On names
A few lines I found particularly perfect from this morning's reading of Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Rereading this is my Christmas present to myself; at times it seems a special kind of torture, not only because of the content that leaves me emotionally drained, but because trying to perpetuate a self-delusion of being a writer is so dreadfully difficult when you see it done so right. However, no improvement is to be found by vigorous reading of mediocrity and unremarkability.):
It was at these times that he began to understand, after all those years of study and performance, of feats and wonders and surprises, the nature of magic. The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.
and
Given the usual urge of those who believe themselves to have lived through a golden age to expatiate upon the subject at great length afterward, it is ironic that the April night on which Sammy felt most aware of the luster of his existence -- the moment when, for the first time in his life, he was fully conscious of his own happiness -- was a night that he would never discuss with anyone at all.
Upon rereading I make note of something that has always been particularly fascinatined to me, and that's the question of names, identity, and how characters self-identify. In the first pages of the novel, upon meeting his cousin for the first time, Sammy tells Joe to call him "Sam". He continues, throughout the novel, to be referred to as Sammy, while the characters around him adapt, more readily than he does, to his renaming and attempt at reinvention.
By comparison, when Czechloslovakian Josef decides to Americanize his name into Joe, it is rare to see him referred to as anything else.
In the use of names, you see Joe's ability to adapt, his willingness, however reluctant, to embrace the newness of America and his career there. And you see Sammy's inability to believe the things he tells others about himself, his doubt in his skills, his choices, his desires, that continue throughout the novel.
ETA: And I by no means meant to neglect the character of Rosa, who, like Sammy and Joe, also has a chosen moniker she uses for her involvement in the comics, as well as acquiring a new name when she gets married, but who is always, at the same time, Rosa. I'm not sure yet of the implications there.
I don't know why I find naming in fiction so fascinating. Too many pulpy fantasies in early adolescence, often emphasizing the old power of names idea? My childhood fascination with T.S. Elliott's ridiculously silly poem, The Naming of Cats? My worshipful rereading of Lois McMaster Bujold's works, where I increasingly noticed, and no doubt have commented on before, her care in how she refers to characters in narration. How long it takes Cordelia, in Shards of Honor to refer to Aral Vorkosigan as anything /but/ Vorkosigan, and how she lapses back into thinking of him in that way during tense periods in Barrayar. The lack of name used by Mark in the first half of Mirror Dance. Even the careful construction of sentences, when dealing with the hermaphrodite Bel Thorne, to avoid using the rehumanizing pronoun 'it'.
Why are these things my brain dwells on, and then sees fit to inflict on the rest of the world? We may never know.
It was at these times that he began to understand, after all those years of study and performance, of feats and wonders and surprises, the nature of magic. The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.
and
Given the usual urge of those who believe themselves to have lived through a golden age to expatiate upon the subject at great length afterward, it is ironic that the April night on which Sammy felt most aware of the luster of his existence -- the moment when, for the first time in his life, he was fully conscious of his own happiness -- was a night that he would never discuss with anyone at all.
Upon rereading I make note of something that has always been particularly fascinatined to me, and that's the question of names, identity, and how characters self-identify. In the first pages of the novel, upon meeting his cousin for the first time, Sammy tells Joe to call him "Sam". He continues, throughout the novel, to be referred to as Sammy, while the characters around him adapt, more readily than he does, to his renaming and attempt at reinvention.
By comparison, when Czechloslovakian Josef decides to Americanize his name into Joe, it is rare to see him referred to as anything else.
In the use of names, you see Joe's ability to adapt, his willingness, however reluctant, to embrace the newness of America and his career there. And you see Sammy's inability to believe the things he tells others about himself, his doubt in his skills, his choices, his desires, that continue throughout the novel.
ETA: And I by no means meant to neglect the character of Rosa, who, like Sammy and Joe, also has a chosen moniker she uses for her involvement in the comics, as well as acquiring a new name when she gets married, but who is always, at the same time, Rosa. I'm not sure yet of the implications there.
I don't know why I find naming in fiction so fascinating. Too many pulpy fantasies in early adolescence, often emphasizing the old power of names idea? My childhood fascination with T.S. Elliott's ridiculously silly poem, The Naming of Cats? My worshipful rereading of Lois McMaster Bujold's works, where I increasingly noticed, and no doubt have commented on before, her care in how she refers to characters in narration. How long it takes Cordelia, in Shards of Honor to refer to Aral Vorkosigan as anything /but/ Vorkosigan, and how she lapses back into thinking of him in that way during tense periods in Barrayar. The lack of name used by Mark in the first half of Mirror Dance. Even the careful construction of sentences, when dealing with the hermaphrodite Bel Thorne, to avoid using the rehumanizing pronoun 'it'.
Why are these things my brain dwells on, and then sees fit to inflict on the rest of the world? We may never know.