Nicky Penttila

Finished Rabbit, Run this weekend for book club; will have more to say (esp. about his amazing tricks with POV) after I’ve digested it a bit more.

But one thing I was reading for was how he depicts anger. I’m trying to build more “emotion” into my stories, as left to our own devices my characters and I like to just ponder and think a lot, which turns out to be quite boring on the page, especially if the reader is expecting a genre story. I re-read The Spy Who Came In from the Cold for the same reason (I remember reading it the first time and thinking it must be the angriest book ever).

Updike, in his literary novel, uses beautiful descriptions of feelings and thinking to depict anger:

The names melt away and he sees the map whole, a net, all those red lines and blue lines and stars, a net he is somewhere caught in. He claws at it and tears it; with a gasp of exasperation he rips away a great triangular piece and tears the large remnant in half and, more calmly, lays these three pieces on top of each other and tears them in half, and then those six pieces and so on until he has a wad he can squeeze in his hand like a ball. He rolls down the window and throws the ball out; it explodes, and the bent scraps like disembodied wings flicker back over the top of the car. He cranks up the window. He blames everything on that farmer with glasses and two shirts. Funny how the man sticks in his throat. He can’t think past him, his smugness, hid solidity, somehow. He stumbled over him back there and is stumbling still, can’t get him away from his feet, like shoelaces too long or a stiff stick between his feet. The man mocked, whether out of his mouth or in the paced motions of his work-worn hands or through his hairy ears, somewhere out of his body he mocked the furtive wordless hopes that at moments make the ground firm for Harry. Figure out where you’re going before you go there: it misses the whole point and yet there is always the chance that, little as it says, it says it. (p. 36-7, QPB 1990 edition, originally 1960)

It is Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom’s thoughts and feelings that lead to his actions that lead to the “adventures” of the book.

In the LeCarre book, there is less emphasis on the internal–the power is in the betrayals and horrible situations that make up the structure of the book. When the spy, Leamas, gets angry toward the end, he is reacting to outside events and behaviors. He’s not winding himself up, or as one of my friends puts it, “getting twisted around his axle;” people really are screwing him. I got angry at the set-up, at the off-screen characters who could be so calculating and the deals they made with “the devil” that has brought some of their own best men down; In “Rabbit,” I’m mostly angry at Rabbit (and, maybe, Rabbit’s god).

“All right!” Leamas shouted suddenly. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what you were never, never to know, neither you nor I. Listen: X is London’s man, their agent; they bought him when he was in England. We are witnessing the lousy end to a filthy, lousy operation to save his skin. To save him from a clever little Jew in his own department who had begun to suspect the truth. They made us kill him, d’you see, kill the Jew. Now you know, and God help us both.” (edited from p. 199, Pocket Books 1991 edition, originally 1963)

Because I’m writing genre fiction (romance), and my stories need to carry a lot of emotion, I’m seeing now that much, much more needs to be built in. People identify with Rabbit (up to a point), but he’s no romantic hero. I need to ground the emotion in real action, not just reaction and self-determined action.

Writers like Mary Balogh can build characters that angst a lot and yet propel the story; I’m good on the angsting part, now I need to build better propellers.