Well Acquainted with the Night
As long as I've been writing I've always disliked it when a writer, whether for the printed page or the screen, falls back on suddenly introducing a dream into the story, whether to explain an absurd turn of plot, or because, frankly, he or she has run out of inspiration. It's like what's known as magical realism, which has always struck me as a weak option--when in doubt as to what to do with your character at one point or another, make him fly, turn him into an umbrella, have the sky rain golden coins--and hence has made any work with magical realism in it utterly unreadable to me. Though I've tried, I can't read Marquez or Rushdie. Simply put, I don't believe it. I'm with Roberto Bolaño on this one: there's enough to deal with in real life before we start going all Chagall on our characters.
I mention this because twice now I've depended on my dreams either to give me an entire novel--my most recent work, now circulating with editors, The Man Who Was, and mentioned in an earlier blog--or an idea that I could use in a future work. The other night I dreamed I was going to die. Not from old age or some disease, but by choice, simply because, within the logic of the dream, I had to. In the dream, this had become a convention of society: one was put on a train, given a pill and a bottle of water. You took the pill, you felt pretty good, you started to get drowsy... And of course you didn't wake up. In the dream I was told it was called "The Vermeer Effect": that during the hour or so before you slipped out of this life, individual memories would come to mind, linger for a moment, and then slip away. Until only one remained. That's the one you stayed with until, moments or minutes later, you died.
When I woke up I mentioned this to my wife, and she reminded me of a wonderful little Japanese film of some years ago in which people died and went to a place where they were asked to choose one moment from their lives in which they would spend eternity.
In the case of my dream one's memories were reduced to, or at least solidified into, a single image. I'd written about Vermeer before, in my novel The Discovery of Light. Discovery is, in fact, a contemporary roman noir, as the French would call it, something in the tradition of René Belletto or Jean-Patrick Manchette, or, as more than one reader pointed out to me, Alain Robbe-Grillet. It's a kind of murder mystery, but the clue to what has taken place--the mysterious death of the narrator's wife--is contained in the enigmatic paintings of Vermeer.
Vermeer has a painting of a woman standing by a window, reading a letter. It's impossible to tell what's in the letter, and the woman's expression, the way she grips the paper, the effect of seeing her reflection broken into several panes of the open window, could indicate that this is either immensely good news, or something very bad indeed. Beyond the fact of the quality of the painting, beyond even the immensely skillful way the painter uses light and reflection, there is the story that both exists and doesn't exist here. Recently, in an article in the London Review of Books, a writer asks why Vermeer's paintings so especially lend themselves to words. I suggested in a letter to the editor that some of his works seem to be snatched from a longer narrative and almost beg to be included in a longer story. But there's a deeper reason here, I think. We humans need story. We live bounded by an opening sentence--our birth--and the inevitability of a last word. We strain to find meaning in the intervening pages of our life, to see those three acts (the standard matrix for most screenplays, by the way) play out in a definite, satisfying way.
We look for our models in fiction, on the big screen, the little screen, anywhere we can find them. Without them our lives could be construed as a meaningless series of discrete events. Which, perhaps, they may well be. So we impose story on our lives, or we ask others to find our narratives for us (therapy, anyone?).
However... "The Vermeer Effect" will be used in a few sentences in a book I'm planning to start writing sometime next year, a novel about a photojournalist. I am deeply interested in photographs, and have a small collection of books about photography and photographers. I'm especially interested in war photographers, and to that end have written one (unpublished) novel and one (unproduced) screenplay about them, and will make that third attempt, as already mentioned. For what is a photograph but simply a captured moment from someone else's life. If the photo didn't exist the life would still have gone on, the little girl would be running from the napalm, the GI would still be swimming up to Omaha beach, and but for the presence of a photographer we would not have known they'd existed. We have to be grateful that someone was there at the right time. Timing, as everyone knows by now, is the name of the game.
Time to get back on the train...
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Sangay Glass says:
I don't feel bad about using dreams.
Both times I used them to express the fears and anxieties of the dreamer. And it's funny, I also used "The Vermeer Effect" though I didn't have a name for it. But I experienced it while I nearly choked to death on a piece of steak. My, that was close.
J.P. Smith says:
Maybe dreams are more common
Maybe dreams are more common than one thinks, Sangay. I may actually save that notion for a screenplay somewhere down the road: a number of people who have common dreams.
No, I have no objection to using dreams if they're in context. And I like the way you suggest you use them, which is, of course, contextual. I sometimes find, though, that writers will fall back on them in place of moving the story forward. And we all know from sitting down at breakfast and listening to our kids' dreams that they can get tiresome very, very quickly!
Thanks for the comment, by the way. Much appreciated.
J.P. Smith says:
Afterthought
Perhaps the most brilliant use of dream in prose--which I only just remembered--is in Goncharov's novel Oblomov, and entitled, aptly, "Oblomov's Dream". And, of course, there's the entirety of Finnegans Wake, which is said to take place during the dream state.
Stephen Lyman says:
magical realism ain't all bad
I agree that when an author uses magic to dig himself out of a painted corner, that can be construed as lazy writing or a lack of imagination, but when one sets out to write a story in which magic is part of the created world, as Haruki Murakami or Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Etgar Keret do, that can be elegant storytelling. Perhaps not a genre you enjoy, but a legitimate approach to story nonetheless.
One of the unwritten rules of screenwriting is that "it was all a dream" is a no-no, because audiences don't want to sit through an entire movie just to find out that it didn't really happen - somewhat ironic since the story itself is a fiction. However, I'm sure that in the right hands "it was all a dream" could be a fantastic film. It's just that beginning writers often rely on that conceit when they don't have a "real life" story interesting enough to tell.
That said, using a dream to enhance a story is an altogether different animal.
Just like using dreams in stories, magical elements are a tool or a crutch depending on who is using it.
Sangay Glass says:
lol... dreams... you probably missed that show, Life on Mars
There was a write up in the NYTimes about it today. I had been following the show and it had a eerie familiarity. It turns out it was a remake of an old series. They were all sharing a common dream on their long trip to Mars.
It makes sense to me. How else would people in limbo make such a long trip in limbo without going insane?
I'll have to check out, Finnegan’s Wake. As Joyce's last piece maybe it tells all.
And btw...all my fiction stories come from dreams. I'm only beginning to realize the significance of my characters and stories. My most beloved character is the personification of all the people I never said goodbye to. And my first novel is a twisted version of my parent’s struggles as they tried to overcome racism and adversity.
Dreams are significant.
J.P. Smith says:
Stephen, I don't agree that
Stephen, I don't agree that Murakami resorts to magical realism. I actually think he works in a more infra-realistic vein, as does Bolaño (and as one finds to some degree in Kafka, as well), so that all of his "magical" moments are rooted in true reality.
Otherwise, I think most writers (and readers) of fiction have begun to find that magical realism has had its moment. It stops the action dead, it detracts from genuine character development, and it takes the reader, happily or otherwise, right out of the narrative. In fact, a lot of readers and critics have found that magical realism is something of a cop-out for those writers who rely on it.
Sangay, I saw the original, British version of "Life on Mars", which I thought though story-wise a bit familiar was a very clever concept very nicely done (and as someone who'd lived in England in the 70s I loved how the details were just right for the times). The writers limited themselves to two seasons, thus one had the sense that they knew exactly where this was going to end up, and the denouement really didn't depend on the stale old "this was only a dream", but rather kept everything within context. I won't say more, as you haven't seen the series, so no more spoilers from me!
Mary Wilkinson says:
I am reading a friends novel
I am reading a friends novel at the moment and I find the best prose occurs when he resorts to a dream sequence, although only a paragaph at most at any given place, it sounds like the true and authentic voice, raw and real and the rest, sounds trivial and contrived..........
J.P. Smith says:
Mary, that could well be due
Mary, that could well be due to a number of things, but I would suspect that when your friend is writing "free", so to speak, the language comes alive. Often "dream writing", as one might call it, can come off as self-indulgent and meandering, as it does when our kids sit down at the breakfast table: "And then the dog turned into, you won't believe this, but he was this gigantic elephant, and he said that he wanted some chocolate, but I was in this field with my friend Janet, and she was skipping rope and the rope turned into a bicycle and Brian was this great big butterfly and he was singing that song, you know the one..." And that's when your attention drifts. Dreams in fiction simply don't carry the investment that they do in life, unless, as I wrote above, they are contextualized (i.e. the character dreaming is precognitive, an important plot point). They are, in fact, a little too easy to write, which may paradoxically be why your friend's work comes alive at that point.
Mary Wilkinson says:
But if the plot comes
But if the plot comes alive.......isn't that the point?! Isn't that what we want? The real voice, the true soul appearing on the page....I hear you about the meandering but if the dream has texture and credibility it matters. Right?
J.P. Smith says:
The plot--or, rather, the
The plot--or, rather, the writing--has to be alive on every page, Mary. If we're reading a novel--if we're plodding through a dull narrative--and suddenly everything comes to life for three pages, once we return to the non-dream descriptions we're plodding again. That kind of thing kills a book for editors, as well as for readers. Because then we think: well, the author's got potential, but only sporadically.
I was going to add to my earlier comments that every novel (or film, for that matter) has an inner logic. If it is rooted in the real world, then suddenly introducing a bout of magical realism, unless we're in a Lewis Carroll novel, which establishes its own logic very, very quickly, we're off our game, just as the author suddenly and obviously is.
Haruki Murakami (or, more properly, Murakami Haruki) builds his works on a very tight realistic logic, so that whatever seems miraculous is deeply rooted within his universe. In that way it's no longer magical realism; it's simply part of the story. Just as Kafka in, say, "Metamorphosis", never has Gregor's family crawling around like insects; they treat him as if he's just another member of the family and that all is quite ordinary. Hence, as readers, we learn to read this story of Kafka's, just as we learn to read Murakami. And a truly great or even good author has to, in a way, teach his readers how to read him.
Mary Wilkinson says:
Yes, I see your point,
Yes, I see your point, sporadic potential is really basically a sad thing because it never goes beyond that point typically, does it? It is like a faint glimmer of light in a permanently darkened room, glimpsed occasionally and only to disappear once more for long long periods at a time...
J.P. Smith says:
Mary, it's sort of like when
Mary, it's sort of like when black-and-white films very selfconsciously burst into color in places. Although black-and-white (and all of the intermediate shades of grey) is really a beautiful palette for cinema, when color breaks out it works against the rhythm and flow of the picture, and the audience feels manipulated in all the wrong ways. Here's where dreams can work best in fiction: when they are memories. Because then they add to our knowledge of the character of the dreamer, and (one hopes) contribute to the narrative motion of the story.