Lies We Tell Ourselves
Jan. 12th, 2011 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraMet up with B in one of my favorite cafes yesterday to swap Campbell chapters. Coffee very strong, tables very close together. Two young professionals chattered away in Russian over a PowerPoint to my right; a precocious child discoursed to its mother on lactose intolerance to my left. Delightful sense of lives being lived, lives overlapping.
Ben looked stressed and uncomfortable.
“Is something up with you?” I asked. Had the Girlfriend issued the ultimatum – marry me or else? Of course, he’d be afraid to tell me.
“It’s this place,” Ben said. “I hate it. It’s so loud in here – I can’t hear myself think.”
I shrugged. “Well, you don’t go to coffee houses to think. You go to coffee houses to eavesdrop.”
The New Year’s resolution was to get serious about this collaborative project. Write a couple of hours every day. Meet twice a week. It’s a commercial plot with a built-in audience – any Baby Boomer who ever had a bliss to follow plus myriad John Steinbeck fans. But I had to question our dedication to the task. Get together plans had fallen through four times in the previous week – first when B became incapacitated with the killer sinus infection, then when his work schedule changed. And I knew for myself the writing was going very, very slowly, some necessary level of engagement just wasn’t happening for me.
Really, I was pretending to write this book to have an excuse to hang out with Ben. I miss hanging out with Ben.
What I wasn’t prepared for was how dreadful Ben’s chapter was. I mean, really, really awful. Clumpy expository prose.
Had he put any effort into this at all?
Didn’t remark on this, of course. Quietly congratulated him on advancing the plot so efficiently. “Right,” he snapped. “Well, this is a mystery novel. It’s not a literary novel. I figured I needed to do something to counteract you when you go over the top.
Now, of course, I read mystery novels. I don’t know that Ben does. And I’d have to say the best examples of the genre are those that combine – well, not a literary sensibility per se. But certainly a conceptual lens with subtext and selective status details, character point of view heightened by the storyline’s impending crises. Think Martin Cruz Smith’s Renko books, or Ian Rankin’s Rebuses. Think early P.D. James and Patricia Hightower, and anything at all by Raymond Chandler or Ruth Rendell.
Terrible prose is not something I’d expect from Ben. Doesn’t auger well for the project.
Afterwards we played Peraquackey. I beat the pants off him.
###
Réuben scored just 3 out of 10 on his ESL test. According to the analysis: Functions with some difficulty in situations related to immediate needs. Can handle routine entry-level jobs that involve only the most basic oral communication, and in which all tasks can be demonstrated. A native English speaker used to dealing with limited English speakers will have great difficulty communicating with a person at this level.
I feel like I’ve failed him in some essential way. I have no teaching experience whatsoever, don’t know anything about educational theory. Last month I did a very considered review of phonetics to prep him for the writing exercises we’ve now begun – rules for long vowels, rules for short vowels, rules for blended consonants. Spent a week on the present continuous (trying to avoid the fact that participles are adjectives.) I take a far more formal approach than Sarah – the delightfully spacey ESL volunteer coordinator – recommends because Réuben, a university graduate in his native El Salvador, is used to learning that way. I sensed a core resistance to dumbing down.
But I guess I’m going to have to dumb it down ‘cause the cerebral approach ain’t working.
###
I tutor twice a week in Ithaca. When we got done, it was snowing quite heavily. The roads were unplowed, frozen. Somewhere just outside Varna, I saw what I thought was a deer on the road and braked too suddenly. Almost skidded into a ditch.
You can do this, I advised myself, sitting shaking by the side of the road. I knew that I was lying but what other choice did I have?
Does this survival shit ever get easier?
Ben looked stressed and uncomfortable.
“Is something up with you?” I asked. Had the Girlfriend issued the ultimatum – marry me or else? Of course, he’d be afraid to tell me.
“It’s this place,” Ben said. “I hate it. It’s so loud in here – I can’t hear myself think.”
I shrugged. “Well, you don’t go to coffee houses to think. You go to coffee houses to eavesdrop.”
The New Year’s resolution was to get serious about this collaborative project. Write a couple of hours every day. Meet twice a week. It’s a commercial plot with a built-in audience – any Baby Boomer who ever had a bliss to follow plus myriad John Steinbeck fans. But I had to question our dedication to the task. Get together plans had fallen through four times in the previous week – first when B became incapacitated with the killer sinus infection, then when his work schedule changed. And I knew for myself the writing was going very, very slowly, some necessary level of engagement just wasn’t happening for me.
Really, I was pretending to write this book to have an excuse to hang out with Ben. I miss hanging out with Ben.
What I wasn’t prepared for was how dreadful Ben’s chapter was. I mean, really, really awful. Clumpy expository prose.
Had he put any effort into this at all?
Didn’t remark on this, of course. Quietly congratulated him on advancing the plot so efficiently. “Right,” he snapped. “Well, this is a mystery novel. It’s not a literary novel. I figured I needed to do something to counteract you when you go over the top.
Now, of course, I read mystery novels. I don’t know that Ben does. And I’d have to say the best examples of the genre are those that combine – well, not a literary sensibility per se. But certainly a conceptual lens with subtext and selective status details, character point of view heightened by the storyline’s impending crises. Think Martin Cruz Smith’s Renko books, or Ian Rankin’s Rebuses. Think early P.D. James and Patricia Hightower, and anything at all by Raymond Chandler or Ruth Rendell.
Terrible prose is not something I’d expect from Ben. Doesn’t auger well for the project.
Afterwards we played Peraquackey. I beat the pants off him.
Réuben scored just 3 out of 10 on his ESL test. According to the analysis: Functions with some difficulty in situations related to immediate needs. Can handle routine entry-level jobs that involve only the most basic oral communication, and in which all tasks can be demonstrated. A native English speaker used to dealing with limited English speakers will have great difficulty communicating with a person at this level.
I feel like I’ve failed him in some essential way. I have no teaching experience whatsoever, don’t know anything about educational theory. Last month I did a very considered review of phonetics to prep him for the writing exercises we’ve now begun – rules for long vowels, rules for short vowels, rules for blended consonants. Spent a week on the present continuous (trying to avoid the fact that participles are adjectives.) I take a far more formal approach than Sarah – the delightfully spacey ESL volunteer coordinator – recommends because Réuben, a university graduate in his native El Salvador, is used to learning that way. I sensed a core resistance to dumbing down.
But I guess I’m going to have to dumb it down ‘cause the cerebral approach ain’t working.
I tutor twice a week in Ithaca. When we got done, it was snowing quite heavily. The roads were unplowed, frozen. Somewhere just outside Varna, I saw what I thought was a deer on the road and braked too suddenly. Almost skidded into a ditch.
You can do this, I advised myself, sitting shaking by the side of the road. I knew that I was lying but what other choice did I have?
Does this survival shit ever get easier?
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 03:45 pm (UTC)Over the years I've stolen a lot more from Ben than he's stolen from me, writing-wise -- he really is (or maybe was) a brilliant writer but I had the publishing contacts and he didn't. After we divorced I discovered this was a point of great bitterness for him. But I was supporting us! And he actually had an agent from a very well known literary agency wanting to rep him early in our marriage, and he just threw that opportunity away -- I couldn't believe it.
I do appreciate yr concern. And God knows he siphoned in many ways over the years. But in this one aspect he's actually a fountain.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-12 04:52 pm (UTC)Well, if he keeps you slogging through the tough parts of writing, that's something. I'm just scared he'll steal your work and miraculously get it sold without your getting any credit. Bc I'm paranoid of him like that.