The Value of Being A Tiger Mother Reviewer

If you haven't already heard about the semi-controversy over Amy Chua's book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, it basically involves a woman who presents the values of a stereotypical Asian mother as the best way to raise a child. A lot of people are criticizing the book because they claim that pushing a child too hard and never being happy with them borders on abuse rather than proper parenting.

I'd like to note first that Amy Chua was NOT 100% serious in her book. Much of the controversy was probably the result of book marketing--which has apparently worked since BHotTM is #10 on Amazon.

More importantly, I'd like to talk about how this discussion got me thinking about my own reviewing techniques. It affects you.

I read excerpts of "Tiger Mother" with an initial bias against it. I felt a lot of pressure to be the best in my teenage years, and I think it caused a lot of needless stress. But, as I was reading, something Chua wrote really struck me. It deals with the concept of expectations.

To paraphrase, Chua argues that a parent who pushes their child to be perfect holds the fundamental view that their child can be perfect. Conversely, a parent who refuses to push their child to be perfect might be assuming that their child cannot be perfect.

For me, that was a very profound insight. I realized that in reviewing the work of my fellow writers, I often soften up because I worry about pushing them too hard. The assumption I'm making is that I don't truly believe that my fellow writers can be as good as Tolstoy or Shakespeare or Woolf or whoever.

This is sort of a sad admission isn't it?

I'm trying to be helpful, but my expectations are possibly too low to ever make anyone better. At the same time, I love it when someone gives me a truly hard critique because it almost always makes me a better writer. (Don't read too much between the lines here, because it really does make me look quite bad the more you think about it.)

So, I wonder. When you all are reviewing each other's work, do you give them feedback with the view that the person you're reviewing could be the best? Is there value to holding that Tiger Mother mindset?

I want to propose an experiment, but I'm really scared it will backfire, so approach at your own risk. I'd like to ask three of you to send me paragraphs that will be reviewed publicly. But, the catch is that I'm going to review them Tiger Mother style. I'm going to assume that you can be as good as the best writers out there, and I'm going to expect that from you. I'll be very critical, and we'll see if it makes you a better writer, or if it just makes you mad at me. I'd also like to ask three of you to send me paragraphs for the opposite type of review. I'll be nice and supportive, only bringing up the good points. I know from experience that this technique also makes a writer better. So, if you're interested, send me excerpts (up to 250 words) to dmalasarn@gmail.com. Tell me if you want a Tiger Mother review or a nice review, and I'll take the first three people in each category. I'll post them up on Monday and Wednesday, and I'll also post up some of my own writing for YOUR Tiger Mother reviews.

The Point of "Point of View"

I Avoid Defining My Terms

I would like to talk about the idea of "point of view," which is usually discussed in terms of storytelling mechanics, as in "who is telling the story to the reader." There are traditionally about four possible points of view: First-person, second-person, third-person (limited) and third-person (omniscient). It's also possible to have both singular and plural POVs, as in first-person plural ("we"). The verb tense of the telling is also considered to be part of the point of view, as in second-person singular past tense ("you were doing") or third-person present tense ("she is doing"). All of these are ways of showing the story to the reader through characters (and yes, I consider the narrator in third-person to be a character in the novel). All of these points of view have advantages and limitations, and there is no general "best" point of view, nor (I think) a "best" point of view for any particular story; there are only different choices and the results of those choices.

Anyway, this post isn't about comparing POVs. What I want to talk about today is the idea that point of view is a decision writers will make once for the duration of the story, and that the established framework of this point of view will remain constant for the length of the tale. That is, a story "written in" first-person singular past tense, for example, will (and should) remain in that point of view from beginning to end. This is a widely-held idea. But in actual fact, this is rarely the case in good writing and point of view will shift, however subtly, throughout the story.

We are told that point of view is a system for establishing a stable narrative framework for the story, of determining through which character's experience the story will be told, and controlling how much of that character's internal reality will be part of the storytelling mechanism. This way of talking about point of view sometimes treats the experience of the so-called "point of view character" as the most important experience of the story. This is incorrect.

Whose point of view matters?

The most important experience of the story is that of the reader. The reader is always present, as is the writer. The reader and the writer are the only real people involved in the telling of this story; everything else is artifice. Point of view is therefore a matter of distance between the reader and the writer (or between the reader and the story, if you like) and the writer uses character and voice to manage that distance. What the writer is doing with point of view is, in a way, determining from moment to moment how involved in the action--how deep into the story itself--the reader is allowed to be. Think of point of view as something like a zoom lens through which you show the story to your reader. You're able to zoom in or out on not only what is visible, but on what is invisible as well (memory, emotions, thoughts and attitudes).

You have to keep in mind that your reader is, in a very important sense, a character in your story. With point of view--more than any other tool in your writerly toolkit--you are able to effectively place the reader however you like in relationship to the story and its characters, actions and emotions.

What Can You Do With Point of View?

Shifting point of view within the story has been done for a long time. Homer's "Iliad" is about 3,000 years old, and is written in third-person omniscient, so you can see the thoughts/emotions of any character Homer wants you to. But there are also shifts into first-person where you know the narrator is talking directly to the reader. The first line of the poem is Homer speaking to his muse: "Sing, O goddess, the wrath of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans." Homer is not just addressing his muse, but also the audience, telling us what story he's about to tell. The narrator reappears later, at the beginning of Book XII, when he steps outside of the "story present" and discusses, in a brilliant digression, what happens long in the future, when the fortifications built by the Greeks on the Trojan beach erode and rot away.

What Homer is doing here, by skipping in and out of the action of the narrative, is to show the reader the place of the story within history, and to show the reader his own place within history; to demonstrate in a subtle manner that although history is made by real people who experience the drama of the real historical moment, time will pass them by and some day they will be part of the past, for there is not only a historical past and a historical present, there is also a historical future. So Homer is playing around with time and tense in his epic poem, focusing the attention of the reader alternately on past, present and future.

Just as you can direct the reader's attention to different levels of time in a novel, you can direct their attention to different levels of emotion. I think of this as the story's "emotional distance." This emotional distance is usually a fixed distance in work of beginning writers, but by manipulating the point of view, you can change this distance at will.

Herman Melville in "Moby Dick" is allegedly using a first-person narrator named Ishmael to tell the tale. "Ishmael" is of course not the narrator's real name (we never learn what it is), and is given as a symbol; the first line of the book is beginning a process of reference to things hidden, buried, submerged as it were. But that's the least of it, when we consider the levels of viewpoint Melville uses. There's Ishmael, telling about his voyage on the Pequod under the command of Ahab, and once the voyage gets underway Melville--not Ishmael--elbows his way over and over into the narrative and brushes his narrator aside to put us directly into the minds of Ahab and Starbuck (not to mention a host of minor characters). There's also a fun moment in a later chapter when Melville is clearly addressing the reader directly to discuss his difficulty as a writer in describing certain behaviors of whales. The reader is thus pulled to and fro in the narrative, suddenly inside Ahab's head, suddenly sitting next to Ishmael (a bright but inconsequential character), suddenly standing outside the story with Melville. All of it works, too. There is disorientation in the reader (but that's quite deliberate, I'm sure) as the landscape shifts beneath his feet and Melville takes the reader's hand and points at the story, saying "Look here! Now here! And here!"

You can also remain within the "story present" and do more subtle things, like increase the reader's emotional involvement here and there, or pull the reader back emotionally, sort of like playing with the lens of a camera or, maybe, like turning the heat up and down in the shower or under a boiling pot. For example, consider this passage:

"The woman looked the three travelers over. They seemed respectably dressed though the Irishman had some dark stains on his coat and breeches. That one and the handsome one had spoken to each other mostly in half sentences and single words. Irish had all but ignored the lady, who’d doted on Handsome all through the meal."

We begin at some distance, as observers outside the scene, and then we get the woman's opinion ("respectably dressed"), and then we are seeing slightly from her point of view ("that one and the handsome one"), and finally we are inside her head ("Irish had all but ignored the lady..."). The emotional distance has moved, in four sentences, from neutral to intimate and personal. You can draw into your characters this way for private thoughts and observations which can tell us about the people in our story. The woman in the passage above is making observations about three travelers that the travelers themselves wouldn't make. When you "drill down" from third-person to first-person like this, you are in effect allowing characters to speak directly to the reader, person-to-person. Which is cool; don't tell me it's not.

Just for Davin, I'll also mention that Tolstoy was a master of point of view. "War and Peace" is written from maybe fifty characters' points of view, including, at one critical point, the viewpoint of a dog. None of this shifting of POV is done mechanically or as a matter of course as scenes and characters change. Tolstoy (like all good writers) has considered what the effect on the reader will be, and how close to the emotion of the story the reader should be in each scene (or part of the scene) and has chosen his POVs accordingly. Good writing isn't done by rote or on autopilot.

So, by shifting POVs around, either in a subtle or direct manner, we can:

Change the (emotional) distance between the reader and various characters. We can see characters as they see themselves, so that we see what they themselves hold important (about themselves and other characters).

We can also use this technique to introduce irony. Story knowledge is given to the reader by one character but that knowledge is not given to other characters in the story.

Point of view is a tool that you can use for more than one thing. It's a complex subject (or it can be, and I don't think I've really done it justice in this post) and, as usual, the best way to learn more about it is to read well-written books and pay attention to what the writer is doing. I know that some writers can't (or don't bother to) control the point of view in their stories. When done sloppily, it ends up being something called "head-hopping" (where the POV changes so rapidly that you can't really be sure whose POV it is; note that sometimes this is done deliberately for effect and can be powerful and dramatic) or "point of view slippage" (a phrase which never ceases to amuse me and refers to writers not realizing that the POV of the story has changed--usually just for short passages--because the writer wasn't paying attention).

But just because it can be done badly (and often is by writers who are just starting out), that doesn't mean it can't be done well. I suggest that you think about point of view as less a set of imaginary cameras through which the story is viewed, and more as a system for communicating the fictional experience with the reader. Follow the emotional line of the story through your characters, in and out of the hearts/minds/souls of those characters, and take your readers with you.

Why Victoria Can Get A Manicure

I've mentioned a few times how astounded I am that Tolstoy can write pages and pages about a man harvesting wheat and still make it interesting. I could never figure out exactly how he was creating any tension that way, but recently I've made some progress--I'm gaining on you, Leo!

I was reading Tolstoy's novella, Hadji Murad, when I stumbled upon a scene that was similar to Levin's wheat harvesting scene from Anna Karenina that I mention above. In chapter 2 of H. M., a group of soldiers carrying arms are moving to their new position where they are preparing to ambush their enemy. They have walked a ways down the road, and then turned off into the forest. This is the conversation they had:

"A good job it's dry," said the non-commissioned officer, Panov, bringing down his long gun and bayonet with a clang from his shoulder, and placing it against the plane tree. The three soldiers did the same.

"Sure enough, I've lost it!" crossly muttered Panov. "Must have left it behind, or I've dropped it on the way."

"What are you looking for?" asked one of the soldiers in a bright, cheerful voice.

"The bowl of my pipe. Where the devil has it got to?"

"Have you the stem?" asked the cheerful voice.

"Here's the stem."

"Then why not stick it straight into the ground?"

"Not worth bothering!"

"We'll manage that in a minute."

Did I mention that they were supposed to be preparing an ambush?

Two things are going on here. First, in the actual scene, there is a small amount of tension. A man has lost something, and the group is trying to figure out a solution. So, on a technical level, this is already working. Second, the entire time I'm reading this, my internal voice is screaming, "Get serious! You're at war! You're at war!" Over the small tension, a much bigger tension has been created.

That's the trick. Tolstoy is giving us the irony of the soldier's mental state. The entire time I'm reading what's on the page, I'm thinking about what's NOT on the page. Tolstoy decides not to stay focused on the story so that the power of the story becomes that much more powerful.

I've mentioned before that I have always wanted to create counterpoint in my writing the way music creates counterpoint with two different melodic lines. For me, the sort of irony that Tolstoy is creating serves that purpose. Though he only writes about one story, he's making me think about two, thereby keeping me distracted and doubly entertained.

I've been trying to do this in my own story about the cannibal. In a new scene, I wrote about a woman, Victoria, waking up and going to get a manicure. The entire description feels rather trivial to me, but I hope that the triviality gives the scene power when we learn that she is actually the victim's wife, and she has no idea what is about to happen to her husband.

Beyond making sure that our prose is smooth and clear, I think it's fun to think about how different scenes can play off on each other to create even more drama. Do you guys do this in your own writing? If you haven't tried it before, are there places you can think of where this might help you out?

Influence and Voice

Yesterday, Lady Glamis posted about voice, which got me thinking. About voice. In my last novel, which is set in 16th-century Europe and plunders Shakespeare's "Hamlet," my narrator and all the characters speak in a sort of modernized Elizabethan speech. It's very distinctive but nothing at all like the way I write or speak in real life. My current work-in-progress is set in 18th-century Colonial America, and while I'm not totally sure how my characters should talk yet (still doing research on that), the narrative voice is more modern than in my last book, but still has a sort of formal, old-fashioned tone. Again, it's not how I talk or write in real life.

As I said in my comment yesterday to Lady Glamis' post, I think that beneath the narrative voices lies my own authorial voice somewhere, which presents in the way the rhythms of the prose work, in word choice, in sentence and paragraph construction. Even though the Hamlet-based book was heavily influenced by the language of Shakespeare, and my current book is heavily influenced by the language of Hemingway and Melville and possibly people like Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens, I think that not only does each book have its own unique voice, they both also have my own unique voice.

Which gets me thinking about influence upon authorial voice. Davin Malasarn, as anyone who's read his posts for any length of time should know, is a big fan of Count Leo Tolstoy. Yet Davin's writing doesn't sound like Tolstoy, it sounds like Davin. Which is good, because I am a big fan of Mr. Malasarn's writing. His book ROOSTER is written in a clear, shining voice that gives space for the characters to act and the reader to see. My own prose, despite my love of Hemingway, is dense and can become overcrowded with multiple meanings if I don't watch myself. So how much actual influence is there on us from the writers we admire most? What is it that we take from reading their works? What, exactly, is the influence Tolstoy is having on Davin and what is the influence Hemingway is having on me?

I think there might be a large gap between our favorite authors and the stamp those writers make on our writing. Which is curious and strange but I think it's true. I think that when we really admire to the point, maybe, of worshipping some writer, they may have less actual impact on us than writers we don't love as much.

When I wrote my very first novel about 15 years ago, I was trying very hard to write in the style of Flannery O'Connor, a sort of bizarre religion-centered Southern Gothic darkness. That novel is really awful, so bad that I gave up writing for about a decade in fact, but in a lot of ways I got the O'Connor voice on the page. But I'll never try that hard again to imitate another writer, at least not consciously. I have since then learned that I write better when I'm not trying to copy someone else.

Also, I think that when we really admire a writer, as we come into our own as writers and start to find our own authorial voices, we avoid anything that sounds like our writing heroes, even if we don't know we're doing it. I want to write like Hemingway, but I don't want to have written something that's a rip-off of Hemingway or anyone else. I think Davin won't write like Tolstoy because Davin is trying to write like Davin. Possibly, what each of us wants is to have the command of craft that our favorites have, to command the same affect upon readers these guys pulled off. But not so much to sound like them. Maybe.

I know that reading a lot of Shakespeare has given me a new appreciation of the way words sound together, and of the games you can play with double-meanings in dialogue. I know that Hemingway has given me an appreciation of clarity and simply saying what you mean. Flannery O'Connor had a great economical way of describing action that I admire and try to emulate. Melville enjoyed the sound of his own voice and really understood the concept of telling details. Dostoyevski and Gunter Grass and A.S. Byatt know how to show people at their best and their worst, to create deep characters that remain with readers. I've tried to learn from all of these people, but I don't think I sound like any of them. If there was one thing I would like to still learn, it would be maybe Ivan Turgenov's way of relaxing into the prose and making the reader see the broad sweep of the landscape surrounding the action, all with a couple of sentences.

So we come to the questions du jour: Who are your favorite writers? Do you try to write like them or not? What's the one thing you'd like to learn from another writer?

Help for the Tonedeaf

When I write stories, I try to serve up a range of emotions. From beginning to end, I want to include happy scenes, funny scenes, alongside the angry and sad scenes. Lately, however, I've come to realize that there are two layers of emotions at play in our stories.

First, there's what I described above. We can write about things that create different emotions. But, underneath that, there's a second level, a foundation emotion, if you will. I think this is what writers are talking about when they use the term "tone." Say we are describing a birthday party, for example. And, suppose that everything is going right in this party. The weather is nice. The cake is beautiful. The balloons are fully inflated. We could say that this is a happy occasion. But, as a writer, I could choose to write about this happy occasion in a sad way. This cake would be the last delicious thing they would ever eat again, for example.

Among the writers I most admire, there's a huge range in tone. Here are some first lines as examples:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. --One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me. --Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. --Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. --Anna Karenina by Loe Tolstoy

Notice how we get different amounts of humor? difference amounts of seriousness? different amounts of magic?

For me, tone is a glimpse into the psyche of the writer. For a depressed writer, everything might have a dark tone. For a blissful writer, something as tragic as death might come out sounding not at all unpleasant. In my personal experience, the tone seems to be an uncontrollable side effect of how I'm feeling when I'm writing. And, maybe that's why I've been fixated on this concept lately.

As some of you know, I've been working on a story about a cannibal. I started a couple of years ago, but I tend to drop it and move onto something else whenever I start getting nightmares. Because of the subject matter, the tone of this book has been dark and depressing. But, recently, I've been feeling particularly good about my writing. I've been reading a novella called Hadji Murad, and I've managed to pick up some new techniques from it. I've also started to write my cannibal story from a different person's point of view, someone who isn't so in the middle of things. And, I wonder if both factors, my happiness at learning something new, and the fact that I'm not in the head of a murderer has changed the tone of my book.

Earlier in the book, I have: The air smelled of fresh paint. He could not make out any noise on the other side of the doors that lined the hallway. He moved carefully so as not to brush up against the walls or the paint-speckled tarp that lay against one side. He walked toward the elevator as the door to his mother's condominium closed and locked behind him.

Later on, I have: Only later did Victoria realize that the others had not spoken for several minutes, that they were exchanging glances with one another behind their magazines. She realized that her turn as the center of attention was over, and, blinking her false eyelashes, she leaned over toward Cynthia and complimented her on her new handbag.

I've had different internal emotions as I wrote these two sections, but I can't tell if the outward tone of the writing has changed. And, I wonder--if the tone has changed, is this within my control?

What do you all think? Do you get different tones from the two paragraphs I copied here? Do you think tone is something we can control, or is it just the consequence of how we are feeling?

Writing Less Efficiently

I'm going to break with my tradition of posting filler on Fridays, and instead I'd like to talk about use of words, specifically repetition of one word versus using synonyms. When I was a wee sprig of a boy in grammar school, one of my teachers claimed that repeating a word in a piece of prose was Bad Writing. For example, if you are writing about a wagon, you should not use the word "wagon" twice in the same sentence, or paragraph, or on the same page even. Instead of repetition, writers are supposed to follow the rule of "Elegant Variation," where you find synonyms for "wagon" and use those instead, or recast sentences to avoid naming the object in question. I heard this advice later on in college, and I've read it in books about writing, too. I know professional editors who also believe this is a good rule to follow. My opinion?

In a lot of instances, this rule is complete and utter bullshit. There, I've said it. Now I'll give an example of what I mean.

In researching this post, I ran across the article How to Write Less Efficiently, by Arthur A. Stern, The English Journal © 1967. I quote his wonderful article in part:

"The student comes away with the impression that repeating words and phrases is a Bad Thing. His writing, accordingly, may be dreary, ineffective, and unnecessarily hard to read. Let us see what might have happened if Abraham Lincoln had received such advice and taken it seriously. Lincoln is reported to have said

It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.

We perceive immediately that Mr. Lincoln has succeeded rather poorly in avoiding repetition. No matter. We shall repair his rhetoric by using synonyms and pronouns as the handbooks recommend:

It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even deceive some of them on every occasion; but it is not always possible to trick everyone.

There. Doesn't the style sound familiar?"

Pardon me while I laugh again, because I find stuff like this to be hi-sterical. Okay, I'm done now.

Here's the thing: it is perfectly acceptable to use the same word to describe something as often as you need to. Why? Because sometimes, there is only one perfect word for that thing (object, action or whatever). Use it. The goal is to communicate your meaning to your reader, not to show that you own a thesaurus. While editors and writers are noticing that you've repeated yourself, your reader will be taking note of the point you're making, so You Win.

Here's a fine example of repetition, from D.H. Lawrence:

She remembered to have hated her father’s overbearing manner towards her gentle, humorous, kindly-souled mother. She remembered running over the breakwater at Sheerness and finding the boat. She remembered to have been petted and flattered by all the men when she had gone to the dockyard, for she was a delicate, rather proud child. She remembered the funny old mistress, whose assistant she had become, whom she had loved to help in the private school.

Note: unless you are deliberately repeating a sentence structure for effect, it's best not to begin sentences with the same word over and over. You fall into a repetitive rhythm which might lull your reader to sleep. All the usual caveats about that, too, of course.

Another good example of repetition is the "honorable men" speech from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar."

Are you writing about an emotion, like guilt? You can refer to guilt with the word "guilt." You don't have to find absurd synonyms for it like "the miasma of regret" or "the rusting-through of my soul" or whatever. Please don't. Please, I beg of you. Don't. I'll come to your house and hit you. Hard.

Let's talk about dialogue tags, where this sort of thing rears its amazingly ugly head too often. If you find yourself writing, for example,

"...I said to the tall, handsome stranger"

or

"...I said to the red-haired dwarf"

instead of

"...I said to him"

or

"...I said to [Name of Character]"

then take a moment, take a breath, and calm down. You don't need to do this. First, you can probably cut every instance of "to [X]" after "...I said." Really, give it a try and see what happens. Clarity of prose, I'm betting. Second, you can probably eliminate about half your dialogue tags without losing your reader. Every line of speech does not require tagging. Your readers are bright. Third, those awkward descriptive tags that avoid pronouns or the character name are, well, awkward and frankly not a little silly. You look silly when you use them. Are you writing a comedy in a comic style? No? Then knock it off.

The thing to remember about synonyms, which is a thing that makes our language (no matter what your native tongue) so immensely fabulous and fun to play with, is that they are Not Direct Substitutes. Hot, sweltering, steamy, warm and blistering all have to do with heat, but they do Not All Mean Exactly The Same Thing. If you use that thesaurus, use your dictionary too. Nothing's worse than using a word that doesn't mean what you think it means. People will roll their eyes and say nasty things about you behind your back. Sometimes in front of you, too. So realize that there are shades of meaning in all of these words, and you should pick the word that best reflects what you mean in your writing. I suggest leaning on that word as much as you have to and leaving your thesaurus alone. See if your prose isn't clearer and more easily understood.

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UN- Purple Prose, A Classic Example

Last week, Lady Glamis (who I've decided is also incredibly nice, and whose books I'd like to read) posted a valuable lesson on Purple Prose. When we write, we should avoid adding flowery details that don't serve any function other than giving details. One way to fix the problem of purple prose is to cut the extraneous information during revision. But, there are great examples when details, LOTS of them, don't end up sounding purple. This happens when the author makes use of the details not only to create a scene, but also to help reveal character, culture, status, and other aspects of the story. In this post, I'm looking at a classic example to show how the best details serve multiple functions. Keep in mind that I usually get criticized for not having enough details, so the fact that this works for me means that there is something in the description that is holding my attention. This is a passage from one of my favorite books -- sorry, but I'm Old School-- Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy:

Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball had cost Kitty great trouble and consideration, at this moment she walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the minute details of her attire had not cost her or her family a moment's attention, as though she had been born in that tulle dress and lace, with her hair done up high on her head, and a rose and two leaves on top of it…

It was one of Kitty's best days. Her dress was not uncomfortable anywhere; her lace berthe did not droop anywhere; her rosettes were not crushed nor torn off; her pink slippers with high, hollowed-out heels did not pinch, but gladdened her feet; and the thick rolls of fair chignon kept up on her head as if they were her own hair. All the three buttons buttoned up without tearing on the long glove that covered her hand without concealing its lines. The black velvet of her locket nestled with special softness round her neck. That velvet was delicious; at home, looking at her neck in the looking-glass, Kitty had felt that that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be a doubt, but the velvet was delicious. Kitty smiled here too, at the ball, when she glanced at it in the glass. Her bare shoulders and arms gave Kitty a sense of chill marble, a feeling she particularly liked. Her eyes sparkled, and her rosy lips could not keep from smiling from the consciousness of her own attractiveness.

What I find amazing about this section is that I get completely overloaded with details but the writing still works for me. We know basically everything there is to know about Kitty's outfit as she is entering a ball. But, we also know a lot more. We know that Kitty has put a lot of time into this very eleborate gown. We know that she has a certain charm -- she knows how to wear this gown. She knows how to carry herself. She's probably been to balls like this dozens of times before, always elaborately dressed and trying to look her best. But, this is not a typical day. Because, we know, though her glamour may have come at the cost of her comfort in previous balls, today, everything is perfect. Her rosettes are not crushed or torn. Her slippers do not pinch. Tonight is a charmed night, and Tolstoy is able to really give us a feeling for just how perfect this night is by describing everything from her feet up to her hair, not missing a thing, to ensure us that, indeed, everything is perfect in its totality. And, then he goes on to describe even more details, this time dipping into the realm of things that most people probably wouldn't even consider. The gloves do not conceal the lines of her hands. The velvet is speaking! Her bare arms not only look like marble, but like chill marble. This is a girl that really cares about her appearance and the impression that she is going to make. (My belt rarely matches my shoes, on the other hand.) This entrance to the ball is something very important to Kitty's life. And, through the descriptions, we get a sense of who Kitty is: a young woman, just breaking into the social world. Her mind is not distracted by thoughts of peace and war, money, death. No. All she cares about at this moment is making a grand entrance. And, in that, we understand who she is at this moment in her life, completely, before she is forced to grow up.

So, while details can be boring, they can also be used to great effect when they reveal more than what is obvious. Tomorrow, I'll break down a more contemporary passage that I like, in the hopes of showing even more ways that details can be made interesting.