The Art of Fiction by David Lodge - Parts 11-20

 

11 Defamiliarisation

Villette by Charlotte Bronte (1853)

The word of the title is one I did not know. Apparently it's about "making strange". The narrator Lucy Snowe is studying a painting, with the title Cleopatra, of a large woman, out of proportion with large garments that do not cover her. The accompanying objects in the picture seem strange. Another word to describe this is "originality" but I'm still not sure how this applies to the description of the painting.

12 The Sense of Place

Money by Martin Amis (1984)

The extract that David Lodge chose is exactly why I avoided this book. About how to get around LA (or not). Amis uses "hyperbole" or "overstatement" to tell us how. But so much is nothing to do with that.

13 Lists

Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald.

Well I get this one. The extract includes Nicole's shopping list. But as Lodge tells us "there is no logical order in the list (it's all over the place), no hierarchy of price or importance. So it includes "artificial flowers, honey, a guest bed, bags, scarves, love birds". Later " a personality .....  generous, impulsive, amusing". That's better. 

14 Introducing a character

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (1939)

"The simplest way to introduce a character ..... is to give a physical description and a biographical summary. Common in older fiction ....... (but now) modern novelists usually prefer to let the facts about a character to emerge gradually". ( My latest book The Candy House" sometimes takes for ever to tell us who they are). 

15 Surprise

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848)

Surprise is a twist in the plot. The extract here has Sir Pitt pleading for Rebecca to marry him. On and on until ...... at the very end "I'm married already". £Enough information must be fed to the reader to make the revelation convincing".

16 Time Shift

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961)

"Through time shift, narritive avoids presenting life as just one thing after another". Here the author goes backwards and forwards in time. There is one passage that does this with "breathtaking rapidity". Modern fiction uses this device in the memories of the characters. There is a mention of Martin Amis and his book Times Arrow that is told backwards. Much like Christopher Nolan's film Memento.

17 The Reader in the Text

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent. by Laurence Stern (1759-67)

This is all about the narratee, or the reader him or herself. "How could you, madam, be so inattentive in reading the last chapter." So always a rhetorical device. The reader is instructed to "Read the whole chapter again".

18 Weather

Emma by Jane Austen (1816) and Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1853)

"Used with intelligence and discretion, (the weather) is a rhetorical device capable of moving and powerful effects".

19 Repetition

In Another Country by Ernest Hemingway (1927)

The repetition on this extract includes "fall, cold, wind, blew". All associated with death.

20 Fancy Prose

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Lodge compares each of the four paragraphs shown here: "a lyrical outburst", "metaphor", "a series of identically structured clauses" (???) and "conversational". Not sure.