Techniques in Appalachian Fiction: Authentic Voice and Dialect in Gap Creek

In Gap Creek, Robert Morgan's primary goal is to create an authentic Appalachian voice in the first person narrative. He states this in a supplementary section at the end of the book, but he didn't need to say it, the voice of the narration stands out as being the most important element of the book.

 

The narrator breaks a lot of the traditional rules of telling a story: she uses second person occasionally, she infodumps the step by step process of butchering a hog, tells her emotions instead of just letting us figure it out by what she does, and sometimes says what other people are thinking even though she can't possibly truly know. Despite all of these technical flaws, the narrator tells the story the way someone's Appalachian ancestor would tell it. She tells it just like my grandma would have and wouldn't have minded at all if it wasn't the proper way to do it. 

The current scholarship (which I will likely discuss in a later post) is that is very uncool to depict Appalachians as people who are ignorant, isolated, foolish, oversexed, violent, and/or alcoholic. Put plainly, writers should think Beverly Hillbillies and avoid doing that at all costs. I tend to agree with this. The challenge is to create characters that avoid stereotypes and seem authentic at the same time.

One thing that stood out to me in Gap Creek is the use of the word poke: "And for Christmas he got four oranges and a poke of peppermint candy" (2). A poke is a bag. I know this because it was one of the "hillbilly" words listed on the centerpiece of a Cracker-Barrel-ish restaurant that we took my grandma to when she was in town when I was a kid. I have never ever seen poke used in any other book or story I've ever read.

A few examples of Morgan's use of Appalachian dialect are:

• Pneumony instead of pneumonia (6).
• "He looked scared out of hisself" (5).
• "If we was to pour it down his throat he might strangle" (7).
• ". . . he woke up with the pains" (2).
• "He dropped the egg on his plate like he had touched a rotten tater" (56).
• "My hands liked to froze. . . " (4).

I think he did a fabulous job with the dialect in this novel. In the current version of my novel, I avoided this kind of dialect for the most part in favor of avoiding stereotypes. But I think I need to work on it a little more.

Next I will look at the dialect used in novels by two women who grew up and have become advocates for the environment in Appalachia: Barbara Kingsolver and Denise Giardina. I also will have another piece about narration in Cold Mountain.

If you would like to view the other posts on Gap Creek and other Appalachian novels, click on Techniques in Appalachian Fiction

Techniques in Appalachian Fiction: Narration in Gap Creek

This is a continuation of a previous post where I looked at some of the techniques used in Gap Creek. Click here to if you would like to check out the whole series: Techniques in Appalachian Fiction.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Setting in Gap Creek, Robert Morgan does some things that new writers are told to avoid at all costs.

Besides the way setting is handled, the narrator self-consciously tells the story to the reader: "I know about Masenier because I was there. I seen him die . . . I seen it all" (1). We are reminded again that the story is being told by the narrator with the lines, "Now the year I'm talking about was the year after Cold Friday, that day when the sun never did come out and it never warmed up" (2) and "The night I'm talking about was windy and late in March" (24).

If I had these lines in my manuscript, people doing a critique would no doubt tell me I can take that out. (I know this because I had similar lines and they told me to get it out - I did, but I'm not sure I should have.) The argument against the self-conscious narrator is that it doesn't need to be stated that the narrator is telling the story, definitely not three times. Instead of "The night I'm talking about was windy and late in March," it should be "The late March night was windy" to make it more concise and direct. Right? Would you argue the same thing?

But in this novel, perhaps in any Appalachian novel where the story is told from a first person point of view, this self-conscious narration is perfect. It's how my grandmother or great aunt or even my mother would tell the story. If the narrator isn't educated in the best practices of writing, shouldn't the story be told the way that narrator would realistically tell it?

I think I might put the self-conscious narration back into my manuscript. What do you think?

Techniques in Appalachian Fiction: Dialect in Bloodroot by Amy Greene

In this series, I'm going to take a look at how dialect is rendered (or not rendered) in a handful of Appalachian novels. Today, I'm looking at Bloodroot by Amy Greene (2010). If you want to look at the other posts on this topic, click here for the whole series on Techniques in Appalachian Fiction.

This novel has a really interesting structure that's tied to point of view. Part one of the novel includes
very short chapters that oscillates between first person narration by Byrdie Lamb and Doug Cotter. Other characters come into the story after Part One, but I'm just going to look at the opening chapters for this post. I was going to look at it up to page 20, but I think there's enough there in the first two chapters (just 4 pages).

The opening lines of the first chapter set the characterization of Byrdie, who is Myra's grandmother. "Myra looks like her mama, but prettier because of her daddy mixed in. She got just the right amount of both." The phrase she got lets the reader know she doesn't have a strong formal education, but the first line lets us know that she's thoughtful. In her eyes, the dad makes Myra look prettier, which is different than what I would expect. I think this sets up Myra as a character who is thoughtful and looks at things differently than most people, which implies she is smart although her grammar isn't perfect.

Honestly, when I read the first 2-page chapter through initially, I was a little put off by the persistent problems with grammar:

• "I didn't see nothing wrong" (3)
• "I couldn't hear nothing else" (4)
• "Then I seen there was things" (4)
• "I should have knowed right then" (4)

The bad grammar threw me out of the story (maybe because I was looking for it specifically). But what drew me in was the colorful language that seems authentic to me: "that snake coiled up inside his heart" (3) and "I got tougher than a pine knot" (3).

In this opening chapter, Amy Greene does use the word reckon in the opening chapter. A professor once told me I shouldn't use reckon because it's derogatory and promotes a stereotype, but I think it's realistic - not for all characters, but maybe for one or two. For my dad, a simple, "I reckon" can mean any number of things depending on the situation and the look on his face and whether he looks you in the eye or stands up to leave as he says it. It can mean he's thoughtful - or he thinks you are wrong but doesn't really care to push it - or that you made him really upset and the conversation is over. I can't omit the words I reckon from my fiction - it's a fabulous phrase.

The sentence structure in Byrdie's section also conveys her education level (at this point I'm not sure of the year or time period for the novel). The sentences tend to be short, simple sentences. There's an occasional compound sentence with the comma missing. The language is simple. On the first page, the most complex word is "outcome."

However, by the end of this very short chapter, Byrdie tells about a dream she has that seems prophetic. "Then there was a crack and my foot went through the boards of that old bridge. It started coming apart, jagged pieces dropping and rushing away, until I was hanging on by a scrap of rotten wood, my feet dangling over the water."  The description of the dream is lovely and eloquent and makes me as a reader believe she is smart and perceptive. I can't wait to hear how she will describe the events that happen in the rest of the story.

In the second chapter, written in first person from Doug's point of view, there is no trace of any Appalachian or southern dialect. Every sentence is written with perfect grammar, and the sentences are more complex. In this brief chapter, Doug goes out to the barn to feed a horse that's in distress. He says his parents and brothers are in the house sleeping, so I have the impression he's a teenager or a young man.

The juxtaposition of Byrdie's narration with Doug's gives me the impression that huge generational differences will be presented in the story and that the syntax used in Byrdie's narration was strategic. I think it was used with the intent to expose the generational differences between these two characters, who tell the story only for the first 100 pages.

Without giving away the plot, both of these characters are connected to the supernatural. Byrdie has a prophetic dream, and her attitude toward it is that this force can't be controlled. Doug, on the other hand, decides to take action to try to calm the horse that's gone wild because Myra Lamb, Byrdie's granddaughter, is missing.

Have any of you used techniques similar to the ones Amy Greene uses in these opening chapters? Is any of this useful?


Work Cited:
Greene, Amy. Bloodroot. New York: Vintage Books, 2010. 3-6. Print.

Techniques in Appalachian Fiction: Dialect in Cold Mountain

In this little series, which you can read beginning to end if you so desire by clicking this link: Techniques in Appalachian Fiction, I am taking a look at the openings of seven novels in the genre of Appalachian Fiction to see how other authors have handled the sticky issue of rendering dialect.

Today, I'm reading the opening chapter of Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, published in 1997. 

I've seen the movie and thought I knew how Charles Frazier would open the novel and present the characters, but I was completely wrong.

The novel opens from the point of view of Inman as he looks out a window from his hospital bed during the Civil War. I will give away no more plot than that because this post isn't about plot at all. The opening chapter is narrated in what I believe is 3rd person limited (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). The narrator gets inside Inman's head but doesn't use Inman's vernacular exactly - by this I mean we don't hear Inman's voice in the narration and there's little to no use of dialect. If we were given Inman's voice, the novel would be entirely different - I think the narration would be chopped and brief and not at all lyrical. It would be more similar to the way Inman's speech is depicted.

When Inman speaks in this chapter in dialogue (which happens rarely), the dialogue is presented not in quotations but rather after an em-dash (which is very curious to me). Inman's words are always brief and to the point:

• "--Why did you never have any? Inman said," (9) referring to the other man's missing eyes.
• "--I'd not differ with you there, Inman said," (14) responding to the blind man telling Inman he needed to set aside a troubling memory.

We quickly learn that Inman walked out of school without ever returning, but he reads daily (and must read daily as if it's tied to his survival on some level). His readings of landscapes capture his imagination and connect him to memories of places that are important to him. Although he isn't educated traditionally, he is an intellectual. This allows Frazier to get away with using beautiful, fluid, even poetic descriptions in the narration as well as words that wouldn't typically be in the vocabulary of a Civil War-era Appalachian man with little education. Words like "divination" and "bulbuous" don't seem to me to be out of place in the narration.

Other soldiers call out phrases that clearly reflect a lack of education but also a lack of thoughtfulness: "Come on closer, I want them boots" (10).

A few times, a little bit of country-talk comes into the narration, like in the line, "His spirit, it seemed, had been about burned out of him" (22).

For me, Inman's character and personality comes through the use of simile in the narration. The similes are all things that Inman could have seen with his own eyes, usually simple things he would have naturally thought would be a good comparison. Some examples:

• "Periodically they were driven from behind the houses by their own cavalry, who beat them with the flats of their sabers like schoolteachers paddling truants" (11). Earlier in the piece, it was revealed that Inman had a teacher with a paddle and Inman was a truant. The voice of narration isn't Inman's, but this simile creates a tight connection between the narrator and Inman.
• "His neck hurt as if a red cord running from it to the balls of his feet were yanked quivering tight at each step" (16). I have a feeling a specifically red cord will enter into the story soon enough.

There's discussion in the narration of two generals, Lee and Longstreet, spending their time "coining fine phrases" (12) during a battle where many men lost their lives. It seems to me the coining of phrases in this opening was done with great care, and the narration lays these phrases on top of an equally tragic story.

Inman, as his name implies, is thoughtful but uses few words when speaking to others. In one scene, he "sat brooding and pining for his lost self" (23). For me, this line alone justifies the lengthy ponderings of the narrator, the almost complete lack of dialect, and the lyrical quality of the narration.

If you haven't read this novel yet, do it! It's fabulous starting with page one.


Because I'm doing this little series for college credit, I must not forget the bibliography. Note the title of the opening chapter, which is in all lower case in the book.

Frazier, Charles. "the shadow of a crow." Cold Mountain. New York: Grove Press, 1997.

IWSG - February 2015

This post is part of Insecure Writer's Support Group. Sorry I'm late. Sorry I'm missing the requisite link and button and everything. I desperately need a time travel apparatus so I can add 4 more hours to my day every day. My little boy said he'd build it for me and sit next to it, watching the control panel's flashing lights, so I don't get lost in time. He will be the mad scientist that builds this contraption for his mother some day. That I am sure of.

* * *

Lately, and by that I mean for the last full year, I've struggled to find words or stories I want to share here. I've been writing a lot - fiction and nonfiction - but privately. So I guess that's my insecurity with writing this month and this past year - finding content for this space.

Those of you who know me know my mid-life crisis has taken the form of me as a graduate student in creative writing, the thing I always wanted to do when I was younger - the thing I didn't do because my first husband didn't like the idea of it or the cost of it or the parenting he would need to do while I was gone.

This semester, I'm taking an independent study class. I designed it myself. It's on Appalachian novels - my current genre. I committed to reading at least the first 75 words of each of six Appalachian novels and writing about them here for my grade.

Whenever I've written about literature in the past - in my undergraduate days so very long ago - I looked at it differently - looked at themes, at bigger messages, yadayadayada. Now I'm looking at technique. I think my first piece will be about openings - and what to do with the dialect and the scenario where the POV character is not particularly well-educated.

I hate dialect done Huckleberry Finn style. It hurts me as a reader. And it seems condescending to me.

My professor for my novel writing class last semester objected to my avoidance of it in my novel. So the first thing I will examine in all of these books is writing well and respecting the characters (and the people of a time and place) while also conveying their speech or thought in a realistic way.

I think I will read only the first chapters of all six first.

This examination of technique is obviously for me. My question for you is if that's something you want to read? (I will be writing it anyway because something deep inside of me needs an A the way a heroine addict needs another fix.)

I miss you all and hope to reconnect soon.

Tonja

The Gift of Third Person

How do you write about your family honestly without causing them pain? 

It is very cathartic and therapeutic to write about things personal to you, to get very close to the people and the events, to relate the details in writing, to get control over pain, especially pain caused by family that has lasted years.  Writing can't really be that good if it's not completely honest and personal.

Over the last year, I have been able to write about my childhood and early adulthood in an honest but fictional way, always speaking in the third person, giving my character a name.  I am Nora in my fiction.  I don't know why that name and no other seems to suit me, but it works.  I can speak from Nora's perspective about characters and events that have impacted me with kindness and empathy.  The narrator of my fiction, the one that sees into Nora's mind also sees into the mind of everyone that impact her.  The narrator is both honest and detached.  The detachment is needed so I, the writer not the fictional character, do feel terrible for writing the words.  The detachment of third person gives me control and prevents a story from turning into a personal, painful rant.

I have also been working on a children's story where both the human and animal characters embody the personalities of the people in my immediate family.  My family enjoys and takes offense to the way I have created both people and animals that are very much like them.  My husband is a nervous bunny that always tries to please and never feels like he is doing enough.  I am a fussy snake that is kind and well-meaning inside but hard to read on the outside.  I write the story with love, and my family takes no offense because they know I see them and appreciate them for who they are - that I notice their nuances of character and put pieces of their personality into my characters.  The think it's awesome.

As for my parents and siblings, I am not sure if I can make a sweet story or lovable characters from them.  When I write about them here in a non-fictional way, I worry I will hurt them, which is not what I want at all.  Instead I will develop fictional stories about Nora with truly fictional characters in them - characters that may need to be a blend or a piecing together of people I know and events I have experienced.  I will try to treat my characters with love and respect - always in third person, never directly from me and never right at you.