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| Ann Pancake |
Is what I'm calling "compression" a strength or a weakness? If you think it is a strength, why? If you think it is a weakness, can you think up a rationale behind writing in this way? How would you describe Pancake's magic?
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Ann Pancake: Given Ground
Read these stories slowly, and read them with love. You will need to in order to pull the narrative from "Ghostless" or "Wappatomaka" or "Sister." For what Pancake specializes in is not surface plot and character but layers that work to simulate a world. Her language is so rich, so full of texture, and metaphorical meaning, that it tends to overshadow some fictional elements that help readers to make sense of what they're reading. You'll notice that Pancake does not follow all of the "rules." For example, she does not identify characters in the mind of the reader early on in each story. You have to work to see these characters--their gender, their age, their societal status--and you sometimes have to revise your first impressions.
It's a kind of compression--I mean Pancake's way of filling our eyes with language before clearly setting forth characters or situations--that takes time to understand. These stories taught me how to read them. When I reached "Sister," the seventh story in the collection, I finally relaxed into the experience, knowing that I would be reading about layers of sisters, and what happens to them, and I would read again in order to unfold, or expand, that which has been so compressed.
Is what I'm calling "compression" a strength or a weakness? If you think it is a strength, why? If you think it is a weakness, can you think up a rationale behind writing in this way? How would you describe Pancake's magic?
Is what I'm calling "compression" a strength or a weakness? If you think it is a strength, why? If you think it is a weakness, can you think up a rationale behind writing in this way? How would you describe Pancake's magic?
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The first thing I noticed in Ann Pancake’s stories is how much she loves language. However, I see this as a good thing or a bad thing but either way entirely subjective and dependent on what you look for in a short story. But for me, her “compression”, her putting language right in front of the reader, tells me that Ann Pancake is not interested in telling an actual story. She has characters, atmosphere, and beautiful writing, but it doesn’t add up to anything. And what backstory and plot she has is exposition, “Jolo” being a major culprit of this. Everything in “Jolo” is backstory, “she did this”, “this happened”, “he did that”, etc. Ann Pancake has a complete aversion to scenes, which is a shame since when she has scenes, stories like “Jolo” actually pick up and do something and become interesting.
ReplyDeleteBut I think Ann Pancake does this because she’s going for a more, “narrow but deep” approach to her stories. She doesn’t want much in the way of plot but trades off for depth and meaning by way of her language and metaphor in both the characters and setting.
As Catherine put it in her blog post, Ann Pancake expresses herself in "layers" of writing instead of something upfront or forward for the reader. I loved that about her work, the way that she used her words to put forth an emotion instead of story really moved me. "Ghostless", the very first piece we are introduced to, affected me the most. The title alone invokes a sense of emotion before the story even begins! My favorite line was found towards the end " In a city, I tell you, it is all straight and angles, your eye broken up by corners and by edges." This isn't something you can dissect essentially and figure out its meaning, it's something your suppose to just take in and let it settle inside of you. By letting this sink in, I was able to finally understand what Pancake is trying to convey. It was that we can't see things for what they mean, but instead of what they are. The same could be found in "Revival" and "Jolo" as well. As we take from the text emotions instead of direct prose, another dimension is added to her stories. A connection is made between what we are reading on the page and what we are feeling, and because of this, I believe Ann Pancake is one of my favorite authors yet.
ReplyDelete--I've had issues with my internet connection & posting tonight so since this is my third attempt i hope the others didn't post as well, and that i've covered everything that I had in the previous posts, sorry!--
ReplyDeleteAnn Pancake's stories gave me more of a sense of scene vs. summary from what Burroway discussed. Especially in the second story "Revival" where it goes from the summary of Lindy every Christmas, to the specific scene, or scenes really, where we see her interacting with Shane and Dee Dee. To respond to your question, I did feel that initial confusion in the beginning of her stories where I felt as though I was not certain where to place the narrator, her openings were so ambiguous; for example, in "Ghostless" it takes until in the middle of the second page before we're really given the gender of our narrator. I was almost certain the main character was female from the love shown to the horse and later the use of the word "daddy". I agree that she is "filling our eyes with language before clearly setting forth characters" but I find that to be more of her style of writing than a weakness. Yes I realize she's "breaking the rules" by not clearly introducing important information in the begining, but I almost prefer that she makes it a point not to do so. I can identify with her slow beginning, using detail to draw my attention and make me pay attention to get to the important parts. I normally don't like to have to wait to receive information, but I think this in and of itself is a part of her magic, her ability to not only draw my attention as a reader in the beginning by making me want to keep going to find out who is speaking, then have to find out more and more until I end up finishing one of her stories. I really like how Laura put it where she talked about layers in her post "the way that she used her words to put forth an emotion instead of story". I agree that she used more than suspense to draw us in, there was more texture in the story through the characters, from the detailed "emotions" that gave the reader the ability to hold onto and feel.
At this point, I still don't know how I feel about Ann Pancake's writing style. Clearly, she's a talented wordsmith. Her language is eloquent and sometimes I forget I'm reading a short story and not looking at a painting. I think the language in Jolo is particularly beautiful, especially in the scenes where Carrie is sitting by the river. Through such descriptions, Pancake is able to tap into a sensuality that I don't think many people possess or are capable of possessing, but sometimes her language is distracting. I'll read a beautiful passage and my head will fill with her words but when I think about it, I have no idea what she's saying and I then have to go back and reread and reread again, which is a little frustrating. I understand that perhaps the action of her stories is on the back burner, but I do wish I had a sense of what the hell is going on. I feel like I stumble over her words sometimes, and her strange syntax just isn't my taste when it comes to reading. I also think I'm doing much more seeing than feeling. I see these scenes easily with the help of her description, but outside of that, I feel a little cold. I feel like she's stuck somewhere between poetry and prose in a way that kind of misses the mark on both accounts. I wish she would take her sometimes deep subject matter (as in the story of the sister carrying a dead child) and push it further so that I can really feel the gravity of the situation rather than focus on the main characters kerosene-stained coat.
ReplyDeleteMy first thought when reading Ann Pancake was that her language was the most beautiful thing I had encountered all day, and secondly I needed to reread the stories out loud. Ms. Pancake is obviously a brilliant writer, but what I was most drawn to was how she created characters that were both tropes and individuals. For example, the father character in the first story that was both uneducated and wise, or the sister who carried the dead baby to term. These characters drove the story in a direction that made such odd story lines work. Normally I wouldn't enjoy a story wherein a man sees ghost, but these allowed the characters to still carry the backwoods demeanor that furthered the plot--the man disobeying the posted signs, a way of creating conflict with the mother in the story. I understand where Maddie is coming from, that Ms. Pancake is stuff somewhere between prose and poetry, and honestly, I love it. Especially the syntax, very subtle at times, the narrator is able to tell the story and still give the reader a feel for the language she grew up with. excellent.
ReplyDeleteWhile I was reading Anne Pancake, I noticed that she loves to use metaphors quite frequently when she writes. Combined with the unfamiliar way that she structures her sentences, I actually found it hard to read some of her writing. There were times where I just really didn't know what she was saying. One such case is in Revival when the main character is listing what it's like to have an age gap with her sister when in that time her mother had several miscarriages. That list on page 18 was really confusing because of her sentence structure. I noticed that a lot of the time, she likes to stretch the meanings of words. She applies sensations to things that are not able to be sensed in that way. Sometimes this writing is very pleasant, but at other times it can be really distracting and confusing when the meaning that she intends is lost.
ReplyDeleteThere are moments in her writing where she gives beautiful description. Although there were moments in revival where the writing was confusing, she also had other moments where a scene was really brought to life. In this story there was a beautiful description of a trailer in which her sister Dee-Dee and her sisters boyfriend were living. There was great imagery there. I loved how Pancake described the fish tank as yellow, and the room smelling of sweat. I loved how the dishes in the sink smelled and were gelled over. I loved the cinderblocks that were placed at the steps of the trailer, almost as if a temporary solution, not worth the effort to create an atmosphere of home.
As a whole, your phrase "compression" strikes me as neither a strength nor a weakness. This writing is about a world that only Pancake can see, and some of her descriptions are lost to the reader. To this extent this is a weakness, however the descriptions that are able to transfer to the reader are powerful and a great strength. The net effect of this "compression" is a neutral position between strength and weakness.
It was very confusing for me to read the works that were written by Ann Pancake. During my time reading, I found myself distant to the stories. I'm not too sure if it was my tastes that caused me to feel this way or Ann's unique, yet disjunct, form or writing. More often than not, I appreciated what she was doing with her great metaphors and symbolism and the images that she was creating, but I couldn't help feel that they were watered down by her structure and form of writing that caused me to over-analyze what she was saying. This just confused me. A good example of this would have to be from her first short, Ghostless. In this piece her writing was unique, based off of what we have been learning from Burroway and how to establish and structure a story, and it because of this, I found the opening to be very ambiguous and I didn't really know what was going on until I hit the second page, and even more so on the third. It took me a while to realize that it was the father who had died, the gender of the narrator and that the ghosts were actually that of spirits of the dead. The confusion, I think, helped make the story more effective in reveal and more (I guess) suspenseful, but the confusion and not really knowing what she had said made me distant from the characters and I found myself not really feeling too much from the story or for the (actually well-written) characters. The same goes for pieces like Revival and Jolo - That due to her, albeit creative, writing, I couldn't really get a feel for her stories and I'm afraid that her meanings she wanted me to see fell on deaf ears and lost in effort to translate her language. I look forward to learning her mind frame and what she was thinking when she made these conscious decisions.
ReplyDeleteI love the way these stories taste as they roll around in your mouth. How Pancake arranges her words differently from story to story to make a point of bringing to light whichever aspect of the take she deems important. All of her stories have developed plots, characters, tones, and settings but instead of trying to bring up them all, the reader dips and flows through them. As you read, sometimes it is the characters you attach to, other times it is the plot and trying to uncover what is happening. Many times it is the meaning behind the words themselves, sentence by sentence. Like in “Jolo,” from the first paragraph, the story is not focused on explaining the details of the character like Burroway suggested, or outlining the setting in its physical sense. “Moving through air as sticky as the blood that moves inside her, same heat as the blood, the spit inside her, that moves inside, so that there in the dark she forgets where she ends, forgets where her skin stops, her skin…” Its sounds like poetry, the words too beautiful to be shuffled off as just definitions and descriptions to introduce another subject. These words are the subject, they are seeking attention, understanding, and assessment more than the character, more than the setting. And still, Pancake can move her words, rearrange them to highlight something else. Like in “Ghostless,” her words paint the plot, teach us about this father from his son’ s point of view. Still later, in “Getting Wood,” Pancake uses her sentences as action, describing exactly the motions, the setting hard and fast so that the reader moves quickly along without embellishment. Pancake’s message is often not spoken in what she says but rather how she tickles the words into arranging how they speak.
ReplyDelete(I posted this on the due date, but apparently it didn't actually load properly after entering "publish" so here it goes again).
ReplyDeleteBefore reading something I usually skim over it first, picking stories that have interesting titles and just getting a feel for what the language is to sort of prepare myself. In my first few glances of these short stories I thought that they would be right up my alley. I love stories that use beautiful language and are rather straight forward, but have meanings within them that makes it so I can go back to them and find something new. Once I started reading "Given Ground" I found that my first impression of her writing style was a bit off. She does use beautiful language, but not in the simplistic style that I was expecting. At times, I found the descriptions to be so detailed that I had to go back and read again just to be sure of what was happening in the story. Also, because of the language I was expecting the stories to be a bit more traditional in how they are told. These, however, focused more on the emotional side of the story rather than the story itself. Many of the details were imbedded within the story and had to be fished out (which I both liked and disliked at times). In short, Pancake's writing is something that I don't think can be read through quickly and still walk way with something from it. I feel it is more similar to poetry where I would have to sit down with it and read them over again to really unfold it into something meaningful to me.