Detail: the sticky threads of story
There are many elements to a story that a writer must consider, including character, world, theme, plot, narrative form, tone, and imagery. You’ll find a huge library of writing and commentary on all of these from writers and literary critics since the art of writing began. But there’s been comparatively little consideration of the importance of detail in stories.
This essay, adapted from an assignment I submitted for my MA Creative Writing, attempts to address that, exploring not only the importance of detail to writers, readers, and literary tradition, but also the ways it has been used in three novels of very different periods and cultures: Madame Bovary (Flaubert), Babbitt (Lewis) and The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Diaz).
(Bear with me: this is a lengthy and in-depth academic essay, not the usual blog post! It will also help if you have some familiarity with the texts mentioned above.)
Matthew sits at his desk, looking deep into the white-screen glare, fingers hovering over keyboard. Around him, plain walls are covered with carefully traced diagrams and text, each entry decisively circled and connected to its neighbours with precision-penned arrows. Matthew flicks a frowning gaze at them, trying to draw from their pre-ordained wisdom. Fingers flex, squeeze into fists, then fall back motionless upon the keys. Every breath whistles louder through his nostrils. Scraping a hand through his hair he leans back in the chair.
Beyond the monitor a white-framed window offers a narrow view of a sprawling, entangled garden that Matthew tries hard to ignore. This screen was the biggest he could find, and was meant to block the view. But every rustle of leaves or flutter of feathers pulls at his attention, away from work and into creeping plants and shrubs. At the least sky above is grey and stagnant, unappealing. Pulling himself up straight, he shuffles his chair towards the desk, eyes squished in concentration. But his mind remains blanker than the screen and stiller than the sky, unbroken by even a single dot of inspiration.
Matthew gets up, squints at his notes, runs an unclicked pen along the timeline, mouthing words from memory. He traces perfectly sculpted character arcs, taps at well-researched themes, follows the scrupulous plot line from beginning to end, then collapses back on the chair and throws the pen at the screen. It misses, hits the window and slips behind the desk.
But then, as if summoned by his frustration, an orange blob descends beyond the glass. With the easy grace of a magician, the dangling ball sprouts eight striped legs and freefalls onto a hawthorn bush. For a moment it stops, limbs working an unseen spell, then crawls out into impossibly empty space. Ahead of it sparks a silver flash, another quivering in its wake. Softly, the secret of its magic is revealed – a tremulous bridge of silk, spanning to a branch twenty inches away. The tiny, bulbous showman bobbles twice around the sprig, before retracing its path along the silver bridge. Halfway across it drops from sight…
Matthew swivels the monitor aside, peers over the sill, urgently scanning the hedge. The brown, woody tangle seems perfectly still. He lifts the window, pokes his head through, looking down at the nest of spikes. A bright dot dangles and twirls within, now pulling the thread tight in a ‘v’ and anchoring it further down within the bush. It raises its legs as if in salute, hailing its cunning feint. Matthew, guilty at his own lack of achievement, rests his arms on the sill to watch the rest of the show.
In less than an hour, more than thirty spokes are spun out from the centre of the fragile y-frame, the structure reverberating, fixed firm in place. But the trick is not yet complete. From the shadowy gloom flutters a brown moth, its wing almost brushing the magician’s speckled bulk. It flies through the gaping threads, escaping to the grey open sky. Matthew frowns. Something is missing: some flourish of completion, some final reveal.
The spider manoeuvres round its shimmering scaffold, spiralling to the centre then out towards the edge, repeating its motion as it spews thread after thread. Soon a pattern emerges, thickening in form, the gaps whittling down to a fine, constrictive mesh. And there it hangs, this sticky illusion, suspended in space and bound like a flower to hawthorn’s limbs. The spider, with a humbly conclusive flick of its legs, runs back up the arm of the ‘v’ to hide, tightly poised, in the curl of a leaf.
Matthew waits for an encore that never arrives, then breaks from his trance. Pulling down the window and turning the screen to face him, he sits, thinks, and in seconds, starts striking the keys. Soon, the white void is filled with a network of words.
This tale of writer’s block both introduces and exemplifies the topic of this essay. Like the garden spider Araneus Diademetus, the success of a writer depends on spinning a coherent web in which to trap their reader. In most cases, they will be inspired by a single idea (the initial thread), which must be spun out into a scaffold of other story elements: plot, theme, characters, world, setting, imagery, voice, tone etc.
But just as the spider binds and strengthens its spokes with sticky threads, the smaller, more intricate, details of a narrative only emerge as these other elements are spun, binding and strengthening them. And with each edit they become more defined and more effective - just like the spider’s repeated spiralling of the web.
It’s not only in the construction of a web/story that this analogy makes sense – both sticky threads and details are designed to ensnare prey. As Francine Prose explains:
“…our memory for detail can be trusted and pull us through a story….” (Prose, 2006:204).
It’s widely accepted that details are an essential story element to grab a reader’s attention. But this can only happen if they cohere with the story’s other elements. A reader’s “memory for detail” will quickly pick up on inconsistencies, causing them to struggle and break free of the story’s grip – or even bounce off it entirely.
For me, it’s usually broader meanings that inspire me to write, usually themes of scientific exploration, cultural significance or emotional expression. When constructing a narrative, it’s easy to forget the importance that details hold when reading. In this post I’m going to explore this ‘sticky’ threads analogy by examining three very different works by very different authors, and consider its usefulness as a tool for adding details to a story. I’m expecting this analogy will stretch beyond the spider’s own use for its threads – there may be times when a writer wants the reader to struggle, to give them a glimpse of the multiple strands of meaning coursing out around them.
First, I need to clarify this idea of ‘sticky threads’, and position it within the traditions of literary theory – this is hardly the first time that parallels have been drawn between webs, weaving, and the craft of writing. The very word ‘text’ originates from the Latin verb textere, meaning ‘to weave’ (Cuddon, 1999:907), and many commonplace phrases draw similar connections, such as ‘story threads’ or ‘spinning a yarn’.
In The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes alo makes reference to the text as weaving or a web, and to the subject of a sentence being a spider “…dissolving in the constructive secretions of its own web” (Barthes, 1990:64). There’s a well established history of such parallels that underline the relevance of the web analogy in literary tradition.
But more problematic is Barthes’ own use of the term ‘sticky’, and this is where clarification is needed. On the subject of the language of Capitalist power, he writes “…it is an implacable stickiness, a doxa, a kind of unconscious…” (Barthes, 1990:29) and of the language of mass culture: “I shall say that it is sticky” (Barthes, 1989:64). This use of ‘sticky’ refers to ideas or ideologies that attach themselves so firmly to the reader that they refute any challenge, even when faced with definite evidence against them. This rhetorical effect is more useful in propaganda, designed to convince the reader of its particular ideas, and to my mind can can only be detrimental for creative writing, which should – at its best – simply open up ideas, allowing the reader to consider their strengths and their weaknesses.
Barthes’ use of the term should definitely not be confused with my notion of ‘sticky’ threads, which should immerse a reader in the story world itself, both consciously and unconsciously - a positive effect for them and a useful concept for a writer to understand.
However, there is a connection between these two meanings of ‘stickiness’: both of them accept that a writer has the power to influence the reader. And if so, any decisions made at the level of detail should be informed by their intentions for the text as a whole. This might have connotations for Barthes’ claim that the author is ‘dead’, that literary criticism should not consider their intentions because “…writing is the destruction of every voice, every origin.” (Barthes, 1989:49). If an author is capable of assimilating cultural influences, forming intentions from them, and structuring a story based on those intentions, to the point of directing the reader’s focus towards specific details to reinforce it, can any analysis dismiss their intentions? After all, the story would not exist without them. Perhaps further exploring this ‘sticky’ threads analogy might provide some insight into this as well.
My intention for the opening sample was to introduce and exemplify the idea of details as ‘sticky’ threads. My initial thread was to draw the reader’s attention to the web building technique of Araneus Diademetus, the garden spider, and on this I built a scaffold consisting of plot (a growing case of writer’s block, eventually resolved), theme (procrastination / inspiration), character (Matthew, a well-prepared but uninspired writer), location (a study overlooking a garden) and narrative form (present tense, creating a sense of immediacy). Having constructed these elements, I then faced the decision every writer must make: what to draw attention to and what to ignore. And this is a decision that is made at every moment of writing and subsequent revision: wherever there is a subject, the temptation exists to add detail to it.
I might have focussed more on describing the the room, the garden, Matthew’s clothes or appearance, or the content of his notes. Instead, I muted or avoided these features: the colours are dull (screen blank, sky grey, walls white), and the only action Matthew’s increasing frustration. In contrast, the spider’s arrival brings colour, light and purposeful motion; the comparison to a magician parallels the idea of a writer being a conjurer of reality, which also contrasts Matthew’s own impotence. These details create moments of significance, where the reader becomes aware of something new occurring – hopefully trapping them on the web of the story.
My source for this description was Richard Dawkins’ meticulous account of Araneus Diademetus’ web construction in Climbing Mount Improbable (1997). Even this created challengees for selecting my own ‘sticky’ threads – Dawkin’s intention was to relate every step of the spider’s technique to consider its evolution. All I wanted was to draw attention to those aspects that were useful for my analogy. In reality, the first bridge deployed by the real spider actually consists of two threads, the first being eaten by the creature while it spins the second out behind, ensuring the line is slack enough to bend into a ‘v’, and the first spiral spun around the frame isn’t sticky, it merely supports the spider while it builds the sticky threads. Fascinating as these details are, they would only distract the reader from the crucial relationship between the main spokes and the sticky spirals, as well as making the piece longer than it needed to be.
As Dawkins explains:
“Laying the sticky thread that is actually going to do the business of catching insects is a precision matter. The junctions with the radial spokes must be deftly positioned so that the spokes are not pulled into an ugly mess leaving holes for prey to fly through.” (Dawkins, 1997:38-9).
We could equally swap the words ‘prey’ for ‘readers’ and ‘spokes’ for ‘other story elements’.
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
When analysing Flaubert’s use of detail in Madame Bovary, it’s important to understand his intentions for the story as a whole. Though originally heralded as a keystone of the Realist movement, Zola claimed that Flaubert “…wrote his novel in order to annoy…Champfleury and his fellow Realists…,” and that he “…vehemently rejected the designation ‘Realist’.” (M Tilby in Unwin ed., 2004:18), while Baudelaire “…considered it to be a parody of Realism…” (Gluck, 2005:99).
Flaubert’s rejection of Realism is not a surprise – the idea of ‘realism’ should send a shiver through the quill-hand of any serious writer. Every story must present a reality – even those that intentionally bear little resemblance to our own – and these ‘realities’ each require careful weaving together of the same story elements to engage the reader. Certainly, the term ‘Realism’ is hardly fit to reflect the range of techniques and innovations employed in Madame Bovary.
While ambiguity persists over his stylistic choices, Flaubert’s thematic purpose is clear: to explore the disconnection of the French bourgeoisie from the reality of their lives by exposing their fatally ambitious Romanticism. The plot continues to follow Charles’s decline after the death of his wife, but the final line focuses on the ‘success’ of Homais the chemist in achieving the Legion of Honour. This deliberately punchy, single-line paragraph ensures Flaubert’s politically-charged intentions remain clear in the reader’s mind, and that his flashes of satire, which gather momentum after Emma’s first affair, take priority over sympathy for the emotional failings of Charles and Emma.
To provide a satirical counterpoint, this critique of bourgeois ambition demands diligent attention to the reality of the characters’ situations. Flaubert experiments with a variety of devices to construct the skeleton of this ‘reality’: objective shifting of viewpoints, free indirect narrative, a location shift from country farmhouse to provincial market town via the chateau of a marquis, and a string of characters all struggling to reconcile their true position in the world with that to which they believe they are entitled. Over this frame he then suspends a lavish application of sticky threads, fortifying these other strands and drawing the reader into the psychology of the characters against the backdrop of their ‘reality’.
One such sticky thread is the almost obsessive attention he gives to material objects, beginning on the very first page in the description of Charles’ cap:
“…one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile’s face. Oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long cord, small twisted golden threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new; its peak shone.” (Flaubert, 1994:1-2)
The cap is new, bought for Charles’ first day at school (presumably by his overbearing Mother) to effect an impression of grandeur on his classmates, but its over-the-top ornamentation stands out in contrast to Charles’ own simplicity. He isn’t prepared for the position to which his Mother wishes to elevate him. The intricate detail here introduces and fortifies the dissonance between character and world that the book goes on to explore.
However, it could be argued that the ‘stickiness’ of the story isn’t necessarily helped by deploying such a lengthy, elaborate description so early on. Aimée Israel Pelletier suggests that “…many of the most visually charged descriptions… seem gratuitous and tend to promote doubt in the reader’s mind as to the role they play in the narrative,” (A Israel Pelletier in T Unwin ed, 2004: 181) and refers explicitly to this description of Charles’ cap to illustrate her point.
By freezing all narrative motion to draw our focus onto this particular object, Flaubert creates a moment of significance, similar to the appearance of the spider in my introductory passage. Such a moment does promote doubt, but this doubt challenges the reader to consider its significance – an early warning from Flaubert that his story will be conveyed using fresh and often uncomfortable methods. He is, perhaps, giving his web a sharp tug to test its stickiness. Even if a few readers struggle and fall from its hold, the thread remains intact, binding the main spokes of Charles and his world together in their disparate relationship. But Pelletier’s comments serve as a reminder that, no matter how well a writer deploys their sticky threads of detail, not every reader will stick be ensnared by every story.
This technique of pausing the narrative to allow heightened, exaggerated, observation is used sparingly throughout Madame Bovary to indicate the power that objects hold over its characters. The ornate cigar case from the chateau ball reveals to Emma the existence of the limitless passion and attention that she craves:
“It had been embroidered on some rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same silent passion.” (Flaubert, 1994:44)
The connection here is not explicit – Flaubert invites the reader to make the association themselves, to draw them into the dramatic tension between Emma’s romanticism and Charles’ simplicity. The detail also emphasises Emma’s blossoming introspection, the wedge she is slowly driving between her self and her reality. It is just a cigar case, but to Emma, it is love.
Flaubert also uses brief, surgically inscribed details to aid visualisation of characters (“…his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the lamp” (47) ), comprehension of behaviour (“…after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he made a gurgling noise with every spoonful;” (48) ) and recognition of significant events:
“They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them was turning – the lamps, the furniture, the wainscotting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors Emma’s dress caught against his trousers. Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a more rapid movement; the viscount, dragging her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where, panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his breast.” (Flaubert, 1994:40-41)
The precision of these descriptions creates an instantly vivid image within the reader’s mind, allowing no room for misinterpretation. Whether they are adding to characterisation or portraying action, such details bind the reader deeper in the web. They’re at are their most effective when pulling together many other story elements at once:
“She went out, crossed the boulevard, the Place Cauchoise, and the faubourg, as far as an open street that overlooked some gardens. She walked rapidly, the fresh air calming her; and, little by little, the faces of the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the lights, the supper, those women, everything disappeared like mists fading away.” (Flaubert, 1994:224)
Realising her relationship with Leon isn’t meeting her ideals, and burdened with accumulating debts, Emma is now desperate to escape. Here she appears dwarfed by the city of Rouen, a lone figure against the fading backdrop of party-goers, attempting to block out their festivities yet still painfully aware of them, and still resolute enough in her fantasies to cast disdain upon women of a lower class. All this is achieved without any obscuring language, or any explicit description of Emma’s state of mind. The meaning is all implied through Flaubert’s use of details, their precise and elegant arrangement strengthening the spokes of characterisation, location, setting and theme in no more than two sentences. This creates significance for the reader without any apparent plot progression – the drama all takes place within Emma’s mind, as it does for much of the book.
Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
Babbitt begins with a conventional use of detail to attract its readers to the story web. The first two sentences read:
“The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly and beautifully office buildings.” (Lewis, 1974:1)
We’re immediately introduced not just to the setting of the story, but the icons of the lifestyle Lewis wants us to consider. These towers are persistent, ‘sturdy as cliffs’, yet strangely fragile, as ethereal and intangible as the ideals that have created them. And like those ideals, they will crumble and rebuild themselves a thousand times over in the main character’s mind.
From this elevated vantage point, Lewis directs his satirical scope across the city, focusing through the forgotten dirt of industry and the polished shine of business centres onto one particular group of citizens:
“Over a concrete bridge fled a limousine of long sleek hood and noiseless engine. These people in evening clothes were returning from an all-night rehearsal of a Little Theatre play, an artistic adventure considerably illuminated by champagne.” (Lewis, 1974:1)
These early paragraphs provide all the information needed to understand this world of contrasts: old industry is giving way to new business, with long-term endeavours sustained only for the purpose of short-term satisfaction. Even its ‘artists’ must have the most opulent vehicles and refreshments to endure their labour.
Lewis is just as quick to lead us to an understanding of George F Babbit himself:
“His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.
His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face was babyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed; his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon the khaki-coloured blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic…” (Lewis, 1974:8)
There is nothing hidden in the character of Babbitt, and nothing worth hiding. With one look we’re invited to make lasting judgements on his age, appearance, wealth, career, morality and marital status. Lewis also ensures that we form an unfavourable opinion of these surface elements. Babbitt has no useful skills, but is flabby from success. His babyish appearance alerts us to a childlike naïvety, which later manifests in his failure to recognise the effects his dubious business methods have on others. This ingenuous vulnerability is reinforced by the detail of his “faded baby-blue pyjamas’ (9), an acceptable security blanket for a middle-aged man to cling to.
But having set Babbitt up as an acquiescent worker-drone, Lewis quickly disrupts this image by telling us he is “again dreaming of the fairy child, a dream more romantic than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.” (8). This dialectic prods forward the entire narrative: the battle between Babbitt’s subservient consciousness (bred into a life of ladder-climbing capitalism) and his striving subconscious (so beaten down it has little strength to force its way into the physical world, and no idea what to do once it gets there). Babbit is a man of contrasts, a true offspring of Zenith. Lewis’ descriptions demand that we both dislike him, but also sympathise with him.
This rapid array of details is vital to Lewis’ intentions for the rest of the book. The reader must be quickly secured in the world and its characters because, for most of its remaining 315 pages, Babbitt forces home the drudgery of consumer-led society by remaining deliberately monotonous, with scant plot or character development to engage the reader. Only through careful realisation of the details in this plodding, materialistic lifestyle can Lewis hold our attention and ensure his satire takes effect.
As in Madame Bovary, much attention is given to material objects:
“It was the best of nationally advertised and quantitatively produced alarm-clocks, with all modern attachments, including cathedral chime, intermittent alarm, and a phosphorescent dial.” (Lewis, 1974:9)
“And it was the very best of water coolers… It possessed a non-conducting fibre ice-container, a porcelain water jar (guaranteed hygienic), a dripless non-clogging sanitary faucet and machine-painted decorations in two tones of gold.” (Lewis, 1974:32)
Unlike Flaubert’s work, these objects are not heralds of dreams or hopes but the trophies of commercialism, the characters’ only tangible reward for their endeavours. The ‘best’ objects are pored over obsessively, each feature adding an extra tick to their evaluation, their worth allocated on a practical, economic basis. This is the simple mathematics around which Zenith society revolves: more equals better. It doesn’t allow its inhabitants to admit to any ambition beyond its own propagation, not even to themselves. Obsessive materialism keeps their dangerous emotions at bay, distracting them from any insubordinate internal dialogue. With each laboriously technical detail, the reader becomes further mired in Babbitt’s delusional loyalty, yet more sympathetic towards his plight.
Like Heller’s references to death in Catch-22, the use of detail in Lewis’ anti-consumerist message is rarely subtle. At times, he even resorts to leading the reader in unabashed judgement on his characters, telling us the Babbitt house is “…not a home” (18), that there is an aspect of Babbitt whose “…god was Modern Appliances…” (10) and that his family are “…devotees of the Great God Motor…” (21). The narrator appears not just omniscient but omnipotent, reducing the characters to two-dimensional straw men, presented on stage just to be knocked down again and again. This threatens the coherence of the book’s narrative strand, causing the reader to struggle in the story web and, perhaps for some, to break free of it completely. But, as Francine Prose explains, details are “…keys not merely to our subconscious, but to our historical moment.” (Prose, 2006:207).
Babbitt was written in 1920s America, when consumerism was being hailed as the new saviour for the economy. Lewis used every available tactic to ensure his message was not misconstrued, that his readers did not become so trapped within the story that they lost sight of its purpose (a similar technique to Brecht’s didactic theatre, which emerged in Germany around the same time). This scattergun deployment of threads might raise questions about Lewis’ ability to maintain a consistent balance between engaging the reader and conveying meaning, but the effect of the book on its audience is undeniable:
“…Babbitt plunged the nation into literary controversy. Again, the novel seemed absolutely new, unlike anything that had come before it. Again, to many the assault on American virtue seemed brutal, uncompromising, and unfair. All over the United States Sinclair Lewis was denounced as a villain and a traitor, and all over the United States thousands and thousands of people bought his novel.” (Schorer, 1963:12)
Again we see that a writer’s intentions, shaped by the attitudes and events of their age, are crucial to the style and theme of their story web, and how they spin their sticky threads of detail.
Any reader that calms their struggles long enough to reach page 81 will witness an interesting phenomenon: the use of sticky threads to suspend an alternate web beside, and in contrast to, the original one. This sudden series of vignettes, many no more than two or three sentences in length, are a meta-detail of the world, aspects of Zenith hidden away, unknown and forbidden, from the life of Babbitt. In these we discover the true drama of the city, and perhaps begin to wish that we were following these other characters instead. Their appearance suggests an epiphany, a moment of significance, but in the next chapter Babbitt’s life continues its slow, unaffected grapple towards the next rung on the ladder. It is nothing more than a genius deception, a dramatic smokescreen, tantalising the reader with a break from the monotony. This is Lewis’ own tug upon his web strings: a challenge to his readers, and the whole of American society, to continue on their course only if they can stomach its tedious consequences.
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
We have a distinct advantage when considering the work of Junot Diaz: he is still alive to tell us his intentions. The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is littered throughout with references to science-fiction / fantasy culture, role-playing games, San Domingo history and lore, and unexplained acronyms, all covered with a liberal splash of hispanic language. Any demographic able to recognise and comprehend every one of these references must be minutely small in comparison to the full readership the book received. In an interview with National Public Radio, Diaz explained:
“If you’re an immigrant you’re so used to not being able to understand large chunks of any conversation, large chunks of the linguistic or cultural codes… I wanted everybody at one moment to feel kind of like an immigrant in this book, that there would be one language chain that you might not get….” (Diaz, NPR, 2007)
Through the precise use of language and detail, Diaz ensures that every reader will experience some sense of this marginalisation. These alienating details create a constant tug on the web of the story, specifically designed to disorient the reader – but crucially, Diaz ensures his web is both strong and sticky enough that they’re unlikely to break free. No important plot point is narrated in Spanish, or obscured by comic book imagery. The clarification of Santo Domingo history is extricated from the main text into footnotes, leaving the reader to decide if they want to learn more. Any details of marginalised culture are deployed precisely enough to allow the reader an understanding of their universal meaning, if not their specifics.
“Oscar had like a zero combat rating” (p15) might be a reference to role-playing games, but Oscar’s inability to fight is successfully conveyed regardless of whether the reader knows this. Similarly, when told “That day what little faith Oscar had in the world took an SS-N-17 snipe to the head,” you don’t need to visualise this exact rifle to hear the shot ring out, puncturing Oscar’s optimism.
“He tried to give Magic a chance, tried to put together a decent deck, but it just wasn’t his thing. Lost everything to an eleven-year-old punk and found himself not really caring. First sign that his Age was coming to a close. When the latest nerdery was no longer compelling, when you preferred the old to the new.” (Diaz, 2008:270)
This extract crosses a potentially unsticky thread with a sticky one, using a reference to the card game Magic: The Gathering to emphasise boundaries between different cultures and different generations. All readers will have some experience of the latter, without needing to know about the game itself. The obscure reference triggers a moment of universal empathy, and prepares us for the responsibility Oscar is about to take for his actions.
Diaz’s details of science-fiction and fantasy lore set up a world, a reality, where the unlikely does not seem so impossible, where accepted facts and natural laws are malleable. Oscar Wao’s ‘reality’ is a place where, no matter how much the reader thinks they know, the cultural boundaries, government conspiracies and supernatural interventions determine that much of this world remains a mystery. “What’s certain is that nothing’s certain. We are trawling in silences here.” (p243)
This is emphasised from the very beginning in a detail of Dominican folklore known as the fuku, a great curse rumoured to have been placed on Oscar’s family. Both Fuku and its counterpart, Zufu, are details of the world so intensely ingrained in the mindset of the characters that they appear to have their own life force – even, at times, appearing as characters: the faceless man that heralds their destruction, and the mongoose that guides them from its path. Diaz binds his details so inextricably to the world and culture of the characters that they take on a greater role than merely describing, symbolising or adding “solidity of specification” (Mullan, 2006:190) to the other strands.
This raises the question: what is detail? The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms* contains no entry for it. Is the definition assumed to be too obvious or too elusive as a literary term? Is the spider in my introductory piece a detail of the world, or a character? We might assume that detail is an additional element of story, and that the development of plot, character and narrative can exist without them, but in such examples we see their dependence on one another, each aspect part of one solid network whose threads necessarily cross and commingle. The metaphor of the web and the intricacy of its intertwining elements again becomes more pertinent to the writer, and perhaps even more useful as a planning diagram than a simple timeline or character arc.
Those readers that resist Diaz’s alienation tactics to engage with his plot and characters will find the accumulation of such references begin to have a different effect: they invite us to acclimatise, to learn more about them, rather than ignore them because we do not immediately understand. Diaz is leading us on “…the quest for home…” (Diaz, identity theory.com, 2008), a quest that culminates in the triumphal chapter “Oscar goes native” (276). The first sentence of this – which extends for nearly three pages – details each experience of Oscar’s first week in Santo Domingo. Here, he not only discovers his roots, but is swept along by the unfamiliar experience of belonging. This extensive picture postcard similarly sweeps the reader up in the ‘reality’ of San Domingo, away from alienating references, obscure mythology and scandalising conspiracies. By the end of the story the reader may not recall a single detail of this week, but its significance remains memorable because it is here that the narrative finally accepts them as well.
Through this analysis of details as ‘sticky threads’, I have begun to identify the ways in which the analogy could be useful to a writer. It’s a reminder of how detail connects the different elements of a story, as well as drawing the reader into the web and ensuring their connection to it. I’ve also examined how an experienced writer can subvert this idea to invoke a particular effect in their readers, to help them experience the theme or even create dissonance with the narrative.
Most importantly, this exploration has given me a fresh respect for details – they’re not merely words inserted to add plausibility to a story. The writer’s power to control reader perception through detail cannot be underestimated, no more than can the time and location in which the writing takes place. An author’s intentions are key for other writers attempting to understand their methods, regardless of any theories of literary criticism. Criticism is the art of hindsight, distanced from the vital act of writing. Perhaps such theories should not concern the writer at all – unless they’re writing a story that explores literary criticism itself.
But of course, the writer’s intentions are not the final tying off of the story web. Each reader brings their own identity and perspective to it, just as different prey bring their own resilience to a spider’s web. They might struggle against certain aspects of the detail or other elements of the story, particularly if they’re distanced by time, location or culture.
As writers, we must ask ourselves whether we’re writing to evoke a particular effect or to engage as many people as possible. Who precisely is it we’re hoping to catch in our story webs and, once we have them trapped, whose position do we wish to upset? These must be the first questions that we answer before deploying our ‘sticky’ threads of detail.
*See bibliography below for the exact edition consulted - maybe newer editions do include a reference to detail?
Bibliography
Barthes, R., 1989. The Rustle of Language, (trans. Howard, R.), California: University of California Press.
Barthes, R., 1990. The Pleasure of the Text, (trans. Miller, R), Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.
Cuddon, J A., 1999. The Penguin dictionary of literary terms and literary theory, 4th ed, London: Penguin Books Ltd.
Dawkins, R., 1997. Climbing Mount Improbable, London: Penguin Books Ltd.
Diaz, J., 2007. Junot Diaz Discusses his 'Wondrous' Debut Novel, Interviewed by David Bean Cooley [radio], NPR, October 18, 2007.
Diaz, J., 2008. Mil Máscaras: An Interview with Pulitzer-Winner Junot Díaz, Interviewed by Matt Okie [internet], identitytheory.com, September 2, 2008.
Diaz, J., 2009. The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
Flaubert, G., 1994. Madame Bovary, London: Wordsworth Classics.
Gluck, M., 2005. Popular Bohemia: Modernism and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press.
Lewis, S., 1974. Babbitt, St. Albans: Panther Books Ltd.
Mullan, J., 2006. How Novels Work, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Prose, F., 2006. Reading Like a Writer, New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Schorer, M., 1963. Sinclair Lewis - American Writers 27, University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers No. 27, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Unwin, T. ed., 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Flaubert, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.