, it is "memory". I might have to link it tighter and directly flowing the story through each segment. Just the way I saw this first part would go. I have loosened this one up to shake out more themes to run with and more characters to drive into the rest of the novel.

Your comment about the shift with the Cassie line (of course the name, Cassandra, and toyed with as possibly, Dorie, as in Pandora. I think Cassie works best. Just as I've changed the brother's name to Jason, and his Golden Fleece). It's funny I saw that too but thought I could slide it by adding "we shared". I'll replace it with direct observation from POV character.

I have a lot going on in this chapter, which probably feels pretty disjointed. Yes, it'll have to be pared down. That's ok. I expect that.

The chapters and tone will change once I get to Part 2: Forgetting and again when I get to Part 3: Truth.

I just thought about this now. It's from a lecture Eli gave about the poet F. P. Grove, that to define a sense of place requires three things: to name, to unname and to rename. For example, let's take New York. British immigrants come over and name it New York after York in England because they need the connection with the old country, the past, to make the New World make sense. However, over the years the sense of place creates a dissonance. It is NOT England. It is America. So, you must now unname it. Finally, to define what New York is, severed from the ties of the Old World requires redefinition of that sense of place. What is truly distinct about New York. That is the process of renaming. It's occurred to me that ultimately that is the lecture I am recreating in this novel.

With that said, my original intention was to create the tension in Part 2: Forgetting, the process of unnaming. In Part 1: Memory, I intend to have it hold the feel of an idyllic past. The old country or landscape of the mind.

As to descriptiveness and theme, I suffer from the "everything is metaphor and simile" approach to writing. So it's easy to see an old car as an old nag. It can be overwhelming I know. It can bog down the story, so I always have to pare it down. That's ok too.

Thanks CC for the brilliant review. You've given me tons to work with here in rewrite. I will make the transitions clearer in chapter 4, tied directly to plot and the story arc.

Cheers! I'll be looking at your piece here, and I hope I'm half as helpful.

Rob,

See, I love the idea. Love the whole naming-unnaming-renaming idea, and the whole idea of "place" that you're developing. There's a book - Montana 1948 by Larry Watson - that some reviewer called "A beautiful novel about the meaning of place" and I think you've got the workings to do the same thing here.

So about connecting the chapters. I see your point, now that I have a clearer picture of your structure. So the question is - how to resolve the disconnect without losing what could be a brilliant structure? I have a thought, and this is just a thought to do with as you will, but why not rivet the story to a place? A school and family home can be anywhere, obviously, but the first real sense I get of PLACE as mattering is in this chapter. It could give you the thread and continuity that you need without having to lasso the plot so closely together.

-cc

Kim and Brent, thanks for your helpful reviews. I must admit that I need to think about the tie-ins in these chapters, as so far it's scenes loosely tossed out. A progression -- so far it's just a moody chord. I am going to rethink and connect the scenes thematically to make it feel like it's actually going somewhere. Thanks for the comments. Very much appreciated. Rob