Character work
And other things that keep me up at night
“What I’d wanted to know was, couldn’t people change? Did they have to settle for just being who they were forever, from cradle to grave?” - Anne Tyler, “Patchwork Planet”
I copied this quote into my commonplace book months ago but the question it raised burned in my brain one night this week around two in the morning as I waited for Rina, our dog, to pee. We both need to rise more often than we would like to these days and I dread it because THOUGHTS start racing through my head and keep me up for much of the night.
I’ve been trying to go with it lately, to use the quiet darkness and solitude of the pre-dawn hours to wonder, travel my own brain a bit, see where I land.
On this particular night, I’d gone to bed thinking about the characters I was trying to bring to life on the page and woke up thinking about my own character — the question of my own moral “excellence and firmness” or “essential nature” or “the complex of mental and ethical traits.”
That day, I’d spent an hour or more googling videos trying to find ones of kids at every age so I could hear how they sounded, what they talked about, and how they put words together. It’s been a while and I’m around a dog more than kids these days so I was hoping the Internet would once again come to my rescue and my googling wouldn’t somehow peg me as a lurker seeking out children. Next thing I know, I’m deep into studies of childhood behavior that are fascinating and not a little worrisome.
For example, there was this segment from “60 Minutes” about a series of Yale studies that suggest babies as young as three-months old are wired for bias - they tend to prefer people or characters similar to themselves. They can be harsh little judges — if they like Cheerios more than graham crackers, they seem to prefer puppets or people who prefer Cheerios and if a “bad” puppet takes Cheerios from the puppet who likes them, then they don’t seem to mind if the “bad” puppet gets punished.
“We are predisposed to break the world up into different human groups based on the most subtle and seemingly irrelevant cues, and that, to some extent, is the dark side of morality….We have an initial moral sense that is in some ways very impressive, and in some ways, really depressing -- that we see some of the worst biases in adults reflected in the minds and in the behaviors of young babies.” - Paul Bloom, professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University.
Wow.
The idea of being stamped with “good” or “bad” morals before we can sit up unassisted is unnerving. Furthermore, changing our moral tendencies won’t be easy says another group of researchers who studied adults.
What does this mean for my characters? Well, I’m the writer. I can make them do whatever I want, and I want them to change or at least have a shot at change or why am I even telling their stories?
As for what it means for me - well this kept me up the rest of the night and, in the morning, I was bleary-eyed but sure of this: I want the same thing I give my characters, the opportunity to change. Maybe it means I grow just a little, or maybe, as we’ve been discussing over the past few newsletters about racism, anti-racism, and white fragility, I become aware of the not-so-great moral tendencies I carry and practice behaving act in a way that counters them. I’ve got to keep trying. My characters’ stories end on the last page. Mine’s still going.
So, tell me, what keeps you up at night?
Speaking of characters…who’s in charge anyway?
From the researchers at Durham University, The Guardian, and the Edinburgh international book festival: a survey of 181 authors appearing at the 2014 and 2018 festivals. Sixty-three per cent said they heard their characters speak while writing, with 61% reporting characters were capable of acting independently.
Then there is the wonderful play by Luigi Pirandello, “Six Characters In Search of an Author” - in which six characters arrive at rehearsal of a play to seek the rest of their stories so they can do what all good characters do: outlive their creator.
“When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.”
― Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
You can buy a copy of the play for under three dollars at our Bookshop page. Here’s a taste from a production at Rockefeller Center and here’s where you can hear the whole thing read aloud to you by all the characters.
Just added to my TBR list:
In their new, very different, novels, both John Vercher and Britt Bennett explore a common question through their characters who are Black but have lived as white. Vercher’s debut novel, “Three-Fifths,” is a thriller that has earned nominations for three prestigious awards: the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and Left Coast Crime’s “Lefty” award for best Debut Novel. Bennett’s novel, “The Vanishing Half” follows her best-selling debut The Mothers and explores the choices of twin sisters to follow different paths along with what it means for their children in a story that spans the 1950s to the 1990s.
I read and loved “The Mothers” and was already looking forward to reading “The Vanishing Half” but this interview with author Britt Bennett gave even more reason to lose myself again in her prose. I learned about John Vercher and his debut novel from this interview on A Mighty Blaze and was pulled in by the premise of his story and how compellingly he spoke of his work despite the overly-chipper interviewer.
And, I’m looking into reading all of the stories in Nikki Dolson’s just-launched collection “Love And Other Criminal Behavior.” Just launched: Nikki Dolson: https://www.nikkidolson.com/
What Sparkers Are Reading
Joyce from North Carolina is reading and enjoying “The Orphan Sisters” by Shirley Dixon, set in Great Britain during World War II. Jen from New Hampshire is racing through the Lewis Trilogy by Peter May set in the Hebrides of Scotland. The titles, in order, are: “The Black House”, “The Lewis Man”, and “The Chess Men.” Shawn from Canada just finished “The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek” (a popular read in the Spark ommunity) and is about to start Michael Connelly’s new book “Fair Warning.” All of these can be found here on our Bookshop.org page where every sale generates funds for independent bookstores and to support literacy.
Tell Me A Story
Before I go, I want to thank every person who sent me lovely notes about last week’s newsletter about reading with my dad. A few of you shared stories with me last week about your fathers along with books you are reading and I’d like to start a new feature here, “Tell Me A Story.” Doesn’t have to be more than a memory, or a few lines sparked by whatever you’ve read or experienced. You are always free to type your stories right into the comments but if that doesn’t work, I’ll share a few here from time to time when they come in over email using first names only to protect your privacy.
Here are a few sparked by last week’s newsletter:
From Denis: Dad passed 9 years ago after a stroke and a fall, or a fall and a stroke, we’ll never know which came first. He lasted a week before he passed - he was conscious but couldn’t talk and the Doc said he had aphasia, so we didn’t know if he understood all that was happening. Mom had passed a year earlier after a 12-week battle with stage 4 cancer. I miss them both.
On a happier note, when we were in elementary school in Burlington VT, Dad would often walk to work at UVM. In the winter we would line up at the door when he got home and he would stick his freezing cold hands down the backs of our shirts while we screamed with delight. I’m sure he was happy to warm his hands too!
From Judy: Your thrill at learning to read, and especially those “big” words brought back a particular memory. On a Sunday drive with my family, yes, we did that, all three girls in the back seat, me in the middle of my two older siblings, we stopped at a light. Outside the window I saw a sign on a business: Bluetown Supply. S-u-p-p-l-y, I read, letter by letter and then sounded out the word: “Supply.” That may have been the first two-syllable unprompted word I learned to spell. How funny that feeling of pride and discovery stays with me even to this day.
As to my father—he was the one who invited me to sit beside him on the scratchy green couch while he opened the big pre-World War II World Atlas across our laps and in those moments, set me on the road as a traveler. Page by page, he said the names of states; we found our state: Missouri, and traced the Missouri River with our fingers and found our town, St. Joseph. He took me to Canada and Mexico, Central and South America, Europe, Japan, (this was after the War, by the way, after he returned from serving in the Navy in the South Pacific). He said the many-syllabled names of foreign and exotic places and then we traveled to the Solar System. I fell in love with Venus. I want to be a Venusian, I told him.
Thank you for these memories. I’ve written about that time on the couch with my dad and his World Atlas in my memoir as well as in other instances, but no matter how often I write about it, I never tire of the memory. Or of traveling.
From Jen: This past Saturday, the day before Father’s Day, I needed to get the sticky stuff from a label off a bottle and needed to use lacquer thinner to make it happen. As I dabbed an old cloth with the thinner, I was immediately reminded of being with my dad at Beaton’s Boatyard in Mantoloking, NJ where we spent each spring and fall preparing his sailboat for the summer sailing season or putting it to bed for the winter. It was a sweet, unexpected memory that instantly took me back 45 years and left me smiling.
From Shawn: My Dad also taught me to read around the age of four. It was a book about alligators, a big word for a four-year-old. He would also read to us before we went to bed. Books I remember are “The Little Princess”, The OZ books, and Winne-the -Pooh books. I still have all of those, although my oldest daughter has claimed them. We are readers because of him. He loved going to the Library.
He has been gone now for a long time, and I still miss him. My Mom has dementia and is in a home, so I know what that feels like.
Whew! That’s it. Please tell me how you are, what you’re reading, and any memories or little stories that pop up this week when you can’t sleep. It isn’t just me, is it?
Until next week.
Betsy
P.S. And here’s your moment of Zen…the last of the Jacaranda
