Nina Shengold Archives

MARY LOUISE WILSON “GETTING IN CHARACTER” 10/29/15

November 1, 2015 By Word Cafe

WORD CAFE EVENT ARCHIVE
MARY LOUISE WILSON, 10/29/15

mary-louise-wilson-nina-shengold-word-cafe The divine Mary Louise Wilson treated us to a spectacular reading from her new memoir My First Hundred Years in Show Business. Our topic was “Getting in Character,” and the chapter she read about her Barrow Street neighbor, friend, and gadfly George Furth were a brilliant demonstration of how well-chosen details can paint the whole picture. Who can forget him shampooing his hairpiece and donning a towel and golf cap while it dried, or barging in on Mary Louise and her new beau “with a canned pear floating in a green plaid dish. ‘I thought you might want this,’ he barked, giving my boyfriend the once-over.”

Mary Louise is the subject of Ron Nyswaner’s Woodstock Film Festival Audience Prize-winning documentary about character acting, She’s the Best Thing In It, which follows her into a classroom full of beginning actors at Tulane University. We talked about parallels between teaching acting and writing: truth, specifics, connection.

Mary Louise talked about finding a natural voice for the memoir through the stories she’s told at parties for years; reading aloud as she wrote also helped. When she writes other characters, in memoir, plays and monologues, “It’s always the language.” How does this character speak? She also talked about finding the physical quirks of a character she plays onstage, or creates as a writer.

When I asked if anyone had questions for Mary Louise, the first response was, “Will you read more?” She did, treating us to a chapter called Fuschia Moon, about her “introduction to camp” in the company of her closeted brother Hugh, his witty circle of friends, and their living room “drag chest.”

THE EXERCISES:

Mary Louise suggested a daily practice called “aide-memoir,” in which you write continuously, whatever comes into your mind, without editing or censoring your thoughts. Nina compared this process to letting the rust out of the pipes till the water runs clear. See where it leads you. You might be surprised.

Nina’s exercise: Think of a person who drives you crazy, for good or bad reasons. How does he or she speak, move, behave? Write a monologue in that person’s voice that begins with the line, “Is this seat taken?” The work people got up and shared was specific, sharp, and hilarious. Takeaway: Irritating people make good characters.

PAUL RUSSELL “PAST & PRESENT” 10/22/15

November 1, 2015 By Word Cafe

WORD CAFE EVENT ARCHIVE
PAUL RUSSELL – PAST & PRESENT, 10/22/15

Novelist and Vassar professor Paul Russell led a terrific discussion of the many roles of past and present in fiction. His just-released novel Immaculate Blue centers on the wedding of longtime lovers Anatole and Rafael. Guests include Anatole’s close friend and Poughkeepsie neighbor Lydia and the elusive Chris, with whom they share a complex past and a love object named Leigh, aka Our Boy of the Mall. They also share another novel: younger versions of Chris, Anatole, Lydia, and Leigh appear in Paul’s first novel, The Salt Point, published in 1990.

Paul read the opening of Immaculate Blue, set in a changing Poughkeepsie. It’s narrated in present tense, with a swooping point of view that moves fluidly from one character’s thoughts to another; Paul favors “ensemble novels” over the “claustrophobia” of a single first-person narrator. Present tense has the advantage of immediacy–you’re right there with the narrator as events take place–but “can lack a certain reflective depth.” Paul’s writing professor James McConkey posited that literary use of present tense was a response to the atomic bomb; there’s no faith in the future. Past tense communicates an assurance that we’ve survived, and can look back on the events of the story from a safe distance. Present tense gives the feel of a story unfolding from moment to moment; its pace is more hectic than thoughtful.

Immaculate Blue’s wedding and reunion with long-absent Chris gives all the characters occasion to revisit the past in memories and in conversations with each other. Paul pointed out that good dialogue appears overheard, that characters talk “to each other, not to us” in a sort of shared shorthand–they don’t remind each other of things they already know. The reader does not need to get all the facts to be drawn in–in fact, quite the opposite. “We love puzzles,” Paul said. “We love putting the pieces together. If somebody hands you a jigsaw puzzle that’s already done, where’s the pleasure?” Nina added that a writer’s great place of power is making the reader want to find out what happened.

Paul observed that his characters’ versions of their shared past vary in often self-serving ways, so “there is no truth, only perspective.” Though he hadn’t revisited these characters in many years, when his agent proposed writing a sequel to The Salt Point, he caught up with them instantly. “It was as though there was a locked room in my brain where the characters had been living, and all I had to do was open the door.” Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, with its ten-year gap between parts one and two, offered him inspiration.

THE EXERCISES:

— Paul read a short passage from Joyce’s story “The Dead,” in which Gabriel Conroy has an awkward conversation with Lily, a servant girl who answers his small talk about schooling and marriage with “The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you,” revealing far more of her experience than he expects. Paul asked us to write a seemingly inconsequential encounter between two people in which the dialogue gives a hint of an unexpected history.

— Nina asked participants to think of a place they had been both as a young child and later in life (a relative’s house, a school, a vacation spot). Write a paragraph or section in present tense from the child’s perspective, beginning with “I am standing in…” and a second paragraph in past tense from the adult perspective, beginning with “When I went back, I noticed…” What is the effect of the switch in tenses?

Photo credit: Jana Martin

OWEN KING “THE B SIDE: SATYRS & ALIENS” 10/15/15

October 20, 2015 By Word Cafe

WORD CAFE EVENT ARCHIVE
OWEN KING 10/15/15

Novelist and graphic novel collaborator Owen King treated us all to a reading from his novel Double Feature, in which his hero Sam endures a classroom visit by his father, B-movie icon Booth Dolan. Regaling the youngsters with his philosophy of youth and maturity as a double feature, Booth reminds them that “make-believe is important” and invites them to try on his collection of rubber character noses.

Nina read another short passage from Double Feature, describing the video store where Sam works, with its rigid division between a lovingly curated Auteur section and disdain-inducing Commercial Fare. Does the same high art/low art divide apply in literature? How do we reach across the aisle?

Owen talked about making characters three-dimensional by presenting their flaws and the trap of liking your hero or heroine too much, so that they become more wish-fulfillment than human being. We also talked about character names. Owen often uses first or last names from old memorials and tombstones; Nina keeps a running list of names from New York cabdriver licenses.

Owen’s latest book is Intro To Alien Invasion, a graphic novel written in collaboration with his screenwriting partner Mark Jude Poirier and illustrated by Nancy Ahn. Owen compared graphic novel scenarios to screenplays, with the artist becoming “the whole movie production in one.”

Boiling a story down to essentials and single-frame images is a good way to practice economy; Owen said it’s helped him to make “ruthless transitions” in his fiction. Nina compared chapter and line breaks in fiction to “Cut To” in film. They allow you to jump freely from one point of view, time, or location to another.

THE EXERCISES:

Owen passed out xeroxes of Diane Arbus portrait photos, asking participants to choose one and write a short piece in first person, addressing the following:

— Something surprising about the character

— A beloved memory

— A sincere regret

In honor of Double Feature’s satyr/janitor, Nina suggested writing about a mundane encounter with someone–shoe-store clerk, bank teller, dental hygienist–in which that person becomes a mythological character.