Excerpt: The Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
I particularly enjoyed this excerpt the most as to me it really stood out with the varied syntax and sentence structure. Instantly switching from super long 3 line sentences to a few words reflects and emphasises very much on his perhaps raceyness and uncertainty - we can even possibly imagine him saying this in real life. I think that this sort of effect added a sort of somewhat realism about the play, even if the story itself seemed to not be genuinely realistic. However, this contrast between the actually storyline and the realism in which it was written seems to be very effective, as the reader is able to engage and relate to situation - even if they had not been there themselves. I also think this fitted in with the actual theme and dramatic effect of the play as a whole as it shows sometimes that maybe words can show the seriousness of an issue. The occasional tense sense was also a bit hard to follow at times, presumably as it was done deliberately to get the reader to focus harder on the story to represent that things were not as simple as they seemed? Overall a good exerpt that really kept in touch with the reader.
The End
It was dark. I unknowingly entered the pitch black hole of darkness I would forever be trapped in. I looked around for help... there was no sign of humanity. Where was I? How had I allowed myself to get here? I looked around. I saw nothing. An empty street with empty hearts... I could hear it in the obstinate silence. I looked up to see a star. Mum would tell me when I was younger that by looking up at star I'd find a guardian angel to set me free, and to show me the light. She was wrong. This isn't a fairytale. This is a walking deathtrap inviting me along for the thrill. There isn't any thrills here though. I am alone... away from home. Just not in the zone. I wondered what Mum would think of me now. I looked out to see a car; shiny, headlights on - completely unaware. Breaks at the ready I heard them screech before I even heard myself think. Silence.
in this piece i avoided going into extra detail to kind of represent the fact that 'he' wasn't aware of the situation himself. And that like real life things will go faster that you can comprehend them. Comments appreciated :)
ReplyDeleteYour first sentence is a good one: a short, sharp declarative, rooted in the concrete, which locates the reader temporally (night-time, we assume), but also introduces a slight sense of mystery due to our narrator having an obstructed view of the story-world. However, your second sentence diffuses this effect; ‘unknowingly’ is an arrhythmic, slightly awkward adverb, and it thus breaks the text’s hold on the reader. I also think it may have been better to show that the narrator unknowingly entered the darkness, than to tell us, especially as the sentence ends with a similar abstraction/piece of exposition (‘I would forever be trapped in’).
ReplyDeleteFollowing this are more sentences which aren’t particularly rooted in the concrete, the specific, or the personal (‘I looked around for help… there was no sign on humanity. Where was I?’). As such the text begins to lose interest – there’s no sense of place, no clearly delineated character, and the narrator’s situation, for me, seems too abstract and impersonal to engage the reader.
The second half of the paragraph individuates the narrator, and for that reason I feel it’s stronger. In your discussion of ‘Big Sur’ you talked about the seeming “realism” of the excerpt, particularly in relation to the colloquial style Kerouac adopts. Similarly, you aim for a “realistic” narrative voice, although I think your narrator mimics real-life thought-patterns, rather than speech-patterns. I think this attempt to put the interiority of the character’s mind down on paper works pretty well. The quick shift of connection from the object (the star) to the childhood memory it summons is effective, (by the way, this kind of object-memory movement is often seen as characterising the modernists – read any Joyce/Woolf/Mansfield/etc.?) and the close repetitions of ‘I looked around’ also similarly replicate human thought/speech. However, my favourite touch of ‘realism’ is the way the narrator keeps coming up with rhymes, or breaking into near-lyricism. Not only does this reflect how human thought can (sometimes) operate, but it also says a lot about the character – a very endearing touch!
However, you falter again with the last couple of sentences. First off: is that meant to be ‘breaks’, or should it be ‘brakes’? Secondly, if this excerpt is the narrator’s interior monologue (as I read it to be), than I found the idea of him narrating the story in present-tense whilst in a car accident/comatose/dead quite hard to grasp – I think that final sentence (‘Silence’) lost the realism of his voice, for me, as I don’t see how he could have narrated this.
Your innovation, in this piece, was an admirable, intelligent attempt to capture human thought-patterns. However, this excerpt would have been stronger if the character’s thoughts were more firmly rooted in the concrete, the personal, and the specific.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI think the strongest part of your writing her is the ending: I really like the inversion of the well-worn phrase “I couldn’t even hear myself think” to become “BEFORE I even heard myself think”. This is such a powerful and interesting idea that I would scrap the last word – “silence” – as it detracts somewhat from the possibilities that the previous sentence throws up.
In fact, in general it is the clichés that let you down in this piece – that’s why it is particularly exciting to see you rethink one such phrase in the way you have done at the end. Just consider: why “pitch” black? Really consider the implications of the words you use, ESPECIALLY if it’s a familiar phrase; often, the real meaning isn’t clear or helpful in the context we use the phrase in. “Pitch” is “tar”, which doesn’t really fit with the image of the “empty street with empty hearts”.
However, you’ve used a great, original phrase in “obstinate silence”. This really conveys, in a fresh and interesting way, the impenetrable and startling nature of supreme quiet; but then you lapse into more dramatic language with “She was wrong. This isn’t a fairytale”.
Overall, this has some great moments of originality, but lacks a certain shape and development – the fact that it is a single paragraph should probably highlight that either there aren’t enough ideas (not true in this case), or that there is shape missing (which I think is the case). Just bear in mind when you’re writing that stories, no matter how short, must have a certain arc to them – they must develop – or otherwise they are merely a snapshot.
Well done,
Penny