Bookish-Dreaming

Three Thoughts

by

Gillian Polack

45c

Sometimes, it’s a good idea to turn stories around and see them from a new direction. I’ve just done that with three quite different sets of stories and I thought you might be interested in the results. Today I’m going to introduce you to (sequentially) The New Twilight Zone, The Dervish House (Ian McDonald) and Ghost Seas (Steven Utley).

First is The New Twilight Zone (first season). It’s a set of short narratives (if I state the obvious too often, throw tomatoes at me). Short stories told on film. The narrative structure of all the episodes is that of a short story, even to the length varying according to the needs of the narrative. String them together and what you’re watching is a television anthology, twenty-four hours long.

I know this is not an original way of looking at The New Twilight Zone. In fact, if you look at the credits, you’ll see the name of Harlan Ellison and other short story writers: it was envisaged as a telling of short stories, so of course it comes together as an anthology. It’s a thought I felt like pondering, however—that the steps from the page to the screen don’t always have to operate in the same way and that it’s possible to cleverly mimic the structure of the written word while presenting a story that’s purely for the screen. I like the thought of a TV series that follows a perceptively normative narrative format for a speculative fiction anthology. It has the variation in the qualities inherent in each story, with morals and humour and sentiment and horror cycling to keep each story fresh.

My second thought is one I’ve had before, but applied to a new book. Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House is a novel (and a rather fine one, too). I read the first couple of pages as a short story. Like The New Twilight Zone episodes, it shifted the narrative and changed its focus and made new meanings. It also played with my brain a little, but it politely put everything back in the same place after it was finished. I think it did, anyhow.

The beginning of The Dervish House isn’t quite modern, isn’t quite standard. As openings must, it sets the tone and the pace and the themes for everything that follows. And this is the way I normally read the beginning of a novel. I look for tone and pace and theme and say to myself “This is the kind of novel I’m reading.” But McDonald’s opening can be seen quite differently, as I said a moment ago, and I find that quite exciting.

The Dervish House opens with the title ‘Monday.’ I found myself explaining this to my mother over the phone. I told her what happened on this particular Monday over these particular pages. “That sounds fascinating,” she said, her voice yearning for more. And it is. Fascinating. And in need of more. It also works, however, if you stop the tale abruptly, when the mood changes. Since this is not a nice thing to do to a perfectly good novel, and since I’m quite obviously in a whimsical mood today, that’s what I shall be talking about. Stopping abruptly—turning a long piece of fiction into a short one.

The book begins with the slow flight of the stork across Istanbul. “A flare of feathers…” and we feel the winds blowing across continents. As the flock separates, we see the city herself and our gaze is brought closer and we start to feel as if we know Istanbul, that jewel of a city . . . and then the city explodes.

The way I explained it to my mother, the change from stork view to terror view is stark. The way McDonald tells it, the terror flows into the story, is a natural part of it and so is a natural part of life in this future city. McDonald maintains the present tense of the narrative and retains the same nature documentary style. We, the observers, watch people hurt from the same dispassionate but interested gaze as we watched the stork’s flight. The mood doesn't change until the protagonist reassures himself with “he’s not a creep.”

It’s an amazing introduction. The shifts in focus are dispassionate, yet the lack of emotion doesn’t hide the hurt. Right from this beginning we see and understand that the Istanbul of this tale is deeply damaged and damaging. We feel its fracture.

I sat on these few pages for weeks, unable to read further. Then I saw the opening as a short story, introducing a novel, and I had to read that novel, in a flash.

Then I read a short story anthology—Ghost Seas—as  a whole, not as a sequence of stories. I meant to take notes on each story and write an old-fashioned review. I have notes on the first story, only, because after that I kept telling myself “I’ll take notes later - gotta read now.” Let me give you those meagre notes, and then I’ll tell you what I found when I read.

My notes cover the first story only, “Ghost Seas.” They say:

Old-fashioned atmospheric fear. I have a very strong addiction to simple language and strong characterisation building an unforgettable picture, and that’s what we have here, a moving picture in a frame. Like pictures of Narnia and can reach out and engulf the unwary watcher.

Then I refer myself to page 25. This amuses me, because I have actually bookmarked page 37. I’m normally very consistent in my note-taking methods, so using two methods for the first forty pages and then forgetting to take notes entirely says something about the book. I finished reading two days ago and have read other things since and all the stories ring clear as a bell inside me, which also says something.

The anthology works as a whole. Each story is separate and unlinked. Utley’s style though, is strong enough and idiosyncratic enough to hold everything together. If the book is a bell, then each story resonates slightly differently and the whole is very harmonic. And this is where my view of this anthology is different to my view of most anthologies. With most anthologies I assess and see if they work as a whole. With Utley’s there is no need: it resonates.

He reminds me a bit of Mark Twain in the apparent simplicity of a complex story, and of Ray Bradbury in the way he builds atmosphere. Like both these authors, each story builds into a sense of who he is and of why one should read his writing. Utley shows us the moment after the big event (“Dog in the Manger”) or a minor player in a big world (“The Electricity of Heaven”). He writes a story purely to make a joke (“Michael Bates Michael Bates Michael Bates Michael”) or to show just how important the qualities of humankind are when faced with the truly big questions (“Upstart” or “Two Women of the Prairie”). His tales show us emotional play or leave us feeling bereft (“Ghost Seas”), as if there were many possible stories and they’ve all been swept away in the tide.

That’s what’s at the core of this anthology: the many possible stories. That’s what unified my three thoughts, too. These are all ways of telling stories, and solid voices for the telling.

Books mentioned in this column:
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Pyr, 2010)
Ghost Seas by Steven Utley (Ticonderoga Publications, 1997)

 

Gillian Polack is based in Canberra, Australia. She is mainly a writer, editor and educator. Her most recent print publications are a novel (Life through Cellophane, Eneit Press, 2009), an anthology (Masques, CSfG Publishing, 2009, co-edited with Scott Hopkins), two short stories and a slew of articles. Her newest anthology is Baggage, published by Eneit Press (2010).One of her short stories won a Victorian Ministry of the Arts award a long time ago, and three have (more recently) been listed as recommended reading in international lists of world's best fantasy and science fiction short stories. She received a Macquarie Bank Fellowship and a Blue Mountains Fellowship to work on novels at Varuna, an Australian writers' residence in the Blue Mountains. Gillian has a doctorate in Medieval history from the University of Sydney. She researches food history and also the Middle Ages, pulls the writing of others to pieces, is fascinated by almost everything, cooks and etc. Currently she explains 'etc' as including Arthuriana, emotional cruelty to ants, and learning how not to be ill. She is the proud owner of some very pretty fans, a disarticulated skull named Perceval, and 6,000 books. Contact Gillian.

 


 

 
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