Startle and Illuminate

by Carol Shields

  April 2, 1996

  Carol to KP

  I have a dozen questions for you, as I think the class will.

  How much have you actually written? I’m not sure how this connects with the first term project, the juncture that is. I would like to know—if you know—where you’re going with this. How much of a hero do you want to make of F or do you intend any such thing? What do the people in the story want, and are their desires located in the “real” world or in fantasy?

  This is richly imagined; I’m not sure though that you’ve coloured in all the connections yet. Your handling of dialogue, especially extended dialogue, is excellent—I can feel the tension growing and each exchange moves it forward.

  I like the fact that you’ve created a whole world, or perhaps appropriated a whole world. Some of the details of the fantasy life are fascinating, and you’ve made it solid.

  For me, the main problem was confusion. Where are we in time and space and who is doing what? I was constantly off balance. You have a lot of people, a number of levels of “reality,” some of your characters have two names. This is a good deal to ask of a reader. In addition, there is the chunk of narrative we haven’t seen. I think you could do much to clarify the story if you were more careful about vague pronouns, marked v.p. in the text. We need these tags so we don’t have to keep reading back and also so we know that YOU know WHO is Who. What I’m talking about is more “authority” from the author, and often you do this well.

  I think you might ask yourself what, in a phrase, is your main through line. And are you able to keep this through line firmly at the front of the narrative. Is it F’s quest? If so, what is that quest?

  Looking forward to discussion.

  April 2, 1996

  Carol to K

  This is very funny, very engaging; I hated for it to end.

  You’ve got off quickly with a bang of an opening, fooling us into thinking we were in for dullness, then pulling the rug out. Lovely. You’ve done a good job conveying the kind of boredom that would make these kinds of games inevitable. And the phone sex itself is hilarious; I only wish you’d provided just a bit more, rather than suggesting to us where the conversation went. But it works well. Very visual, very nice. Curiously innocent, which is also nice.

  Occasionally I wanted other bits thickened a bit, particularly the setting. And a little more attention to who is speaking. I sometimes had to reach back.

  Where should this go? I don’t think you want to lose the lightness, but you could darken it slightly—you’ve read Lorrie Moore, so you will know what I mean. What does it mean that one person manipulates another, even in fun? Is anyone hurt, anyone punished? I can only imagine a kind of ironic doubling back, a genuine erotic passion growing in the place of this rehearsed one. But would a lawyer and a cowboy be able to—? You’d have to give it legs, somehow. Anyway, I love it. And with revision, clarification, closure, can see it being published so that other people can love it. I look forward to hearing the class suggestion for an ending.

  Hope you had a good holiday.

  December 16, 1996

  Carol to AG

  I’m going to get off a few impressions with the manuscript and will send more later when I’ve had time to digest my feelings. I certainly loved what you did at the end, and think, with a few revisions, you could do Chapter 12 as a short story and send it to the New Yorker. You’d have to get rid of P though. I don’t know how you knew how someone this sick would feel, making that final effort. Marvellous.

  The whole book is a fine accomplishment, and I think will find its audience. It’s often amusing.

  I suggest a few things. One, that you stop from time to time and summarize: Something like—This is P’s last year of exploration, her daughter is sick and in crisis, her son is emerging from sexual ambiguity and finding a connection. I notice that many writers do this, and that it helps keep everything on track.

  Two, that you try to get rid of some of your parentheses. I know why you have them: because there is an undervoice to so much of the novel. But the material doesn’t need commenting on. Even if you eliminated half of them—

  I would love to have had one mention of the potluck club—a paragraph or two—in each chapter, as a sort of binding together mechanism.

  The only place I lost interest was during some of the dreams. I think it was John Barth who cautioned his students about the use of dreams in novels, that we are interested in our own dreams but not necessarily in others’. How important are they to the unwinding of P’s journey? Perhaps you could telescope them slightly.

  Some of the pronouns were unclear—and I’ve marked those. In most cases it’s easier just to reconstruct the sentence.

  It’s been a joy to read this, B. You never make P cute or, god forbid, feisty. Perhaps you could have her reflect now and then about how she’s doing fulfilling the role of “older person.” Is she good at it? Is she resisting, going along with it?

  Will it ever stop snowing!

  Undated

  Carol to Q

  This is a fine project. Your introduction opened up some personal issues which would be interesting to discuss: Hélène Cixous and her theory of writing as liberation, writing as a way of bringing equality between the sexes, and your evident freedom and pleasure in writing in English rather than German—all three ideas interest me.

  Overall I find your writing “blooming” in these pieces. The image that comes to mind is that of a “fountain overflowing.” You are generous with yourself and indulgent with language (once or twice I think you went over the top, but then where is the top?). You use language, in any case, daringly, risking curious juxtapositions that almost always work. In this project, more than the last, I felt your English was solidly in place, but that would only be natural, I think.

  Your mingling of domestic detail and life’s larger emotions feels natural, unself-conscious. The laundry experience achieved humour in the face of frustration, and I liked YOUR stance in the piece, the baffled observer who is, nevertheless, determined to master the machine. You might want to take this piece a little deeper, widen it out slightly.

  The persona of the narrator, you, is suggested with an ardent and contagious energy, with boundless curiosity, and, most interesting to me, a rare and natural tenderness toward the world.

  I’ve made occasional marks: the odd awkward construction. Opaque (to me) references. Some images that don’t work for me. Phrases that seemed to me unnecessary.

  Undated

  Carol to L

  A good project. I can see you’ve spent time thinking your way through this, establishing character and setting up scenes. Your dialogue is funny, smart, quick, sure-handled. You use it to move the story forward as well as add texture. And you’re generous with it.

  I like your nice ironies: that A feels that she is unworthy of a handsome man, for instance. (Someone out there gets the handsome men.)

  I’ve marked a few sentences that I think could do with a haircut.

  And I have a suggestion: that you occasionally, for both A and E, provide a sudden deepening. An emotional deepening. I know that you are working on a vein of romantic comedy—and not everyone can do this—but I don’t believe you’d lose your tone, or your footing, if you showed us, now and then, your characters’ dark side. Their very real insecurity. Their loneliness. You might, by letting their banter merge with sudden sincerity, let us know how grateful they are for each other’s friendship. It sometimes helps if you ask yourself: what does A want? (for instance) and let her speak to it, even if she speaks only to herself.

  I feel this growing toward a longer work, and look forward to watching it.

  Undated

  Carol to L

  You’ve done a lot of work on this, and large parts of it succeed. You know how to show tenderness, and also humour, and your dialogue is consistently good and believable.

  I’ve marked a few problems, and chief of these is pacing. The Paris interlude seemed to arrive too qui
ckly, and never really establishes itself in my mind. (I didn’t feel much in the section that spoke of the flavour of Paris. You might do more with Montréal too—name neighbourhoods. Describe her journey to school and back home every day. The seasons, the public gardens, the cafés and theatres and shops.) And I was unsure how long the various episodes lasted. It’s important to keep the reader solidly located in time as well as in space.

  I’ve marked passages, too, where the language goes suddenly stiff and formal and out of joint with the nice, loose feeling of the rest.

  You get into S’s point of view very occasionally. Consider carefully whether you need to do this. And whether you want to. It might be much more effective to stay with A.

  I need to know where you are going to from here. This isn’t the end is it?

  A good project. I do hope to see more. I’d like to know if she can really leave Carrot River (innocence) behind. Ask yourself: what does it mean to leave your past behind?

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  WE WISH TO THANK DONALD SHIELDS FOR HIS EARLY AND enthusiastic support of this project; the staff of Library and Archives Canada, including Catherine Hobbs, for their astute and thoughtful assistance in gathering the material collected here; Trena White and Jesse Finkelstein, of Page Two Strategies, who encouraged and supported our work from notion to publication; and Anne Collins and Amanda Lewis, of Penguin Random House Canada, who helped provide this book form and focus.

  Thanks also to Freydis Welland for her invaluable insights, and to Bradley Dunseith and Anjalika Samarasekera for theirs, and to Dorothea Belanger and Marcy Zlotnick for their invaluable notes and memories of studying writing with Carol. Chapter 14 would not exist without their class notes.

  Finally, we wish to thank Carol Shields for taking so many opportunities to shed light on the craft of writing, and for helping writers learn to notice things, to recognize a story when they see it, and to trust their impulses.

  SOURCES

  GENEROSITY, TIME AND FINAL ADVICE

  Terry Gross interview: “Everyone asks me this …” Fresh Air, NPR, July 18, 2003, www.​npr.​org/​templates/​story/​story.​php?storyId=1340226.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “A View from the Edge of the Edge” in Carol Shields and the Extra-Ordinary, Marta Dvořák and Manina Jones, eds. (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007); “Why Do Writers Write,” speech, 1988; “The Case for Curling Up with a Book,” essay, 1997; paper, undated.

  “I’ve always seemed to be able …” Undated letter to Anne Giardini.

  “A good question …” An Interview with Carol Shields, BookBrowse, www.​bookbrowse.​com/​author_interviews/​full/​index.​cfm/​author_number/​764/​carol-shields.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Paper on myths about writing, untitled, undated.

  “And I have my writing …” Unless (Random House Canada, 2002), p. 2.

  “Romance novels … are able to fill their pages …” Unless, pp. 206–7.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Of Boxcars and Coat Hangers and Other Helpful Devices,” paper, 1997.

  “I thought I understood …” Unless, p. 13.

  “Out of her young, questioning self …” Jane Austen: A Life (Penguin Group, 2001), p. 9.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Crossing Over,” paper, 1990.

  “I like to sketch in a few friends …” Unless, p. 122.

  Peter Ward: “head-on into the frustration …” Publication unknown; attribution confirmed and permission obtained October 29, 2015.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Creative Writing Courses, a lecture given in Trier, Germany, April 1990; Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops, Carol Shields, ed. (Simon & Schuster, 1998).

  “To write is to be self-conscious …” Jane Austen, pp. 120–21.

  “It had always seemed something of a miracle to him …” Swann (Random House Canada, 1987).

  Writing Assignments: Creative writing notes, courtesy of D. Belanger and M. Zlotnick, English 4.350, University of Manitoba, 1994–1995.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “The Subjunctive Self,” paper, undated.

  “For every writer the degree of required social involvement …” Jane Austen, p. 119.

  “Notes for Novel …” Small Ceremonies (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1976), pp. 55–56.

  “A life is full of isolated events …” Unless, p. 313.

  “Nevertheless, publication meant having a public self …” Jane Austen, p. 148.

  “I work on my sonnets at a small keyhole desk …” “Segue” in The Collected Stories (Random House Canada, 2005), p. 11.

  Letters of Sigmund Freud, Sigmund Freud, ed.; translated by Tania and James Stern (Basic Books, Inc.: 1960).

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “On Avoiding Standards,” paper, undated.

  “There is a problem all fiction writers must face …” Unless, pp. 139–40.

  “Where, then, did Jane Austen find the material …” Jane Austen, p. 70.

  “… there is what the literary tribe calls a ‘set piece’ ” “Flitting Behavior” in The Collected Stories, p. 80.

  “The Seaside Houses,” The Stories of John Cheever (Ballantine: 1946).

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Carol Shields” in 22 Provocative Canadians: In the Spirit of Bob Edwards, Kerry Longrpré and Margaret Dickson, eds.; foreword by Catherine Ford, pp. 26–31; “Others,” paper, undated; “Gender Crossing,” talk, Canadian Booksellers Association, 1997.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “The Love Story,” paper, undated.

  “To be a romantic …” The Republic of Love (Vintage Canada, 1992).

  CHAPTER TEN

  Talk, Manitoba Writers’ Guild, September 1994.

  “I had an argument with Matt Cohen …” Undated letter to Anne Giardini.

  “But we have to notice …” The North British Review, Volume XIX, May–Aug. 1853.

  “The house seems to take up …” Letters between Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murray, Cherry A. Hankin, ed. (New Amsterdam Books: 1991).

  “How wonderful it feels …” Loitering with Intent (The Bodley Head: 1981).

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “The New New New Fiction,” paper, undated.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Narrative Hunger and the Overflowing Cupboard,” paper, undated; Narrative Hunger, and the Possibilities of Fiction, Edward Eden and Dee Goertz, eds. (University of Toronto Press, 2003).

  “Years ago I belonged to a small writing group …” Unless, p. 271.

  “Writing is mere writing …” Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (Harper & Row: 1989).

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “A View from the Edge of the Edge.”

  “Having Lived in Chicago …” “As for Me and My House,” Books in Canada, Jan.–Feb. 1985.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Creative writing notes, courtesy of Belanger and Zlotnick; Letter from Carol Shields to Anne Giardini, February 2, 1989.

  “I have no idea what will happen in this book …” Unless, p. 16.

  The Works of Carol Shields

  Poetry

  Coming to Canada

  Intersect

  Others

  Novels

  Unless

  Larry’s Party

  The Stone Diaries

  The Republic of Love

  A Celibate Season (with Blanche Howard)

  Swann

  A Fairly Conventional Woman

  Happenstance

  The Box Garden

  Small Ceremonies

  Story Collections

  Collected Stories

  Dressing Up for the Carnival

  The Orange Fish

  Various Miracles

  Plays

  Unless

  Thirteen Hands

  Larry’s Party—the Musical

  (adapted by Richard Ouzounian with music by Marek Norman)

  Anniversary: A Comedy (with Dave Williamson)

  Fashion Power Guilt and the
Charity of Families (with Catherine Shields)

  Departures and Arrivals

  Women Waiting

  Criticism

  Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision

  Biography

  Jane Austen: A Life

  Anthologies

  Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren’t Told

  (edited with Marjorie Anderson)

  Dropped Threads: What We Aren’t Told

  (edited with Marjorie Anderson)

  BORN IN OAK PARK, ILLINOIS, IN 1935, CAROL SHIELDS MOVED TO Canada at the age of twenty-two, after studying at the University of Exeter in England, and then obtained her M.A. at the University of Ottawa. She started publishing poetry in her thirties, and wrote her first novel, Small Ceremonies, in 1976. Over the next three decades, Shields would become the author of over twenty books, including plays, poetry, essays, short fiction, novels, a book of criticism on Susanna Moodie and a biography of Jane Austen. Her work has been translated into twenty-two languages.

  In addition to her writing, Carol Shields worked as an academic, teaching at the University of Ottawa, the University of British Columbia and the University of Manitoba. In 1996, she became chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. She lived for fifteen years in Winnipeg and often used it as a backdrop to her fiction, perhaps most notably in The Republic of Love. Shields also raised five children—a son and four daughters—with her husband, Don.

  The Stone Diaries won a Governor General’s Literary Award and a Pulitzer Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, bringing Shields an international following. Her novel Swann was made into a film (1996), as was The Republic of Love (2003; directed by Deepa Mehta). Larry’s Party, published in several countries and adapted into a musical stage play, won England’s Orange Prize, given to the best book by a woman writer in the English-speaking world. And Shields’ final novel, Unless, was shortlisted for the Booker, Orange and Giller prizes and the Governor General’s Literary Award, and won the Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction.