The Sentence by Matthew Baker. Ann Arbor, MI: Dzanc Books, 2023. 140 pages or 1 page, depending on your definition of a page. $31.95. (Accordion edition.)
Matthew Baker’s The Sentence is a gripping graphic novel – if you put the emphasis on graph, as in a sentence diagram … and if your definition of “novel” is based on page rather than word count, because this engrossing work is a single diagrammed 6,732-word sentence. The setup may sound gimmicky, but the “gimmick” and the story itself are completely inseparable, coming together to make a work of art much greater than the sum of its parts (and the diagram form is much easier to read than it appears!)
The narrator, grammar professor Riley, has a fraction of a second to grab one item from their office as they are suddenly rushed into the unknown, away from the new dictatorial government’s unfounded treason charge against them. That one item they instinctively lunge for: a book, “the seminal text in the art of the sentence diagram … (a system for imposing order over chaos, for mapping the rough terrain of the language (the secret trailways that logically linked the words together,) for depicting the hidden architecture of a statement (the structural supports that prevented a collapse in meaning) …” This system serves as an anchor for Riley as they try to adjust to life on an off-grid anarchist compound as a very organized autistic person. Putting the story in diagram form embeds the reader under Riley’s skin by presenting reality in the orderly way they process it. The contrast between Riley and the community they come to care for is a very compelling conflict. Trying to decide between the lawless vision of their friends and the oppressive but lawful government they resist, Riley laments, “I would be forced to choose between friendship and chaos and loneliness and comfort and might die either way …”
Even the book-as-object mimics Riley’s thought process and brings the story to life in your hands. The hardcover, 70-foot-long accordion-folded sheet of paper that accommodates the diagram structure resembles Riley’s brain: neat, focused, and fragile. While toying with the book (naturally I unspooled sections across my apartment floor a few times) it occurred to me that the book is like a single thread that you pull at or comb through as you read, that continuously unravels or untangles Riley’s brain.
I just cannot get over the craft features of this form. It’s surprisingly well-equipped for pacing. As you trace through a long tangential clause, the line on the left-hand side tying it to the relevant upcoming story beat continues steadily downwards, often building suspense and always providing the assurance of order that sets Baker’s narrative apart from other stream-of-consciousness styles. At the end of a long tangent, I would follow the trail back to the point that triggered it, assess the action again in light of the new information, then flip forward once again with the background neatly compartmentalized. This back and forth motion held the story together like a backstitch, securing every lengthy description in place. It reminds me somewhat of the chronological back and forth I enjoy in Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez’s writing, but the motion is spatial rather than temporal.
The Sentence asks us, what happens to an orderly system (of language or law) when it is stretched to contain an entire life? An entire people? Not only that, but the book offers itself as an exhibit of its own study in such a clever way. As a poet and poetry reader (not to mention a book arts geek), the novel struck me as a textbook example of how form and content can work together, and I’ll now be using it in the creative writing class I teach this fall.
Unswerving by Barbara Ridley. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2024. 227 pages. $19.95. Paperback.
Barbara Ridley’s novel Unswerving is a journey through perseverance and the importance of community. Tave, a delightfully judgmental character, is introduced as a bitter young woman who recently broke her neck in a car accident, losing her ability to walk, function in her arms and hands, and, perhaps more importantly, contact with her girlfriend Les, who was also in the crash. Tave begins the novel as a grumpy protagonist struggling to come to terms with her circumstances. As she slowly regains control of her hands and arms, but not her legs, Tave needs to push herself to recover both physically and mentally. Enter Beth, her 30-something year-old primary physical therapist, who serves as a counterpoint to Tave. Having a more optimistic outlook, Beth is the kind of person to enjoy the reward and teamwork of working in rehabilitation. As a fellow lesbian, Beth identifies with Tave’s mental turmoil and isolation and goes beyond the call of duty for her.
From there, Ridley tells a brilliant story of what it means to live with a disability. The novel is open about the hardships being paralyzed can bring, yet never dramatizes what it means to be disabled. Instead, the story crafts a cast of disabled characters who are independent, joyful, and find fulfilling hobbies within the disabled community, such as handcycling. With these side characters who invite Tave, and the readers, into their world, Ridley shows the importance of a dependable community to survive. This community is pivotal to Tave’s mental recovery and well-being, helping her find new sports, having previously been a softball player, and independence. This means day-to-day independence in the form of mobility and independence from her homophobic, extremist-Christian family. By spending time with colorful characters Maddy, who Beth introduced to Tave, and Billie, a former patient in Tave’s unit, Tave is made to question her own preconceived notions about being disabled. As she becomes more comfortable around Maddy and Billie, Tave also becomes more comfortable with herself.
This storyline is mirrored by the significance of both Tave and Beth being gay. Beth acutely sympathizes with Tave’s lack of support system and refusal to rely on her unaccepting mother. Because of this, Beth feels a greater personal responsibility to helping Tave discover how she would live meaningfully with her paralysis, which leads her to introduce Tave to other people who are disabled, help her go on outings away from the hospital, and help her find more information about Les and the crash. The bond between the two is in part fostered by this sense of queer solidarity. Through this connection and Tave’s slow but welcomed entrance into the disabled community, Ridley underscores the importance of having a community to rely on. To Ridley, independence and community are inseparable, both in queer and disabled communities, despite how a starkly individualist culture would define the terms.
Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi. In 1970, at the age of 15, he moved to London to complete his education. He graduated from SOAS with an Honors degree in South Asian Studies. He simultaneously studied European languages. He began to publish short fiction in the 1980s. Mirror to the Sun, his first collection including new stories with others previously published in journals and anthologies, appeared in 1993. This was followed by several other collections including Cactus Town and Insomnia, and two novels, Another Gulmohar Tree (2009) and The Cloud Messenger (2011). He returned to shorter forms with The Swan’s Wife (2014) and Hermitage (2018). He has since published his first collection in Urdu and a volume of memoirs and autofiction, Restless (2021). His stories have been translated into Italian, French, Arabic, Japanese, and Urdu. Aamer was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004 soon after the publication of Turquoise, his highly acclaimed 3rd collection. He was also a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, The New Statesman, The Literary Review and The Independent for many years. He is currently a Senior Editor at Critical Muslim and a regular columnist for the literary pages of Dawn (Karachi). Aamer Hussein’s latest work is a selection of his stories, memoirs, and essays, entitled What is Saved (2023).
Sheeraz: Many of your characters are seen walking, biking, sitting in a moving train, or planning to go somewhere (e.g., the protagonist of “37 Bridges”). This often corresponds with their mental miles across continents and years. What makes them go places? What makes them develop a sense of belongingness everywhere and nowhere?
Aamer: Let us go back to beginnings. My mother was born in Indore in what was then called Princely India, but both her parents came from elsewhere. Though she retained many of the ways of Malwa, where she grew up, and was always nostalgic for its green spaces and its monsoon when she moved to Karachi after her marriage, she told me many years later that she always felt she did not belong in Indore. In Karachi, where she had a busy social life and dedicated herself to classical music and to women’s rights, she found the topography alien and spent much of her spare time planting flowers and fruit creating gardens with my little sister and me assisting her. I believe her children inherited her “sense of belongingness to everywhere and nowhere” though to tell the truth I do not think I belong everywhere. I began to feel like a stranger in the city of my birth when I was a child and often longed for rainy Malwa and its cold winters. Not one of us returned to live in Karachi once we left. I spent four formative years between the ages of 11 and 13 shuttling between Karachi, Indore and various Indian cities, until I spent 18 months studying in the Blue Mountains in South India before moving to London at 15. So I experienced a sense of inquietude at a very early age; although I spent many years trying to settle down in London, and didn’t begin to travel abroad till I was 20, I chose to belong nowhere. By chance or unconscious design, many of the friends of my youth were transients, wanderers, and exiles. At 21 I began to travel in Europe; at 26 I visited Bangladesh, where my sister lived, and since then I have frequently travelled back and forth between London and South Asia. Like my parents, who moved back and forth between their homelands all their lives, I put down some tentative roots in Karachi in the second decade of this century to assuage my sense of longing for a permanent home, but continue to move between languages in my writings and contrasting landscapes in my memories and anticipations. I suppose my characters’ constant flights reflect my own adult life and journeys. The title of my antimemoir, Restless, captures my writing self and to some extent my private world too.
Sheeraz: Critics have read some of your characters as fictionalized real people (e.g., the protagonists of your novel, Another Gulmohar Tree as writer Ghulam Abbas and his Greek-Scottish-Romanian wife, Zainab or poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz and his British wife, Alys). To what extent is this reading correct? How do real people contribute to the development of fictional characters? How do you decide on what to allow of a real character to enter the narrative? How do you keep a fictional character different from the person that inspires it?
Aamer: Fallacy. Faiz and Alys have nothing at all to do with my story. I did read “The Girl with Golden hair”, a story about a transcultural marriage by Ghulam Abbas, the unsatisfactory conclusion of which provoked me to start AGT as a rejoinder, but it was quite a while later, when I was well into the Karachi section of my story, that I discovered Zainab/Chris Abbas’s charming illustrations in a book of her husband’s poems and tales for children. Since I am not an illustrator, I found them enormously helpful in depicting a British woman’s attempt to give her pictures an unexotic Pakistani flavor. Usman is one of the most difficult characters I’ve ever created, and entirely unlike me; since I have read very little about Ghulam Abbas’s life, any resemblance between him and Usman owes all to happenstance. I later found out that Ghulam Abbas happily lived with two wives – now if I’d been writing about him, where would that have taken my story? In most cases, when a real person enters my story, they appear as themselves; for example, “The Lady of the Lotus” is drawn, with her approval and collaboration, from my mother’s diary. There are exceptions I can think of; my Urdu story “Zohra” (an English translation was included in The Swan’s Wife) was inspired by the tragic death of the very talented Lahore poet Hima Raza, and drew tears from the eyes of her sister when the latter heard it read out in their native Lahore. My friend, the late great Indonesian poet Toeti Heraty, asked to be portrayed in a story, and not only chose the name of her fictional self but loved the story “Insomnia” when she read it. Inspiration, however, usually comes from characteristics writers observe in the many people we meet, and indeed contradictory aspects of ourselves, not from fictionalizing any one person. When I went on to write about real people, I chose the form of the personal essay, a form I approached in my 60s with some trepidation and then increasing confidence: I’ve written about the role the writers Qurratulain Hyder and Han Suyin played in my life, on a note of elegy; and about encounters with Abdullah Hussein, Intizar Hussain, Fahmida Riaz, sadly in the form of obituaries. But my Karachi friends Mehreen, Taha and Shahbano appear as themselves in some pieces, as does my Chennai friend Mukund in “A Convalescence”, which is often read as fiction, but is actually fact, an experimental and time bending memoir; its dreamy quality derives from the large quantities of painkillers I was taking during the eponymous convalescence. There are one or two “lockdown” stories in Restless which trickily navigate the middle ground between genres, because I wanted to fictionalize myself in that time that slipped away from time, rather than follow a diaristic approach or a strict adherence to clock or calendar.
Sheeraz: Most of your characters live in big cities (e.g., London, Paris, and Karachi) as globalized, educated, middle-class people. They find friends in swans and doves and trees and waters but are often seen struggling with developing human friendships. How do relationships define a character?
Aamer: I would say that my characters struggle with betrayals and unrequited love, not human friendships. Poet Mimi Khalvati, at the launch of my collection Insomnia, described my abiding concern as friendship and love beyond the narrow confines of the erotic. The title story of that collection, for example, and “The Angelic Disposition”, are both about friendships between men and women that defy sexual desire. And Restless, too, embodies this in its factual or semifictional depictions of my abiding friendships. My characters, at least since my third collection (and to an extent in my novel The Cloud Messenger, in which romantic love becomes friendship), are defined by such relationships, which sometimes as in “Knotted Tongues” only end with the death of one person. The stories in Hermitage, which are fables drawn from my imagination in which characters like the Buddhist monks appeared before me from nowhere, or from traditional sources like the legend of ‘mad’ Qais and Laila, do often deal with love and separation, in an attempt to reach out to the grand Sufi tradition. And yes, as Ali Akbar noticed in his interview with me, my characters do find solace in quiet green places, by rivers and lakes and the sea, among birds and sometimes other creatures: but their walks are often companionable, chatty rambles with friends, not solitary expeditions.
Sheeraz: Your poetic short short, “Dove,” is a character story. For an expert reader, the phrase, “country’s queen of melancholy verse,” when read along with the cities named, is indexical to poet Ada Jafarey and adds her life history to the meaning of the story. How do you decide what to mention and what to keep out for the reader to fetch from their knowledge, experience, or emotions?
Aamer: I can’t say much about the story except that it came as a kind of epiphany; and yes, the central image was inspired by a passage in Ada Jafarey’s magnificent autobiographical work, Jo Rahi So Bekhabri Rahi; but I never met or even saw the lady in person, and wanted to present the era in one life, not a biographical essay about the poet. So no, not a character story in my book, though for a reader who knows of the poet situated in history, it may appear to be so, and the reader who doesn’t may not need to know the inspiration behind it, though I mention it in an afterword.
Sheeraz: I heard you speak in a craft talk about a composite character inspired by multiple people from real life. Would you like to elaborate on the creative process behind writing such a character?
Aamer: I think you’re talking about Sara in “Zindagi se pehle” (translated as “What is Saved”)? Her cats, and the walk in Regents Park, are inspired by my friend the novelist Mary Flanagan, as is the visit to exhibition in the story: but Mary does not see herself in Sara at all! The life of the painter LM, who never appears but plays a catalytic part, is entirely fictional: I felt her work was inspired by the paintings of Lee Krasner, until my friend Alev Adil, herself a writer and visual artist, reminded me of our visit to an exhibition of the paintings of Etel Adnan, whom I knew, at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park like the exhibition in my story. Memoir forces the mind the observe ‘truth’ in chronology and location; fiction gives me licensee and plays wonderful tricks, as it did in this case, where memory took me to a spot I had forgotten. That is why I wrote the story as fiction and not as an essay or memoir: an unconscious process, as is the creation of character.
We’ve all heard the phrase, “Life is not a straight line.” This holds true not just for our own experiences, but also for the types of stories and lives of characters we encounter in stories. Yet, in fiction, the temptation often exists to create linear journeys, with heroes marching steadfastly towards their goals. But what about the detours, the unexpected turns, the moments where characters veer off course? These diversions, often dismissed as mere plot twists, can be the very essence of a character’s arc.
To many writers, diversion is the creation of a surprise in a narrative, and the thrill of that surprise is what keeps the reader involved in the story. The word “diversion” has its first recorded use in England in the early 1600s. It is believed that the concept of diversion bore some similarities with some elements of writing discussed in the treatise “On the Sublime” by the Greek philosopher, Longinus, but it became popularized by eighteenth-century writers who employed digression as a form of diversion. For Longinus, diversion, as a crucial literary device, suspends the reader’s sense of disbelief. Generally, in literature, it refers to the practice of including stories within the main story. The stories within the story are usually very brief and are often used to expound on a particular element of the main story. As Peter Selgin notes, by its very essence, a story is “an exercise in controlling information.” Writers must skillfully dole out knowledge to create patches of unknowledge – i.e., suspense – and keep the reader interested. Such diversion, in the form of well-timed revelations and withheld information, does not happen solely according to the creative strategy of the individual writer but adheres to a tradition as old as the stories themselves. The main purpose of a diversion is to create a sense of anticipation or to build enough suspense to keep the readers interested in the main story. A writer could also use this technique to provide the reader with some necessary background information that cannot be included in the main story or to help set up a climax. By using the different stories within the main story, the writer has a chance to provide a much wider view of the world. The reader gets various perspectives on different elements of the overall story. This can serve to make even the most fantastical of stories seem more real because it is demonstrated that different characters have different, opposing views and so on. Also, by giving the reader ‘breaks’ in the main plot where they get to read other smaller, self-contained stories, the writing becomes a lot more accessible and targeted to all kinds of readers.
In simple terms, diversion in fiction, like other forms of display, seeks to do more than to decorate or to entertain the audience. When one witness in a court trial declares that, for example, defendant A did not break into a house, it is so easy for the audience to keep making wild, imaginary scenarios of how the burglary took place. However, the narrative, fabricated in their minds, is abruptly cut when the same witness suggests that in fact, the burglary did not even take place on the previous night as he claims to know, but on the night in question. By offering new, surprising twists to an on-going temporal narrative and deconstructing the audience’s version of the known events, the narrative gets a boost. Through diversion, we see the writer cleverly creating situations in which the reader’s anticipation is crafted to naturally expect a certain chain of events. This then allows the writer to break this chain and surprise the audience.
It is of course important that writers should discern when to use diversion as a literary device in such that subplots, creation of cliffhangers at the end of chapters, adding in unexpected twists, deceptions, strategic revelation of information, and creating an open ending, all contribute to keeping the reader diverted. The reader feels smart when they catch the hints and forms expectations on how the story will unfold. At the same time, they become curious to find out whether the predictions are accurate as the plot progresses. In turn, by being engaged in the reading, emotions are evoked as the story takes the reader through different methods of diversion, making the reader experience the special and stunningly galvanized into plot and characters. For example, a well-timed twist can suggest hidden correlatives and themes. Or it can inject an unexpected viewpoint that might add a fresh sight or serve to emphasize thematic elements. Well-disciplined use of diversion often profound the reading. Readers may continue to explore to find out what each new turning and twist may uncover and can be delighted by success at prediction or stunned by a wily and subtle deception. This act of provocation is a delight to many readers who find the discovery and unraveling of solutions highly satisfying. In this manner, diversion enables the reader to be active on a metaphysical and emotional level.
Again, when we think of how diversion can become a shrapnel for crafting the character arc, it becomes clear that characters are not robots programmed towards a predetermined conclusion. They are complex beings shaped by choices, experiences, and the unforeseen twists and turns of life. Through diversions, the writer can add depth, nuance, and a touch of the unpredictable to their journeys.
Why does there need to be a twist in the plot in every story, you may ask? It is an interesting point to focus on, the real thing is that if one diverts someone’s attention, and then that other person will most probably be focused on other things, instead of finding out the truth. So, the reader will not try to discover the writer’s true opinion or where the story is set if it is made clear. If a writer is telling a story directly, then diversion would be in the form of flashbacks and maybe the introduction of more than one small puzzle, maybe a few more than two! It is remarkably interesting because if you take the definition out onto the internet or open books, you will find that diversion covers many different parts of stories, from characterizations to distinct types of diversion.
It is important to consider some real-life examples of how diversion works. Fans of this literature will find various examples of distraction at work in short stories across the ages that have been written by a range of authors as well. A great example to start with is “The Purloined Letter,” written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published over 150 years ago. This classic short story is about the amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin as he attempts to retrieve an incriminating letter that is being used for blackmail. Throughout the story, there is a sense of deliberate, misleading information that is being given to the reader, which distracts from reality and makes it more difficult to discover the truth. This kind of diversion could further be used to create suspense within the reader as one avenue is explored after the other, each with its own sense of partial logic and progress. Another prominent example of diversion in short stories can be found in the work of Shirley Jackson and her famous short story called “The Lottery.” This tale of a small town that commits human sacrifice as part of the harvest ritual was first published in 1948, with some readers dismissing it as being nothing more than mere sensationalist horror. However, when looking deeply at the themes within the story, it becomes clear that Jackson has intentionally used diversion to guide the reader towards shock and distaste for the characters and society within the story. The use of detail to distract from the grotesque occurrences of the “lottery” and to prepare the reader for something entirely different is a key strategy; the fact that the ending comes as it does shows that diversion has been used effectively in this piece. Through exploring these examples of diversion in short stories, the message of how this works to create interesting and absorbing literature becomes clearer.
While the town is small and it seems everyone knows each other, the truth is that it is completely isolated. The village serves as a dehumanizing environment that is resulting in a change in society. First, we can observe the irony of the town’s and the lottery’s name, as the lottery is commonly known to be a good thing to win and be a part of, but in this situation, the ‘prize’ is death. The first mention of tradition comes when the boys see each other and make a pile of stones. Soon after, the parents, especially the dad, are with the boys. He’s reminding the boy of how to arrange the stones and Jackson writes, “Bobby Martin has already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones…” (Jackson, 2009). The author wanted to clearly show how even the youngest of the village knew what they were doing, what is the underlying meaning of this ritual, and how to bring the evil of the event to its success. This creates an atmosphere of horror as even the audience becomes aware that a successful prize of winning is death, as they see that everyone, children and adults, had taken part in organizing the lottery and preparing for it for the past few weeks. Finally, when the victims gain a voice after the winner has been selected and is going to die, they use ‘it isn’t fair, it isn’t right.’ It is a reminder that people and society do have the power to change things and that they’re not losing their voice to fear.
As BGSU is abuzz with excitement for the total eclipse, we at MAR can’t help but consider how the moon has been reflected in literature, more specifically, poetry.
The moon has been an object of curiosity since the beginning of time, with many cultures regarding the moon as a symbol of power that holds the essence of life and time, and the ways of the earth in its clutches. Cultures including the Greeks, Egyptians, Mayans, and Chinese worshiped the moon and associated many deities with it. The moon has consistently appeared a female deity due to similarity with the menstrual cycles and its fragile appearance when compared to the flaming power of the sun.
Thus, with these associations, the moon in literature has been a divine source of female fertility, love, purity, romance, beauty, mystery, madness, and power. The history of the moon’s symbolism, its glowing appearance shrouded in darkness, and its continuous cycle of changing appearances have given writers a lot of freedom to display a variety of emotions and themes. Poets and writers such as Emily Dickenson, Shakespeare, Percy Shelly, Ted Hughes, and more have used ideas behind the moon to express raw emotion, change, and death.
Eclipses are not as commonly written as the complete focus of a poem of piece of work, yet many poets mention eclipses to once again signify change or the tense relationship between two people or ideas. A beautiful example of these themes expressed in poetry is by the American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919):
In that great journey of the stars through space
About the mighty, all-directing Sun,
The pallid, faithful Moon, has been the one
Companion of the earth. Her tender face,
Pale with the swift, keep purpose of that race,
Which at Time’s natal hour first begun,
Shines ever on her lover as they run
And lights his orbit with her silvery smile.
Sometimes such passionate love doth in her rise,
Down from her beaten path she softly slips,
And with her mantle veils the Sun’s bold eyes,
Then in the gloaming finds her lover’s lips.
While far and near the men our world call wise
See only that the Sun is in eclipse.
Wilcox here uses her expression of the moon and the eclipse to express intimate love and change. As an activist, Wilcox also makes social commentary within this poem, noting that men at times only can acknowledge the masculine energy that they relate to (the sun), missing the beauty and the effort of the opposite sex (the moon).
So, as we prepare to celebrate the eclipse, I encourage you as readers and writers to find your own favorite examples of the moon in poetry and ponder how the author uses the moon to carefully craft their narrative. Eclipses are more than just a special phenomenon, but a chance to express so much emotion and power within our own works.
