Thursday, May 11, 2006

Narrator's descriptions

What, if anything, does Christopher's way of describing things add to the book?
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4 comments:

kc said...

Oh God, I was just thinking about this around 2 a.m. when I was finishing the last few pages in the bath tub. I read this sentence: "And the Reverend Peters was the invigilator and he sat at a desk while I did the exam and he read a book called The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and ate a sandwich."

The sentence is not that remarkable, but for some reason it made me think that good writers have sort of an autistic sensibility. They see details in a scene where others just register the big picture. A good writer, like an autistic kid, would notice the name of the book that the reverend was reading. He would naturally find that interesting. Christopher is always deconstructing the world to understand how it works — he doesn't accept things on faith — and that's how writers operate. I love when he says: ""I think there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly. And, also a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of being new."

Substitute "day" for "house" in that first sentence and you have a description of Greek tragedy.

Substitute "family" for "house" and you get Jane Austen.

10:23 AM, May 11, 2006
Ben said...

For me, the descriptions wore just a little thin. If it had been a longer book, I would have tired of it.

Some of the descriptions, especially early in the book, were important: clues, red herrings, and characterizations were in them. But many descriptions, especially later in the book, seemed to simply say, "This narrator is autistic." I got the point pretty early on.

And what you might call the "slow-motion chase scene" (the journey to London) had no flow because of this. But maybe it was better that way. It was probably more important at that point to show just how difficult it was for him to function in everyday life without help.

On the whole, I think it worked, but maybe only because the book was so short. If it had been any longer, the author would have needed to make all the noticed details relevant. Of course, having all the details be relevant and seem like the things an autistic person would notice would not be easy, but I'm not one to be easy on an author.

11:26 AM, May 11, 2006
george said...

The trip to London didn't bog things down for me. I agree with you, Ben, on it was important to to show just how difficult it was for him to function in everyday life without help. Whatever he sees, he gives an accurate and honest discription as much as he can, and I thought that was great. Going back to what I commented earlier, it goes back to dealing with honesty.

I think honesty's important in the book. Christopher has trouble dealing with the rest of the world because he has trouble dealing with dishonesty. He doesn't understand phrases or sarcasm from the ticket agent or the the guy selling the maps. He assumes what people tell him are true.

That's why he likes math: you're given equations and truths with which to solve a problem. The book is like a math problem: He searches for truths (clues) to plug into an equation to solve for an answer.

What I finally asked myself after finishing the book around 2 a.m., was whether Christopher had trouble dealing with the world because of dishonesty, or did the world have trouble dealing with him because he had trouble being dishonest?

12:57 PM, May 11, 2006
cl said...

I wouldn't like this in a book, usually, but the way Christopher's words were sometimes emphasized by bold, or italic or all-caps, kind of helped you understand what he considered important, or what was a term still new to him that he was working through. Also, since the idea was he was writing the book himself, that seemed like something a kid would do.

9:45 AM, May 12, 2006

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