Part 14 (1/2)

A layman might describe a man as being dressed all in black. The image is vague, it gets the fact across, but not the feeling. It could have been written by anybody. Here's what Updike did, again in a nonfiction work: He sits by the little clubhouse, in a golf cart, wearing black. He is Greek. Where, after all these years in America, does he buy black clothes? His hat is black. His s.h.i.+rt is black. His eyes, though a bit rheumy with age now, are black, as are his shoes and their laces. Small black points exist in his face, like scattered punctuation.

Markers that signal a person's background can be as useful to writers of nonfiction as to novelists, though few think of markers as a matter of course. Writers of articles, features, and books are more likely to use markers than journalists preparing copy on the run. If reporters try to use markers consciously a few times, it can become a rewarding habit.

As an example of the use of markers in nonfiction, I've chosen excerpts from a frontpage story about the hapless treasurer of Orange County, California, Robert L. Citron, from the New York Times of December 11, 1994: He was the type to wear, along with patent leather shoes and belts, red polyester pants and a green blazer at Christmas, pastels at Easter, and orange and black on Halloween.

The license plate on Mr. Citron's car is LOV USC; and, until it broke, the horn was programmed to play the school's fight song.

These markers-there are more-fit the main point of the story, that the Orange County treasurer who managed and lost billions was not a sophisticated Wall Street type, but a homespun local with unsophisticated tastes. The story focuses on the Santa Ana Elks Club, where Citron came for lunch routinely, arriving at ten past noon and leaving at ten minutes before one. Even the dining room of the Elks Club is described with markers: The decor is heavy on Formica, Naugahyde and Styrofoam. On the tables, the only centerpieces are Keno coupons and bottles of Heinz Ketchup and McIlhenny's Tabasco sauce.

These markers of Mr. Citron's private time contrast with his role as ”a sophisticated, aggressive and daring investor” whose ”high returns ... made him not only a legend in financial circles nationwide but a hero to local politicians desperate to do more with less.” Quick bites of television and the usual news stories told of Orange County's financial disaster but did not capture the human drama of the man behind the collapse. The memorable account by reporter David Margolick that I am quoting ends with a comment from a man by the name of Fred Prendergast, ”a regular at Mr. Citron's table at the Elks”: ”To go to a man's home Sunday afternoon, intrude in his personal life, and practically force him to resign, is the most cowardly thing a person could do,” he said bitterly. ”All they had to do was wait for eight o'clock in the morning, or seven in Bob's case, and he'd have been right in his office, where he's supposed to be. They treated him like an animal.”

With the aid of markers and particularity, Margolick made Robert L. Citron visible the way photographs of the man do not and gave a news story a human face and the ring of tragedy. The nonfiction writer who becomes aware of the emotions elicited by cultural differences can use this power in representing people by well-chosen cla.s.s markers.

Often the writer's job is to characterize public figures in depth. I've selected an example from a work of history, a cla.s.sic that has sold far more copies than many bestsellers.

Most people have at least an idea as to what Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, looked like. Paintings, and sculpture, seen in books and on TV, have carried the often romanticized image. Some photographs bring us closer to the truth. But a skilled writer can give us not only exact images but a sense of personality. In the following paragraph, both Lenin and his brother Alexander are characterized: Alexander's face was long and brooding; his skin milky white; his hair, thick, turbulent, frizzy, deeply rooted, stood up in all directions from a line far down on his forehead. His eyes, set deep and on a strange angle in a k.n.o.bby, overhanging brow, seemed to turn their gaze inward. It was the strongly chiseled face of a dreamer, a saint, a devotee, an ascetic. But Vladimir's head was shaped like an egg, and the thin fringe of reddish hair began to recede from the forehead before he was twenty, leaving him bald, like his father, in young manhood. His complexion was a blend of grayishness and full-bloodedness; his eyes tiny, twinkling, Mongoloid. His whole aspect, except in moments of intense thought or anger, was jovial, humorous, mischievous, self-confident, aggressive. Not knowing him, one might have taken him in later years for a hard-working kulak, a rising provincial official, a shrewd businessman. There was nothing in his build or appearance or temperament to suggest kins.h.i.+p with his brother Alexander.

The excerpt is from Bertram D. Wolfe's Three Who Made a Revolution. One of the strengths in the description of Lenin is the evocation of what he looked like earlier and later. That's a technique all writers can employ under appropriate circ.u.mstances. Note the liberties taken by the author. Alexander's hair is turbulent. It is also deeply rooted (how could the author know?), which conveys its permanence as contrasted with Lenin's baldness. Lenin is compared to three different types: a kulak (a well-off farmer), a provincial official, a businessman.

Is taking risks, as this author has, irresponsible in nonfiction? The dean of American literary critics of this century, Edmund Wilson, referred to the book from which this paragraph was taken as the ”best book in its field in any language.”

It's worth taking risks. If it doesn't work, it will be apparent when you revise.

What if the subject of an article or a book is well known to at least part of your audience, as would be the case with, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt? What can a nonfiction writer do that is fresh and new in characterization when dealing with someone whose history has been the object of intensive research by many writers? One interview, with Betsey Whitney, is the basis for the extraordinary first paragraph of Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, No Ordinary Time: On nights filled with tension and concern, Franklin Roosevelt performed a ritual that helped him to fall asleep. He would close his eyes and imagine himself at Hyde Park as a boy, standing with his sled in the snow atop the steep hill that stretched from the south porch of his home to the wooded bluffs of the Hudson River far below. As he accelerated down the hill, he maneuvered each familiar curve with perfect skill until he reached the bottom, whereupon, pulling his sled behind him, he started slowly back up until he reached the top, where he would once more begin his descent. Again and again he replayed this remembered scene in his mind, obliterating his awareness of the shrunken legs beneath the sheets, undoing the knowledge that he would never climb a hill or even walk on his own power again. Thus liberating himself from his paralysis through an act of imaginative will, the president of the United States would fall asleep.

The evening of May 9, 1940, was one of these nights. At 11 p.m., as Roosevelt sat in his comfortable study on the second floor of the White House, the long-apprehended phone call had come ...

That paragraph, like much of the book, is filled with visual particularity and action. Goodwin's book is worth studying for its technique in using research, all of it doc.u.mented, not only to characterize historical persons but to provide the reader with a rich experience.

Here is a checklist of questions you can ask yourself when characterizing: * Would the reader be able to identify the person you're writing about if he was seen in a group of ten people?

* Have you done anything with the person's eyes, the way they are used, to look at a person or to look away?

* Have you given the reader a sense of how that person feels through describing an action rather than by stating the person's feelings?

* Does your person have a habit like tapping a finger, pointing eyegla.s.ses, laughing too loud, waving his hands in a particular way that would make him more visible?

* Is there anything individual about the gait or posture of the person?

* Can you lend resonance to your characterization by invoking other matters in which your person was involved?

* Has your person changed much? In a longer work, can you use that change?

Setting a scene goes hand in hand with characterization. Suppose someone described a scene from history this way: Mary Stuart came into the great hall, followed by her retinue. She climbed the steps to her chair, faced her audience, and smiled.

The reader gets the information, the facts, but not the essence of the occasion, and it is the essence that conveys truth. There is no reason why nonfiction writers cannot do as well as novelists in conveying a scene. Witness what historian Garrett Mattingly did in introducing Mary Stuart in The Armada: She entered through a little door at the side, and before they saw her was already in the great hall, walking towards the dais, six of her own people, two by two, behind her, oblivious of the stir and rustle as her audience craned forward, oblivious, apparently, of the officer on whose sleeve her hand rested, walking as quietly, thought one pious soul, as if she were going to her prayers. Only for a moment, as she mounted the steps and before she sank back into the black-draped chair, did she seem to need the supporting arm, and if her hands trembled before she locked them in her lap, no one saw. Then, as if acknowledging the plaudits of a mult.i.tude, though the hall was very still, she turned for the first time to face her audience and, some thought, she smiled.

How much Mattingly gets into part of one paragraph, all of it designed to make a scene he never saw real to the reader.

The difference between ordinary nonfiction and extraordinary writing, as in Mattingly, is often in the resonance: Against the black velvet of the chair and dais her figure, clad in black velvet, was almost lost. The gray winter daylight dulled the gleam of white hands, the glint of yellow gold in her kerchief and of red gold in the piled ma.s.ses of auburn hair beneath. But the audience could see clearly enough the delicate frill of white lace at her throat and above it, a white, heart-shaped petal against the blackness, the face with its great dark eyes and tiny, wistful mouth. This was she for whom Rizzio had died, and Darnley, the young fool, and Huntly, and Norfolk, and Babington and a thousand nameless men on the moors and gallows of the north. This was she whose legend had hung over England like a sword ever since she had galloped across its borders with her subjects in pursuit. This was the last captive princess of romance, the dowager queen of France, the exiled queen of Scotland, the heir to the English throne and (there must have been some among the silent witnesses who thought so, at this very moment, if she had rights) England's lawful queen. This was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. For a moment she held all their eyes, then she sank back into the darkness of her chair and turned her grave inattention to her judges. She was satisfied that her audience would look at no one else.

Note how Mattingly conveys the strength of her presence in the last lines of that paragraph. He is characterizing a strong queen for whom many had died. Is he making things up? The writing-quite apart from Mattingly's considerable reputation as a historian-convinces us that the author has feasted on every sc.r.a.p of eyewitness testimony and on paintings to convey that scene.

Lest you conclude that resonance is available only to the writer of history, here is a paragraph from James Baldwin's essay about his father from his first published nonfiction book, Notes of a Native Son. Note how the drive to the graveyard blossoms into so much more: A few hours after my father's funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker's chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the third of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate gla.s.s.

The day of my father's funeral had also been my nineteenth birthday. As we drove him to the graveyard, the spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred were all around us. It seemed to me that G.o.d himself had devised, to mark my father's end, the most sustained and brutally dissonant of codas. And it seemed to me, too, that the violence which rose all about us as my father left the world had been devised as a corrective for the pride of his eldest son. I had declined to believe in that apocalypse which had been central to my father's vision; very well, life seemed to be saying, here is something that will certainly pa.s.s for an apocalypse until the real thing comes along. I had inclined to be contemptuous of my father for the conditions of his life, for the conditions of our lives. When his life had ended I began to wonder about that life and also, in a new way, to be apprehensive about my own.

Are the techniques of plotting any use to the nonfiction writer?

All storytelling from the beginning of recorded time is based on somebody wanting something, facing obstacles, not getting it, trying to get it, trying to overcome obstacles, and finally getting or not getting what he wanted. What has interested listeners, readers, and viewers for centuries is available in the conscious use of desire in nonfiction.

In life we prefer an absence of conflict. In what we read, an absence of conflict means an absence of stimulation. Few things are as boring as listening to uncontested testimony in a courtroom. Few things are as interesting as a courtroom clash. If Marjorie and Richard lived happily ever after, the reader's response is ”So what?” In articles, newspaper stories, and books, the reader's interest often flags because the writer did not keep in mind that dramatic conflict has been the basis of stories from the beginning of time.

Conflict does not have to involve violence. Conflict can be low key. It can exist by innuendo. What it takes is a mind-set when examining the cast of a prospective piece, whether it is to be an article or a scene in a book. Are there two people, two parties, two organizations, or two ent.i.ties of any kind that are in conflict? If the conflict might not be immediately apparent to the reader, can the writer provide some help by bringing the conflicting elements closer to each other and by highlighting the conflict, actual or potential?

Conflict can arise from a thwarted desire, but the desire must be planted. Here's a simple before-and-after example: Terence McNiece, 14, was arraigned yesterday in Town Court for allegedly stealing a bicycle belonging to a neighbor.

Watch what happens when desire is added: According to the testimony of his mother, Terence McNiece wanted a bicycle more than anything in the world, but she couldn't afford to buy him one. Terence, age 14, was arraigned yesterday in Town Court for allegedly stealing a bicycle belonging to a neighbor.

In the first part of the example, the information that a boy has been arrested for stealing a bicycle comes across as dispa.s.sionate fact. It's rather blah. The revised version, in which we learn that the boy wanted a bicycle more than anything else in the world and that his mother couldn't afford to buy him one, tugs at the reader's emotions. What has been activated is the boy's desire for the bike, which is more powerful than the act of stealing.

A news story or a nonfiction piece can move a reader more if the writer remembers that desire, wanting something important badly, can be a force.

The more important the objective, the bigger the conflict will seem to the reader if there are obstacles in the way of gratifying the want. The thing that's wanted may not be possible. Nevertheless, the reader can have his emotions stimulated by that unrealistic and unattainable want.

When the writer has his material and is ready to begin writing, that's the time to determine whether any of the people in the story he is about to write want something badly. Bringing that material up to the beginning could help touch a match to the reader's emotions.

One of the best guides for planning nonfiction is the Actors Studio method for developing drama in plots that I described in Chapter 7. It involves giving each character in a scene a different tack. That technique can be adapted to nonfiction. In preparing to write any pa.s.sage or scene involving two people, if the writer focuses on their differing intentions (or ”scripts”), he will immediately see the dramatic advantages of positioning their conflict in many kinds of adversarial situations in which conflict is inherent in the circ.u.mstances.

Doris Kearns Goodwin's remarkable book No Ordinary Time focuses on the home front in World War II and on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. All couples in a relations.h.i.+p have differing scripts, but the Roosevelts are a dramatic example of the point. Eleanor was motivated by humanitarian causes, Franklin by politics. Their intentions clashed frequently, made more complex by their extramarital friends.h.i.+ps. Yet as a public couple, especially as Franklin became governor and president, they were trapped in a crucible. (You will recall from Chapter 8 that crucible is an emotional or physical environment that bonds two people and that characters caught in a crucible won't declare a truce. They're in it till the end. Their motivation to continue opposing each other is greater than their motivation to run away.) The story of the Roosevelts, in expert hands, is as moving as the exemplary novels whose characters are trapped in a crucible.

Though the crucible is as applicable to confrontations of people as it is to fictional characters, I have never known a nonfiction writer who employed the idea consciously. Yet it has been used in countless histories and biographies, both of which invite scenes in which two adversaries are locked in a situation that holds them together more than anything that would drive them apart. Nonfiction writing would be more dramatic and tap the reader's emotions more if the crucible were considered more often in the planning stage.

Suspense is a valuable technique for the writer who wants to make his reader keep turning pages. It occurs when the reader expects something to happen and it isn't happening yet because the author is holding off. For instance, if a person has been characterized in an interesting way and the reader learns that the character is in danger, the reader wants to know how the person gets out of danger. If that information is withheld for a while, the reader will be left in suspense. If trouble is in the offing, the reader hopes that the person will find out in time to prevent the bad event from occurring. A variant occurs when the reader wants something to happen to a character and it isn't happening yet.

Nonfiction writers do not think of suspense as a conscious method for enhancing reader interest in their work, though some writers use suspense instinctively. Let's look at a simple example, from a newspaper story, of how suspense can be implanted: A bus carrying thirteen pa.s.sengers to Mount St. Vincent yesterday evening careened off the road into a gully. One of the pa.s.sengers, Henry Pazitocki, died before the ambulance reached the scene. Six other persons were hospitalized, two critically.

There is no element of suspense in that first paragraph. The story continues: Three of the pa.s.sengers with minor injuries told patrolman George Francese investigating the accident that the driver may have been drinking. A spokesperson for the Tri-State Bus Company denied those allegations.

Accusation and denial rendered, no suspense. Here's how a writer conscious of the benefit of suspense might have written the same story: A bus carrying thirteen pa.s.sengers to Mount St. Vincent yesterday evening careened off the road into a gully. One of those pa.s.sengers never made it to Mount St. Vincent.

A spokesperson for the Tri-State Bus Company said, ”The driver is a teetotaler. There is no evidence that he was drinking despite what some of the pa.s.sengers said. It was an accident.”

The first sentence tells what happened to the bus. The second sentence arouses curiosity as to who was the pa.s.senger who didn't make it. The purposeful repet.i.tion of ”Mount St. Vincent” helps set up the suspense. The second paragraph doesn't tell us who the person is. The switch to a different part of the story (the spokesperson for the bus company) heightens the suspense. The reader wants to know more. Another element of suspense is introduced: was the driver drunk or not? The last paragraph of the story reads: Patrolman George Francese, investigating the accident, said, ”Three other pa.s.sengers with minor injuries complained that the driver appeared to have been drinking. Rosella Carew, who was sitting just behind Henry Pazitocki, the man who was killed, said, 'I had doubts about getting on the bus when I saw the driver's eyegla.s.ses in his lap and he didn't even seem to know it.' ”

This method of handling the story not only provides conflict for reader interest, at the end it lets the reader draw his own conclusion.

The following true story demonstrates how suspense can be built and maintained in nonfiction through a consistent point of view in which the reader learns only what the narrator knows, and learns it when the narrator learns it: A friend of ours let us have the use of her condo in Florida during a period of icy weather in the east. It was a cozy place, fully equipped, with only one problem. The dishwasher disgorged water all over the kitchen floor.

My wife went down to the superintendent's apartment-his name is Roger-and knocked on the door. He didn't answer. This was Friday, could it be his day off?