Missing the Mold of Manners

We've been watching the old TV show Poirot. A brilliant, stout, impeccably polite detective (the Belgian Hercule Poirot) finds himself around complicated murders and proceeds to solve them through observation and conversation. He is the epitome of class, good manners, and gentle dry humor, and if he weren't an old guy, I'd have a crush on him. He's like a favorite uncle that I want everyone to meet.

The stories (based on Agatha Christie novels, which are even more excellent than the show) take place in the early twentieth century and mostly in Europe. As such, everyone is Just So. The men, even on their days off, wear three piece suits and carry themselves with perfect posture. They pay their debts, watch their language, and rise to their feet when ladies enter the room. The women exude poise, pride, and propriety to the point that it's palpable. Their dresses are flimsy and flowy and they wouldn't dream of leaving the house looking a wreck or failing to offer a guest tea.

I've also been using The Dick Van Dyke Show as my mindless, while-I-chop-veggies-for-salad show. (Gabe doesn't care for it, but I grew up watching reruns so it's basically comfort TV.) Though that takes place in the '50s, I think, it's got that same air of class. If people are invited to dinner, they put on a suit or a dress to attend. Men call for ladies at their houses for dates. Words are well-chosen and well-enunciated. Ladies sometimes wear gloves. Houses are neat. Everyone understands what's expected of them to do or say, or not do or not say. It's so...pretty. Life was pretty.

Now, I know I'm supposed to rage at the fact that in Poirot women are treated like dainty, delicate creatures who can't be exposed to nasty words, and in Dick Van Dyke, women are expected to do the housework and look nice for their husbands...but I don't. I just don't.

I wish I lived in one of those times. I just absolutely love the cultures. The more I watch stuff like this, the more I think we've gone too far in the opposite direction. In our quest for "realness," we've completely disregarded tact and presentation. In our quest for equality, we've demonized the idea of women being managers of the home. In our quest for expediency, we've neglected to foster healthy, precise vocabularies.

This paragraph here was originally me admitting that "of course, there are some things I'm glad I can do today that I wouldn't have been able to do in Poirot's day," but I couldn't even come up with anything besides "wear shorts," and I think dresses and skirts are more comfortable anyway. I guess I'd miss some modern medicines and plumbing. Yeah, that's definitely true. But to give up such amenities in return for Such Classiness sounds like a fair trade.

(Note: These thoughts are more about manners than societal/gender roles. That's a topic for another post.)

I wish people were still expected to behave well. Sure, it's easier not having to put your napkin in your lap or bring a hostess gift or stand when an older person walks in or say "Excuse me" when you leave a situation, but...just because it's easier doesn't mean it's better. I get that honesty, transparency, and genuineness are desirable qualities, but can't we still maintain some discretion? Obviously I want to be able to share my thoughts with my sister or husband or best friend even if said thoughts aren't polite or rosy, but maybe that's where we should draw the line, rather than spewing outright, inarticulate shade to anyone with ears.

Of course, even "back in the day" shade was thrown and insults were spoken (have you ever read a Jane Austen novel?), but it was done more subtly, and almost more fairly too, because people were more aware of expectations. If you did X, Y, or Z, you knew it was considered impolite; you opened the door to just criticism.

Some might say that's worse, that all the manners just made it easier to be phony and passive aggressive and prevented people from becoming fully themselves. But...hm. Maybe I'm just a sucker for appearances? Or maybe I'm a little bit right. I think when done correctly, the old manners don't just help you appear to be a prettier, better, politer person, they might actually help mold you into a one.

~Stephanie

You Might Be an English Major If...

~ You like to laugh at whoever made notes in your literature book before you. They had no clue what they were talking about.

~ You get a special thrill when you've already underlined a passage your professor highlights in class.

~ It takes you three times longer than necessary to study for a literature exam, because you keep getting caught up in how beautiful the words are.

~ Your idea of "relaxing" is paraphrasing Paradise Lost in modern English.

~ You're reading a book for pleasure, but keep feeling like you ought to be taking notes.

~ People ask you grammar questions instead of looking up the answers, because you're faster.

~ Some of the truest joy you've ever felt comes from finding a book source that is truly PERFECT for your research paper. (This happened to me about an hour ago and I'm not gonna lie, I'm still coming down from it.)

~ If listening to your favorite song looks like this.

~ You experience gut-wrenching horror, anger, and sorrow when book-burning is mentioned.

~ A fun evening of relaxing can totally include watching a Macbeth adaptation or reading scholarly articles on femininity in "The Birthmark."

~ You are beyond tired of the question, "So do you wanna teach then?" English majors do not have to be teachers any more than math majors have to be calculators.

~ It feels completely normal to spend 80 minutes talking about phallic and yonic symbols. In fact, you don't really even notice.

~ The inappropriate use of "literally" makes you want to walk away from a conversation--LITERALLY.

~ You are the go-to person whenever someone needs his or her paper edited. And you don't mind.

~ You hear the phrase "country matters" and start giggling mischievously, because Hamlet.

~ You check out a book at the library called "Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon:  Beowulf as a Metaphor" JUST BECAUSE IT SOUNDS INTERESTING.

~ You have turned in over 100 pages of writing this semester.

~ You cringe whenever directly quoting forces you to use controversial punctuation. {I like my Oxford commas, thank you very much.}

~ You actually have an opinion on the Oxford comma.

~ You go out with your friends and end up talking about Hamlet's psychological state, why you're in love with Emily Dickinson, and how Wallace Stevens was a total nihilist.

~ You care enough to compile a list of things called "You Might Be an English Major If..."

Bonus Round:
You might be a SENIOR English major if...

~ You accept the challenge of writing a paper on a text you have not quite finished reading.

~ You email your professor a question about your paper and justify crossing off "work on paper" from your To Do list.

~ You really hope your professor remembers the amazing paper you wrote freshman year and gives you a massive benefit-of-the-doubt about this current one.

~ You write a blog post about your paper and justify crossing off "work on paper" from your To Do list.

~ You do not crumble at the thought of reading 250 pages in a weekend, and another 400 between Monday and Thursday.

~ You start crying when your professor changes a paper requirement from "12-15 pages" to "10-12 pages."

~ You start crying when your professor postpones a paper deadline by a week.

~ You just generally start crying a lot.

You might be a senior English major at Campbell University if...

~ Your professors are some of the most important and amazing people you've ever had in your life, and you are going to miss them every bit as much as you're going to miss your friends. And free pizza.

I'm not even going to make a joke about Just Kidding I'm Gonna Miss Free Pizza More.

I can't believe this part of the journey is almost over.

~ Stephanie

Why I Freaked Out (Today)

Well. I was sitting in class, listening to the professor wrap up our discussion on Lee Smith. I was thinking about how different Fair and Tender Ladies' plot is, and how different the plot of our next book--A Death in the Family--is from the plots of all my stories. Fair and Tender spans the character's whole life, flowing and falling over the moments she chooses to capture in letters to people she loves. There isn't exactly a climax. There aren't any real plot twists or sudden stretches of intense action. But it's wonderful.

A Death in the Family takes place mostly within a couple of days. The characters sit around and wait and talk and think. You get into their minds in stunningly real ways. The way the children think rings so sweet and true and naturally childlike that it's impossible to imagine a grown man writing the story. But nothing much really happens. As in Fair and Tender, the story's beauty and heart lie in the gentle, raw, realness of it all. The people are real not just because they're "complex," but because we Meet Them.

Lots of books have great characters, characters that seem original and believable, and--until now--that's all I'd ever thought a "well-written character" needed to be. But it occurs to me now that there is a difference between Believing a character and Meeting Them, leaving the book and feeling like you've just had a conversation with someone very old who lives in the mountains, or a little child who wants you to help him understand the world.

Until JUST now, I assumed that one feels like she has "met" a character only if the story is written in first person; otherwise the character is just believable and well-written. But A Death in the Family Introduces you to the characters without ever slipping into first-person narration.

But this doesn't explain why I "freaked out" in class. I freaked out because...I don't know how to write characters like that. I might be flattering myself, but I think I can write believable characters, characters that are at least somewhat original. But writing characters that the reader truly Meets is an entirely new animal, an animal I didn't even know existed much less know how to catch.

I think it has something to do with the type of story, which really fueled my panic. I think it has to do with the stories relying not so much on plot, but on characters. Ivy just recounts her life, in a simple yet poetic way, and the reader followers her as she grows up. Fair and Tender Ladies is crudely lovely, a classic. A Death in the Family conveys Real People and Real Feelings more by observing a family for forty-eight hours than by exploding into a dynamic story arc. The story is gripping and fantastically good.

And then you have my stories.

Girl, Boy, Magic Mirror, Other World. Secret Family, Language Barriers, Epic Journey. Big Decision, Twist Ending.

Evil Lord, Six MCs, Dramatic Escape. Rescue for World, Love Triangle, Complex Culture.

Ancient Civilization, Laws with Unintended Consequences, Resistant Love. Big Realization, Thought-Provoking Moral.

I think my stories could be good. I think I could maybe write them well and maybe get them published and maybe people would read them and like them. But I am afraid they won't ever be Great in the way the books I read for school are Great.

In my wildest, wildest, silliest dreams, I could be in the category of J. K. Rowling--and I would be absolutely floored and honored and ecstatic and lucky if I were.

But...there's such a difference between the outstandingly successful Harry Potter series and the writings of Lee Smith, James Agee...Shakespeare, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and all the things I read for my classes.

What do you have to do to be Great? What is it that these authors have?

And how can I get it?

Can I ever get it? Am I "that kind" of writer? Do I want to be? Or do I want to be J. K. Rowling? (What writer WOULDN'T want to be J. K. Rowling...?)

I don't know the answer to any of these questions. And for a girl who has always assumed she would one day be a writer, that causes a freak out.

~Stephanie

I've Been Reading

Since school ended, I've been able to start reading for fun again.

"Read," is the advice always given to budding writers. Actual practice helps your writing improve too, but reading... It seems to train your mind to Hear and See the world with capital Hs and Ss.

When your car rushes through a rain puddle, the sound registers as "a lush hiss" instead of not registering at all. A dance recital audience reaction becomes "an appreciative rumble of laughter" instead of just "chuckling." You have conversations and naturally detect things like others' "clunky giddiness"or "apologetic authority."

To me, words give the world more substance. When I read a lot, I start to sense the depth in the molecules around me. It's not like the world is brighter; it's like I start to see new colors. Everything isn't more beautiful, but everything is more intentional, specific. I'm not sitting on my couch; I'm sitting on My Couch, where I had a kiss that tasted like ramen, where I first fell asleep on Gabe, where I once cried a tear stain into the cushion.

When I immerse myself in words, everything feels more real. It's like tapping a secret source of energy.

I guess this makes sense, seeing as the entire world is Words. "In the beginning...the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep... And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."

This entire world is literally words. There was nothing, and then God spoke, and from His words came the existence that I now try to describe with my own words, like "lush hiss" and "appreciative rumble." Is that redundant? To use words in an attempt to express/describe/create a reality that is already so perfectly linguistically expressed that it is actually tangible?

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning."

Jesus is--maybe literally, maybe figuratively, maybe spiritually (which is probably some inexpressible middle ground there)--Words. God is Words. He made our world of words with His words. We are in this world, made in the image of God. We are spoken. We are words. The light is words; the water is words; the land is words; the day and night are words.

So yes, it makes sense that everything gets more beautiful and more real when I connect with words. Don't you understand the ocean better when you jump in?

Words are fun and powerful and persuasive and enduring and endearing and funny and piercing and beautiful and satisfying and frightening and dangerous. I like words, on principle, because I am a writer and a reader and I like to reason and persuade. But even deeper than that, I like words because I think they are cosmically important. When it all comes down to it, the world is just atoms and energy and space.

But when atoms and energy and space come down to it, they are all words.

~Stephanie

I Don't Like Love Stories

I think I don't like love stories because they're all lies.

I guess to some extent, all stories are "lies" in that they're fiction. But see, no one expects {REALLY expects} to be able to read a character into our world or travel to Venus. At least, by the time you're old enough to look for truth in books, you know that those things won't happen. But by the time you're old enough to look for truth in books, you're also old enough to search for Love, and that is something we really DO expect.

In real life, we look for love and expect to find it, so it seems cruel and wrong to write stories that set people up for failure.

Books--love stories in any form--are pretty clear from the beginning. The main characters are laid out for you and you can tell instantly which guy{s} are on the list of potential Trueloves. By about half or three-fourths of the way through the story, you're sure whom the main character will end up with. {In movies, it's usually within the first fourth.}

Real life is absolutely nothing like that. In real life, you're sort of always and never in medias res. Yes, you're in the midst of your life right now, but at any moment, something completely new could be introduced. Every second of life could be the beginning of a new story. There's never a time where you can nod and say, "Okay, no more central characters are going to be introduced" or "Clearly, this is the main plot strain."

In a way, real life can never be authentically translated to a story, because stories deal with neatly defined sections of a person's life and include--for the most part--only details relevant to the story. {Unless it's by Herman Melville.} In a story, you know what to pay attention to, because if it's there at all, it's likely important. In real life, you have all of the details all of the time and must prioritize them on your own.

However, some kinds of stories can achieve more authenticity than love stories, for example ones that deal with solving a mystery, investigating a crime, or battling an enemy. Those stories can be more authentically contained by literature because they have beginnings and endings in real life too. Mysteries have answers; crimes have perpetrators; evil kings have deaths. In both stories and in real life, the components of the answer exist before you embark on the journey. In both stories and real life, you know for sure when you can check the box on the story's completion.

Plus, mystery/crime/morality stories contain universal, applicable life lessons. Love stories are generally mined incorrectly for wisdom. Instead of looking at a story and saying, "Clearly lying to people results in unimaginable heartbreak," people look and say, "Clearly a liar can still be your true love if you just don't give up on him." People miss the trees for the forest, instead of the other way around.

But even if crime-solving and enemy-fighting stories couldn't be applied to real life, the topics aren't sacred. They're universal and impersonal enough that it wouldn't be terribly offensive to distort them a bit.

But to distort something like LOVE...that's just sick. "Love stories" usually pump people full of unrealistic expectations of the scope and clarity and beauty of love. Real life and real love cannot be detected any better by familiarizing yourself with romantic fiction. Real love is too complicated to reduce to a finite story.

Love stories do a gross disservice to Love and lead people to false knowledge. I'd rather read something else. To me, "Inkheart" is somehow more real than "The Notebook."

~Stephanie