No More Heroes (Heroines) Any More
Classical literature tends to introduce the reader to a character and then through a slow drip feed reveal of information about them, the reader moves inside the character's psyche. This usually culminates in some inner emotional journey the character takes, to an end point of redemption or tragedy or some other demonstrable indication of change.
When a reader meets "A,B&E's" Karen Dash, there is no slow build towards her psyche, it is on show right from the off. The reader is plunged straight into the workings of her inner mind and the novel's drive is for the reader to come to understand exactly how she is who she is, but there may well be no pay off of 'change' at the end. Even as Karen attempts to re-suture her open wounds through the relaying of her tale to the reader, the paralysis of her situation becomes clear. There is no redemption, no tragic denouement. Whatever self-realisation she arrives at, will offer little prospect of escape.
I feel this is a far more realistic representation of our contemporary world. When you meet someone, say at a party or a bar, you instantly form an impression of them. Partly based on physical appearance or attractiveness if applicable; in the first person narrative in a novel, to have your character step outside of herself to describe how she looked (unless composing a lonely hearts ad), would seem contrived. Back to first impressions, you also gauge a lot from the first few words out of her mouth, which a novel can seek to convey very successfully. You don't need to describe someone physically for a reader. How they express themselves, the language they use, their views on the world or other people, one gesture describing how they do something, is enough to let the reader's imagination have free rein to build their own image. Karen Dash regaling people at bars is all about first impressions. She divulges her stories, but there isn't a peeling away of her character as such. More a getting acquainted with how reliable a narrator she is to escort the reader along her tales. Sat there in the Summer heat, drinking all day and trying to ponce cigarettes, she may have other agendas. That's why I compare her to a cross between Scheherazade spinning tales in order to save her life and a female version of Charles Bukowski's 'barfly".
For I also can't help feeling that the conventional character developmental 'journey' also holds less sway within our current day and age. Do people really change their behaviour all that much? Certainly some do manage to reinvent themselves, or turn their lives around. But most of us mere mortals are condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over again and I find this drive much more interesting to look at. Karen Dash has her character flaws, but I am also delving into what it is about her position in society that keeps her exactly where she is in place. Be it as a Don's wife in an university environment, or a moll in the very male world of crime. Two milieus where for all her natural abilities which ought to enable her to thrive, yet she is held in check by the mores and ironclad rules of those societies. This is counterpointed even further, by comparison with Billie Rubin, the NHS nurse, who forensically dissects every single fantasy image of the figure of a nurse that a patient may seek to impose on her real being. She too is pigeonholed as to what she ought to be as a carer and tenderer, but resists mightily to fall in with such prescriptions.
Returning to the notion of redemption or tragic endings, again I question the value of these in the twenty-first century. They seem to me to be relics from an age when morality was far more clear cut as good versus evil, virtue against sin. In today's world, is it still relevant to conceive narrative in these biblical terms? When serial killers such as Dexter and Hannibal are offered up as at least partly sympathetic protagonists for an audience? When personal misery is commodified and packaged as part of any would be reality contestant's CV, in their quest seeking to conquer their hardships and prevail in triumph in spite of them? Who are we offered as heroes today? A deeply flawed person like Michael Jackson, whose talent is indubitable, but whose character is wreathed in ambiguity, spread out in public for all to see and inviting judgement upon. Or a David Beckham, who was a very talented football player for a peak of maybe four years, far outlasted by his ability to serve as a mobile Hoarding that wouldn't look out of place above Piccadilly or Time Square, since he is just a prettified, but bland screen to project upon. Have you ever heard him make a pronouncement of worth upon any subject other than football? (Even that asseveration is questionable).I don't wish to pick upon these two individuals (and have made reparation by putting both in two of my novels as metaphors), but I use them to illustrate that there are no more modern heroes left for novels to aspire towards recreating in a fictional world.
Karen Dash isn't even an anti-heroine. Like most of us, she doesn't have that much power or influence to be an actor on life's stage. That is not to say she isn't a powerful personality with many capabilities, not least of which is her ability to size up the dynamics of the social situations she finds herself in. But these situations diminish her acute powers, since institutionally she is placed in positions of relative powerlessness. A Don's wife in the world of academia, a Moll to the ruthless masculine world of hardened criminality and an older woman in the world of unfettered lusts and desires of the young. She brings her strengths to bear in each of these milieus, but also founders on the limitations she has for manouevre within them. The situations she finds herself in at different stages of her life vary, but she is still broadly the same personality, with the same strengths and vulnerabilities as she vies with each. She tries on three different ways of life in her search for expressing her own identity and three times she will have to discard them as being ill-fitting. Shed snake skins, but still the same integral Karen Dash beneath. A little older, a little wiser, a little more set in her ways. The epigram at the novel's beginning is from the wonderfully funny novel "Karoo" by the late author Steve Tesich; "Saul knows everything, except what to do with what he knows".
When a reader meets "A,B&E's" Karen Dash, there is no slow build towards her psyche, it is on show right from the off. The reader is plunged straight into the workings of her inner mind and the novel's drive is for the reader to come to understand exactly how she is who she is, but there may well be no pay off of 'change' at the end. Even as Karen attempts to re-suture her open wounds through the relaying of her tale to the reader, the paralysis of her situation becomes clear. There is no redemption, no tragic denouement. Whatever self-realisation she arrives at, will offer little prospect of escape.
I feel this is a far more realistic representation of our contemporary world. When you meet someone, say at a party or a bar, you instantly form an impression of them. Partly based on physical appearance or attractiveness if applicable; in the first person narrative in a novel, to have your character step outside of herself to describe how she looked (unless composing a lonely hearts ad), would seem contrived. Back to first impressions, you also gauge a lot from the first few words out of her mouth, which a novel can seek to convey very successfully. You don't need to describe someone physically for a reader. How they express themselves, the language they use, their views on the world or other people, one gesture describing how they do something, is enough to let the reader's imagination have free rein to build their own image. Karen Dash regaling people at bars is all about first impressions. She divulges her stories, but there isn't a peeling away of her character as such. More a getting acquainted with how reliable a narrator she is to escort the reader along her tales. Sat there in the Summer heat, drinking all day and trying to ponce cigarettes, she may have other agendas. That's why I compare her to a cross between Scheherazade spinning tales in order to save her life and a female version of Charles Bukowski's 'barfly".
For I also can't help feeling that the conventional character developmental 'journey' also holds less sway within our current day and age. Do people really change their behaviour all that much? Certainly some do manage to reinvent themselves, or turn their lives around. But most of us mere mortals are condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over again and I find this drive much more interesting to look at. Karen Dash has her character flaws, but I am also delving into what it is about her position in society that keeps her exactly where she is in place. Be it as a Don's wife in an university environment, or a moll in the very male world of crime. Two milieus where for all her natural abilities which ought to enable her to thrive, yet she is held in check by the mores and ironclad rules of those societies. This is counterpointed even further, by comparison with Billie Rubin, the NHS nurse, who forensically dissects every single fantasy image of the figure of a nurse that a patient may seek to impose on her real being. She too is pigeonholed as to what she ought to be as a carer and tenderer, but resists mightily to fall in with such prescriptions.
Returning to the notion of redemption or tragic endings, again I question the value of these in the twenty-first century. They seem to me to be relics from an age when morality was far more clear cut as good versus evil, virtue against sin. In today's world, is it still relevant to conceive narrative in these biblical terms? When serial killers such as Dexter and Hannibal are offered up as at least partly sympathetic protagonists for an audience? When personal misery is commodified and packaged as part of any would be reality contestant's CV, in their quest seeking to conquer their hardships and prevail in triumph in spite of them? Who are we offered as heroes today? A deeply flawed person like Michael Jackson, whose talent is indubitable, but whose character is wreathed in ambiguity, spread out in public for all to see and inviting judgement upon. Or a David Beckham, who was a very talented football player for a peak of maybe four years, far outlasted by his ability to serve as a mobile Hoarding that wouldn't look out of place above Piccadilly or Time Square, since he is just a prettified, but bland screen to project upon. Have you ever heard him make a pronouncement of worth upon any subject other than football? (Even that asseveration is questionable).I don't wish to pick upon these two individuals (and have made reparation by putting both in two of my novels as metaphors), but I use them to illustrate that there are no more modern heroes left for novels to aspire towards recreating in a fictional world.
Karen Dash isn't even an anti-heroine. Like most of us, she doesn't have that much power or influence to be an actor on life's stage. That is not to say she isn't a powerful personality with many capabilities, not least of which is her ability to size up the dynamics of the social situations she finds herself in. But these situations diminish her acute powers, since institutionally she is placed in positions of relative powerlessness. A Don's wife in the world of academia, a Moll to the ruthless masculine world of hardened criminality and an older woman in the world of unfettered lusts and desires of the young. She brings her strengths to bear in each of these milieus, but also founders on the limitations she has for manouevre within them. The situations she finds herself in at different stages of her life vary, but she is still broadly the same personality, with the same strengths and vulnerabilities as she vies with each. She tries on three different ways of life in her search for expressing her own identity and three times she will have to discard them as being ill-fitting. Shed snake skins, but still the same integral Karen Dash beneath. A little older, a little wiser, a little more set in her ways. The epigram at the novel's beginning is from the wonderfully funny novel "Karoo" by the late author Steve Tesich; "Saul knows everything, except what to do with what he knows".