Below are the opening sentences from a short story in Granta. I'd be very interested in your views. The reason I'm asking is I've been thinking a lot lately about what consitutes integrity in fiction writing; that and how to balance it with creativity.

"The harbour at Mana was a converted mudflat, tightly elbowed and unlovely at any tide but high. I had never been there when the tide was high. The birds were shags mostly. The fish were small."

Terry

I think it's an interesting voice. Not sure what tightly elbowed means. I probably would not bother to read on if this was all I had to go on, because the setting doesn't greatly interest me.

There were quite a few little things that snagged me, reading this. Like, 'converted mudflat': what does that mean? How do you convert a mudflat; you build on one, maybe.

Like you, I don't know what 'tightly elbowed' means; can't picture it.

'Unlovely' is not a word.

If she's never been there when the tide is high, how does she know that's when it looks okay?

'Shags mostly' suggests she knows about birds, but is this significant? (As it turns out, it isn't.)

'The fish were small' - what, all of them? And how does she know?

I may be too picky, but I think it's the author's job to not snag the reader's mind with too many unclear meanings or references. I think that's what I mean by integrity: that it's the author's job to make the words disappear, so to speak, and the imagery to take their place.

Terry

I'm not against writing that sometimes verges on the 'difficult' and forces one to think about the meaning but I wouldn't relish the prospect of working too many sentences in this vein. Demanding is fine, but the reader's efforts should be rewarded by an outcome that satisfies or at least makes sense.

'Converted' caused the first problem. Was the mudflat converted (could one be converted?) or was the harbour cut into it in which case 'tightly elbowed' might have seemed slightly less opaque?

'But high' read as if it referred to the harbour/mudflat until I encountered 'the tide was high' in the next sentence and had to backtrack.

The use of 'shags' rather than 'cormorants' initially suggested a deliberately provocative reference to the word's many other meanings and it was only after the fish comment that I wondered whether it was in fact meant to communicate something to the effect that the first-person narrator was a sea or sea-edge fisherman - another backtrack situation. On the other hand, if this is what he was, how come he'd never been there at high tide? And, if he hadn't, how come he knew it was not unlovely then?

A device that I did like was the use of the short 'The fish were small' at the end.

Contrived and self-conscious are words that come to mind. Still, perhaps I'm being too pernickety about the language because, despite all these complaints, I thought the paragraph communicated enough about the scene and the character to stop me giving up at that point. Maybe even it was the contradictions and confusion that were exciting that interest, in which case I take it all back!

Chris




<Added>

Terry - Didn't press the submit button until an hour later, so various points crossed with yours. Chris

Not sure what tightly elbowed means

http://www.flickr.com/photos/19387816@N00/107526479

To me,

unlovely at any tide but high

suggests one of those seashores that looks ugly except when the tide comes in and covers it all up. That's how I would have understood that part. The fact that someone hadn't been there at high tide would not prevent them from (a) being able to tell how high the tide came (from the watermarks it would leave), and (b) judge how much of the ugliness it would cover up.

Also, the two statements juxtaposed like that tend to suggest that the narrator is a little judgemental - i.e. assumes that the place looks okay at high tide even though he/she hasn't seen it.

The passage doesn't give me too many problems; but then, I used to live not far from the sea, so maybe I can picture what it means without too much difficulty.

Alex

Seems a little unfair to base the coments on such a small excerpt. Here's the complete story.

http://www.granta.com/Magazine/106/Two-Tides/1

Since it was deemed worthy of publication, any comments are purely subjective and it seems a little mean to nitpick.

'Unlovely' is a word, isn't it? It's in my Oxford Paperback Dictionary at any rate.

I think 'converted mudflat' is just a little joke - imagine it without the mud - but perhaps a bit aimless. The sentences have a riddling, teasing quality - the author is toying with the reader's mind. I'm not sure I'm all that taken with it, but I'd probably read on just to find out what it was all about.

I don't know how you can judge this piece on that short extract. I would never nit-pick a piece like that and it fact would probably skip over the intro if its description was overly long as I rarely understand descriptions unless there are people in it- in this case this is all the setting I need. Perfect in fact. Now let's get on with the story.

Granta thought it worthy of publication so...

<Added>

And I agree - 'unlovely' is a word. Who says it isn't?

If the writer was trying to conjure a dreary setting, 'unlovely' if you will, then I think it's worked.

Perhaps he/she deliberately chose the words to convey that it's really not somewhere you should bother with iyswim. As if she can't almost be bothered to tell you. I can almost hear the yawning.


HB x

Thanks for all your comments, which are very interesting. This is why I made this post: to get different views on something that bugged me, and thereby to work out better where I should be bugged and where I should maybe just let it go.

But I probably should have explained myself better. I wasn't judging the story on these opening sentences, and I did read the whole thing. I'm reading every story in this particular book, the main reason being to see if I have any stories to submit to Granta. For what it's worth, I didn't enjoy this story; thought it was too weighed down by detail. By contrast, 'In the Crossfire' by Ha Jin, in the same book, is wonderful (subjective opinion, of course): the writing is invisible to me and the characters just jump straight off the page.

I thought it might be useful to use this example to talk about what might snag at some readers' minds, but not others, and to see if there are any objective criteria for what constitutes smooth prose. Chris clearly had similar issues to me with this opening; others didn't. Jem and Naomi think it's nit-picking to look at prose with this level of attention; I disagree (besides, surely the 'Technique' section is for looking at prose in detail). As writers, I think we have to be very conscious of how we put words together, especially bearing in mind that most stories we submit will only have the first paragraph or so to convince an editor to read on. Just because Granta published it, doesn't mean we should accept it's beyond analysis.

As for 'unlovely' - the Cambridge Dictionary online doesn't find it, but the Oxford does. So, maybe the question for a writer is whether or not it's wise to use an ambiguous word at the start of a story.

As said, I posted this piece because it snagged my reading mind so much. By contrast, the Ha Jin story just glided me straight into the imagery, situation, setting and story. Okay, we all have preferences, but I think I'd argue that good prose is probably less subjective than some might like to think. For example, I can't see how 'converted mudflat' wouldn't snag at anyone's mind who's paying attention. Sure, a reader can ignore it, just to get to the story but I don't think we writers should.

Actually, I realise I feel strongly about this. I don't understand how any writer would not want to work out how prose works, and therefore how they can improve their own.

Terry

No time just now to work out a detailed analysis - internet connection in the Philippines is a bit variable, but I'm treating myself to a quick WW check-in after three days in the middle of a conflict zone! - but my main reaction to this first line is that I rather like it. It's evocative and intriguing, and on that basis I'd read on.

Unlovely is certainly a word. Even if it weren't, it's not exactly difficult to understand, is it?

'Tightly elbowed' suggests, to me, a river that bends tightly back on itself.

I wasn't bothered by the author's use of 'shags' - if shags there were, then shags she should mention.

My two cents only.

Haven't read this story, beyond the paragraph that Terry posted, but I've read Catton's debut novel, The Rehearsal - which I really enjoyed, and from which I got the strong sense that what concerns her most as a writer in terms of style is the sound of the words she chooses. And then because I hadn't heard much about her I went searching for author interviews, and came across this, about her writing/editing process:

'In one of the very first scenes, the saxophone teacher is rhetorically asking whether her students' lives are very meaningful: she's saying, "your two-minute noodles after school, your candles on the dresser and facewash on the sink". The editor had put in a little question-mark, "facewash on the basin? because surely 'sink' means kitchen". And I said, "I know that sink is wrong, but 'sink' ends the sentence on a one-syllable word, on a hard glottal consonant - I can't have 'basin'!" It was tiny things like that, but they were often rhythmic, where I would put my foot down and say, no.'

So I'm wondering how much you can usefully apply that definition of integrity: that the words disappear and the imagery takes their place - if that's not what most concerns the author? She's made the decision to sometimes sacrifice clarity or accuracy for rhythm, and you can like or not like the results, but I'm not sure you can say it lacks integrity.

Jane, very interesting comment.

As for 'sink' vs 'basin', I would have thought the author could have argued that this is in dialogue, and therefore it would be perfectly natural, if not product-accurate, for someone to say 'sink'. Rhythm is easier, potentially, in dialogue, because the author can convey it in the way people speak, rather than have to find ways to do it within 'proper' prose. But, personally, I still prefer prose rhythm where the words do not snag, even if the writer has a reason for doing so.

But I accept your point, that the author may be more concerned with using words for purposes other than have them disappear and the imagery take over. This is probably a personal preference. I have the same thing with music: that I want the skill of the musicians to disappear into the atmosphere of the music they're creating. I've never been able to get into music - classic, jazz, rock - that exists primarily for the musician to show off their skills. Even so, I think there are occasions when 'snags' have a positive effect. In 'Creep' by Radiohead, Johnny Greenwood added harsh, chopped guitar sounds here and there, because he didn't think the beauty of the melody was appropriate for the subject matter. Which I think works very well. Then again, the melody was at least there in the first place.

Terry

So, maybe the question for a writer is whether or not it's wise to use an ambiguous word at the start of a story.

How is 'unlovely' ambiguous? It's self-evidently (from its standard English prefix) the opposite of 'lovely', whether or not any given dictionary-writer has seen fit to include it**. I'm snagged by trying to work out how that makes it ambiguous.

Alex


** Many words beginning with standard prefixes like 'un-' aren't explicitly defined in a lot of dictionaries. They usually just define the meaning of the prefix, then of some of the most common examples, and leave it to the intelligence of the reader to work out what is meant by any other word beginning with that prefix.