The Gonquin Table: All You Need Is Love
February 13, 2008
Mary Shelley frowns as Al, the Gonquin’s owner, with a dramatic conspiratorial wink, places a blood-red rose in front of her and says, “From a secret admirer.”
Eyebrows around the main table rise as if pulled by a puppet string. Bram says, “From Dr. Frankenstein, no doubt.”
Mary blushes, “Given the color–and the proximately to St. Valentine’s day–it more likely comes from your Count Dracula.”
Papa, hands layered over his heart, says, “To quote the bard, ‘As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.’”
Edgar with a swatting hand tries to wave away the sweet comments. “These symbols of love, these words, its emotion, emotion to the core. The issue we as writers must deal with is how to convey not just the feeling of love but the essence of all relevant emotion through our work. Hate, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, happiness. Putting our pen to these and making them flow to the reader is the challenge we face. Without convincingly infusing these into our characters and stories we write nothing but hollow tracts filled with reason and no heart. ”
Not for the first time, Edgar has stilled the quick tongues around the table. If there is an immediate reaction to his words it is one of logic, not emotion, as thoughts seem to ricochet inside skulls. Bram is the first to respond. “Though I hate to admit it, you raise an interesting issue. My first reaction is you cannot convey an idea without impregnating it with emotion. Ideas standing alone are straw men easily picked apart by determined crows.”
Papa raps his briar on the oak table then points the stem at Bram and says, “Unfortunately, dear friend, you are wrong. Ideas are best presented without emotion. Though Darwin wrote with passion, he did not argue from a visceral platform. He laid his hypothesis, his evidence, and the conclusions he drew from them on the table, unadorned with emotion.”
“But,” Mary, catching Papa between words, interrupts, “there is a difference in fiction. As we spin our stories what we do is give life to ideas, we take them from Dr. Frankenstein’s scientific table and show how they affect the lives of people. To that extent, Bram is entirely correct.”
Edgar says, “To me the issue is not whether we embed emotion into our work, but how to do it without being melodramatic, without insulting the reader. For example, in my story, The Pit And The Pendulum, the key emotion is fear. Using the atmosphere of the setting: the melting candles, blackened cell, lurking hazards, the scythe, and the unknown at the bottom of the pit, my goal was to elicit horror and its handmaiden, the emotion, fear. You feel the fear my narrator feels even though he does not admit to it. My sense, then, is that it is the atmosphere you create that can best evoke emotion.”
“Ah,” says Mary. “To ‘evoke emotion,’ what does that mean? Is our challenge to create a feeling in the reader or to effectively describe the emotions experienced by our characters? The difference, I think, is subtle, yet important.”
“I’m not so sure,” Papa says. “If the task is to have readers understand the emotion felt by the character, what better way than to duplicate that feeling in the reader. It’s the old ‘show versus tell’ admonition. And Edgar, while I would agree that atmosphere is an effective tool, I think there are other means by which to convey emotion. Analogy, metaphor, and word choice to name a few. Think of old Lancaster in Elmer Gantry, ‘And what is love? Love is the mornin’ and the evenin’ star. It shines on the cradle of the Babe. Hear ye, sinners. Love is the inspiration of poets and philosophers. Love is the voice of music.’ No finer description of love than that.”
Bram says, “As always, dear friend, you are right. It always comes down to understanding on the part of the reader. And, I would add foreshadowing to your list, little hints that alert the reader to what is ahead. Anticipation—whether it be of affection, anxiety, contempt, frustration, or shame—is, I think, is the foundation upon which feeling is built. Emotion does not pounce on one like a puma, instead, it sneaks up like twilight before the night. For me it has been an effective device to elicit emotion.
Edgar, smug, treating us to a self satisfied look, says, “I think we have agreement. And as my erstwhile pupil, Stephen King, says ‘The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.’ No doubt, emotions in writing are both important and hard to capture.”
The rose still rests in Mary’s hand. Who sent it seems less important, now, as we think of its implication. Is it an attempt to create an atmosphere? An analogy? A metaphor? A foreshadowing? If so, to what purpose? It makes us all anxious.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Ah! the balding newcomer to the table cries from the corner, but wait! Edgar, if I may?
“To One In Paradise
Poem lyrics of To One In Paradise by Edgar Allan Poe.
Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine-
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”- but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For, alas! alas! me
The light of Life is o’er!
“No more- no more- no more-”
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams-
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.”
I suppose what I am trying to say is simply…let he who dream so oft of lost Lenore, recall his words of love, yes, evermore!
And he sinks back into the shadows.
DNW
Dave, you have earned a place at the table.
Frank
“…let he who dream so oft of lost Lenore, recall his words of love, yes, evermore!” Dave’s quote from THE RAVEN reminds me how much style contributes to emotion as well. I read that masterpiece of Poe’s aloud to someone last year and we were both caught up in the sense and sensibility of it. Emotion travels by faith and intuition and ethereal paths that defy planning and conscious perception. You just know. You know?
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Hey Sully, just for laughs…check out my essay over at my own site today…something that occurred to me, and I’m not sure I’ve nailed it…but maybe.
Edges and the Valence of Fiction
–Dave
Yup. Add style to the list, Sully. To some degree, though, style and atmosphere go hand in glove.
Frank
Works for me as far as it goes, Davey – and it goes quite far, it seems to me. A rather brilliant metaphor. I love the molecules> one atoms> electrons analogy. And I can subscribe to your tiny indivisible world that we all have (though it might be fun to take that to the subatomic level). I guess where I hit the limits is – well – where you reach the limits of the comparison. Can the natural limits of a 3-D model cover something psychic, intuitive, quantum? Maybe quantum. Or is energy ultimately definable as matter? Upon what does insight travel? Much more than prescribed orbits like those of electrons. If our experiences travel like those electrons, then those experiences are similarly limited as an explanation of insight. There is something more. It may have to do with genotyping, or genotyping applied to phenotyping, but it is as fundamental as individuality and as inscrutable as intelligence itself. How does a person who never travels further than 10 miles from the place of their birth become wise? It is certainly a very limited type of experience that informs them: the universe in a grain of sand, the flower in the crannied wall. Again, it must be something they bring to the table then which is the critical factor. It seems to me that the experience levels you described are merely interchangeable variables – the dispensable furniture from which universal wisdom is derived. Your model works better for specific knowledge, which may be all you intended; but then a writer should say so much more, shouldn’t they? And you do mix insight with knowledge, I think, in your theory. Finally, as you know from your own odyssey of becoming a Far Voyager, insight and imagination are acquired as much by avoiding social conditioning as by actual learning. Surround yourself with monotonous people in a routine life, and you will take on the colorlessness of your surroundings. Alas, we are all chameleons. I am grateful for having lived in a dozen countries by the time I was six, because when you don’t belong anywhere, in a sense you belong everywhere. Hey, I needed that advantage because the only thing I brought to the table was an appetite. Between you and Flamingo Frank, you’ve covered both logic and emotion today. I am inspired and in awe of you guys.
–Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Nah, my theory holds, I think, Sully.
The person with 10 miles of radius still might have – for instance – played midnight football and slept with the coaches wife – and a story where playing football at midnight brought in something from BEYOND that could work very powerfully. It’s a matter of not trying to include free radicals from other “atoms” without something to ground them that causes the disruption.
You are correct, though…there is an intangible something – a state of “self” that empowers the entire process as well, and is individual.
Man Frank, see what you started?
I need to get a guest-blog over at my site with the Gonquin table crew. I love these. I do find angsty, over-emotional Edgar an odd one to be siding against love, though he didn’t (in actuality) have much luck with it…
A wonderful discourse. I can see “The Gonquin Table” as the
basis of a post graduate course. –Janet
Dave, Dear Edgar was indeed unlucky in love as he was in life. What short time he had he used well. Perhaps he reflects that in the way he handles these post-mortem discussions.
Janet, you are a flatterer, and I love it. My thoughts were more on the kindergarten level. Thanks.
Frank
Crikey, I’m so late to the table today that the check has already been argued about, the spills wiped up, and the after-work crowd has taken over.
This one’s an absolute delight, Frank.
I heard a comment made by Alfred Hitchcock that echos some of the “atmosphere” ideas. He said his success in films was to let the audience in on the plot before the hero…completely involving the viewer at every turn.
Another good one Frank! Happy Valentine’s Day