Lobstergirl's Reviews > Regeneration

One author who creates wonderful characters, complete with first class 'imagined conversations and fabricated details' from historical facts, is Hilary Mantel. Try just a few pages of Wolf Hall to see what she does with Thomas Cromwell, Henry the VIII's lord chancellor.

I can't read novels written in the present tense. (I checked out Wolf Hall....) It's a pet peeve of mine.

"The last night, Wolsley gives him a package. Inside it is a small and hard object, a seal or ring. 'Open it when I'm gone.'
People keep walking in and out of the cardinal's chamber, carrying chests and bundles of paper. Cavendish wanders through, holding a silver monstrance.
'You will come north?' the cardinal says.
'I'll come to fetch you, the minute the king summons you back.' He believes and does not believe that this will happen.
The cardinal gets to his feet. There is constraint in the air. He, Cromwell, kneels for a blessing. The cardinal holds out a hand to be kissed. His turquoise ring is missing. The fact does not evade him. For a moment, the cardinal's hand rests on his shoulder, fingers spread, thumb in the hollow of his collarbone;
It is time he was gone. So much has been said between them that it is needless to add a marginal note. It is not for him now to gloss the text of their dealings, nor append a moral. This is not the occasion to embrace. If the cardinal has no more eloquence to offer, he surely has none. Before he has reached the door of the room the cardinal has turned back to the fireplace. He pulls his chair to the blaze, and raises a hand to shield his face; but his hand is not between himself and the fire, it is between himself and the closing door. (.....)
When he gets home, the servants ask him, are we to paint out the cardinal's coat of arms? No, by God, he says. On the contrary, repaint it. He stands back for a look. 'The choughs could look more lively. And we need a better scarlet for the hat.'

People write books based on a true story in hopes they will be made into films $$based on a true story$$. The books with the most antique furniture and period costuming contained therein will get fast-tracked to be out in time for Oscar season. They are often written in present tense because it reads like a ready-made screenplay, complete with notes for the actors regarding their "characters' motivations".

I believe "The Misfits" is the first instance of this. Arthur Miller states at the beginning something to the effect that it was his idea to write a piece intended to become a film, which was formatted like a short story but reads like the film should play out. It was for him merely a writing experiment. I don't have the impression he would have ever desired for all fiction fifty years hence to be written this way.

It's a horrible trend and I wish it would stop. But I'd put money down we'll see "Wolf Hall" on the screen by November 2013.

I also avoid films based on books, especially those I've read and loved. But just because an author uses the present tense doesn't mean she's really writing a screenplay. For me, the use of the present tense in Wolf Hall simply facilitated my involvement with the characters and the happenings described. Mantel is also very careful never to reveal her characters full motivations. She leaves plenty for the reader to figure out.

Fionnuala wrote: ""The last night, Wolsley gives him a package. Inside it is a small and hard object, a seal or ring. 'Open it when I'm gone.'
People keep walking in and out of the cardinal's chamber, carrying chest..."

Yeah, this is torturous for me to read.

Brixton wrote: "People write books based on a true story in hopes they will be made into films $$based on a true story$$. The books with the most antique furniture and period costuming contained therein will get f..."

Gross.

No torture intended. I rest my case.

Fionnuala wrote: "Mantel is also very careful never to reveal her characters full motivations. She leaves plenty for the reader to figure out."

Just for clarification, I did not mean character motivations in terms of plot (for the reader/audience, "what will happen next?"), I was referring to acting cues. These are details inserted into filmic texts to guide what the actor should try to convey with movement/posture, facial expression, or the delivery of dialogue. There are three in the passage you quoted above: "He believes and does not believe that this will happen."; "There is constraint in the air."; and "So much has been said between them that it is needless to add a marginal note."

So instead of making the effort to create an atmosphere of constraint, for example, the author simply throws down blunt and shorthandedly that it exists, and it becomes someone else's job to flesh that out. If the author had already properly established what exists in the past between characters, it would be needless to tell us so much has happened or been said between them. We would have already experienced this fact and could therefore bring the vibe the author is going for to the scene. (Alternatively, the author is being redundant.)

I don't mean to pick on a book you like nor to distract away from Lobstergirl's review of a different book, but it just seems to me that contemporary authors of fiction aren't these days even doing their job. I also am finding better and more thorough storytelling in non-fiction nowadays (and good reasons why people say, "You can't make this shit up!"); the made-up stuff I come across lately seems to require readers to do more and more of what was once the writer's work. And my impression is that is because writers of fiction are not writing literature anymore so much as they are writing structures of stories for readers(-as-actor, director, location scout, production, costume and set designer) to make more real and whole and compelling than they are willing or able to do themselves. A lot of people seem to like being David O. Selznick when they read a book, I don't, each to their own.

You argue your ground so well that I feel the ground I picked shifting under my feet and collapsing in on itself, leaving me and my objections, well, groundless...

Fascinating.