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

ποταμοισι τοισιν αυτοισιν εμβαινουσιν ετερα και ετερα υδατα επιρρει.

Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers.  – Heraclitus, 6th-5th Century BCE.

'The past is never dead. It's not even past.'   – William Faulkner, 20th Century CE.

Between those two quotes about the flow of time lies a gulf, not only of a couple of millennia, but of understanding about space/time. The conundrum has some implications for your next domestic novel or short story.

Why Is Time Important, If I'm Not Using a Time Machine?

Oh, sure, you say. Of course I need to keep track of the flow of space/time if I'm writing a Doctor Who episode. But what does this have to do with my story about the Jones Family in Arkansas?

Let's take a look.

What Did Heraclitus Mean?

Heraclitus never met Ernie Pyle, the US war correspondent who became famous during World War II for his reports from the front. But Ernie validated Heraclitus' observation in a newspaper column he sent from Tunisia:

'One night before coming to the front I went to a USO show in one of the rest areas and was put in the bald-headed row up front, sitting next to a two-star general.

As part of the program a girl came out and sang "Pistol Packing Mama." The applause was scattered, and you could tell the tune was not too familiar.

The general turned and said, "That's a new one on me; I never heard that before."

To which I replied: "You're a fortunate man. I never heard it either until I went home last fall, and then I had to listen to it 30 times a day. It was coming out of trees and water faucets. Even my dog was howling it at night."   – Ernie Pyle, quoted from The Free Lance-Star, 30 December 1943.

You see? The soldiers were being shelled by the Germans and Italians, but they were sheltered from early rockabilly. The moral: when you leave the river, it flows on without you. When you step back in, you get surprises. You might get hit with a strange fish, too.

Culture Shock

A case in point from my personal history: between 1978 and 1988, I lived in various locations on the continent of Europe. In 1988, I moved back to the US. My parents picked me up at the airport, and we drove to their house, a place I'd never been before, since they'd moved several hundred miles since I'd seen them last.

On the way there, I looked around with curiosity. I recognised some features of American life: the language, the fast-food restaurants. But I kept blinking at the size of the cars. The houses seemed strange. Since it was North Carolina, there were billboards with Bible verses on, something I wouldn't have seen in Greece. There was a sign for 'Hillbilly's BBQ'. I remembered what 'BBQ' was, but I was still on souvlaki time. In fact, I didn't feel comfortable until we went to the local Greek eatery and talked to Manolis, the proprietor. Once he'd made me a salata horiatiki, I settled down.

Worse culture shock was to follow: in my absence, these people had had the nerve to change. My mother's hairstyle was different. My dad owned, gasp, a pair of blue jeans, an item of clothing over which we had had arguments, and which he had sworn never to put on. They had cable TV. They had a gas fire in their fireplace.

The changes went deeper. They supported politicians whose policies went against the principles they had taught me. (I KNOW what they taught me, I was there.) I actually heard them say something about the 'evils of the separation of Church and State'. The doctrine of the Separation of Church and State had been hammered into me since I could sit up in church and listen. Who were these people?

The moral: Asheville, North Carolina, native Thomas Wolfe was right. You can't go home again.

What Does This Do to My Domestic Drama?

This phenomenon – going away, coming home to confront change – is ubiquitous. Trust me on this. Better yet, consult good writers.

• To my shame, I can't remember the name of the play we saw in Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1978. Or the star, a very talented middle-aged woman. But I remember the story: a woman who left Ireland as a teen to work in America returns in retirement to live with her family. All these years, she's been sending home money that she has painfully saved from her wages. It turns out that her relatives are much better off than she is. They've saved her wages in the bank as a nest-egg for her return. And everything has changed: they've got running water now, and modern conveniences, and the Ould Sod of her childhood memory is vanished away. She's confused, and sad, but eventually comes to terms with her life.
• Again, I cannot find the story I heard on the radio about 15 years ago. That's a tribute to the power of the story, though – I can't remember the author, or the title, but I can remember every detail of the story. Let's see if you can help me with it. An older woman lives on an island off the eastern US coast. It's a picturesque place, and she has a job with the local museum. She takes visitors on history tours, by appointment, since it's not a crowded place. One day, she escorts an interracial couple around. The wife is clearly pregnant. This causes a crisis in the tour guide – she begins seeing ghosts everywhere. Gradually, her story unfolds: the protagonist left her African American family as a young woman, to 'pass' as 'white' in the greater world. To do this, she severed ties with her beloved parents, never confessed the truth to her 'white' husband, whom she once overheard passing a racist remark, and lived with the loneliness of her secret all her days. Worst of all, she was afraid to have a child, because she was afraid the child's features would in some way betray her 'racial origin'. The story was a heart-breaking tale of loss, memory, and forgiveness. It started with the idea that things change.
• Read any Catherine Cookson novel. Yes, that Catherine Cookson. Cookson is passionate, sharp in her observations, and ruthlessly honest about what changes – and doesn't change – in England. Many of her characters suffer from 'stepping in and out of the stream' moments.

What About Faulkner?

Well, he drank a lot. Oh, you mean, what about Faulkner's claim that the past isn't dead? He's right, of course. The past isn't dead – or, at least, it's dead, but it won't lie down. Zombified history lurches through all our narratives.

The problem with that old history is that it means one thing to your characters in their own space/time, and quite another one to the people who originally lived that history.

Examples? I gotz 'em:

• Wuthering Heights. That's the classic. As wrapped up in passion, destiny, and generally overwrought Whatnot as Heathcliffe and Cathy are, their kids have a much more down-to-earth approach, and are much happier.
• The film Racing Daylight. If you haven't seen this, I would point out that a critic talked about 'character development' and 'good storytelling' in relation to this whimsical and moving tale of people in the 20th Century who unravel a love story from the US Civil War era. Events look different through different temporal lenses.
• The Chimneys of Green Knowe, a YAF novel by Lucy M Boston. Confession: I haven't read the book, but I've seen the film. If it's anything to go by, young readers are given a chance, not only to interpret the values of another historical era, but to see how the remnants of those values affected the future. This is even more effective to a 21st-century audience, because the baseline narrative is set during the Blitz, while the backstory is in the 18th Century.

I'm sure you can add to that list. I'm sure you'll want to. Once we become aware of the temporal culture shock inherent in all our narratives, examples start popping up. They're well worth studying for what they can teach us about improving the verisimilitude of our storytelling.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

28.01.13 Front Page

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