Welcome back to DC's Writers Workshop. This is the second in a new series of days on the blog where writers who are part of the blog's community will present work-in-progress in search of the opinions, responses, advice, and critiques of both readers who don't normally post comments here and local inhabitants of this place. I ask everyone to please read these works with the same attention you give the normal brand of posts here and respond in some way in one of the two comments section below. Obviously, the closer your attention and the more you're able and willing to say to the writer the better. But any kind of related comment is welcome, even a simple sentence or two indicating you read the piece of writing and felt something or other about it would be helpful. The only guideline I'm going to give out regarding comments is that any response, whether lengthy or brief, praise filled or critical or anywhere inbetween, should be presented in a spirit of helping the writer in question. I'll be responding to the work too, and, at least initially, my plan is to post my thoughts on the work in the Comments section towards the end of the weekend. So I guess all of that is probably clear. Giving support to the artists of different kinds who read and post on the blog has always been a very important aspect of this project, but this workshop represents one of the first times that aspect has been made formal. I'm hoping this will work out interestingly, and that the workshop will become an occasional, regular part of DC's. Today's writer is Mike Kitchell who currently posts on the blog under the screen named 'Magick Mike' and who has been a member of the blog's community for years, formerly using the simpler screen name 'mike'. I thank him greatly for entrusting his work-in-progress to us, and I thank you all in advance for your kind participation. -- DC
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"I workshopped this story in my real-life Fiction Writing Workshop, but my professor immediately dismissed it as being "too hard to read" and "not worth it," which I thought was totally unfair. I argued with him about marginalized writing representing marginalized persons/fantasies, but he still never said anything relevant to the story itself. So to amend this, I offer it here to maybe get some real feedback instead of dismissive comments. I had just finished reading Tony Duvert's Strange Landscape and the book's prose style is a fairly obvious influence, as well as the direct, yet elliptical, style of an Audrey Thomas short story. Also, to stay true to my Oulipian fascinations, I set down a set of three rules to follow:
1) No use of the first person "I"
2) No use of punctuation except for apostrophes-- punctuation must be expressed with white space
3) The story must be cyclic, must be able to "loop"
Thanks for looking!'
-- MK
02 Intersection
Get your own at Scribd or explore others:
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24 comments:
Overall I think this piece is poetic, strange, enticing and beautiful. It sucked me right in and kept me wanting more, which is good. I think lines that a within larger paragraphs such as "no think hard my body" are what your professor was dismissing... that line seems lazy, like you should look at it and restructure it or something, i also think as for following the rules you succeed, but only in so much that you did away with the I and filled it with "my body" or "body" which is a step and I've thought about the same rule in my own work so I understand how difficult that can be but I'd just say look at that some more and see what other creative possibilities you might be able to find.
I'd also like more indepth discussion of the gods the speaker alludes to and why the speaker is willing to give himself over to the gods, what is the draw to the gods, more gods, etc.
At the end when you have the segment about time, at first you are specific about the time lapse, then lost in time, then specific... I'd suggest looking at that and playing up one experience to make it more "absurd" or "abstract" or "interesting" type thing... does that make sense?
enjoyed.. best of luck in edit mode...
Hi MK,
Thank you for sharing "Intersection 02" with us. Having shared work here myself, not to mention having endured two years in an MFA workshop, I dig your courage.
(By the way, academic writing programs are generally unforgiving when it comes to genre, experimentation, or anything outside the realm of traditional literary fiction, whatever the fuck that means, and I hope you keep writing despite that, or better yet, to spite it.)
About "Intersection 02:"
I was lost my first time through and spent my initial read of "Intersection 02" familiarizing myself with your style. I've not read anything like your story before, save abstract poetry, and abstract poetry is difficult for me because I prefer narrative to imagery, or story to imagery. Actually, a balance of both. :-)
Yes, the story is hard to read. But "hard" doesn't equal "poorly written," and so I'm sorry your professor didn't put in the time it takes to experience a piece of writing like this. Chances are, he's overworked and underpaid, but that isn't an excuse when it comes to his obligation to students, and I'm pissed he let you down.
My second read through was easier. I was more navigated. Still, I felt disconnected from the action the same way the narrator is disconnected from his body. Do you intend for the narration to mimic denial, disconnection? If so, this piece is successful. Do you want readers to experience that same level of disconnection? If so, would the piece become more successful by writing in a less disjointed style in a few sections while allowing other sections to retain the disconnected prose style? I don't know. This is a question to the group.
My favorite part of the story, MK, is page 3, paragraphs two and three (three meaning the strip of internal dialogue. I also loved the line, "is it like eight hours or something" because all of a sudden your narrator sounded like a real person. I was connected.
Another thing that occurred to me while reading through the second time was how the narrator was thinking the way society trains us to look for the "She/he asked for it," out when regarding victims of hate crimes, molestation, and rape. A faggot roaming a street at night presenting himself in a sexual manner, flaunting his homosexual desires, his desperate need for attention/validation and affection is asking to be ridiculed, attacked, beaten, raped, violated, and demoralized, right?
And, your narrator literally does "Ask for it," which is an amazing twist on how society often regards victims. Really powerful, stuff, MK: it's awful, a real and painful conflict within your character as he tries to distinguish between his humanity from how he's been dehumanized by rape.
Third read: temple/tomb imagery. Play between a spiritual/physical existence, aged vs. agelessness. Weariness vs. hope. Gods as rebirth, salvation, forgiveness, acceptance. But also, gods as tormentors, violators, punishers. I especially took hold of the personal gods as pornography on TV. For me, this is when I feel a narrator disconnected from real human interaction: he's literally untouched, unloved. A narrator who feels as if he falls short of the images in porn. Not to mention a person pushed outside the heterosexual "norm."
There's a lot of fear and shame in this piece of writing. "that's what happens when you go outside," meaning "that's what happens when you come out of the closet, faggot." Right?
At this point, your story takes on political and social significance, and I'm very excited by that. It's powerful. It's subject matter that makes me uncomfortable; it makes me angry; and it makes me sad. I want to take action. Know what I mean?
I like moments when you use more explicit, concrete language like "nape to asshole" one finger, two, three. Would writing that way more often allow your narrator additional opportunities to "connect" with readers? I mean, he is a Real Human Being, and that's important to this piece of writing.
MK, I feel your narrator dying in the end, and I really want it to matter when I feel his death. (Or, maybe he's dead already as he narrates the past, but I'm not sure) and I'm not sure that matters as much to me as wanting to feel your character dying. And I really want to wish he's not dead.
I'm not sure how to help you with this because it's tricky for me to advise you without risking the implication I want to change your writing style. I don't. I just want more Glimpses. Clues. Him. Do you like the idea of more explicit language, more concrete images? What about a memory outside the central action?
MK, good luck with this, and thank you, again, for sharing the story here. This was an entirely different reading experience for me, and it was exactly what I needed right now as both an intellectual challenge and creative inspiration.
Peace,
A
First I'd say how brave of you (or anyone) to put stuff up here like this.
Well I liked this against the odds. My heart sinks when I'm confronted with what I'll quaintly call 'experimental' fiction, although it has been pointed out on here quite recently that most of the writers I like are just that, to varying degrees.
I'm amazed when writers set themselves rules like you have done (No punctuation etc) and like DC does - eg, only writing a certain text when he was listening to a certain Joy Division album. Or the elaborate grids and blueprints he makes before writing (Paul Curran, you're another one!) I just think, are they mad?! Writing's hard enough without imposing constrictions on yourself.
But then I think, well the novel is itself a bit of a straight-jacket, especially, ironically, the 'conventional' novel. And the sonnet is pretty restrictive but Shakespeare managed to knock out some good stuff in that format.
So that's why I find it impossible to critique 'experimental' fiction. I get sort of angry when I can't work out what's going on, so I just assume I'm stupid and everybody else gets the deep structures and hidden meanings and I don't. Or that I'm just too lazy to pay close enough attention.
(This is OK for me,a casual reader, but a writing professor should surely be more willing to engage with a student's work - 'not worth it' indeed!)
I agreed with a lot of what Alana said, and got more and more with every reading. I do prefer narrative and mostly conventional stuff (although that includes Kerouac,Genet etc).
But in spite of all that I did enjoy flowing through it. I found that if I just relaxed with the spaces and little word islands it made more sense and I'm left with a series of floating images, physical and mental.
It reminded me a bit of DC's Period, the bits where it's just lines of abrupt observation -
Scared
Go away
Think of Something else
I wonder what your thing would look like with all the sections just laid out one after the other like that. Be interesting to try that.Cut more words.Be even more economical.
Not better
Just different
First of all, from a strictly moral perspective (my own), gang rape is cool. It makes me laugh.
Second, cool style. I really liked the absence of punctuation. It was as if I was reading a medieval text. That said, I read the text out loud and was told by a friend to shut up.
Third, your professor is an asshole. He probably told you your stuff sucked to protect his turf. If you know what kind of car he drives, fuck it up.
Fourth, everything in the text was starting to sound like stuff I had not read before until the "or something" moment. Nevertheless, what I liked about the text was that it was a product of at least five writers. That's cool. Most people pretend that what they've written just fell from the clear blue sky. You don't and I like that. All my stuff is plagiarized.
Fifth, I didn't like the 'gods' stuff. It's okay if you don't know what to call the impossible or the unnameable. But, the use of words like 'gods' kind of brought the story back down to earth. And for a while, I was really flying through it.
Sixth, I really enjoyed reading your text. I wasn't feeling well when I started reading it and it made me feel really good after I read it. Thank you.
Keep doing it. But make sure you do it any way you want to do it. Use everybody and everything to write it. It was fun to read it.
Mike. Your prose is beautiful. In fact, on the level of rhythm, it proceeds with such perfect vortical precision that I found myself not only wrenched in to the piece itself but also abstracted from it on another level in a literary excitement at being reader to a style that is so impressively and telegraphically its own. For me, the most critical point to this piece is to be had in the line: “…too sore can’t think where the fuck is my body.” It becomes clear in that moment that this is a chase, as well as an accelerating slide, after the ‘fact’, which is figured in the recitative chant of the body. One of the most striking aspects of the work is the initial idea of the narrator naming the room he is in as ‘empty’, and, moreover, being so precise as to specify it: “this”. That this – this room – is empty but is also the position from which the narrator speaks is critical for what follows. It’s kind of the ‘intersection’ between dumb erasure (evidenced by the hot muddy body) and irrefutable thinkingness - for want of a better word, consciousness does not suffice – that informs the paradoxical disintegrating stasis of the work. I loved Alana’s observation about how this story subtly but unavoidably tackles the idea of how society trains us to fixate on that ‘thing’ in the victim which supposedly is responsible for courting the violence that the victim has encountered. “This is what happens when you go outside.” However, to do the injustice of distilling a ‘straightforward’ narrative out of this, I read out from this that this is the story of someone who hooks up randomly, gets involved in a gangbang and becomes overwhelmed by the scenario, is done violently, in bareback. It’s hard to tell if it is rape. The speaker seems to have been dumped in the room he was fucked in, strewn and left behind. He says: “it was given to them by my own decision my own volition my own violation”. He says: “laughing still maybe me laughing too maybe doesn’t really change anything because it felt good at first exactly what my body wanted but didn’t stop they didn’t stop now too sore can’t think where the fuck is my body.” A friend of mine once invited a guy home but by the time they got back there, my friend was too drunk to have sex. So the guy raped him. Weirdly, the general consensus among my concerned and otherwise sympathetic friends was that he had not exercised enough caution in bringing this stranger home as if – in classical Gothic style – the trauma could only be invited in by a pre-existing structural weakness at work on the inside. I think how reactionary this is is pretty evident. However, as Alana notes, the provocative element of this tale is that this ‘thing’ is there in your story – the sex is thought in terms of ‘my own volition my own violation’ – but volition itself is upturned in the form of the errant body, which is the violation. The speaker says that he is “…not there by choice was it choice it could have been depending on the mood perhaps but no don’t think so something else…” That something else seems to be the body’s strange implacable sovereignty – which often has only obscure and barely legible thing to do with the mind – and the fact that this sovereignty is not a sentience per se but rather a inescapable facticity, a constant, unrelenting fact that it is simply there. In that light, this story for me was less a direct comment on rape per se and definitely not anything so moralistic as a cautionary tale where disaster befalls the narrator because he couldn’t control his behaviour but rather a sharp, shattered look into the inherent precarity of a body that is both libidinous and liable, the thing we want in (‘even imagination implies potentiality’) and the thing we have no choice but to be in. In that respect, after the trauma he has passed through, it is no wonder the speaker is at such a loss to place his body in relation to himself. It’s too much to know it’s still there.
To turn to technicalities. Your feel for form is thrilling. This kind of writing has such an intricate interior and organisation, it’s just a delight. In part, what I found so fascinating about the way that the disconnection works in the story is that it accelerates so rapidly and yet also prevents the voice from becoming hysteric. Hysteria would have ruined this piece and made it reactionary. Most specifically because the crux it turns on is the idea of being fucked without a condom. If this were a hysteric piece, it’d be no better than one eloquently-composed condom commercial. It isn’t and it doesn’t accidentally become that and I can only applaud you for pulling that off. In terms of what I might consider changing, the end of the story stands out to me especially. The hour one, hour two stuff feels a little like filler. Maybe I’m being too harsh or missing a crucial thread in the story but I feel as though you could easily cut everything from “Maybe light is starting to come back” to “”oh well maybe try remembering again at least that way my body can relax or something” and end up with a leaner, sharper story. Also, I think I’d like to see some small thing extra added to the last line of the story, to just sound it out better. “because sleep can sleep do” might be a suggestion as by saying ‘do’ it would cause agency and event to align themselves right at the moment of their suspension, of falling asleep. One other thing: I feel as though you start the piece with a proposition: the idea of the ‘empty room’ – ’this’ empty room – that the body is in, that the speaker speaks from. For this story to truly cycle back on itself, I think it needs to come back to the concept of emptiness. After you say “but maybe there is a bit of light coming in now”, I feel like the room’s emptiness needs to be highlighted again in some way, tied in with some powerful phrase there at the end. Sleep is a kind of ‘out’ for the speaker, it’s where he goes with nowhere else to go, because he ‘can’, he says, which is profoundly ambiguous in itself, but I sense some other thing is needed at the end to forefront how much of answer it isn’t, to undercut sleep, to flag it as a false repose, let’s say – kind of the speaker’s fatigued answer to the empty space of the room, to the full painful weight of the body, to vacate the room like those who fucked and dumped him, to empty himself out. Perhaps you could even say ‘maybe some sleep yes sleep my body too sore to stay awake empty myself out of this empty room doesn’t matter what happened right now…” That’s only a suggestion, sorry. What you want the empty room motif to be may not be anything like I’m picturing it at all. But I do think that current of the story would flow together a lot better if it features in some way, whatever way, at the story’s very conclusion.
And on that note, I’m done. All the best to you, Mike, and thanks for sharing this with us. It was a real privilege.
Mike, like JoeM 'experimental' prose terrifies and I start to feel all insecure and angry by turns.
Like Alana, the first time through 'Intersection' I was completely lost. And the second, actaully. Then I went back to the beginning and started reading it aloud and THEN I got it - and I got the rhythm in it too.
I wnated more - I wanted to listen to this, my ears seemed to take it in more easily than my eyes. I know you;re maybe intentionally not going for an easy assimilation, but difficult subject matter combined with difficult form is a very brave way to go!
Have you ever considered a radio play? Cos this for me was a completely aural experience, it's such a strong, powerful voice when you hear rather than 'see' it.
Your professor seems to sum up the worst of academia, in his comments. Don't be put off,though - I get the impression you're strong enough NOT to be - but maybe do be prepared to take his comments on board (although I think he was well off the mark with 'not worth the effort'), learn from them and pull from them what you can use and what you need.
Thanks for giving us a look, it's good for me to be forced to read this kind of stuff.
I read about a page and a half. Realizing I was too tired and sore to even read your monologue sensibly, I've set it aside until I can give it a proper reading. It's very much a piece for the ear. Thank you for sharing it.
mike,
i´ve read your piece and found it beautiful, although not being used to read this kind of literature i still don´t have a coherent idea of it -i´ll read it a second time and then get back to you. for now i just wanted to thank you for sharing it with us, i really appreciate this
Mike- It's sad that your teacher thought this was too difficult or whatever. Sad for you but also a sad reminder of the purpose of writing classes in general
your piece is just totally great and amazing. I don't know the writers you called out as influences, but I hazard to guess you wrote your own piece and it stands strongly on it's own. I love how your piece, for me works in cycles, and how repeated images clarify but also elongate the overall intention of the piece. Have you read Claud Simon, Robert Pinget? They achieve similar effects in different manners.
I also love how you have a couple places where, for me, your piece reaches a point of clarity that, while being separate from the rest really cast it in yet another new and separate light. a line like the one that starts "on the curvature of our world there is another world...." that line totally really did it for me truth be told.
Your piece wont be accessible to all, so I guess that would be a negative if you chose to look at it that way, but it's wonderful to see someone just going for it all out
Mark
I love your use of spacing here. What it forces us to do as we read.
There are lots of small presses out there that are looking for just this kind of transgressive material, if you're looking for publication.
Mike,
First, I like and admire the piece very much, and I have to second pretty much everyone else here when I say your teacher is either just a lazy ass or an enemy of literature, if possibly a clueless or inadvertent enemy.
I think the form and style you’re using here is fully integrated with the subject matter and story, and I think where they locate the reader is quite effective and quite exact considering how slippery the reading experience feels. I think the degree to which you’ve simultaneously disoriented me and coerced my inner spelunker to surface and do battle with the work’s internal haze is really impressive, and the way the retrospective gang rape retains its grab even as the kaleidoscopic aftermath asserts a strict if wavering control in seeking the act’s disintegration is something of a coup.
I also really like the combination of the rhythm’s violence with the softening visual effect of the form, which, to me at least, doesn’t recall the Duvert novel so much as the kind of self-consciously misty poetry written by pained, untrained romantics and spiritual types. There’s a lack of terseness in the writing, and the work’s obsessiveness isn’t able to coopt and use fiction’s gravity to its advantage in the way that, say, Duvert’s interests do in that novel. Your piece looks and feels floatier and more innocent, and there’s a very interesting wrongness in that. It took reading of a fair number of sentences to distinguish what you’re doing from what more casual, watery writers tend to do with a similar kind of spacing effect and lack of caps and the use of enjambed and/or disjunctive phrases. I enjoyed the test and am completely convinced by the subversive value of this approach, but the work’s initial challenge on this front might explain your teacher’s misimpression that the piece is something less crafted and assertive than it is.
Otherwise, I just have some site specific questions and thoughts. For instance, I’m not sure about your isolating the word ‘this’ in the first line. To me, it hammers home the style of the piece too obviously and quickly, and it creates a kind of exclamation point that might be a little too self-conscious when one is first entering the piece, I’m not sure. I guess I’d prefer it welded to the first phrase a la ‘empty room this’ or something like that. I also had a similar issue with ‘yes’ in the second paragraph. In both cases, it feels slightly predictable and heavy handed, and I think I’d prefer to feel lost and more on my own as a reader at that stage. After that, I didn’t have any problem with your singling out of single words, and the device held more surprise, for me at least, after I’d had a chance to find my own footing.
I had a bit of a similar if less problematic reaction to the ‘no no no no no’ you thing used at least a couple of times. But I’m not as confident that there’s an actual problem there, so I won’t push it. It’s just that, again, there was a lack of surprise for me in that device, and I had a slight feeling that it was a little devicey and conventionally theatrical. I didn’t have as much of a problem with the somewhat similar device of repeating the word ‘ow’, which I quite liked even though, again, I think there was also the effect of you clearly showing your own hand there.
Others have mentioned the ‘gods’ thing. I can’t say that I found it all that interesting, but, at the same time, I didn’t dislike it necessarily, although someone here said it made them want to know more about these ‘gods’, and they might well have a point. Using that word does draw attention to the speaker’s choice of employing that term, and it does kind of cause the piece itself and maybe the reader to issue a challenge to the speaker that neither the piece nor speaker really follows up on. I’m not sure what to suggest as an alternative though. In my opinion, it might be okay as is, but I’d give the questions it raises some thought.
I think Slatted Light’s suggestion about altering the very last phrase of the piece is very interesting, and, even though I hadn’t felt dissatisfied with the ending before I read his comment, I think his advice is impressive, and I’ll second his idea.
Those are my issues with the piece, such as they are. Otherwise, mostly and most importantly, I’m really taken with it, and I think its strange, weighted, fragmenting, and self-lacerating beauty is really quite beautiful. The piece is full of terrific, sharp, delirious, multi-tasking prose that manages to more than hold its own on the level of style while also performing successful ‘botched’ surgery on the sex and ‘victim’ under its consideration. Having a piece that works as an overtly stylized piece and also does emotional justice to pretty heavy content is no small feat. I think some careful tinkering here and there and a post-critique comb-through is all it needs, and, with that, I suspect you’ll totally have it nailed. Thanks a lot and much respect to you, Mike. To everybody else, see you tomorrow.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for sharing this piece. Your teacher is clearly an ass and an outright fraud for not doing his job to engage what you've written. And this story is really engaging, the rhythms of the prose are completely hypnotic, the circular structure works nicely, the use of space instead of punctuation beautifully captures the fragmented thoughts of the narrator as he tries to piece together the actuality of the gang rape. your avoidance of "I" worked well too, isolating the narrator's body and consciousness without calling attention to itself.
My only suggestion is that I thought the piece could be tighter and would benefit from being edited as tautly as possible. For instance, I wasn't sure you needed the graph on the second page that starts "aware of my body." I'd be ruthless in looking for a few other spots where you might prune and condense. My sense is a few well placed edits could really strengthen the overall reading experience. I see Dennis liked how the looseness made the piece feel "floaty and more innocent" and I can see that, but I guess my instinct was that the story would be stronger if there was a touch less text overall, so that what remained was more obviously obsessive, had more gravity, and accentuated the narrative vortex that already seems to be in effect.
Anyhow, those are my two cents and I hope they make sense and prove helpful. This is a fascinating and well executed piece. Don't let your instructor's stupidity keep you from continuing to explore this style. You've struck a worthwhile vein.
hey mike,
I really liked the abstract tones f this piece. To me th murkiness and trawling through that to understand what was going on made the piece. The floating voice hovering above the scene and action i found quite engaging. To me the intersection of the title was the spiritual- for lack of a better word- and the physical melting. The spirit/ inner voice trying to understand what is happening by distancing itself from the action and observing it from there. To me this ws the point and the most intriguing part of the story, trying to understand this intersection.
For me the story lost some of it effect when grounding of the voice back in time and space. The use of precise figures and the explanation of the intersection seemed too precise for the vagueness that the early voice described.
Personally I think that lessen the emotional impact of the story and takes some of the challenge of ambiguity out.
I hope all of this makes sense as comments. I'm trying to be succint, which might make things difficult to understand.
Other than that keep up the experimenting.
Mike, The style of your piece reminded me of late Beckett, though you’re using it in a different way. You're using it naturalistically, to represent disorientation, uncertainty, denial. That's pretty clear. I wonder if your professor was simply turned off by either your subject or your take on it.
I'll say that on the contrary I felt like I knew a little too soon where the piece was going. Maybe consider making it even more fucked up? In a good way? Just a thought. Along the same lines, "personal gods from movies tv pornography" seem a little too directly theoretical for such a fractured consciousness. But, in another way, that’s also one of the most interesting elements in the piece, so I’m really torn on that.
I particularly liked this line, which very economically sums up the main conflict, I thought: “it was given to them it was given to them by my own volition my own violation.” Anyway, thanks for sharing this.
Mike, Are you trying to destroy Literature as we know it? Really? You are? Good...
No, seriously, I really like "Intersection." Here are some things that stood out to me:
1. though there is no punctuation or capitalization, you still indent paragraphs, which conveyed to me subtly the struggle of the narrator for control of himself or even moreso, his desire for total freedom, as there are instances where the last sentence of one paragraph continues into the indented first sentence of the next. no matter how hard he tries, there is still a conformity to which he must harken.
2. the spaces between words are very effective in that they control the reader's reading and pacing, much like the victim is controlled by his aggressors, then by his own musings. it's subtle but very effective.
3. i like that you used words like 'maybe' sparingly.
4. i think that, overall, the style of the piece illustrates exactly how the narrator feels and encourages these feelings in the reader. i found reading your piece to be as visceral as it was intellectual. at times, i was positively claustrophobic, scared, and struggling for a way out.
Now a couple things I noticed:
1. on page 4, do you really need to use the word 'gangbanged'? on the one hand, i can see where the narrator is finally able to put voice to and de-mythologize what has happened to him; on the other, we know what's happened to him.
2. on page 5, 'more realistically' bothered me. though it could be seen in the same light as 'gangbanged,' i thought it could've been shown without being said.
3. the first line of the last paragraph - same thing.
But that's nitpicking, and really, decisions like that are up to the author.
What's funny is, I was looking up some things on the net about a week ago, things about the blog here, and I came across a post from when I was lurker, where Dennis mentions a writing-teacher friend who was giving his students all these writing 'rules' to follow. And Dennis' reaction was fuck that. Basically. I paraphrase, forgive me. But the point is, yeah, I have to agree with everyone else here about your teacher. It's one thing to give harsh criticism but quite another to dismiss a piece out of hand. It shows a total lack of respect, as well as intellectual laziness.
And as far as your rules for this piece, why those three? Are they arbitrary? Because I could see you starting to write a 'traditional' story but deciding, as the story creates itself, that punctuation is a no-no and so is the use of 'I' and the story MUST loop. It's interesting that your rules led to this story rather than the other way around.
Mike-
I had absolutely no problem with the way the piece was laid out, I've written blocks and clock of prose with no spaces, no punctuation that I've forced on people, your spacing is perfect to keep the action flowing. it was a swift thought stream, and it was effective,
I've never read Lucky or something Lucky Bones by that woman who was raped and left for dead Sebold? But I imagined it was something like this, or should be something like this, I shouldn't include commentary on a book I never read but i work at a library and read the backs of tons of books.
so what i am saying is this is what i would think thoughts would be like in the fictional situation that you set up, it makes sense and it works. I would say that my criticism is it works too well for me and I wasn't surprised by any of it. the narrator is disoriented, has stated his thoughts of pleasure and pain and the perps aren't doing anything to change up the cycle. Even the vagueness seemed familiar. I want more surprises. the technique , the style work very well for me.
I hope that was some sort of help...
-WR
i need to add more, sorry, the language, there were some turns of phrase that now I can't find that were really great.. something with the mote, i have written a lot about motes and lights lately, great word, great idea... i like the personal gods... i know it is a piece about repetition and you mentioned "the loop"... i just want to be surprised...but then again, my lack of surprise is my punishment and maybe that is the intention, if that is, it is effective...
okay this is part 1 of my overlong response:
Wow! First of all I want to offer an absolute sincere THANK YOU to everybody: this has been an absolutely amazing experience– I have been in and out of workshops for the last couple of years at my Uni and I have never gotten this much wonderful feed back and suggestions; I really feel like this is the first time my work has been engaged with in such a dedicated level and it’s really great: there are loads of great things to think about here and I honestly feel like I can take this in much stronger direction. I really appreciate the dedicated community around here.
(This is probably going to be pretty long-winded, just as a heads up! Also, for the record, I might refer to the protagonist as a “he” throughout my responses, but the intention was the the gender of the protag be ambiguous or undefined– I would venture that it seems more male primarily because I took on [ostensibly] the first person, and I am male)
Stephen–
The “gods” the speaker refers to are intended to signify the sort of sexually fetishized “idols” that one places stock in at a level of obsession: for me personally this is something found most often in media characters and actors, and I spend a lot of time trying to figure out (mostly for myself, and for narrative reasons) how these sort of pop signifiers work and where their “power”/hold over me comes from. However, in this I was more interested in the idea of this representational “other” that exerts this hold, but I didn’t want to be too specific because I was trying to get at more of an idea than something concrete? This is sort of the part that I’m not sure enough of is present (and I’ll expand on this idea later)– but I always didn’t want it to overkill because in the physical/mental “space” that I set out intending to represent, these icons are immediate, and not extended/thought-out; they’re more instantaneous, and just the idea is what launches the response. Does that make sense?
I think the idea of fucking with the time thing more holds definite potentiality: I tried to use it as a simple mechanism to progress along far enough to get to a looping point, and while I think, to some extent, it works in that way, I’m not sure if I shouldn’t just sacrifice one of the (ostensibly) arbitrary rules in order to improve the story.
Alana–
I’m applying for a number of MFA programs right now, and I was actually considering putting this piece in the portfolio: mainly because I know I have interest in further exploring this sort of extensive formal experimentation further and I’d prefer to get into a school where this sort of thing is not only okay, but encouraged (the lack of openness to experimentation has been what has driven me nuts about my undergrad workshops).
Abstract poetry was also a major influence on this form, but I have an obsession with narrative, so something that I’m always trying to do is to work abstraction into a narrative structure: this is probably my most “extreme” experiment in that regard up to this point.
The narration was indeed (at least ideally) intended to mimic a disconnection (more specifics on this later). One of the things my professor did point out was that (well, from him it was more of a mandate than a suggestion) the story would work better with more anchors in less abstracted prose– my ideas about art (and in saying art I of course include writing) in general follow the idea that with this sort of intensity a break from the tonal diegesis disrupts the intensity and lessens it. In this idea I take cues primarily from films, specifically such flicks as Zulawski’s Possession or Phillipe Grandrieux’s Sombre. Because of my thoughts on this, I am willing to sacrifice an easily “accessible” reference point (though I don’t think this is precisely what you’re suggesting, I often feel this is where such a change would lead).
But of course, as your next comment implies, I do slightly break out of this “mode” to introduce more concrete dialog/commentary via the protagonist. For me these elements of the concrete are far more present as buried within the abstraction, and they stick out more? I don’t know– I guess this is something I’m still messing with.
I have a problem with the hyper-presence of victimization (I guess mostly in an Oprah “oh isn’t htis SAD” sort of way) in contemporary pop lit, so it is something that I want to avoid– I think trauma works as a good catalyst, but victimizing the event cheapens the trauma, so I’m glad you found the piece successful in that regard.
The death at the end was intended to be ambiguous– I was the physical/mental/emotional space that I mentioned earlier, in the generation of this piece, was that sort of space that one can exist in during the moment of orgasm– so there is a death in, of course, the Bataillian/French idea of the “little death.”
JoeM–
For me experimental/Oulipian writing works best, or I guess feels most successful or something, when the form and experimentation can collapse into the ideas present in the narrative (or conception of whatever piece), and the story can be felt, experienced, at some sort of visceral level even if the reader is ignorant of the schema, rules, etc. I am also a fairly amateur post-structuralist, so I more or less buy into Barthes’ idea of the death of the author, which ironically influences the way I write things. When I want to work with specifics I try to make sure the formal structures are not overwhelming the ideas, the narratives. This is the “furthest” I’ve pushed this idea, so I was curious to how other people would respond.
Period is one of my favorite books O.A.T., so I’m fairly certain it creeps into a lot of what I’ve written! Cutting down to the minimum was something I was trying to do here, and there is already a fair bit written out. I think there are definitely parts that can be further trimmed, but as I mentioned to Alana above, I like the idea of the less economic passages “punctuating” the sparsity that runs the rest of the story.
Steven Trull–
The idea of the text being read out loud, I think, from what I’ve been told by others, really helps to orient the reader within the text. I think, generally, when I’m writing something, the words are being said out loud in my head, as if they’re being spoken, and the writing style sort of intends to mimic this. I guess that doesn’t always work though?
And yeah– I don’t think I could ever write something divorced from anybody else unless I had never read a book in my life. And I read a ton, so it’s never going to happen that I write something not influenced by someone else!
Slatted light–
The idea of sort of physically manifesting “thinkingness” is something I’m sort of obsessed with; and I have to assume that a room designed/built to echo “thinkingness” would, and I don’t say this in a fatalist sort of way, be empty. Because any sort of physical representation of “thinkingness” would have to allow enough room for “things” to constantly be moving, colliding, crashing through it.
In terms of the “rape,” I didn’t want the protagonist to become a “sympathetic” victim, because, as I mentioned above, I feel like that is a sort of bourgeois idea that cheapens the actual experience, the event. Does the protag seem too much like a victim? I think the body/mind dichotomy might sort of make it a thin line. Your comment “In that light, this story for me was less a direct comment on rape per se and definitely not anything so moralistic as a cautionary tale where disaster befalls the narrator because he couldn't control his behaviour but rather a sharp, shattered look into the inherent precarity of a body that is both libidinous and liable, the thing we want in (`even imagination implies potentiality') and the thing we have no choice but to be in.” is, I think, what I needed to hear– because I think it means to some extent I was successful, which is something I was still curious about.
I also like your ideas regarding the ending; it is what I’m least sure about at this moment. Ending on “sleep” does feel a little weak to me, and I do like your idea lots, so I will work with that. The idea of establishing the protag as emptying his/herself out is great– that needs to be in there.
Jax–
As I mentioned above, the idea of “hearing” this piece is something I’m very interested in– at the same time, I like the way that the text visually can represent what’s going on, with the black spaces– because as visual space it can work in different ways that silence can? I have this weird tension in a lot of my work where I try to combine visual aspects with aural aspects, and it’s a tension I’ve never quite been able to wholly dissolve.
Mark Gluth–
A couple of Claude Simon’s books sit on my shelf, but I’ve yet to read him. The couple Pinget books I’ve read has been great, though in all honesty it’s been too long since I’ve read them, so I’d say it’s time to revisit. Fable is one that sticks out in my head that I am sure would be far more affecting now that it was upon my first read. The Nouveau Roman are a major, major, major obsession/influence of mine.
And thank you for the comment on that line; for me that is one of the most “concrete” details of the story, mainly because it’s built out of three things: Lovecraft’s story Dreams in the Witch’s House, Quantam Mechanics/Parallel Universes, and pornography.
J. Campbell–
I’m definitely looking for publication, for a number of things. Any specific suggestions? I never know where to look for these sorts of things, which in all honesty has kept me from submitting a lot of my stuff to various outlets.
Dennis–
A friend of mine had the same professor and ended up reading his (my prof’s) one published piece of fiction, and said it was actually totally awful. His work primarily deals with Faulkner, so I sort of wonder if any sort of avant garde ended for him with Sound and the Fury. No use speculating though ;)
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m obsessed with forms & styles echoing/mirroring narrative and content, so I appreciate that comment. I often have a hard time personally dealing with/responding to experimentation for the sake of experimentation (most particularly in film and video), but it’s often fascinating, so just on a personal level the interaction of the two is what I’m most interested in.
I like the idea of an inherent “wrongness” arising from the sort of dichotomy present between the “floaty innocence” and what’s “going on.” I hadn’t thought of that.
In an earlier draft that initial “this” wasn’t there; but I was afraid that without it I wasn’t establishing the diegetic “present” as being in the empty room. I think maybe it might be the spacing that adds to the heavy handedness. Looking back I question even the necessity of that “yes,” so I might just take it out.
I think as it stands right now I need more space between those no’s for them to work the way I wanted them to, right now they do seem like a fairly theatrical convention, and I really wanted more time between each one, more staccato or something.
I think my use of the word “gods” is a bit deceptive and possibly dangerous, as it is such a sort of rooted word. I think the signifier of the sexual fetish is a necessary part of the story, but you’re making me question my choice of the word, which is for sure a good thing.
part II:
Chilly Jay Chill–
I think I agree that there might be too much here, so I will experiment with how it works upon cutting more. I might want to try to play up a sort of tension between a tautness and the floaty-ness, though I wonder how the interaction would affect each “part.”
Paradigm–
I like the melting of the material with the metaphysical, but I worry too much about overplaying the idea of distancing oneself from the material action– for me there isn’t necessarily “distance,” rather, I just want to establish a definite divide.
Alan–
My prof actually mentioned that there was a “good story” buried in it and that it was a shame that it was so hard to get to. He tried to get me to re-write the story in a straight forward, traditional manner, but I insisted that that obviously wouldn’t be the same story: that would be something completely different. Upon realizing that the battle was futile I ended up just turning in something that was written in a more straightforward manner for the grade!
I haven’t read any late Beckett, but one of my good friends keeps insisting I read basically his entire oeuvre, so I will– what late Beckett is best?
Misanthrope–
Yes! I want literature as we know it to ENDDDDDDD. This is the future! Literature needs to catch up with contemporary art!
The indentation is something I hadn’t even considered until, but I think that’s a great observation and I kind of want to play that up further... because that is a formal, traditional control and obviously the fact that I totally overlooked it says something...
In terms of using “gangbanged,” I think I agree with this. It might be beyond the level of concreteness I was striving for.
In terms of generating the rules, they came sort of simultaneously with the idea for the story. I had an idea of what the story wanted to be, but I couldn’t get the story out until I had some sort of structure to put it into. Knowing this, I established the rules as a sort of container/emphasis for what I knew the story was going to be about, so I had some sort of formal reference to help give me the momentum that I needed. I also ended up modifying the rules as I went along (at first it was no punctuation whatsoever, but then I realized I needed apostrophes to distance it from highly form, contraction-less writing, etc.).
winter rates–
Lovely Bones or something? I’ve never read it either, but I work in a bookstore so I know what you mean.
I think I know what you mean– formally there is no climax, there is no peak, formally it’s pretty straight forward direct current style. This is certainly something interesting to think about, to see if I could climax the narrative with the form...
And mote is a totally great word, isn’t it? I want to use it more.
part III:
Once again, I totally wanted to thank everybody. This is completely awesome. Also, I just wanted to add one more thing:
The main catalyst, you could say, for this story was to create a sort of abstract representation of both the “space” one inhabits at the moment of orgasm, and how that space intercepts with sexual fantasy (which is where I was trying to go with the whole pop-culture “gods” thing). However, it seems that that idea isn’t wholly in here, but I’m okay with– it means it’s an idea I can play with further. As I’ve mentioned, I at least vaguely subscribe to Barthes’ ideas, so for me the reader’s experience with the piece is more important than the author’s (my) intention... So it’s really interesting for me to see this dialog with the work going in directions I totally didn’t expect! It’s kind of really awesome and exciting, surprising. At the time of writing, in my mind, the only “real,” “material” event was the act of masturbation– there was no actual rape, and there was no fourth dimensional visitors, there was only sexual fantasy and corporeal release. But the whole thing is sort of a masochistic release, I think, and that’s why I think the political implications that have been pointed out are fascinating, because it makes me wonder about my own psyche... anyway, before I ramble on forever I should go to bed since it’s now 4AM.
Thanks again everyone!
alsoooo
Dennis:
I am a meagre 5'7''
very depressing, particularly because I like dudes that are at least 6'2'', and it's hard to find tall dudes into short dudes like me...
Hey Mike:
I’m a little late with my comments but, nonetheless, here they are … Unlike yr prof, I had no problem reading ‘Intersection.’ I’ve done my share of writing pretty similar in style & structure to this piece. So I think my reader/writer mind is attuned to this realm.
Saying that, I felt the breakdown of conventional punctuation & graph structure and the ways in which these style devices come to capture the narrator’s heavily conflicted state of mind re. the rape event were the main pleasure of the piece. But there are a few issues that, for me, dull the final power of ‘Intersection.’
1. Your rules are solid. Except maybe #2 … I think you should consider expanding its scope to include line breaks as effective punctuation. Incorporating certain poetic line break conventions here might help ease the reader experience by giving them something structurally familiar.
2. I think you should eliminate the paragraph approach straight up. Too much tension dissipates with each clear break. In order to modulate narrative streams … I like the series of single lines first used on Page 1:
“please
please meet at the intersection
right now”
Alternating the text block (AKA paragraph) template with the line series seems truer to the deconstructionist quality of the piece.
3. The prose could still be simplified in spots. Like eliminating unnecessary repetition. Dennis kinda touched on that problem. Overuse of repetition is a facile or affected way to convey narrator confusion.
4. Last, I think sometimes a stream of thought is strung on too long. The thoughts being narrated are totally fragmented but aren’t given appropriate form using the blank space rule. (And some careful cutting of linking words/phrases.) Like at the top of page 4:
“laughing still maybe me laughing too maybe not doesn’t really change anything because it felt good at first exactly what my body wanted but didn’t stop they didn’t stop now too sore can’t think where the fuck is my body”
If I edited that section it could become:
“laughing still maybe me laughing maybe not
doesn’t really change anything it felt good at first exactly what my body wanted but they didn’t stop now too sore can’t think where the fuck is my body”
Uhh ... Blogger didn't capture my spaces. So spaces=line breaks.
----------------------
If I edited that section it could become:
“laughing still
maybe me laughing maybe not
doesn’t really change anything
it felt good at first
exactly what my body wanted
but they didn’t stop
now too sore can’t think
where the fuck is my body”
Mike, if you intend to apply to MFA Programs, yes, please include "Intersection" as part of your writing sample.
You Do Not want to find yourself penalized and discouraged for your writing style. Ugh! The idea makes me . . . sick. Remain honest and sincere about your line of academic inquiry and overall vision as an artist. :-)
I was urged, numerous times, not to include "gay erotica" in my application to an MFA Program. No list of "erotica" publications, no gay erotica writing samples. Pah! My mentors at the time worried I would not be taken seriously as a writer if I were honest. What a shame. And what a crock of shit.
Which isn't to say I didn't second guess myself several times.
The validity of my writing speaks for itself. So does yours.
Peace,
A
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