Words, words, words. That's what we're made of. Herewith some of my thoughts on what we're doing with them.

As all of h2g2 probably knows by now, all three current members of the Guide Editorial Team suffer (if it can be called that) from prosopagnosia, the inability to read or remember facial features. The condition is also called face-blindness. People with prosopagnosia are rubbish at identikits – ask them, 'what kind of nose did the suspect have?' and they'll reply, 'Oh, er, I know he had one. . .somewhere in the middle of his face. . .' Not helpful.

Obviously, those with prosopagnosia use alternative strategies to identify friends, acquaintances, even family members. I have the condition, and I always thought it was merely a handicap until recently, when I discovered an odd perk to the way I recognise people: I'm not bothered by prosthetic make-up on actors.

Elektra and I were watching an episode of Deep Space Nine. Somehow, we'd never got around to this series before. In this scene, Major Kira and a curmudgeonly Bajoran played by Brian Keith were verbally sparring in Keith's kitchen. There were two non-speaking characters at the table – and one of them looked familiar, even though she had a wrinkly nose.

'That's June Wheeler, Data's wife from Night Court,' I observed.

Elektra looked puzzled. 'How can you tell?'

I laughed. 'Because when she smiled, I heard a voice in my head. It said, "It's like all the pasta you've ever eaten come back to git you."'

We had a laugh remembering the classic comedy routine about the Yugoslav Wheelers and their West Virginia worm farm. It was the expressive face I recalled, nothing to do with eyes or noses. On another occasion, I recognised Wallace Shawn playing the Ferengi Grand Nagus. That is, I said, 'That's the little bald-headed man from A Town Called Eureka.' And sure enough, it was. I looked him up.

When I looked up Wallace Shawn, I got a surprise. It turns out that in addition to being the go-to guy for 'short, bald comic relief', Shawn is an avant-garde playwright of a menacing nature. The personally amiable man writes surreal and politically provocative theatre pieces that are often disturbing. One outraged New York audience is said to have become so frustrated that they began mooing. Not booing, mooing. Like cows.

Under that genial exterior lurks a playwright with an urge to tell more truth than is socially convenient. Although I was surprised by this knowledge, I wasn't shocked. Shawn's comic performances have a depth to them that suggests that there's more to the actor than meets the eye. Just as the true expressions of the performers come out in spite of several inches of latex, so the emotional and intellectual complexity of a mind often shines through a perfunctory story.

Can we use this observation in writing? I think we can – at least, I hope so. I think we can layer it in.

Bud Abbott: I overheard Doctor Zoomer say he needed a couple of men to accompany his mummy back to the States.

Lou Costello: Is she afraid to travel by herself?

Bud Abbott: She? No, Lou. This mummy is a he. What's wrong with that? Some mummies are men, some mummies are women.

Lou Costello: Such a strange country.

Bud Abbott: What's strange about it, Lou?

Lou Costello: Your mummy, your mummy. Wasn't she a woman?

Bud Abbott: I never had a mummy.

Lou Costello: What did your Father do? Win you in a crap game?   –   Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy

You may find this hilarious. (Yawn.) Whether you get a giggle out of mummy puns or not, I think you'll agree that there is no characterisation going on at all. The speakers could be robots. In fact, it might have been funnier if they had been robots. . .

Try this piece of dialogue:

The Mayor: The hospital – have you cleaned it up?

Lazlo: Well, you could eat off the floors. We put sheets on the bed, and we got the goats out of surgery. I put charts on the foot of each patient's bed indicating the nature of their illness.

The Mayor: Good. Now at least they'll know what they died from.   –   The Inspector General

Notice how, under the jokes, you get a sense of what's going on in the place? Of course, this Danny Kaye film was based on a play by Gogol, and according to the imdb, the redoubtable Ben Hecht had an uncredited role in writing the script. And then there were Danny Kaye's improvisations, in which he convinced you that under the foolery, there was a real person. . .

Kaye's fancy footwork often conceals deeper observations. As do the novels of Martin Cruz Smith. Right now, I'm reading – slowly, and with pleasure – a 2007 novel of his called Stalin's Ghost. It's a novel about Russian policeman Arkady Renko. 'Police procedural' does not describe Smith's Renko books, which go far beyond genre.

What I appreciate most about Martin Cruz Smith is that he puts you right there without a lot of excess verbiage. His Russians talk like Russians, although he seldom uses the Russian language. He lets his characters carry on conversations that make sense in Eastern Europe. He gives you a sense of the depressive isolation of spending the winter in a half-empty Moscow apartment without using 200 words for 'snow'. Best of all, his characters, even minor ones, have depth. Smith accomplishes this by sharing his characters' stray thoughts.

In this opening scene, Arkady Renko and his partner are undercover. By accidentally answering another policeman's phone, Renko has stumbled across the information that, apparently, his colleague is moonlighting as a hit man. (Have we mentioned that this is modern Moscow?) Renko is hoping to uncover more about the criminal activity by pretending to go along with the businesswoman who wants her husband killed. A meeting takes place in a bar.

Arkady felt he had a front row seat to the snow, to the way it tumbled in foamy waves over parked cars. If Zoya Filotova could afford an SUV, she could pay five thousand dollars to eliminate her husband.

'He's very strong,' she said.

'No, he'll just be heavy,' Victor assured her.   –   Stalin's Ghost

Ah, that's more like it. See how the economy of description still leaves us with a sense of who and what we're dealing with? Best of all, we want to know more.

The author tell us that Arkady Renko, a compassionate, decent man, has standing among the Communists in Moscow. The main reason is that Renko's father was a general, and a confidant of Stalin's. We're not told directly what Arkady felt about his father, whom he mentally describes as a 'talented butcher'. Instead, Arkady thinks an anecdote at us, about the fact that often, a staff car would arrive to take the general to the Kremlin:

Either to the Kremlin or the Lubyanka [a political prison], it wasn't clear which until the car turned left or right at the Bolshoi, left to a cell at the Lubyanka or right to the Kremlin's Spassky Gate. Other generals fouled their pants on the way. General Renko accepted the choice of fates as a fact of life.  –   Stalin's Ghost

Stalin's Ghost is a story involving digging. Both in Moscow and the neglected city of Tver, people are digging up the past, literally, with pick and shovel. No wonder they are stirring up ghosts. The author uses choice of detail and an economy of description to engage the reader in the search for answers in big history and in personal history. Some of those answers will make you choke.

I don't know how Stalin's Ghost comes out yet, so don't tell me if you've read it. But I'm not there for the detective story. I'm reading it for the insights into what things are like in Moscow these days, and for what else this writer can tell me about people. So far, I really care about Renko's girlfriend, a Chernobyl survivor, and the street kid he's responsible for. And I really, really want to know why older people are seeing Stalin's ghost in the Metro.

But most of all, I'm enjoying what I glimpse under the prosthetic make-up of a 'police procedural' – a window into the thoughts and feelings of the characters in this story. Prosopagnosia teaches you to distrust the outside, because it won't stay in your memory. Being face-blind forces you to dig a bit deeper to find lasting markers, such as voice and expression, in order to identify people. Digging deeper in search of ways to portray your characters can be a rewarding task, as well. Let them shine through the genre latex.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

23.07.12 Front Page

Back Issue Page