Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

[HelloKiddo]

Ar last, a first page I recognize!

I'd turn the page (actually I did turn the page when I read this.) The first page is not thrilling, but I found the description just intriguing enough to want to know more.

[JasonChirevas]

Originally Posted by James D. Macdonald

Well, folks. Many of y'all decided not to turn the page for that last novel.

Here's a different book:



The question is, as always, do you turn the page?

No. My god, no.

-Jason

[Judg]

No, not for entertainment. If I were reading it because I wanted to read some more Oscar Wilde, I'd give it a go for a while. But he'd have to come through with something better sooner or later.

[Yeshanu]

Since we're talking about first pages, I've put the first page to my next WIP up here. If anyone cares to comment, I'd appreciate it. And don't feel shy about ripping it apart if you don't like it. I have claws and teeth -- I'll fight back.

Seriously, I personally have the feeling that what I've written doesn't stink, but if you've got negative comments, don't keep them to yourself. I can't learn if all anyone says is, "You're writing's fantastic."

[pdr]

but this is Wilde and he's always worth reading.

[Yeshanu]

Originally Posted by pdr

but this is Wilde and he's always worth reading.

If the rest of his prose is like his first page, I wouldn't be able to get through it, no matter how profound his points.

But this is where individual taste comes in. I'd probably be able to read the entire text of the nurse novel, even though aware I'd be reading junk rather than a classic.

I'd rather enjoy a book than read one simply because it's "worth reading," or "a classic," whatever the criteria are for those designations.

To each her own...

[Chris Grey]

I would turn the page, possibly a few pages, to see where it's going. It's well-written and that counts for a lot, but today's a bit too attention-deficit for a page like that to fly far. As he brought up Japan, I present a haiku:

We want explosions,
Monsters, and don't forget the
Exploding monsters.

Sad but--ooh, shiny!

[DamaNegra]

I turned a couple of pages, then got so bored I put the book back and blocked it out of my mind.

[Minister]

Another whole-thread reader finally drawn into commenting by the first-page game.

My eyes were glazing over before the end of the first sentence. If I picked that up, not knowing who wrote it, no, I probably wouldn't continue, even though I usually give novels a few pages to prove themselves. That passive, overwrought description of surroundings is almost guaranteed to make me set a book aside.

Knowing it's Wilde, I might have picked up the book deliberately and given the first few pages the benefit of the doubt (I make a far more dedicated effort to read works recommended by those I respect) -- but I'm already skimming before I get to the end of the first page, and if I don't see something more interesting or profound in the first few pages, I just don't have the time to waste on it, no matter how well-regarded the writer or book may be. It's not for me. Life is short. Books are many.

[James D. Macdonald]

As many have recognized, that's the first page of chapter one of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde.

===========

Since it's the preface, everyone skips it, but here's the preface to that work:

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.


The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.


The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.


Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.


This is a fault.


Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.


They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.


There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.


That is all.


The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.


The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.


The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true cannot be proved.


No artist has ethical sympathies.


An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.


Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.


Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.


From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.


From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.


All art is at once surface and symbol.


Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.


Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.


It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.


Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.


When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.


We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

Then comes the epigram:

All art is quite useless.

[Yeshanu]

I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.
I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.
I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.
I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.
I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.

I disagree on many points (though not all), though I'm aware that if that's the prologue to the book, he may be writing the viewpoint of one of the characters and not himself. But still...

I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.

[James D. Macdonald]

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the type-specimen of the literary novel. The interior lives of the characters are more important than the external events. The interior life of the protagonist is even made an external symbol, the "Picture" of the title.

I chose it because, like Doctors' Wives, it opens with long descriptive paragraphs. Unlike Doctors' Wives, however, it has been continuously in print for nearly a hundred and twenty years.

Most "literary novels" also fall into genres. (Cormac McCarthy's The Road, for example, is post-apocalyptic science fiction.) Wilde's novel falls into the sub-genre Gothic Romance.

We'll do a line-by-line on that first page in a bit.

[James D. Macdonald]

Originally Posted by Yeshanu

I disagree on many points (though not all), though I'm aware that if that's the prologue to the book, he may be writing the viewpoint of one of the characters and not himself.

I believe that Wilde was making his confession of faith in that prologue, and that he then attempted to prove each of those points in the novel. (This may be an example of Samuel Goldwyn's "If you want to send a message call Western Union.") Nevertheless, Wilde not only talked the talk, he walked the walk; at the end he wound up suffering terribly for his art.

And, the book is still being printed and read, and quoted ("The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about" is from this novel, for example). And everyone knows the plot, and Dorian Gray (either the book as a whole or Dorian as a character) has appeared in movies, comic books, and other novels.

Whatever Wilde was doing, he was doing something right. Our job is to figure out what.

[Redaelf]

This may be me having read too much stuff upholding literature at an impressionable age, but the portion I see on this page, at least, is intriguing to me. It makes a lot of bold statements.

Man. I'd never wanted to read that book before...and I'm not too thrilled to want to now, either.

[James D. Macdonald]

Originally Posted by Redaelf

Man. I'd never wanted to read that book before...and I'm not too thrilled to want to now, either.

It's public domain now, and available free on-line. Go for it.

[bsolah]

I have Wilde's book sitting in my 'to read' pile. I've snuck a peak at the first few pages, as well as read some his political essays. Quite an extraordinary writer, as well as inspiring for standing about against the first trial against a gay men for being gay.

[Yeshanu]

Just for the record, I don't disagree with everything he says in the prologue. But there are things he does say about morality and ethics that I do disagree with.

For example, I believe that all artists have ethical sympathies, and that not only is it important to express them, you can't not express them. The artist who believes otherwise is fooling him or herself, in what I think to be a very irresponsible way. Not that I believe that everything I write needs to be chock full of my moral values, but I find that even when I'm writing something silly like my NaNo novel, I can't help but create a work where what I believe to be true about humanity and morality is an important part of the story.

And I definitely do not agree that all art is useless.

That being said, I'm looking forward to your line-by-line. Not having taken English literature beyond high school (except for one class in ancient Greek and Roman and biblical classics), I consider myself to be woefully ignorant of the classics (in a scholarly way), especially when I compare myself with my son who will be graduating with a four-year English degree this spring.

[euclid]

I baulked at the lines about moral/immoral books, although I suppose OW could argue the point using semantics. There certainly are corrupting books (and other more modern media).

[smsarber]

I think each statement in his prologue is meant to be interpreted the way each individual reader chooses. The moral/immoral line, for instance. I am personaloly a Christian so my moral is what I believe God has instilled in me from birth. The Ten Commandments, etc... Now, if I were the complete other side, into satanism and black magic and witchcraft, my moral may be the thrill of seeing others in pain. (For instance.)
But another way to see it is there is another definition of moral; The practical meaning (as of a story.) Which goes back to the way each person interprets the line, and, everything else they read.
But I'm just wrapping my brain up in bubble wrap right now.
"You may be right... I may be crazy... But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for" - Billy Joel; You May be Right

[Jake Barnes]

"Whatever Wilde was doing, he was doing something right. Our job is to figure out what."

I'll take a shot. First, it's got a great premise. Second the theme of What is beauty? Is an interesting one. Wilde seems to say that what is beautiful is also good (see Plato) but also that beauty is deceiving (so how can it be good?). Third the story plays into the hedonist/puritan divide and this creates tension and conflict in the character in the plot and in the reader (don't we all want a portrait like Dorian's?). Fourth, the character of Dorian is a very modern one like Dr. Jekyll and Sherlock Holmes and people still find it appealing.

[James D. Macdonald]

Line-by-line:

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

Paragraph one is a single sentence. Forty-five passive words. It gives a place, "the studio" (apparently in or near a garden) and a time "summer."

Sight and smell are heavily invoked (odour, scent, perfume). Colors are heavily invoked (rose, lilac, pink). The only active verb is the stirring done by that light wind.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

Woo! Super-sentence! One hundred and nineteen words. Let's see if we can break this down a bit. Separating the sentence out, clause-by-clause, we find:

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying,

smoking,

as was his custom,

innumerable cigarettes,

Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum,

whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs;

First half of the sentence is now complete--we've introduced a person into the place. We have an idea of his social station, Lord, and something of his character. He is an aesthete.

We're back to the smells and the colors.

and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,

producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect,

and making him think of those pallid,

jade-faced painters of Tokio who,

through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile,

seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

And we've introduced the theme of painting, and rendering the impression of motion in a fixed medium. (Incidentally, Tokio is a perfectly valid, if rare, alternate spelling of Tokyo.) We're heavily into colors still (pallid, jade).

In contrast to the first paragraph, and the first half of this sentence, we have speed (and transitory) action: flitted, momentary, swiftness, motion.

The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive.

Sound is introduced in the second sentence, while passivity and neglect is emphasized. The bees murmur (sullenly). They "shoulder their way." They're monotonous. The grass is unmown. The woodbine (the flower theme again) is both dusty and straggling. The stillness is oppressive. One might suspect an impending thunderstorm.

The overall impression is of lassitude and boredom. This may be intended to revealing the character of Lord Henry Wotton.

The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

A simple sentence, at last! Nailing down the location, as we hear the sounds of a major city, though it is "distant." The bourdon is a bass drone note.

So far we've got a person in a place with a problem: Lord Henry Wotton, in a studio, is bored.

[James D. Macdonald]

May I comment here that portraying boredom or monotony in our novels is always dangerous? We run the risk of boring our readers.

To do this on the first page bespeaks either ... well, I wouldn't try it here in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

[James D. Macdonald]

One more note, since the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scores have been mentioned.

All three of the last first-page examples (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Doctors' Wives, Nurse Kelsey Abroad) have the same reading level: Grade 16 (senior year of college).

[Berry]

Originally Posted by James D. Macdonald

Incidentally, Tokio is a perfectly valid, if rare, alternate spelling of Tokyo.)

Particularly at the time when Wilde was writing. "Romanization", the transliterating of Japanese words into the Latin alphabet, had not yet been standardized to the extent that it is today. THere are still at least three major systems in use, but the Hepburn system is the dominant one. While it was first introduced in the late 19th century, it didn't become de facto official until the Occupation after WWII.

It's interesting to note, if you're a language weenie, that in Japanese "Tokyo" is a TWO syllable word, "To-kyo", and not, as many Westerners pronounce it, three: "To-key-oh", so while "Tokio" was at one time valid, it's fundamentally flawed.

[smsarber]

Uncle Jim, I have a question. One of the lead characters in "A Birthday Suicide" is named Willis Jefferson. Throughout the first draft I alternately use three different names for him: Willis, Jefferson, and The Big Man. Is it proper to do that, or might it be a tad confusing?