Ruth liked to tell. Not show.

Not only will this be the last blog post of third quarter, but it will also be my last blog post on A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.  I believe that I have found more things to leave out of my own writing than to try to incorporate into it.  Not only that, but I think all that I have learned not to do from this novel is more than from all of the books I read during the first semester.  Thank god for the author’s study, I need an excuse to move on.

What I noticed during the most recent chapters I have forced down my own throat is that the author doesn’t do herself very many favors.  I started writing down all of the times she mentioned herself or her own thoughts, and I noticed that those sentences were probably the least dynamic sentences in the whole novel, which was supposed to be about her thoughts and discoveries.  

Some of the lines I wrote down were…

“Ruth liked her nickname” (142)

“Ruth admired her for admiring” (143)

“Her aversion to the telephone prevented her from answering” (144)

“Ruth liked the silence” (147)

“She sat back in the chair.  She wanted to weep.” (151).

Not sure about you, but with that many sentences following the same Ruth-past tense verb-object structure gets boring fast.  So its no wonder that when she starts talking about herself and her opinions and actions and thoughts (essentially anything she ever does) I stop caring and my interest and attention becomes up for grabs.  I would understand if it were a stylistic choice and she does it once or twice, but that many times in just a few pages?  For example, if she had kept the line “Ruth liked the silence” I could understand why she would want to end the sentence right then and there.  Because she would have actually created some silence.  

However, that is the only one of the sentences I recorded that can stand on its own the way she wrote it.  All of the other sentences just throw some random information at me.  They don’t show me why she does something or feels something.  They just tell me.  And I can’t seem to relate to that.  Why did she like her nickname?  What about it was appealing to her?  Why about her admiration did she find admirable?  Why did she avoid the telephone?  What has to happen for her to overcome this aversion to answer the phone?  What happens when she does answer the phone?  How did she sit back in the chair?  Why did she sit back down? What about what just happened made her want to weep?  What kind of weeping was it?  How did she feel about the fact that a failed internet search made her bawl like a child who didn’t get handed what she wanted?

The reader knows nothing about what the writer is trying to convey, until the writer tells them.  But if the writer simply tells them, the reader essentially just has a list of facts about the story to try to memorize and string together.  However, if the writer shows the writer what they mean by adding a little bit of meat to an average elementary student’s sentence format the reader can begin to connect with the story.  If the reader can see what’s happening, or hear it or touch it or hold it, their senses will get involved in the plot and the connections will form effortlessly.  No stringing together necessary.

A Little Sarcasm Never Hurt Anybody...

Okay, well maybe sarcasm isn’t for the sensitive or faint of heart or whatever, but when it comes to writing it can come in handy when trying to give a narrative some pizzazz.  Not only that,  but it also brings the narrator or the main character out of the second dimension and into the third with more realistic and relatable (not to mention interesting and entertaining) thoughts.  Granted, it is significantly easier to use a sarcastic tone when writing in first person, especially in a diary, but when writing in third person limited about yourself, you could at least provide the author was something humorous thoughts you had.

The first time I actually appreciated the writer of this book was 83 pages in when she said “We’re celebrating the End Times, Mom.  The collapse of the power grid and the world banking system.  The Rapture and the end of the world...My goodness.  Imagine that.”  This was the first time I actually felt like I could relate to the author and her frustration with her mother as she slowly descended into madness.  Before I had no idea how she was handling this gradual loss of her mother or how she treated her, and then all of a sudden the narrator that Ruth Ozeki had created was pulled out of the shadows and became an actual human being that could be connected with.  Not to mention I actually laughed and enjoyed one of her chapters for once.

Then of course on the next page, the narrator’s sassiness sort of faded into the background as she upstaged herself with her own cat.  Yes, I realize that sounds strange but the way she writes about the cat that she really isn’t fond of is a lot more interesting than the way she writes about her own life.  In this particular case “The cat turned his back and stalked out of the room, tail in the air, as if leaving had been his intention in the first place” (84).  Let me repeat: she upstaged herself in the way with which she wrote about her cat.  This was a face palm moment for me.  I had been so proud of the author, I earmarked the page in the book where her voice popped off of the page and then I read 50 words onto the next page and bam! the cat became my favorite character in this section.  Again.  Yes, this is not the first time her cat has captured my attention, and I don’t think it will be the last.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the way she describes her cat.  It paints a very clear mental image and really tells me what that cat is thinking right then and there.  But what is the author thinking right then and there?  Hell, what is the author thinking ever?  Okay yes she does provide her thoughts from time to time, but she just copies them down onto the page in a very syncopated manner that reminds me of the notes I take during Psychology lectures.

Reading this novel has made me realize how important it is to create a strong, three-dimensional voice when you want your readers to actually care about what you’re saying.  No, it doesn’t have to be sassy and sarcastic all of the time.  But an author’s voice should always reflect the personality and/or they’re trying to convey.  Simply giving a glimpse at who she is every couple pages is not enough.  It has to be a constant exercise in letting the reader get to know you.  And maybe your cat, but only to add a little something occasionally.

Similes

The two writers/speakers that contribute to A Tale for the Time Being have two very different voices, as should be expected.  They also have two very different approaches to keeping the reader engaged, as I have noticed.  As I drag myself through Ruth Ozeki’s sections, I have started trying to pick out reasons why her writing as an established author isn’t as interesting as some teenage girl’s diary.  One specific difference I have noticed thus far is the use of figurative language.  More specifically, their use of similes.

You would think a successful author like Ruth Ozeki would have interesting and engaging sentences that would provide the reader with imagery that would spice up her not-so-interesting life.  The most interesting sentence I have found in these first 80 or so pages was “her sentences were peppered with slang” (29).  I absolutely love when authors used “peppered” in their writing, so I am sure I am slightly biased about this sentence.  However, the author never really seems to say anything interesting unless it is about Nao, the other writer in this novel.  As far as similes go, I had to comb her chapters just to find the few she used to make her own writing more interesting included “it looked like two moons talking” (40) and “her fingers, which lay in her lap like dead things” (65).  Don’t get me wrong, I will take whatever I can get to make Ozeki’s chapters more interesting, and these similes do stand out from the rest of her flatter sentences depicting her boring life on Boring Island married to Mr. Boring with their two boring cats.  However, these similes aren’t the most fantastic things I’ve ever read.  What would two moons talking look like?  What kind of dead things would her fingers look like?  These similes are ambiguous enough to the point where they add very little to her writing.

Nao, on the other hand, peppers her writing (I really do love that verb) with various similes and metaphors.  Opening the book to a random page in one of her chapters Nao wrote provided me with more examples of figurative language than Ozeki has used since the book started.  Not only does Nao have a large variety of similes, but I actually enjoyed the imagery that they provided me with.  “Time isn’t something that you can spread out like butter or jam” (25).  Nao had no idea that her writing would become part of a novel or that time would become a huge symbol in this novel, and yet she was still better able to give an actual visual of time.  One of my favorite lines that Nao wrote was a simile, “I feel like a little wave person, floating around the stormy sea of my life” (42).  She connects the Japanese character that had been given to her after she hadn’t passed her entrance exams to how she felt in the world in general.  Its not a particularly brilliant simile, but she is just a teenage girl after all and I thought in the context she used the simile in it was beautiful.

Similes should be used to make abstract ideas something that the reader can be visualized.  This is an idea that most writers seem to understand and take advantage of, however, in the case of this novel it isn’t used nearly enough by the speaker that should have a much more advanced literary grasp.  I think I have definitely honed in on a reason why certain chapters drag on more than others.

An Attempt at Structure...

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki has two very different speakers that alternate every chapter.  The first is a young girl named Nao, who immediately tells whoever happens to find her journal that she plans on killing herself as soon as she has finished writing.  Then, there is the author telling her own story and her reactions to Nao’s journal in a third person limited voice.  I will be the first to admit that the author’s chapters are a cannonball chained to Nao’s chapters’ feet.  So while my eyes glaze over her rambling on about her life, I started to notice how the chapters were structured.  The narrator had mentioned how Nao’s entries were undated, so there was no real way of knowing exactly how much time was passing in between. However, she noticed certain clues: “the changing hues of ink, as well as shifts in the density or angle of handwriting, which seemed to indicate breaks in time or mood.  If she studied these, she might be able to break up the diary into hypothetical intervals...and pace herself accordingly” (38).  So as I forced my eyes over the story behind how she ended up living on some island in Canada I realized that the breaks she had made in Nao’s chapters likely corresponded with the breaks Ozeki noticed in the actual diary itself.  Within each chapter are numbered section, and Nao’s sections are clearly separate entries, although each section usually references the one before or elaborates on something she touched on.  Nao finishes one section saying “You’re my kind of time being and together we’ll make magic!” and then begins the next “Ugh.  That was dumb” (4). Most of her sections directly respond to each other, and then each chapter she begins a new topic or story or just set of random thoughts that she needed to get down.  I have found that its actually very similar to my own notebook I keep for class, where the piece I am actually working on gets interrupted from time to time by thoughts that need to make it onto the page.

Then, after a chapter of interesting thoughts and stories told from an active perspective, comes a chapter from the author.  What I have noticed is that she tries to mimic the same structure that she gave to Nao’s entries.  However, she never uses the same numbers of sections and her writing never seems to clearly lineup with Nao’s.  She does continue her train of thought, similarly to how Nao does, but usually just elaborates on the last thought of the previous section.  Occasionally she discusses Nao, but so far its just her own life.  My personal preference would be if the sections actually related to Nao’s or lined up with them so it could be clear how the two chapters relate to each other, as opposed to just being back to back.  However, this is not the case and I am just going to have to suffer through passive chapters before I can learn more about Nao’s fate.

Hooked

I have just started reading Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale for the Time Being” and all I can say is thank god for this book having two narrators.  While I understand that you can’t just start a book somewhere exciting and that you have to build, if the author had put her point of view instead of Nao’s first entry as the first chapter in the book I don’t think I could have continued reading.  Sure, I could see why someone would have put it the other way.  If we were to get a glimpse into the narrator/author’s point of view first and then Nao’s first entry after the narrator found the book then it would be in chronological order and would also make sense.  But I repeat, thank god that was not the case.  This is one of those moments where you realize how important hooks are to any piece of writing.  Nao’s entry immediately engaged me and made me want to keep reading even once the author began to tell her story about walking on the beach.  If the first diary entry was that interesting, surely it could only get better as she told the story of her grandmother.  Who also sounds incredibly interesting.  I can’t wait to learn more about her.  In fact, I am so interested in Nao and her grandmother that I am willing to put up with entire chapters where the most interesting sentence is: “Ruth was a novelist, and novelists, Oliver asserted, should have cats and books” (11).  I suppose a congratulations are in order, for having cats and reading books and all.  Please, elaborate even further on your life as I wait (im)patiently to find out what great stories this buddhist nun grandmother has and of course what happens to the teenage girl who is going to kill herself as soon as she finishes writing the stories down (this is not a spoiler, she tells us in the first diary entry that she is planning to commit suicide and it is also on the back of the book).  Anyways, back to the importance of engaging hooks.  As I trudged through the narrator’s first paragraph, I couldn’t help contrasting different aspects of both sections and wondering why Nao was so much more interesting than the actual author of the book.  After all, she is a published author and this novel was a finalist for the 2013 Man Booker Prize.  One key characteristic that stood out to me was the opening line that each chose to use.

Nao

“Hi!  My name is Nao, and I am a time being.  Do you know what a time being is?  Well if you give me a moment, I will tell you,” (3).

My Reaction

No, I have no idea what a time being is.  I am not going to lie, I originally thought that “time being” in the title was being used like “we will meet in his office for the time being”, not a being of time.  So no, I don’t know what a time being is, please tell me.  Please explain what the title of this book I am about to invest hours of my time in means.

Ruth (Author)

“A tiny sparkle caught Ruth’s eye, a small glint of refracted sunlight angling out from beneath a massive tangle of bulging kelp…” (8).

My Reaction

I couldn’t even convince myself to finish copying down the entire first sentence.  Yes I would like to know what is so important about the thing that caught her eye in a bunch of sea gunk but, you know, could you get to the point a little faster?  Yes your descriptions are beautiful, and for being an author successful enough for me to have found this novel I would you would be able to describe things nicely.  But I get the point.  Please tell me what is so important about the seaweed and explain what this has to do with the girl who is going to kill herself.

What I have concluded is that hooks are important.  The initial thoughts and reactions of the reader are likely going to decide whether or not they give up on your book after the first couple chapters, pages, or even sentences.  So, well played Ruth Ozeki, I am hooked.

Breaking Bubble

John Green’s novels have slowly been breaking down the bubble of happily ever after I have hidden inside of.  The third book of my John Green campaign, Looking for Alaska lasted for about one week.  The first part of the book was spread out evenly over the course of several days.  The second section was started on Monday during our in-class reading.  Once I reached the turning point of the novel there was no turning back.  I went home and read for two straight hours and finished the book.  Oops.

With each John Green novel I burn through, I  have come to accept the fact that once John Green does what he has set out to do since the beginning, there is no fighting it, turning back or stopping.  Letting go of control has always been something I struggle with when I read.  For example, any time a character is killed off in any book or film, I go into denial.  There is no way that character is gone.  Then I begin to mourn the character, cherishing their best scenes and trying to burn them into my memory.  I also hate the author or creator in the back of my mind just the tiniest bit for the hole in my heart the character used to fill.  But after finishing this book, I seem to have learned to accept anything John Green throws my way.  I just have to sit down, shut up and take it.  I can’t put down a book because it doesn’t agree with me, I must finish it to see if John Green is able to tie up the ends into a nice little bow.  Or some sort of knot that makes me understand where he’s coming from.  Whether or not this novel of his did that for me is debatable, but I definitely thought it was better than the end of Paper Towns.  However, I would need to reread The Fault in Our Stars to compare those two endings.

One minor layer of my protective bubble that John Green has broken down is looking past the actions of characters that I don’t agree with.  Certain aspects of characters that don’t sit well with me or my morals can distract me from the entire point of a passage or section or the meaning hidden behind it.  For example, on the 18th page the narrator says “I became a smoker because 1. I was on an Adirondack swing by myself, and 2. I had cigarettes, and 3. I figured that if everyone else could smoke a cigarette without coughing, I could damn well, too.  In short I didn’t have a good reason.  So yeah, let’s just say that 4. it was the bugs.”  First off, I’ve been raised to believe that smoking cigarettes is never, ever, acceptable.  My father has threatened disowning me if I ever pick up the habit (and being a lawyer he is very familiar with the process) and even if that weren’t a concern, I would never want to be on the receiving end of his judgements of those that do smoke.  No offense to those that do, but in my world that is  a big no no.  So when the main character began this habit 18 pages into the book, I sucked it up and looked past it.  Something I have never been able to do before.  And lucky me, because I was able to see how much I like that way of presenting a list, and have adopted it in my own writing.  Once I made this connection, I realized a series of John Green habits that I liked, and have begun to pick those up as well.

So, all in all, John Green has helped me get over myself to actually pay attention to what the writer is saying.  Whether I want to or not, I might as well be respectful and pay attention to what they’re saying.  I’m sure scrutinizing smoking so much makes me sound like a horrible person, but my upbringing gave me little choice. Anyways, thank you John Green for helping to pull my nose out of the air and back into the book I’m reading.

The Old Man

I have now moved on to my third John Green novel, having finished Paper Towns rather quickly. In order to avoid Saw the Movie Before I Read the Book Syndrome, I have selected Looking for Alaska to continue my John Green streak.  Since we have been talking about character sketches in class lately, I chose to focus on a passage introducing the narrator's favorite teacher at his boarding school: Dr. Hyde.

"Just then, the Old Man shuffled in.

He breathed slowly and with great labor through his wide-open mouth.  He took tiny steps toward the lectern, his heels not moving much past his toes.  The Colonel nudged me and pointed casually to his notebook, which read, The Old Man only has one lung, and I did not doubt it.  His audible, almost desperate breaths reminded me of my grandfather when he was dying of lung cancer.  Barrel-chested and ancient, the Old Man, it seemed to me, might die before he ever reached the podium." (31).

Immediately after reading this, I wondered to myself why in the world John Green would put me through this painful image of a teacher struggling to breathe and walk at the same time, let alone teach a class full of the mischievous students the previous 30 pages had introduced.  The class was World Religions, and the narrator didn't show any sign of being religious whatsoever.  And all of the previous teachers had only been glossed or skipped altogether up until this point.  In fact, the narrator spent more time talking about his disappointment that the girls all chose to wear pajamas to class than most of his teachers.  It wasn’t until I continued reading that I figured out why the Old Man was so important to the narrator…

“I’m in class, so teach me.  And teach me he did: In those fifty minutes, the Old Man made me take religion seriously.  I’d never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, the same way that historical events are important whether or not we personally lived through them.” (33).

This fascinated me.  The way Green chose to introduce Pudge’s teacher not only developed the teacher, but Pudge himself.  Through the incredibly detailed observations of the narrator, we have a clearly painted picture of a character that has already begun to affect our narrator within the first 50 minutes of their relationship.  This old and frail man gained the respect of the narrator within seconds in order to convince him that religion is in fact important.

This idea in particular resonated with me, because I myself have never identified myself with a certain religion.  In fact, I really haven’t given much attention to any one religion at all.  While I have been exposed to many religions throughout my public school education, their importance has never really made any real connections with me.  Nothing in any curriculum so far has been able to convince me of why religions are necessary or important.  So for someone in a similar state of mind as me, like Pudge, to have such a breakthrough about the importance of religion in a 50 minute period, baffles me.  Am I missing something?  Is there something that my exposure to these religions has been lacking if I don’t truly see the importance of having or believing in a religion?  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t believe in religion.  I respect everyone’s decisions and all that, but I don’t quite understand the importance of religion to society.  I also don’t understand why having the narrator becoming fascinated by religion early on was so important to the author.  What importance will this teacher or this class have on the narrator?  Other than the obvious Open-Mindedness that the narrator is already experiencing from Day One.

On an entirely separate note, I realized that in that last sentence that I’m starting to adopt John Green’s stylized capitalizations