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TOTW 12/08: What's your take on the detailed nature descriptions in the SS?

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Vermont Sunset:

--- Quote from: oilfieldtrash on April 10, 2008, 04:05:38 pm ---"It was just the two of them alone on the mountain, flying in the euphoric bitter air, looking down on the hawk's back and the crawling lights of the vehicle on the plain below. Suspended above ordinary affairs and distant from tame ranch dogs barking in the dark"

Their Arcadia was both beautiful and doomed, as they really weren't alone after all. But, the vision of an Arcadia where they, or someone like them under their circumstances can be happy, is so very moving. Perhaps I think of the "natural" descriptions of their Arcadia on the mountain as being so appealing because it is painted on a canvas that is not so pretty, the real world of the small economically depressed towns and its harsh judgements of them.

And, a doomed beauty is often the most moving type of beauty, as it is fragile and transitory.

--- End quote ---

Yes, just at that moment AP tells us "They believed themselves invisible, not knowing that Joe Aguirre......." The ultimate Peeping Tom!

Of course you are right. But really life itself is transitory and fragile. It will end for all of us some day. So the real goal is to have at least one moment in time when things are perfect, when you can put aside the issue of its impermanence and just relish its exquite beauty. "...the time that distant summer when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisftying some shared and sexless hunger. They had stood that way for a "long" time..." That long time was probably less than an hour. In the movie it was less than a minute. Rocking in the sparklight feeling each others hearts beating. It may have been way too brief, yet it's memory brought joy to both of them for years after it passed.

Not to say that made it right. Made their suffering OK. Excused mistakes and bad decisions they made thereafter.  Made society's treatment of them acceptable.  It's just to say that they both had something that many people never experience.

BlissC:
I think at the most basic level, the nature descriptions give us a sense of place, a landscape to put the characters into. It's glaringly obvious, but you need some sort of context to put the people into. Like much of the SS, the description of Aguirre's office at the start of the story is very sparse, but even from those few words, it paints a vivid picture in your mind just from the words she uses of what the inside of Aguirre's office is like, and you form a mental image of it.

With nature it's not so simple though. When they first went up the mountain - "ascent into heaven" (I'm sure I've seen it described as that somewhere before) -

"Ennis and Jack, the dogs, horses and mules, a thousand ewes and their lambs flowed up the trail like dirt water through the timber and out above the tree line into the great flowery meadows and the coursing, endless wind."

She could have said, "Ennis and Jack, the dogs, horses and mules, and the sheep climbed up the trail up the mountain through the trees and then up through the meadows", but apart from being a rather boring description, it gives us no sense of scale, no sense of how they moved up the mountain. I'm not a big fan of "how to write" books, preferring to just get stuck in myself and writing by instinct, but I do own a couple, and one of them has a chapter entitled "show, don't tell". Annie's not telling us simply what they did, but giving us that viital information that allows us to form a picture in our minds. It gives us the information to imagine how all of those thousand ewes and their lambs would have looked, making their way up the mountain, and so much more. They made their way through the trees and the meadows, and not only visually can we picture those flowery meadows that are "great" (sense of scale again), but the "coursing, endless wind" tells us about the climate up there so that apart from seeing the landscape we can also feel it - we can feel that wind and we're using all our senses now, not just the visual ones.


--- Quote from: Penthesilea on April 07, 2008, 11:52:49 am ---„ ...and they packed in the game and moved off the mountain with the sheep, stones rolling at their heels, purple cloud crowding in from the west and the metal smell of coming snow pressing them on. The mountain boiled with demonic energy, glazed with flickering broken-cloud light, the wind combed the grass and drew from the damaged krummholz and slit rock a bestial drone.“
(coming down the mountain)

--- End quote ---

Again, having been given the visual descriptions of the landscape throughout their time on the mountain, this time there's more emphasis on the feeling of the place, and the way it echoes their emotions. We're given details though from the tiniest level "stones rolling at their heels", which is something we can relate to, the way when you're walking downhill small stones roll after you, to the visual again "purple crowd rolling in..." - a visual description which also carries a sense of the mood, and also another sense - "the metal smell of coming snow", and then a more detailed description of the weather with sound "a bestial drone".

"It was just the two of them alone on the mountain, flying in the euphoric bitter air, looking down on the hawk's back and the crawling lights of the vehicle on the plain below. Suspended above ordinary affairs and distant from tame ranch dogs barking in the dark hours"

Again, a sense of scale - looking down on the hawk and vehicles on the plain below, but in with that there's mixed so much more about their relationship - two words she uses "flying" and "euphoric", but contrasts that with "bitter air" (bittersweet?). They're "suspended" both physically with the height of the mountain, and emotionally, separate from everyday life and "tame ranch dogs". Life on the mountain is far separated from everyday life, and though as Penthesilea says,


--- Quote from: Penthesilea on April 07, 2008, 11:55:26 am ---She herself said in interviews, that in a short story every single word has to be right, has to carry meaning, that even the punctuation is important.

--- End quote ---


...it's that description that tells us more about their life together on the mountain and how it contrasted with "real life" than any amount of dialogue between them could.


--- Quote from: Vermont Sunset on April 10, 2008, 02:57:39 pm ---If you have read Close Range, the collection of Short stories in which BBM appears, you will realize this is unique. AP's characters are crushed and contorted by the harsh economic, social and physical environment in which they try to survive. but in BBM she lets nature ease up just a bit to allow the tender and fragile love of these two boys to flourish.

--- End quote ---

As Vermont Sunset says, it really feels as though with BBM she does let up and lets nature ease up just that little bit. I bought a friend of mine Close Range, and she started reading the other stories and about half way through gave up and skipped to BBM on the grounds that the stories were "Far too damned depressing!" lol! (and BBM's not? lol!)

I do feel that as Penthesilea quoted AP as saying, in a short story the choice of words is so important, but with the nature descriptions in BBM they really are vital to the story - the story of the mountain described through those descriptions, is just as important as the boys' story, and mirrors their story (in calm times we have descriptions of a peaceful mountain and the nature that surrounds them and in times of trouble, dramatic descriptions of the weather and the feel of the mountain that mirrors their moods), and that continues through the whole story. Those natural descriptions are integral to the story, and without them it would lack a lot. In the film we get the majestic landscapes and the subtle gestures and the looks and the expressions. In the SS though we have only the descriptions of their surroundings and we need those words to fill in the sense of place and to reinforce the dialogue and the snippets we are told about their thoughts. For linguistic artistry, how AP uses those words, on a scale of one to ten she gets and unequivocal fifteen - every single word is right, and does carry meaning, and BBM should be up there amongst the literary greats.

Front-Ranger:

--- Quote from: Vermont Sunset on April 10, 2008, 02:57:39 pm ---she does throw one little "burr" into this description. It just occurred to me recently. What would you do to an insect you saw crawling across a tablecloth, huh?)


--- End quote ---
Ouch, another premonition couched in an aside or joke!  :-\ Very insightful, friend VS!

Vermont Sunset:

--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on April 11, 2008, 12:01:42 am ---Ouch, another premonition couched in an aside or joke!  :-\ Very insightful, friend VS!


--- End quote ---

Yes, FR. I love her descriptions of nature as you well know. But from the very first time I read this, there was a "discomfort". Not only is it a bit of an unsettling image, it is an image from an indoor domestic setting, having seemingly nothing to do with the majesty around them. I figured it was just her unique way of describing things. But after reciting that passage from memory for the hundreth time at least, my voice suddenly took on a sinister tone as I came to that line..a sneer. And that's when it began to hit me. Then I thought of old man Twist's hands folded on the plastic "tablecloth" as he stares down Ennis and it clicked.

And think about it. An insect on a tablecloth is just being itself. Like adorable little 3 year old Jack who just can't quite get to the bathroom on time.  It has found itself unwittingly in the territory of another much more powerful creature who perceives it as a threat. ( the shoot 'em zone). The only response is to kill. ( Except if you are some of us bleeding hearts who go get a tissue to deposit the poor thing outdoors. I bet there are a lot of us here.  ;)).  The metaphor becomes clear. Jack as a "queer" is a threat to the homophobic society in which he exists, including most notably his father in that domestic setting.  But what if that insect was a dragonfly or a ladybug or a honeybee? Then not only do you kill an innocent creature, you kill one that actually has benefits to you.

And the further issue here is that this image is what Ennis is perceiving! His homophobia is completely unalloyed at this point, but that building attraction to Jack draws his eyes across that "great gulf". 

The price of blind ignorance. AP is truly a genius.

Vermont Sunset:
Contrast Jack's view of Ennis. "night fire." "a red spark on the huge black mass of mountain." No ambiguity there, huh? Ennis is Jack's true love and only joy in a dark and forboding world.

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