Hamlet comes from the fact that we know Hamlet will die from the start, and when he does die finally, his death is much more moving.”
“Funny about plays like Hamlet ,” says Nina, who has studied Shakespeare recently. Nina is one of the more well-read of the group, but she never shows off. “You know Hamlet will die every time you see the play, but somehow you hope he won’t.”
“So, Nina. What do you think? Would your story be better off spilling the beans at the outset?” She is mulling it over.
Most of Nina’s story is told in the first person. “Why choose one voice over another? First person, second, third?” They all come up with the obvious answers involving the scope of purview and information available to each of the voices. “But is there not some other advantage, particularly to the first-person voice that Nina uses?”
“Well,” says Jasmine, “we know that the narrator will survive the story—unless she’s already dead, like the narrator of The Lovely Bones. But logic dictates that the person telling us the story survives.”
“And what does that fact suggest? Ishmael survives, the woman in Rebecca survives, Pip survives, Nick Carraway survives. What do their stories have in common?”
After a moment: “They suggest that the people they are telling us about may not survive,” says Robert.
“Nice. We have no proof of this, but every time we are greeted by a first-person narrator who announces a story about someone else—the narrator of The Good Soldier , for instance—we can be fairly sure that the person whom the story is about will meet a bad end.”
“As in ‘The Laughing Man,’ ” says Sven.
“As in ‘The Laughing Man,’ since we know at the outset of Salinger’s story, merely by the way the boy tells the tale, that his hero’s heart will be broken.”
“Don’t you take a risk, writing in the first person?” says Ana. “Either you glorify yourself or you humiliate yourself. Either way, the reader dislikes it.”
“So you think every story should begin ‘Once upon a time.’ It’s an interesting point of view. I’d adopt it if I, and you, hadn’t read dozens of great stories told in the first person.”
“I guess it’s a matter of individual talent,” says Ana. “The strength of an individual voice.”
“What’s all this talk of ‘voice’?” asks Suzanne.
“You mean, ‘all this crap,’ don’t you?”
“If you insist. Yes. Crap. That’s all anyone talks about when they talk about writing. Voice. If, at my age, I don’t know my own voice, I’ll never know it.”
I tell her she’s right, that “voice” is merely the latest cliché to signify good writing. Its predecessor was “authority.” She is also right about linking self-knowledge to writing. “But instead of thinking of self-knowledge as idiosyncratic, try connecting it more to the task at hand. Subject matter determines voice. Voice should be selfless. Want to tell a tale in the voice of an idiot savant? Try The Sound and the Fury . Want to create an innocent learning morality? Put your glasses on Huckleberry Finn’s nose, but make sure the reader sees more of Huck’s nose than your glasses. Voice is the knowledge of what you want to say. After that, it becomes any voice that serves your purpose.”
“I find I don’t know what I mean to say till I start to write,” says Robert.
“You find that you don’t know what you think until you write it, too. You’ll be going along writing sentence after sentence about some slight received by a character, then you find yourself growing angrier on his behalf. Before you realize it, you’re in a rage, and the rage is what you felt from the start, though you had no sign of it until the words unearthed it. If we have to put it in terms of ‘voice,’ voice may be the imprisoned you, waiting to be paroled.”
“We write what we are,” says Nina.
“I think so. What we are, what we fear, what we love, what we believe, what we
“Funny about plays like Hamlet ,” says Nina, who has studied Shakespeare recently. Nina is one of the more well-read of the group, but she never shows off. “You know Hamlet will die every time you see the play, but somehow you hope he won’t.”
“So, Nina. What do you think? Would your story be better off spilling the beans at the outset?” She is mulling it over.
Most of Nina’s story is told in the first person. “Why choose one voice over another? First person, second, third?” They all come up with the obvious answers involving the scope of purview and information available to each of the voices. “But is there not some other advantage, particularly to the first-person voice that Nina uses?”
“Well,” says Jasmine, “we know that the narrator will survive the story—unless she’s already dead, like the narrator of The Lovely Bones. But logic dictates that the person telling us the story survives.”
“And what does that fact suggest? Ishmael survives, the woman in Rebecca survives, Pip survives, Nick Carraway survives. What do their stories have in common?”
After a moment: “They suggest that the people they are telling us about may not survive,” says Robert.
“Nice. We have no proof of this, but every time we are greeted by a first-person narrator who announces a story about someone else—the narrator of The Good Soldier , for instance—we can be fairly sure that the person whom the story is about will meet a bad end.”
“As in ‘The Laughing Man,’ ” says Sven.
“As in ‘The Laughing Man,’ since we know at the outset of Salinger’s story, merely by the way the boy tells the tale, that his hero’s heart will be broken.”
“Don’t you take a risk, writing in the first person?” says Ana. “Either you glorify yourself or you humiliate yourself. Either way, the reader dislikes it.”
“So you think every story should begin ‘Once upon a time.’ It’s an interesting point of view. I’d adopt it if I, and you, hadn’t read dozens of great stories told in the first person.”
“I guess it’s a matter of individual talent,” says Ana. “The strength of an individual voice.”
“What’s all this talk of ‘voice’?” asks Suzanne.
“You mean, ‘all this crap,’ don’t you?”
“If you insist. Yes. Crap. That’s all anyone talks about when they talk about writing. Voice. If, at my age, I don’t know my own voice, I’ll never know it.”
I tell her she’s right, that “voice” is merely the latest cliché to signify good writing. Its predecessor was “authority.” She is also right about linking self-knowledge to writing. “But instead of thinking of self-knowledge as idiosyncratic, try connecting it more to the task at hand. Subject matter determines voice. Voice should be selfless. Want to tell a tale in the voice of an idiot savant? Try The Sound and the Fury . Want to create an innocent learning morality? Put your glasses on Huckleberry Finn’s nose, but make sure the reader sees more of Huck’s nose than your glasses. Voice is the knowledge of what you want to say. After that, it becomes any voice that serves your purpose.”
“I find I don’t know what I mean to say till I start to write,” says Robert.
“You find that you don’t know what you think until you write it, too. You’ll be going along writing sentence after sentence about some slight received by a character, then you find yourself growing angrier on his behalf. Before you realize it, you’re in a rage, and the rage is what you felt from the start, though you had no sign of it until the words unearthed it. If we have to put it in terms of ‘voice,’ voice may be the imprisoned you, waiting to be paroled.”
“We write what we are,” says Nina.
“I think so. What we are, what we fear, what we love, what we believe, what we
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