Always, always, if you were my student, I’d tell you to allow the epiphany to occur in the reader’s mind before it’s stated on the page.
Once on tour to England I shipped two thousand bacon-scented air fresheners in my luggage. These were cardboard squares printed to look like strips of bacon, and saturated in a bacon-smelling oil. They dangled from a string, designed for hanging from your car’s rearview mirror. The Customs agent opened my suitcase and saw these and didn’t blink an eye. I hadn’t a change of clothes because there was no room left. As the two thousand people arrived for a reading in London, I handed each an air freshener. They opened them, handled them. Soon the entire hall smelled of frying bacon.
That night I read the story “Hotpotting,” describing how young hikers will soak in natural geothermal pools. The story plods along until the narrator steps outside one night and smells meat cooking. Historically, the danger is that drunken people will slip into spring-fed pools, realizing too late that the water is boiling hot. The actual case histories are heart wrenching, and I detail several, gradually establishing precedent. Once the narrator smells bacon, it’s too late. By then the auditorium stank of cooking bacon. Before they knew what the smell in the story heralded, people had jokingly rubbed the cardboard over their hands and faces.
The truth didn’t have to be dictated. Any subsequent description would only confirm the dread they already felt.
It was a wonderful night, that night in London.
So never dictate meaning to your reader. If need be, misdirect him. But always allow him to realize the truth before you state it outright. Trust your readers’ intelligence and intuition, and they will return the favor. Authority: Subverting My Expectation
One workshop, after my work had been rejected by some magazine or ten magazines or yet another agent had written to say he only represented “likable” fiction, Tom Spanbauer walked over to his bookshelf and studied the titles. He took down one book, then tucked it back. Pulled another, put it back, as if looking for the exact perfect book. At last he pulled a book off the shelf and gave it to me. “Read it,” he said. “Next week we can talk about it. It will help your work enormously.”
Don’t look for me to name the book, a novel. A famous publisher, famous for only the highest-quality literature, had brought it out. The most prestigious imprint of a very respected house. The back of the dust jacket was crowded with the statements of famous writers praising the author and the work.
The following week I read and reread it. An easy job because it hardly topped a hundred pages, but a tough read because the characters were hard-pressed and put-upon cornpone hound-dog types just scraping by in the burnt-over backwoods hills of wherever. They lived on a farm, eating the same grits for breakfast every morning. They did nothing exceptional, and nothing happened to them. Each time I finished it I felt angry about wasting more time for so little return. I hated the author for wasting my time. But mostly I hated myself for being too backward to appreciate this work of art documenting the lives of folks interchangeable with the folks I’d been raised next door to.
The next Thursday I took the book back to Tom.
He asked, “Did you love it?” He didn’t take the book from my hand, not right away.
“The writing was beautiful,” I said. I hedged. What I meant was that the spelling seemed to be spot-on. Somebody had proofed the dickens out of this book.
He pressed, “But what did you learn from it?” Still not accepting the book.
“I don’t think I understood it.” I’d hated it. That, and I felt stupid for being too stupid to appreciate a book published by the smartest people in New York City. Clearly I’d failed. I felt like an oafish, uneducated yokel for not loving a book about oafish hillbilly yokels. It never dawned on me that maybe people in New York loved the book for the same reason that skinny white people love the film Precious. Because it makes them feel superior.
Other students were arriving and taking seats around Tom’s kitchen table. But he wasn’t done. “What part didn’t you understand?”
To fit in with the smart people, I lied. “You know,” I said, “I really loved the language.” If all else fails among the literati, always claim the language is beautiful.
Tom reached out and took the book. Workshop commenced. Who read that night, who knows? After the last comments about the last piece. After Tom read a few pages of what he was currently working on. Some students left. The rest of us opened bottles of wine.
It was Thursday night, my entire weekend rolled into an hour. We basked in the presence of this published author, living proof that a person could do this impossible thing. We drank, and Tom read. We argued about the Altman movie Short Cuts and whether it was true to Carver. Maybe we argued over Magnolia or The Player, both big movies at the time. At that I broke. “I hated it,” I said.
Somebody, Monica Drake, maybe, asked, “You hated Short Cuts?”
No, I hated the book Tom had lent me. “So I’m stupid.” It felt good to fall apart. The first step to being schooled toward some greater knowledge.
If you were my student I’d give you that same book and force you to read it and feel like an idiot for not loving it. Then I’d hound you about whether or not you’d loved it.
Because the next thing was, Tom smiled. “I didn’t give you the book to enjoy.”
He hadn’t shelved it. The thing still lay on the table near his elbow. He looked at the cover and said, “This book is awful…” He grinned like he’d played a joke that never got old, no matter how many students he’d played it on.
