This month's passage proved especially challenging to emulate, and not just because of the sophistication of Strout's prose. Like Jack in Olive, Again, Roy in my novel in progress, The Book of Suggestive Coincidence, suffers from self-recrimination. (Does a novel exist without such a character?) If I wrote about Roy, however, the gravitational pull of the original passage would be too great to overcome. What I don't want, is to re-do Elizabeth Strout. What I do want, is to get down into the writing and try to learn how it works and how it was done.
Fortunately, I already have a passage which, like Strout's, uses a lot of repetition, a natural technique for interior monologues because our ruminations - or mine, at any rate - endlessly chew the same cud.
Throughout, I try to replace verb for verb, noun for noun, etcetera, making my scene as different as possible from the original. So for "Jack sat on the bench for a long time," I wrote, "Justin turned on the radio for some distracting music."
First, here's Strout's passage:
... And that was that! That was that.
Jack sat on the bench a long time. People walked by, or perhaps no people walked by for a while, but he kept thinking of his wife Betsy, and he wanted to howl. He understood only this: that he deserved all of it. He deserved the fact that right now he wore a pad in his underwear because of prostrate surgery, he deserved it; he deserved his daughter not wanting to speak to him because for years he had not wanted to speak to her -- she was gay; she was a gay woman, and that still made a small wave of uneasiness move through him. Betsy, though, did not deserve to be dead. He deserved to be dead, but Betsy did not deserve that status. And yet he felt a sudden fury at his wife -- "Oh, Jesus Christ Almighty," he muttered.
In my version, Justin Case reflects unfavorably on his previous therapist, "Dr. Brad."
Annemarie wanted him better. They all wanted him better.
Justin turned on the radio for some distracting noise, something to listen to, or perhaps not to listen to for awhile, and he tried lowering the emergency brake, but it refused to lower. He had just one insight: that he saw right through Dr. Brad. He saw right through the Native American chic of the Navajo blankets on his office wall, he saw right through it; he saw right through Dr. Brad's always trying to offer sympathy because after the accident, Justin had not wanted sympathy from anyone. Dr. Brad was a phony, he was a phony quack, which predictably made a big impression of sincerity on Annemarie. Annemarie did not see through Dr. Brad. Justin saw right through Dr. Brad, but Annemarie did not see through his act. And then he had a fluttery suspicion of Annemarie and Dr. Brad. "Oh, screw 'em both," he said.
I wrote the above without consulting the original passage in my manuscript, which follows.
Justin didn’t like Dr. Brad. He didn’t like his smooth hands or soothing voice. He didn’t like the way he said Justin’s name every sentence. He didn’t like how he told his patients to call him Dr. Brad. He didn’t like the faux Native American/Santa Fe decor with the hokey dream-catchers and the Navajo-Rug wall-hangings and the ugly silver and turquoise Kokopelli figures, like Dr. Brad wanted you to think he was some kind of shaman. He didn’t like the box of kleenex he kept ready in case someone cried.
When I compare them, I see how sing-song the original is. We almost expect Justin to say, "I do not like him, Sam I Am." This makes us take Justin less seriously, which oddly, suits me fine because my tone is more satiric than Strout's.
I think I'll stick with "saw through" instead of "didn't like." "Hate" is too strong, and to say Annemarie did like Dr. Brad is too limp. The contrast between Annemarie's and Justin's attitude, which I discovered from emulating Strout, does a lot to characterize all three characters. Justin's "fluttery suspicion," leads to the expletive, "Oh, screw 'em both," which like, "Oh, Jesus Christ," may have a double meaning.
Why not try your own hand emulating Strout's passage, and paste it in the comments?
Until next month.
Fascinating observations!
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