A Peek at Pecker

1. A Peek at Pecker Analyzing the script as fiction.

2. Art is…. • Mother: • Father: • Rory: • Shelly: • Friends of The Whitney: • Matt: • Pecker:

3. Basics What fundamental elements go into the crafting of just about any story, and how do those elements function in this film? • Character • Setting • Plot • Point of view • Theme • Language (style, tone, diction) • Image • Symbol

4. Plot, character, setting, theme—all intimately enmeshed in Pecker ! What’s the story’s “narrative question”? Will Pecker become famous artist? How will he develop as an artist? What will happen to him, his community (Baltimore, family, friends), and his art as he becomes famous? Good and interesting stories often involve a character who is put into a situation which will disrupt his equilibrium. In this case, we have a kid who relies on his community and his connection to that community for his well-being, his equilibrium, and his art. His happiness (even joy) seems to come from his ability to frame/control/actively make and embrace his world and life. So what situation would put such a character to the test? What would amplify his weaknesses or provide maximum tension--and therefore maximum interest for us, the viewers? Break or threaten to break his connection to his community. Take away or threaten his freedom and power to frame or own his own life

5. Plot Structure of Pecker • Exposition: long sequence of scenes in which we are introduced to community and all people closest to Pecker. Art and community are closely linked, with Shelly at center. Pecker is an active framer of his life. Art and life are one. • First “hook” or complicating action: Rory sees his stuff on exhibit and he gets fired. (Or, even before this, we see the community react to his work.) First loss of control, ability to frame/make own life; first loss of own vision. Disequilibrium.

6. Second complicating action: has a show in NY and sells work. First signs of rupture: Shelly unhappy, homeless people mistreated. With fame comes increasing loss of innocence. • Return home and further ruptures: • burglary of home; • Matt in trouble; • sister fired; • little sister changed; • mother used and abused; • Mi Mama rejected. I.e., the people he cares about are being hurt, so his art is suffering at its root. Also, the community is mad at him and so his art suffers; needs love for his art to work.Note that the art industry at this point is in control of Pecker’s art and vision. Pecker relies for his well-being on art, which comes from his community and his ties to his community. The tension comes when those ties are severed or in danger of severing—his character is put to a test, must find new ways of connecting, regaining control and equilibrium.

7. Crisis, maximum rupture: Shelly sees Pecker and Rory and splits. Loss of Shelly = loss of his center. • Turning point: throws down camera and says, “Cancel the Whitney.” Becomes active agent again; not passive receiver of his own life. His art comes from his life and his life was appropriated from him. He chooses his life over art and thus regains his art.

8. Gets Shelly back in voting booth: notice how art + Shelly are linked in Pecker’s well-being. (Note that, to some extent, this story is really about Shelly, who actually changes the most?) • Reverse show in Baltimore: Pecker regains (and even enlarges) his community and thus his art. The “embrace” of art is enlarged and tightened. Miracle of art/community/love affirmed. Notice too that the community actually becomes involved in his art. Maximum art-community synthesis. Mi Mama and Mother Mary: real art happens when artist makes right choices? When art and world are in proper balance? When artist is in control of his own vision? • Balance restored. Or rather a new equilibrium is found.

9. Standard, rising-action, linear plot. • Any plot devices? • Flashbacks? • Framing? • Multiple, intersecting plots?

10. Do similar analysis of “Cathedral” and “Sonny’s Blues” • Note initial situations in both stories: what is the narrative question? What are we reading to find out? What question(s) keeps us turning pages? • Again, how is character being tied to plot and theme? Who is the main character and how is he being tested? • Outline the plot of the story. Where is the first main hook or complicating action, where are some additional complicating actions, where is the climax? Etc. • In “Cathedral,” “Sonny’s Blues,” and Pecker, at least one character is taught by another to see art and imagination in a new way. Explain. • What view of art/imagination is finally affirmed in each story? What is art? What and whom is it for? • What can you learn from these two writers? If you read as a writer, what can you take away from the stories?

11. For Next Week • Workshop? • Look at more Fiction Project options. • “How to Tell a True War Story” (online) and “How to Talk to Your Mother” (handout). Today • Review perspectives. • Look at a couple project options. • Finish “Sonny’s Blues” and “Cathedral.” • Workshop. • Selected weirdnesses.

12. Reviewing perspectives…

13. A confrontation with reality; facing reality The invention of reality Formalist (possibly mocking?) Art The improvement of reality An escape from reality; a sedative or distraction Formalist Defiance of reality; reality as it ought to be An affirmation of reality Formalist

14. Something produced solely for others; a means of pleasing an audience Formalist A commodity A pile of crap; a hoax; excuse for not having a REAL job Art The honoring of tradition Formalist The subversion of tradition Emotional or psychological therapy A mode of perception Self-expression; solely for self ; exploration of one’s unique vision Formalist

15. So: what are YOUR aesthetics and standards of judgment? What should/will be the standard of judgment in this class? (Maybe I’ll ask you that at the end of the term.)

16. Where do stories come from? Hint: there’s no such thing as writer’s block. Writer’s block is a figment of your imagination.

17. Harmonious Confusion • What was I saying last week about plot and character? • Look at links on schedule. • Look at passages of “Sonny’s Blues”:

18. Look at Fiction Project Option 1 Don’t confuse a first-person narrator of a story with the author of the story! A story isn’t an essay! • It’s understood as “fiction,” not “reality.” • No thesis statement. • Meanings are implicit rather than explicit, resonant, overlapping, multiple. For Option 1, you are to draw heavily on fact and autobiography, but still write a piece of fiction, a short story.

19. Stop thinking in terms of action-centered plots, and focus on other things: a person you barely know, an intriguing small detail, a comment someone made, the way a single street looks at different times of the day… • Go home and look again. Sit alone in a café you haven’t been in for awhile. Just sit, listen, and write. • Drive around. Slowly. And just look. • Consider the ugliest or most otherwise unfortunate qualities of your hometown. Make a story out of them. • Hunt down the oldest citizen or the person who has lived there longest. Interview that person. • Go to work one day with the garbage man, mail man, mayor, grade school principal, road construction worker, supermarket cashier, ambulance driver, town drunk.

20. Food for thought… If you were to do the written equivalent of what Pecker does…what would you be doing? How might the art of photography translate into the art of writing poems and stories? That is, how is writing like taking pictures? Portraits as interpretations. How do you wish the community members to be seen? How do you see them? What will you leave in and leave out?

21. Look at Fiction Project Option #3

22. Plot (on board) • Traditional: • Exposition • Narrative question • Complicating actions • Pace (what speeds up pace? what slows it down?) • Structure • Devices: flashbacks, framing, foreshadowing, O’Henry Twist • Nontraditional: • Multiple intersecting plots • Plot made up almost entirely of flashbacks • Circular plot • Non-plot: • episodic approach • (Alain Robbe-Grillet) • pure interior monologue • montage Alternative ways of experiencing and understanding TIME! Consider: Momento, Slackers, Etc.!

23. Consider: anything that happened to you today. Anything.

24. Questions for “How to Tell a True War Story” • Look closely at LANGUAGE in this story and comment in a brief paragraph, with examples. • How would you describe the plot of this story? Remember that “plot” is the sequence or order of events. Is this story’s plot chronological or linear? Episodic? Circular? A montage? What plot devices is this writer using? Flashbacks? Framing? Multiple plots? False endings? The story obviously does not have a traditional plot—describe it as well as you can. (In Wed. group: go over nontraditional plots first.) • What is this story’s narrative question? That is, what question(s) drive the plot? What are we reading to find out? • Who are the story’s main characters? What is the main character’s chief problem or issue? Who is the main character? • The title of this piece suggests that the story will ultimately explain or give instructions for telling a true war story. So—how does one tell a true war story? What are the particular difficulties, according to this narrator, in telling the events of war? What is this narrator saying about “truth” and how we understand it? • Do you happen to know anyone in Iraq (or anyone who has been on active duty there)? Do you know anyone who has been in any other war? Draw a meaningful connection between your experience/ understanding of the Iraq war and Tim O’Brien’s story.

25. Questions for “How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)” • Look closely at LANGUAGE in this story and comment in a brief paragraph, with examples. • Ok, so: based on this story, how DO you talk to your mother? • Notice that these two writers have appropriated the “how-to” genre in their titles (have evoked the “how-to” manual or instruction guide). What opportunities does this approach provide a writer? How does it affect the story being told—its narrative motion and tone? Its audience expectations?

26. Prompts, Exercises(See also “Harmonious Confusion” • Write a 7-page story in class, taking no more than 1 hour. • Write anything, non-stop for 30 minutes. • Write a paragraph imitating the prose style of each writer we’ve read to date. • Locate a segment of your Fiction Project which has the potential for a developed scene. Write that scene.

27. Flash Fiction (Fiction Project Option #7)250-300 words or so • Why? • Because we’re too busy. • We’re brain-dead; over-stimulated, desensitized, no attention-span. • Because we live in a “flash” world (fractured, media-saturated, disjunctive, fast); TV and now the Web ask us to process the world in bytes or chunks. • Because it’s an interesting, compressed, challenging and fun form. • Because it forces compression; awareness of the word as valuable currency. • Because “good lit” isn’t necessarily long (Dickinson, sonnets, Herrick). • Works well in class with limited time. • Doesn’t waste paper. • Could be interesting hybrid of poetry and fiction. • Challenges • Must evoke character, feeling, theme with few words. Art of the minimal sketch, the telling detail. Iceberg principle. • Have to be aware of how language connotes. Heart of the “story” is in suggestion and nuance—not explicit statement.

28. The Iceberg Principle

29. Show, don’t tell. • Provide fewer, but better, details. (Less is more.) • Let only the tip of the iceberg show—the right details will evoke the great mass of what lies beneath. • Avoid platitudes, like the ones I’m using here.

30. It roars down the road. The engine howls, a caged animal begging to be set free; plumes of bronze smoke blast skyward with every scream. Dust billows in airborne whirlpools behind gargantuan tires. Its ominous shadow bears down upon everything trapped in its destructive path. Ever closer it approaches, once a mere speck on the horizon this beast becomes a veritable leviathan.

31. It roars down the road. The engine howls, a caged animal begging to be set free; plumes of bronze smoke blast skyward with every scream. Dust billows in airborne whirlpools behind gargantuan tires. Its ominous shadow bears down upon everything trapped in its destructive path.Ever closer it approaches, once a mere speck on the horizon this beast becomes a veritable leviathan. Once a mere speck on the horizon, ever closer it approaches.

32. It roars down the road, a caged animal. Plumes of bronze smoke blast skyward with every scream. Dust billows behind gargantuan tires. Its shadow bears down upon everything. Once a mere speck on the horizon, ever closer it approaches. It roars down the road. Bronze smoke blasts skyward and dust billows behind gargantuan tires. Once a mere speck on the horizon, its shadow bears down. A delicate wind blows from the south…

33. “stalks and beards” • “the wet sterile smell of humidity” • “It comes to rest just inches from the fence…” • “She shrugs, ‘dunno, but I hear the Hoof ‘n Heel is due through here’…” • “Scooch over.”

34. Silences aren’t silent. Silences aren’t nothing. Being good with words means knowing when to shut up.