Monthly Archives: September 2014

‘Show, Don’t Tell’ in Life Narratives

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What I mostly wanted to concentrate on this week was the old idea of ‘show, don’t tell’ in literature in regards to Diamond Grill by Fred Wah and Missing Sarah by Maggie De Vries. Wah seems more partial to this way of story-telling than De Vries, most likely because her work is so much more news-related both in its content and its form. De Vries, therefore, is less likely to embrace the ambiguity in text that Wah enjoys. What I wonder is whether one of these method of story-telling (in life narratives in particular) is more effective than the other? I’ll confess, I initially was completely convinced that the ‘Show, don’t tell’ mantra was the obvious choice, but the question requires more consideration.
Wah, throughout Diamond Grill, encourages engagement and confusion in the reader simultaneously. A perfect example of this is the Head Tax chapter we discussed in class and how Wah is drawing the reader into Chinese-Canadian history in a confusing but intriguing selection of run-on sentences that force us to do research ourselves to achieve understanding; we are expected to make sense of “…Grandmpa Wah’d white Canada’s xeno-heat for long shimmered their open portals union jacked adapt miscegenated legislated fish heads…” and so on (130).
De Vries, on the other hand, will more often than not explicitly explain information or events to you at a time Wah would have most likely stopped. For example, the book begins with a series of anecdotes about Sarah as a child to exemplify her strong-headed personality. De Vries describes a time Sarah was told to not eat a spicy pepper but eats it anyways, and ends up crying with sore eyes and a burning mouth. The anecdote, standing alone, communicates to the reader the curious and sometimes stubborn personality of Sarah, but De Vries continues: “Experiences like that with the peppers didn’t teach her to trust adults’ advice and save herself some pain. She went right on following her own lead” (11). Indeed, this style could be seen as a weakness by some; Ernest Hemingway, in particular, put forth in his ‘theory of omission’:

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due only to one-eighth of it being above water” (Qtd in Nakjavani 14).

If you’re interested in learning more about Hemingway’s theory, you can read about it here.

Whereas Wah is a “subject [that] will not stay still” (Saul, 103), De Vries is relatively stationary. While Wah makes us research, De Vries presents her research to us and explains it. However, I then considered this may partially be because she is on the outside looking into Sarah’s life, and wants to give a more accurate and documented portrayal of her rather than just an impression (Literary Impressionism is another interesting literary theory in regard to Wah, that you can read about it in Jesse Matz’ Literary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics). If De Vries left gaps to be filled, perhaps we would fill them with stereotypical ideas about residents of the DTES, the very ideas she is seeking to challenge. To make her goal clear, it makes sense she chooses a much clearer format than Wah.
Another example of this inherent difference is chronology – the lack of chronology in Diamond Grill suits the biotext. In an interview, De Vries regards both the directness of her message and her use of chronology. She mentions she even had to take out “some parts where [she] became too preachy” and she was told to make the story chronological, which was “an amazingly useful piece of advice…Chronology itself pulls the reader through”. (qtd in Raoul).
You can read the interview here.

Lastly, I include a link that directly argues with my preconception that ‘Show, don’t tell’ is an inherently correct statement. In a short article on the Writer’s Digest website, Joshua Henkin argues we should reject the concept as an all-encompassing rule:

“If you ask me, the real reason people choose to show rather than tell is that it’s so much easier to write ‘the big brown torn vinyl couch’ than it is to describe internal emotional states without resorting to canned and sentimental language. You will never be told you’re cheesy if you describe a couch, but you might very well be told you’re cheesy if you try to describe loneliness. The phrase “Show, don’t tell,” then, provides cover for writers who don’t want to do what’s hardest (but most crucial) in fiction.”

To read more, click here.

What do you think? Is one style more effective than the other?

Works Cited:
De Vries, Maggie. Missing Sarah. 2nd ed. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2008. Print.

Henkin, Joshua. “‘Show, Don’t Tell’ Is the Great Lie of Writing Workshops'” Writer’s Digest. Writer’s Digest, 19 June 2012. Web. 24 Sept. 2014. .

Matz, Jesse. “Literary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics”. Port Chester, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 24 September 2014.

Nakjavani, E. G. “The Aesthetics of Meiosis: Hemingway’s ‘Theory of Omission’ (Interdisciplinary Study, Cezanne)”. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1985. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Web. 24 Sep 2014. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/303448162?accountid=14656. (303448162).

Raoul, V. (2004). “You May Think This, But: An Interview With Maggie De Vries”. Canadian Literature, (183), 59-70. Web. 24 Sep. 2014. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/218810664?accountid=14656

Saul, Joanne. “Writing the Roaming Subject: The Biotext in Canadian Literature”. Toronto, ON, CAN: University of Toronto Press, 2006. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 24 September 2014.

Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2006. Print.

Link

What I found especially interesting in the blog posts for this week was the issue of trust that most of us, I think, automatically feel when introduced to a life narrative of any kind, including Facebook. This trust may be forfeited if the viewer spots inconsistencies or implausibility, but most of us begin with a pretty untarnished view of the author.

Particularly with social media we can be quick to believe others’ lives are just be that much better than our own, for as Rosie Pierce points out, many users try to make themselves look “happier and more successful than [they are] in reality”. This unrealistically ideal representation of life is much like unrealistic representations of models in ads that have led to poor body images, particularly among youth. This point is supported by Jane Shi’s cited article on how depression in youth may worsen with use of social media. If one constantly compares oneself to others on a network that encourages displaying one’s accomplishments and not one’s faults, the experience can definitely make someone feel inadequate.

Is this trust inherent to the genre of life narratives and autobiographies? Is the reader betrayed if the writer doesn’t abide by that trust that seems to be a social expectation?

A good example of this trust is in Vivian Wan’s discussion of Humans of New York. She says that while she respects people’s right to privacy, she can be hesitant to believe posts that lack names, for they could be orchestrated to promote the particular Westernized ideology Wan argues these bloggers are promoting.

One may also assume, then, that names and photos inspire more trust in a reader, whether this is logical or not. While Facebook in particular allows fake photos and names, these attributes gives us an illusion of identity, and therefore we begin to build a bond with the writer, artificial or otherwise.

Proof this may be inherent to the genre of autobiographies, and not just Facebook, is in Sam Cohn-Coisineau’s post on Carlos Casteneda. Cohn-Coisineau points out many of these accounts are most likely untrue, but for a long while his books were “universally praised” because they were read as anthropological accounts. Cohn-Coisineau also points out there was a lively market for such books at the time, as modern readers developed a “exoticized fascination with Indigenous cultures”, so the books were serving a purpose to an avid audience. By taking on the language of an anthropological text, did Casteneda betray his readers’ trust? How does this compare to Facebook?

Lying by omission is similarly discussed by Hugo Liu, pointing out people are less likely to share negative but significant life events on social media despite their importance, thus creating, essentially, a different identity of a person without this struggle. How can you claim to be the same person as that on your Facebook account when there are no photos of your serious conversations with you family, your moments you feel most alone, or any of your struggles? We take it for granted life narratives are biased, but tools like Facebook now allow ‘white lies’ and embellishment of stories to be used even more often. Do we need to be more wary as readers? Or is it really no worse now than the diaries and propaganda we study in history, that were also trusted accounts at the time?