Writing in the Negative COLUMN BY JON GINGERICH FEBRUARY 22, 2012
When physicists first discovered the existence of black holes, they identified these gravitational oddities not by physically seeing them, but by noticing how neighboring celestial bodies reacted in their presence. It was enough to compel scientists to rethink their observations, to realize contemporary models were missing a component — albeit one not visible to the human eye. Fiction works the same way. ometimes ometimes the meaning or theme of a story doesn!t avail itself f rom what!s said or directly explained — but from what isn!t. ometimes a story!s meaning can be inferred by observing repeated interactions in the narrative milieu, or elements that orbit around a leitmotif that is, oddly, missing missing from the narrative. It"s a relatively common trick. Writers can draw distinction to what!s on the page by repeatedly revolving around ideas or concepts that are left unwritten. #he missing element becomes a centerpiece, revolved around by the other elements in the story, making its absence that much more profound. $one properly, writers can use this negative space to their advantage if they want to highlight a critical void between what!s said and what!s implied, what!s present and what!s missing, what should have been but wasn!t. %robably the most classic instance of negative space in narrative can be found in &emingway!s '&ills (ike White )lephants.* In this story, a young couple embarks on a trip where the female plans to have an abortion. +s they wait for their train they talk about a number of things the beers they!re drinking, the appearance of the surrounding hills. -ut while it!s clearly on both their minds, the word 'abortion* is never mentioned. &ere, a noted discord is established between what!s being said and what!s obviously being thought. What has made it onto the page thus, is simply an echo, a trace of the story!s missing nucleus, which is now delicately and deliberately characterized by a shared sense of profound loss. “
It!s really an awfully simple operation, ig,* the man said. 'It!s not really an operation at all.*
#he girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on. 'I know you wouldn!t mind it, ig. It!s really not anything. It!s /ust to let the air in.* #he girl did not say anything. 'I!ll go with you and I!ll stay with you all the time. #hey /ust let the air in and then it!s all perfectly natural.* '#hen what will we do afterward0* 'We!ll be fine afterward. ust like we were before.* 'What makes you think so0* '#hat!s the only thing that bothers us. It!s the only thing that!s made us unhappy.* unhappy.* #he girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads. '+nd you think then we!ll be all right and be happy.* 'I know we will. 1ou don!t have to be afraid. I!ve known lots of people that have done it.* 'o have I,* said the girl. '+nd afterward they were all so happy.* happy.* 'Well,* the man said, 'if you don!t want to you don!t have to. I wouldn!t have you do it if you didn!t want to. -ut I know it!s perfectly simple.* '+nd you really want to0* 'I think it!s the best thing to do. -ut I don!t want you to do it if you don!t really want to.* '+nd if I do it you!ll be happy and things will be like they were and you!ll love me0* 'I love you now. 1ou know I love you.* 'I know. -ut if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you!ll like it0* 'I!ll love it. I love it now but I /ust can!t think about it. 1ou 1ou know how I get when I worry.* worry.* 'If I do it you won!t ever worry0* 'I won!t worry about that because it!s perfectly simple.2
#he narrative voice you choose to tell your story is a lot l ike a camera lens it dictates what we see and what we don!t. +s a storytelling tool, film has a wonderful habit of simply showing what!s on the screen and then using a series of transitional devices to move us to the next scene. 3nderstanding this, we see the expository 4ualities of writing can sometimes put literature at a disadvantage. 1ou!d never see a movie captioning a scene with text to inform the viewer of what!s going on, but in writing this happens all the time. (iterature!s habit of explaining every detail can have a wearying effect on a story. In 5aymond 6arver!s 'Why $on!t 1ou $ance0* a man removes his personal belongings from his house and holds an ad hoc yard sale on his front lawn. + young couple passing the house strikes up a conversation with the man and begins buying his property, one piece at a time, while the man happily pours them drinks and persuades them to stay and listen to music. #here!s no doubt 6arver was a masterful writer, but I!ll bet he would!ve made a great director as well, because he understood the importance of telling a story
You’d never see a movie captioning a scene with text to inform the viewer of what’s going on, but in writing this happens all the time. Literature’s habit of explaining every detail can have a wearying
without showing his hand and needlessly explaining the thematic blueprint under the surface. 6arver was a writer who understood the power of silence. In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard. #he mattress was stripped and the candy7striped sheets lay beside two pillows on the chiffonier. )xcept for that, things looked much the way that had in the bedroom 8 nightstand and reading lamp on his side of the bed, nightstand and reading lamp on her side. &is side, her side. &e considered this as he sipped the whiskey. #here are so many 4uestions here. Why is the character putting his furniture on the lawn0 Why is he setting up things exactly the way they were in his bedroom0 What happened to his wife0 Why is he selling his possessions for such little money0 + less experienced writer might inundate us with back7story and explain what happened in the character!s past, or why he feels compelled to rid himself of his worldly belongings. -ut 6arver is smart enough to realize that by drawing our attention to what!s missing, we!re more inclined to place a careful, sympathetic eye on what!s left. 9ost good stories have a mystery component. #hat isn!t to say the y feature s4uare7/awed detectives eluding double7crossing dames in urban dystopias. It means there!s an unanswered, pending 4uestion that compels the reader and pulls us forward. I!ve said this before and I!ll say it again purposefully leaving
details out of your story doesn!t make you sound more 'literary.* #hat!s not what!s being proposed here. Working in negative spaces isn!t an attempt to be cryptic. :n the contrary, there!s a high precision to it. When your story revolves around a distinct, pending 4uestion that lies off the page it can charge the words that have made it into print. It!s not a matter of obfuscating, but of using the properties of opposites to identify and empower existing profiles.
+ master of this techni4ue is short story writer and poet ames (asdun. (asdun is often deliberately sparse in the details he grants the reader; it seems his narratives are seeded with 4uestions. #he elements that make it to the page somehow soak up these missing 4ualities, and naturally, we begin 4uestioning what"s happening beneath the surface and forming patterns based on those
4uestions. #he resulting text offers a dreamlike meta7reality where we"re forced to
4uestion the boundaries between light and dark, real and imaginary, asleep and awake, fact and fiction. In his short story '#he -ugle,* a young man returns home from apan to discover the nanny who took care of him as a boy has inexplicably returned, but is now taking care of his aging parents. &aving been gone three years, the man discovers his home is now a mysteriously different place bedrooms have been moved, doors are mysteriously locked,
and the domineering nanny has begun taking old family items from the attic, which she burns casually in an incinerator in the backyard. #he story is governed by a dreamlike eeriness that seems to suggest how memories, and the past, can haunt the present. &e opened the living room door, then thought for a moment, and closed it without entering. &e doubled back, and tiptoed up the stairs. :nly when he reached the second landing, where his parents! bedroom was situated, did it strike him as laughable that he should feel he had to tiptoe up the stairs in his own home. &e strode over to the bedroom door, knocked loudly once, and burst in with a cry of greeting. #here were dustsheets on everything. #he great brass bed, the lac4uered bamboo tables on either side of it, the plump little sofa by the window — all were shrouded in a pale grey drift of cloth. #he air was musty. (ight billows of dust scudded away from his feet as he moved. &e raised the sheet from an ob/ect beside him. It was the nutwood escritoire from which his mother had run her affairs. &e tried the little dra wers and hidden chambers that honeycombed its interior. #hey were all locked. + distinct feeling of weakness came over him. &e crossed to the window. + large incinerator was smoldering on the back lawn, /ust where a /aponica bush had been. #he ground beneath it was scorched in a black circle. + voice startled him — <#hey don!t sleep here an ymore.! %ractically every element here is characterized by an absence missing parents, locked doors, empty rooms, a charred earth. #he character!s displacement highlights the uncomfortable boundaries between his current life and his past. #he past has never disappeared; it!s there the entire time under dustsheets, behind l ocked doors, manifesting itself in plumes of incinerator smoke. Finally, working in negative spaces can be wonderful for subtext. Writers can posit absurdist /uxtapositions of truth and falsehood, artificial and natural, frugal and excessive, logic and nonsense, all of which offer poignant commentaries on the world in which we live. In &aruki 9urakami!s short story '#he econd -akery +ttack,* a newlywed couple awakens with an unspeakable appetite, even though they!d eaten dinner /ust several hours before. +s they forage a nearly empty refrigerator, the man recalls a time when he was younger and constantly hungry, which once drove him to hold up a bakery for food. #he wife begins to see their hunger as a sort of curse, and suggests they hold up another bakery to break the spell. #hey end up robbing a 9c$onald!s instead. We drove for a half hour, found an empty parking lot by a building, and pulled in. #here we ate hamburgers and drank our 6okes. I sent six -ig 9acs down to the cavern of my stomach, and she ate four. #hat left twenty -ig 9acs in the back seat. :ur hunger77that hunger that had felt as if it could go on forever77vanished as the dawn was breaking. #he f irst light of the sun dyed the building"s filthy walls purple and made a giant :=1 -)#+ ad tower glow with painful intensity. oon the whine of highway truck tires was /oined by the chirping of birds. #he +merican +rmed Forces radio was playing cowboy music. We shared a cigarette. +fterward, she rested her head on my shoulder. 'till was it really necessary for us to do this0* I asked. ':f course it was>* With one deep sigh, she fell asleep against me. he felt as soft and as light as a kitten. (ike a lot of 9urakami!s work this story is steeped in surrealism, but it!s especially fine tuned here. #heir mutual hunger, which is sated by stealing far more -ig 9acs than they could possibly eat, seems to be a pretty obvious comment on modern consumerism. 9urakami!s penchant for sparseness in exposition offers miles of subtext below the surface; the direct action in the story bridges layers of parallel meaning beneath. =othing!s missing in a story that asks you to look beyond the page. 1ou /ust have to read between the lines to find it.
