CAAF: Homework

This week we’re having a “craft session” in writing class. This means no manuscript critiques; instead, discussion and one or two in-class writing exercises. In preparation we’re to read the first 50 pages of Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder’s profile of the crusading Dr. Paul Farmer, and the short story “Magda Mandela” by Hari Kunzru.
As we read Kidder’s nonfiction work, our instructor has asked us to “think of fiction that has a similar narrative structure. The obvious one, for me, is The Great Gatsby, with Tracy Kidder as Nick Carraway and Dr. Farmer as Jay Gatsby. Also think about the difficulty in writing abut a person who is larger than life, whether real or fictional, with ‘Magda Mandela’ in mind.”
It’s a pleasing assignment. For the first part, I’ve got Cakes and Ale, Prayer for Owen Meany, and, even though it figures a quartet, not a duo, A Dance to the Music of Time. Pale Fire might also qualify, although that parallel would have Kidder twisted out of all recognition: cracked, from Zembla, and suffering mad halitosis.
Thinking about larger-than-life characters my mind keeps flashing on how in Gothic novels the male lead (terrible, mysterious) is sometimes introduced as a potent presence thumping around another part of the manor — sensed but unseen — an eminence for the narrator to wonder about from afar, sometimes for days before a first meeting. (Incidentally, this is how Melville introduces Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, just replace the crumbling manor with a ship.) It reminds me a little of the first of the Vera Pavlova poems I linked to the other day, where the “he” of the poem grows from the size of a speck to glacier-like immensity. But I’d guess we’re supposed to be thinking more concretely, e.g., CHARACTERS WHO SPEAK IN CAPS LOCK: VIABLE OVER THE LONG HAUL?, etc.