"i am writing to inform you of what i am currently doing" made me dizzy. But I loved it. The constant repetition, the myriad voices piling and mixing and merging together, the irony of certain phrases ("write it in your own words so that it sounds like you"), the fascinating (if occasionally nonsensical) juxtaposition of others ("birth is generally considered a declarative sentence. a name attached to an idea, screaming."), the mechanical quality of the short, declarative sentences--all these elements work together in this piece to create a strong emotional impact. One of my favorite moments during my reading occurred on page 19, when my eyes once again passed over the often-repeated phrase "repetition equals depersonalization." This particular time, however, the word was broken up, so I only saw "repetition equals deperson-," which my brain misread as "repetition equals desperation." Which was completely accidental, but fit perfectly with the desperate tone of this piece established by the recurrence of phrases like "you just missed it" and "do you think this looks like i'm trying too hard."
"A Little White Shadow" was obviously much less overwhelming, but equally interesting. Instead of an overload of information, we are given just a tiny portion of it, giving it a feeling of secrecy, like a riddle that we can't quite grasp. As in the previous piece, there were many interesting juxtapositions of words, images, and ideas, such as "It was my duty to keep the piano filled with roses" (page 10) and "my ignorance was a refining influence," (page 20).
These two techniques, overload and reduction, produce vastly different effects, both of which can be useful to incorporate in our own work, drawing from each as it suits the specific tone/emotion/effect we are attempting to create.
No comments:
Post a Comment