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.