Going over There

I  moved to a new home that’s dedicated to writing and reading-related stuff. I’d love to see you over there, my wonderful blog friends. 

Wings

That’s what summer looks like around here.

The Spirits of the Air

If Blake is to be believed, the spirts of the air “live in the smells of fruit.”  I kid you not.  And even better, this all happens in autumn.  Investigating this fruit-related issue, I have discovered that he is indeed correct.  At least in Berkeley, California, where the nectarine and the peach are the first thing you see when you walk into a produce market.  Even in Safeway.  Also, the tomato.

I have been disconnected from the internet for all of August, which is a good thing, because the break allowed me to gather myself together.  Actually, first I fell apart under the onslaught of teenagers (the relevant statistics there are 2 and 16.  Two of them.  And they are 16.)  They don’t live in Autumn, as I do.  They’re all about heedless summer.  That’s good, unless you’re the mother.  And then you have to increase the meds and do a lot of yoga.  Which is precisely what I have been doing all of August, to be absolutely frank.

And I would like to say that those of you who so nobly embarked on the BlogLily Summer Reading Program are heroes in my eyes, because your summers were, well, obviously somewhat heedful.  And those of you whose packets have been delayed by adolescent angst?  Would you email me please and I will send you the BlogLily Fruit Smelling Fall Reading Packet? (Also, I would just like to get some e-mails about something book-related.)  There is no  reason in the world that you should be denied this pleasure.  Fall is, after all, the time of the book report, is it not?

xo

The True Deceiver

I have no idea how I ended up with Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver in my book bag.  (Tove Jansson is the author of the Moomintroll series, which is wonderful also, but in a different way.) Did I see it on one of those “other people bought this” recommendations on Amazon?  Did a blogger mention it?  Was it face up on a bookstore table?  Where do our books come from, anyway?    But if I get into THAT then I will not write about THIS, which is, right now, more interesting,

The True Deceiver is a simple story, set in a village in Scandinavia during the winter.  The writing is beautifully spare, psychologically astute and the story it tells is an utterly unique one, or at least it was to me.  The story is driven by the desire of Katri, a  woman the village children call a witch because she has yellow eyes and a wolf-like dog, to find a home for her brother who seems to be “simple” but might just be quiet.  Katri, who is a business-like, straightforward, truth teller,  focuses on Anna, an innocent-seeming, older woman who is the author of children’s books which feature meticulous drawings of the forest floor in the spring and rabbits covered in flowers.  The two women could not be more different and it is inevitable that when Katri comes into Anna’s home and uses truth as a kind of deceit neither of them will be the same when the snow melts.

The book is about honesty and artifice and what happens to us when we encounter and engage in them.  Jansson has a remarkable eye and ear for human behavior and a true compassion for her characters.  She began writing for adults when she was in her 50s, and I wonder how much that has to do with the beauty of her work.  It’s as though she’s figured out just how much she needs to say and no more.  Like Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, True Deceiver is a meticulously crafted novel that carefully charts the relationships among an isolated group of characters.  I’d put it in the literary fiction category of my summer reading, although it’s so transcendent that I wonder if maybe we should invent another category for it.

Let’s see, points totals:  Nobody recommended this, not as far as I could tell, so not points there.  I did not check it out from the library (which makes me think I bought it at a bookstore.  Or stole it, since I can’t remember where it came from — a little bit like Katri, actually.)  Definitely  no points there.  But I did write it down and write about it and I snuck in Housekeeping in case you’re wondering what other beautiful book it reminds me of.  30 BlogLily Summer Reading Program Points.  (But then I don’t get the boomerang — or other prize —  because I’m pretty sure that’s totally not allowed.)

The Untailored Spy

I adore George Smiley.  You probably do too, because you probably have already read all the John leCarre books that feature him.  Lucky me, I had not, which is why I chose two of them as my BlogLily Summer Reading Program (which I like to think of, acronymically, as B-SLURP) genre choices.  The first, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the second, the Honorable Schoolboy, are among the best books I’ve read in a very long time.

George Smiley, who is at the center of both books (and a third I haven’t yet read, called A Perfect Spy thank you Joe, for pointing out that the third book is actually called Smiley’s People), is basically all about righting the sinking ship that is the British secret service in the 1960s and 1970s. Smiley’s work is not triumphant or inevitable, as maybe an American’s might be — in Smiley’s world, there are no rocket launching cars or poison gas shooting pens.  Instead, budgets are tight, and notes are delivered later than they should be because people get busy, there’s little political support for Smiley, and plenty of Americans who look down on the British as the worst kind of amateurs.  These books are imbued with a kind of melancholy, not so much about a lost world or lost values, but more about aging and endings in general and the losses that come with them.  They are about the cold war, of course, but also about the compromises of age, about the fatigue of living, and about the way in which we still go on and try to protect, as best we can, the things we have built or have admired as they were built.

Which brings me to Smiley — a man in his sixties who wears beautifully made suits that are too big for him, marries a beautiful woman (Lady Ann) who, like his suits, doesn’t fit him, and so leaves him again and again to his sorrow, but never anger.  Smiley closes his eyes and thinks when someone tells him something you’d expect to make him shout, and pads around and patiently figures out the most complicated things, not with flashes of insight, but by looking closely at the budgets for old projects, while he never puts sugar in his tea or coffee — always saccharine — because he is, regrettably, watching his weight (how delicate is that?  he is never “on a diet.”) In most spy books, characters either have no limits or their limits are weaknesses they must fight against.  Not so with Smiley.  He has plenty of limits, but they seem to all be external.  He is a man who appears to some — the more foolish people in these stories, in fact — to be weak and ineffectual, but he is anything but.

If it is true that plot is simply character in action, then leCarre’s plots are also brilliant.  After a while you don’t care that the twists and turns of the story are difficult to follow because you realize, or you accept, that the plot isn’t really the point — the point is that the world is terribly imperfect, and dangerous and difficult to understand and men struggle with these things bravely and often fail but sometimes don’t.  And that occasionally, and at great price, a temporary equilibrium is achieved.  It is leCarre’s greatness that this balance is created not by strong confident men with sports cars but by almost finished men who nevertheless have a kind of wisdom that I, for one, am grateful to have come across this summer.

It’s Sleeping in My Memory

you're breaking my heart, you're shaking my confidence daily

For reasons unclear to me, as I was driving to work, some lines from Alexander Pope’s stupendously long poem, An Essay on Criticism, popped into my head.  I would like to say that the poem is roughly 362 pages long, and I only read up to these lines, which occur very soon into the poem.  I mean, I’m sure I “read” this poem, but only if “read” is defined loosely as “slept five minutes, forgot entire meaning, read five minutes, slept five minutes, forgot entire meaning, repeat for six weeks.”   The whole thing is written in couplets.  Reading it was like riding on a bouncing stagecoach.  Anyway, the lines are:   “Unfinished things, one knows not what to call,/Their generation’s so equivocal.” 

What impresses me now is that Pope pulled off rhyming “not what to call” with “equivocal.”  I mean, really.  ” Call” doesn’t  truly rhyme with equivocal.  But when you make a line out of those four words (“not what to call”) you get something that rhymes with equivocal and doesn’t sound stupid.  What must have been floating around in his head, waiting to become a rhyme I cannot even begin to imagine. 

But I digress.  What I really have today is a question.  I am curious about what pops into people’s heads.  This is the first time I can remember that actual poetry appeared.  Mostly what comes to me when I’m driving to work is either (a) something someone said to me once that so shocked me that I still think about it (for example, a boyfriend, on his sexual responsibilities: “I am not a service station,”) or lines from pretty much any song on Bridge Over Troubled Water (“still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”)     

What lines of poetry or dialogue or description or wisdom or insult pop up in your head with some regularity?

French Lessons: Champagne All Around

A few years ago, I did a writing residency at the Atlantic Center for  the Arts in Florida.  It was magical, that place.  They had a room full of beach cruisers for us to ride — and the ocean wasn’t very far.  The writer who was the “master artist,” Antonya Nelson, turned out to be called Toni, and to be not in the least bit scary, which was my great fear.  I got a lot done there.  And I became friends with some really remarkable women.

One of these women was Ellen Sussman.  I’d been seeing her anthologies around in bookstores with provocative names like Bad Girls, and Dirty Words (which has an essay in it by my first writing teacher, Thaisa Frank) and honestly, I was as intimidated by her as I was by Antonya Nelson.

And then I met Ellen and she wasn’t intimidating in the least.  What she is, among many other things, is a really disciplined writer.  While we were in Florida, she sold French Lessons, a novel that she had been sweating over for quite a while, to get it just right.  Apparently, she got it even more than just right.  There was an auction and a glamorous trip to New York to meet with her new editor and a bunch of other stuff that left me speechless because it seemed so, well, professional.  And then there was champagne.

And here’s the book.  It just came out.  It’s wise and bright like Ellen.  And quite moving.  It’s the sort of book that makes you feel just a little bit more alive, more awake, and grateful that Paris exists and people like Ellen are around to write about it.

So, champagne all around.

The Beauty of the Bookmark

ha! and you thought birthmarks were hot

It was an arts & crafts kind of weekend, blog friends.  Specifically, I spent an embarrassing amount of time making bookmarks and booklets and sizing up my stash of stationery items to see what else might go in the official BlogLily Summer Reading Program mailers.  I also made one thrilling trip to Elmwood Stationers, our neighborhood independent stationery store that I, alone, keep robustly profitable.  On that trip, I acquired clear plastic gift bags in which to stick the BLSRP mailers.  These classy items were a revelation to me.  I had no idea that a private individual could acquire stuff like this, thinking as I did that they were specially made for far fancier operations.  Apparently not.  Total cost of classy stationery items:  2.99.  Everything else:  free.  (Well, except for the Martha Stewart folding contraption, which is actually very cool and I am certain will not gather dust, being useful as well as cool.)

If you have given me your address, your mailer should arrive soon.  If you have not, please send it to me at bloglily@yahoo.com.  For you latecomers, your version of the BLSRP mailer will reflect the many ways in which my arts & crafts skills improved throughout the weekend.  For example, I learned that the proper amount of glue is a lot less than I thought it was.  Actually, the votes are still out on that.  If you get a bookmark that starts to fall apart, don’t tell me, okay?  Just glue it back together.

Tomorrow, I have a guest poster who’s got some ideas about good summer reads.

xo BL

Erased

It is a sign of my robust mental health that I have taken in stride the fact that , for the last four or five days, the comments I leave on wordpress blogs never actually show up on those blogs.

If you have a wordpress blog, and you want to know what I said, it’s probably in your spam filter.  Fortunately, getting something out of your spam filter is not the same as taking something out of the trash.  For that, you need an extra, extra long pair of tongs and a facemask.  (Depending on whose trash we’re talking about anyway.)

Getting something out of your spam filter just involves some clicking.  Unless you hate me and really did erase my comment.  But I can’t believe you’d do that.

And that is it for today.

ChicFic

chicfic is the new ladylit 

Here is my first BlogLily Summer Reading Program report.  Haha.  I am ahead of everyone else because I have the prototype program booklet thing in my hands. (Yours goes out this Friday.)  But then again, I am not actually competing for any of the prizes because that is not allowed.  It’s not allowed ever in any program of any kind, is it?  Still, in the interest of participating in all the fun, here is my review:

In Her Shoes, Jennifer Weiner.

I checked this out from the South Lake Tahoe Public Library because I am under the impression that this is women’s fiction, which is one of the categories of reads for the BL Summer Reading Program.  Why am I under this impression?  Because Jennifer Weiner eloquently and unapologetically says it is.  And she should know, because she wrote it.  Plus, she went to Princeton, and I think that gives her a little added authority, don’t you?  (You don’t?  Well, maybe you have a point.  By the time you’re in your thirties, your Ivy League credentials have aged into irrelevance.  And then all that matters is whether you can write a book that made me cry.)

Book made me laugh:  Yes.  Jennifer Weiner is funny.  No question.

Book made me cry:  It did!  It did!  I gave up all critical distance and gave myself completely up to the story, which is basically the tale of two sisters — one sensible and a size 14 (would that be Sense?) and one dyslexic and hot as hell (would that be Sensibility?)  One hurts the other.  Guess who?  (Yes that would be sensibility who does the hurting.) They wear the same size shoes (that would be the title).  One is a lawyer (that would be Sense.)  They must learn to get along, and they must also come to terms with their mother’s death early in their lives and the horrible fall out from that death.  It is a really fine plot.

Did I cringe at the writing?:  No.  Jennifer Weiner is a good writer.  She is clear and clever and a good plotter.  Whatever this is, it is not trash.

Did I learn something new about myself, about life, about people, about how fiction is put together?  No, I did not.

Did I expect to learn something new about myself, about life, about people, about how fiction is put together?  Not really.  Why must every book do this?  Jennifer Weiner did not set out to do this, so why should she be penalized for not accomplishing something she never even suggested she was going to do?

Is this a bad book?  No.  As I mentioned, I enjoyed it.  I like crying at stories when I know that everything is going to work out.  It’s like a movie where you know exactly what’s going to happen but the acting is good, the locations are lovely, the dialogue is sharp — you know you’re in good hands.

Is it a great book?  No.  Sense and Sensibility is a great book.  It is very difficult to write a great book and really I very much doubt a great one has yet been written this century.

Other books like this:  Well, I believe I have mentioned Sense and Sensibility which is also the story of two sisters who have to learn to love properly.  They do, however, get along through most of the book.  Another book this reminds me of is Cathleen Schine’s  The Three Weismanns of Westport, which I vaguely remember is modeled after Sense and Sensibility, although honestly I wouldn’t have realized that if the book jacket didn’t mention it.

Summer Reading: Prototype

number of staples removed while making this Prototype: 9

Here is what I learned when I made the BlogLily Summer Reading Program Booklet Prototype.

1.  I will have to call the finished reading program book  a prototype because otherwise the people who’ve signed up for the Summer Reading Program will think they’re getting the above-captioned, messy-looking item.

2.  The Prototype has a lot of staple holes in it but no actual staples.  That is because I cannot figure out which direction things should go in until I staple them and realize that, in fact, I have stapled the entire booklet closed and no one will be able to use it. Then I have to remove the staples and start again.  Note:  The Actual Booklets will be made using rubber cement.

3.  There is something out there that allows you to fold cardstock without making the folded arts & crafts item look like someone stepped on it.  I think it is called a bone folder, which is a weird name, when you think about it.

4.  I could have made ten different categories, but I have always been so relieved to realize that something I thought had ten parts actually had eight, so I went with it to increase the Summer Reading joy.  Also, I miscounted.

5.  I like those accordion-style books and have never actually had one, so I made one for the Program Booklet.  But because I wasn’t quite sure how to make it fold out properly or where to begin the numbering there was a lot of stapling and unstapling going on (see above-captioned photograph).

6.  It is better to use a fine point sharpie on flimsy paper than a thick one.  This is not a package you are sending back to Amazon.

7.  There are an infinite number of reading categories — I picked eight of them out of a hat.  Well, not actually a hat, more out of thin air.

8.  Everyone who signed up for the Summer Reading Swag Program will have to send me a mailing address.  Dorothy, The Bookseller’s Daughter, has reminded me that it would be helpful to know where you should send your mailing address:  to bloglily@yahoo.com

9.  What is a reading program without a couple of rules, so you will feel that you have accomplished something?  I will have to pick some rules out of thin air.  This has been known to fall flat, but I’m doing it anyway.

The Rules:

You will need to read eight books.  In eight categories.  You will earn 10 points just for performing the basic activity of writing down the name of the book in your Program Booklet.  There are bonus points for doing more in each category, and although they are basically the same from category to category, I’m going to write them down, so there is no confusion.

1.  A summer read from ten years ago.  Bonus Points if you re-read (or read it, if you never did get to it):  10.   Bonus Points if you blog about it or otherwise write about it:  10.  (I love bonus points.  One of our family mottos is “always do the extra credit.)  Bonus points if you identify in your booklet or on your blog at least one other book that is like this one.  Bonus points if you check it out from the library:  10

2.  A book your librarian recommends.  What is a summer reading program that does not involve a trip to the library?  Go ask your librarian to recommend a book.  Read it (10 bonus points),  blog or write about it the conventional way  (10 bonus points), check it out from the library (10 bonus points), name a book that’s like it (10 bonus points).

3.  Genre Fiction.  Pick a book in your favorite genre. Read it (10 bonus points),  blog or write about it on paper (10 bonus points), check it out from the library (10 bonus points), name a book that’s like it (10 bonus points), answer the question:  is there any beautifully written genre fiction?

4.  Literary Fiction.  Figure out what that is and then pick one.  Read it (10 bonus points),  blog or write about it on paper (10 bonus points), check it out from the library (10 bonus points), name a book that’s like it (10 bonus points).

5.   Genre Fiction.  It is summer.  Repeat Number 3, above.  Read it (10 bonus points),  blog or write about it on paper (10 bonus points), check it out from the library (10 bonus points), name a book that’s like it (10 bonus points).

6.  Women’s Fiction.  Is there such a thing?  I am interested in this question.  You might not be.  If you aren’t, just pick any book you want to pick.  But make sure it’s written by a woman, unless you want to pick one that’s written by a man, which is fine by me.  Read it (10 bonus points),  blog or write about it on paper (10 bonus points), check it out from the library (10 bonus points), name a book that’s like it (10 bonus points).

7.  Men’s Fiction.  Why are there no books identified as “men’s fiction”?  Or are there?   Pick one.  Should it be written by a man or a woman?  It’s up to you.  Read it (10 bonus points),  blog or write about it on paper (10 bonus points), check it out from the library (10 bonus points), name a book that’s like it (10 bonus points).

8.  Whatever You Want.  Read it (10 bonus points),  blog or write about it on paper (10 bonus points), check it out from the library (10 bonus points), name a book that’s like it (10 bonus points).  If you don’t like any of the 1-7 categories above, then just do 8.

Prizes?  Of course.

Bookmarks?  One will be included in your packet, which will contain a Spiffed up Version of the Prototype, and a writing instrument.

Counting Points:  You will have to do that.  I know you would never cheat.  Because you do not know the prizes.  There could be cars, there could be boomerangs, there could be books, there could be candy.  Who knows?  (I don’t know, is the real answer.)

xoxo L

The BlogLily Summer Reading Program

Although this looks suspiciously like a wooden worm, it is actually a boomerang.

I love everything about library summer reading programs, but the thing I love the most  is the swag:  the little sheet they give you so you can fill in the names of the books you’ve read.  The stickers you stick on the little sheet as evidence that you’ve finished a book.  The bookmarks!  The buttons!!  And the prizes:  the ticket to an A’s game, your very own paperback book.

Which brings me to my favorite summer reading prize of all time, the one they’re giving out at the Berkeley Public Library this summer:  a boomerang.  No.  Really?  I love that.

The boomerang is the perfect symbol for what happens when you become an enthusiastic reader.  You read that book and your first reaction is almost always to tell someone else about it.  And before you know it, they’re telling you about the book they just read that you’ll like too.  That’s about the path of a boomerang, isn’t it?

the path book sharing takes

Actually, around here the first reaction to reading a good book is to dress up like your favorite character and go around sword fighting people.  Or to immediately ask, “are there any more like this?”  That last question is my favorite reading question of all time.  You can do this on Amazon, of course, but it’s a lot of fun to see if you can come up with “more like this.”

I’m pretty sure I have a point here.  Yes, I do.  I’m going to have a BlogLily Summer Reading Program because I don’t see why kids should have all the fun.  It will involve downloadable swag, so you too can follow along.  You might have to supply your own stickers.  In a pinch, you can just draw something.  And yes, there will be prizes.

Stay tuned.  I’m not an artist.  But I figure I can make a decent summer reading sheet thing.  I’ll give you the sheet, but you have to write down your books.  Most importantly, you have to do that “more like this” recommendation.  You don’t, however, have to give them boomerang ratings.  Unless you want to.  And even if no one signs up, because, you know, kids these days are too busy playing on their i-things to fill out the reading program sheets, I will still be doing this.

In advance of the official roll out of the BlogLily Summer Reading Program, I am going to report on my very first summer reading book.  I’m well on my way to winning that boomerang.

Book:  Ordinary Thunderstorms

Author:  William Boyd

Boomerangs:  5 (out of 5, naturally)

Before it was cancelled because it was probably not a great show, the bloglily household spent many pleasurable Tuesday evenings watching a show called The Event.  It was about aliens and humans, and whether they could live together when there were a lot of aliens and the humans were taking up all the room.  What I loved most about this show was the hero.  He was an unlikely hero — a good looking young guy of about 30, with what looked like excellent computer skills and a fine future in IT.  But then, oh, but then!  His life is turned upside down and suddenly he is on the run from pretty much everybody.  And you know what?  He acquits himself beautifully, despite the fact that he was really headed for a tech career.  Turns out, he’s strong and fast and totally driven.  Plus, it comes in handy to know how to hack into the CIA’s computers.  Plus the white house’s.

That’s what the hero of William Boyd’s  Ordinary Thunderstorms is like.  He’s an unassuming enough scientist who knows a lot about clouds. And then, and then — he witnesses a murder, gets blamed for it and all of a sudden, he’s sleeping on the ground and growing a heavy beard.  That he acquits himself well gives nothing away.  The pleasure is in reading how he does it.  What could be a more perfect summer book than that?  It is not, for example, Tess of the d’Urbervilles.  Quite possibly, and objectively Tess is a better book than Ordinary Thunderstorms, but, if what you’re after is a hero who’s good on the run, Tess is not your woman.   .

Only criticism:  Actually, not a criticism.  More a thought.  It’s awfully hard sometimes to pick a really good villain.  But pharma?  Somehow that’s just not scary enough.

Are there more like this?  Well, there’s a great Harrison Ford movie called The Fugitive that you might enjoy.  Doctor on the run.  I believe Tommy Lee Jones is chasing him.

Back

Here are some things that happened while I was gone:

1.  When you don’t write in your blog, but you keep your feedreader open, you have a lot more time to listen to what other people have to say.

2.  This makes you remember something you really value about being part of a community of people who write and read blogs:  People other than you have a lot to say — sometimes what they say is incredibly funny, or inspiring, or thought-provoking.

3.  There’s real joy out there.  Nova, whose blog I’ve been reading for a long time, and who thought at one time that no one would ever want her books, has written and sold a second book.  It came out today.  It sounds wonderful.

4.  There’s unimaginable sorrow.  Elizabeth, whose blog I’ve also been reading for a long time, is very sick and in hospice care.  She’s such a talented writer, and a wonderfully loving person.  Here is a story she wrote.  If you read one thing today, this should be it.

5.  Although it’s true that I learned a lot of other things while I was away, tonight these seem like enough to illustrate my point.  The people I’ve met while blogging aren’t virtual people.  They’re real, as real as flesh and bone, and as important.

Gone for a While (June 14 to be exact)

I promise not to fall in or otherwise embarrass myself

After my recent, exhausting spate of blog posting, I’m confining my online presence until mid-June to checking our bank account to make sure I haven’t spent all our money and to that page up there that’s got a great picture of what happens when I spend too much time online.I’m also going to keep reading blogs, because I like knowing what people are up to. But no facebook, and no twitter. I know that’s sort of like saying I’m going on a diet, but I’m going to keep eating chocolate, just no potato chips and no ice cream. Moderation in all things, though, right? In the past, when I’ve had to turn off the computer to get things done, I just haven’t said anything. I doubt anyone thought I’d died in a car accident, but still…

See you on this blog on June 14th.  Flag Day!!

That will give you enough time to read the whole post on dialogue in 1984.  Which you should read, because, as I point out, most of it is written by Aldous Huxley, George Orwell (what an idiot I am sometimes) rather than me.

Talking at Cross-Purposes: Dialogue

watching you

The other day when I was writing about Albert Brooks’ new book, 2030, and talking about how I thought the dialogue was not so great, I briefly considered giving some examples.  And then I thought, good God, who’d want to read all THAT plus all the other stuff I have to say.   But today it occurred to me that if most of this post is written by George Orwell and comes from 1984, that can’t be so bad.

Before I started writing fiction seriously, I never gave much thought to dialogue. (Instead, my bete noir was endless landscape descriptions, which I just skipped, so as not to ruin my enjoyment of the plot).   Now that I have to write it myself, though, I realize that some dialogue is better than others and that good dialogue actually does a lot of stuff.  Among other things, really fine dialogue (1) moves the story along, (2) makes us feel tension and so makes us want to keep reading; (3) helps us see something about a character we hadn’t seen before and maybe, for good measure, (4) makes us see something interesting about the world we hadn’t seen before.

To accomplish this, good dialogue very often shows characters being thwarted or thwarting other characters —  in good dialogue, you see people who might disagree, evade, challenge each other, tell lies, work harder to get what they want, and in so doing maybe even get into more hot water than they’re already in.   They don’t have to yell or scream to do this, either.  You can open an Austen novel to any page that has dialogue in it and you will see people doing these very things, in the most genteel of tones.

To illustrate this, I’ve picked a piece from 1984 and one from 2030, both dystopian novels with numbers — years in fact — in their titles. Both the 1984 passage and the 2030 passage involve one character seeking information from another.  They’re chosen somewhat at random — I picked the first places I saw dialogue in which there’s information gathering.

As it turns out, there isn’t actually a lot of dialogue in 1984.  It’s a book that very much focuses on Winston’s experience of the world in which he lives and toward which he grows increasingly opposed.  Because it’s a book that concerns itself with thought control, it’s no surprise that we see a lot of Winston resisting — within himself and in his diary —  efforts to circumscribe his world by circumscribing the language available to him.  But here’s an example of dialogue in which we learn something about Winston, Winston’s world, and something larger about our own lives — which might make us uncomfortable, and which also deepens the story.

In this passage, Winston goes to a bar to mingle with the “proles” the class that’s still out of reach of the efforts of the thought police.  He strikes up a conversation with an older man, a prole who doesn’t seem afraid to say what he thinks, if only to say that he doesn’t want to order his beer in the metric system but the old way — by the pint.  Winston tries to get the man to tell him if things were better in the past.  But the older man can’t do this — or Wilson doesn’t think he can — because the man’s answers are particular, rather than general.  And so he can only tell Winston stories about what life was like for him in the past.

The prole, as it turns out, isn’t an historian.  He’s a storyteller.  And really, the difference between the two is a lot like the difference between a summary and a story, one of the very things that distinguishes 2030 from 1984.    Here it is.  Yes, it is long.  But if you haven’t read 1984 or you haven’t read it in a while,  it’s worth your time :