Critique #17 — Elaine Barlow #2
Kevin Andrew Murphy June 30th, 2006
Sleep.
Conceptually enigmatic to those who cannot perform the act of relaxation when voices in the halls of consciousness scream the curses of the world and the worries of everyday. Eve sits on the edge of her own world, staring out the window into a blue-purple sky. Clouds in the shapes of her nightmares crawl past, quietly escaping the distant fading thunder. She walks down a familiar path in her mind, searching for a new reality amidst flashes of lovemaking and phrases never spoken in daylight - uttered as chants they leave nailholes of new obsessions. She is silent in the pitch, her shadow cast upon a wall by the outside streetlamp. She can smell herself - her sweat and her sex - mixed with the smell of humid rain.
“I wonder, Eve,†Says a voice from behind her. Quiet and seductive as usual, “if anything supernatural was born out of that storm we had,â€
The voice is what trapped her to begin with. It was the end of her peace when she had tired of peace - when she was young and had longed for questions and pain. The sound of her name spoken in darkness stung like a wet lashing, leaving the same bitter taste in her mouth; a pinch of desire, a dash of devotion, and a sprinkle of hellfire … punishment for wanting more than peace.
Eve is quiet for a moment – seeking a new mental foundation better than her current one and built of a substance other than frosted glass. “I’m tired.†She finally replies coldly in a whisper. “I don’t know.â€
Hoo, this is more like it! I am so turning the page. But I did almost lose it in the first long graf.
Let me give my reactions in specifics.
I’m intrigued because we have a rarity here, conflict before character, when usually it’s the other way around. I loved it up until screamed curses of the world and the worries of everyday partly because screamed, coming at me after that internal, logical opening, seemed like over-writing. Not your fault; just too many stories have gazes screaming, colors screaming, tires screaming, etc. I went back and the screaming did come from voices, but the curses of the world are cosmic and worries of the day kind of featureless but far less grand in scale than those world-curses, so I wondered if I was supposed to be laughing. You know, the ” . . . and I’m deathly afraid of global warming, and whether the sun is fading my stuff.”
Her world–or her bed or desk or chair? But I fight back the urge to wonder how a world can have a window and clouds outside of it, tell myself ‘metaphor alert’ even if the metaphor does not grant clarity but muffles it. The tone of the opening –distinctive, internal, fraught–makes me wonder if I’m dealing with madness, and move on.
I’m hitting bumpy road here–the words are not building but seem to be working against one another, conveying a febrile sense of over-writing.
Clouds in the shapes of her nightmares–what does that mean? I get no image, it sounds Grand Guignol, but because there’s no real image, there is no impact, and thus I feel it’s a cheat.
crawl–well, that’s my first clue: so the nightmares are in the shapes of creatures that crawl? Because clouds do not crawl, they have no short legs, no slimy undulating body, so slithery tube, are not a four-limbed creature on hands and knees. If they are frightening animal shapes, why not say it, and sharpen the image?
escaping the distant thunder makes me think the departing storm is coming this way, but the clouds are going that way. Huh? Oh yeah, and the quietly, though correct (clouds are quiet), imply the clouds are really quite tame. Words like ’silently’ or ’soundlessly’ don’t connote the same as ‘quietly’.
and here’s where I am just about to stop reading–I’ve seen searching for a new reality so much, especially during the seventies, it’s become threadbare and meaningless, and therefore uninteresting. But the very next phrase–amidst flashes of lovemaking and phrases never spoken in daylight–has rivted me in a snap, like someone who’s been listening to voices fading in and out of static reaching a station playing an aria by Puccini.
But the next phrase shuts me out again–I cannot make any sense whatsoever of nailholes of new obsessions, especially as there has been no wall in the piece so far. Nailholes in her mind’s path? Except is she stepping on the obsessions, then? and how do chants leave nailholes? Also, ‘they’ is unclear: the phrases I can understand being chanted, but how does one chant flashes of lovemaking?
Comma after we had should be period.
The question rivets me again, and so does her response–it’s terrific–until I trip over ‘wet lashing’. Lashings are long strips of stuff that in the old days tied things to other things, and what’s the problem with them being wet? I’m lost with that one, bounced out of the story as I examine the worlds this way and that, trying to make sense of how limp, wet ties could possibly sting? But the wonderful bits before it keep me trying.
leaving the same bitter taste in her mouth–as what? So far we’ve had no bitter tastes mentioned, so I have nothing to connect this sensory image with.
But following that another breath-taking bit: a pinch of desire, a dash of devotion, and a sprinkle of hellfire . . . punishment for wanting more than peace. I don’t care that desire isn’t measured in pinches, and fire isn’t sprinkled, the cockeyed verbs just add to the terrific overall effect.
and the last graf has got me gripped by the chitlins again.
I want to repeat what’s probably unnecessary, that everyone’s reaction is different, so whatever I say will probably not make sense to the next person. You have chosen a highly idiosyncratic voice as well as an unusual way into the story, so it’s going to cause idiosyncratic reactions in your readers. But I am convinced that there’s tremendous potential here.
I love the cold feel here–the analytical voice speaking of terrible things. Sherwood did a great job pointing out bits that are overwritten. I also got a bit of an “asylum” feel here. BTW, I interpreted “wet lashing” as whipping with a wet lash, because of the verb stung. Do clarify the ambiguity.
Keep going!
Carol