In the brave, struggling world of irrational hope, Calle de la Congelacion was a refuge, a sequestered haven, a quarantined boneyard, a loved union, a hated community, an irresistible beauty, a ghastly dread, an eternal presence, a temporary thing, a home for the white robed, a home for the unapologetic sinner, a place where people stood tall, a place where people dropped to their knees, a home of understanding, and a home of confusion. It was far from unique.
Jack lived there because he could afford to.
Each house bore no resemblance to its neighbor. Each property was a thick forest. Each house stood alone. Each property displayed the uniformity of a renewing, continuous nature. Each house was poor and showed the deterioration of time. Each property was rich with a timeless patience, waiting for the predictable renovation of spring. It was far from unique.
Jack lived there because it was a good place to hide.
It was a confession booth. It was a denial of the pious. It was perverse. It was ordinary. It was isolated. It was in a crowd. It loved. It hated. It bought. It sold. It lived. It died. It was far from unique.
Jack lived there because it was near his job.
One could easily go on and on with Calle de la Congelacion’s traits to tiresome perpetuity. However, it would merely be indicative of a total, tragic, comic and ludicrous disregard for the harsh reality now brutally manifested in the street’s world of today.
Opening: SumCan.....Continuation: Khazar-khum
Notes
This reminds me of A Tale of Two Cities, in that both have three Jacks. Okay, in A Tale of Two Cities it's three Jacques, but . . .
The sentences starting with Jack keep taking me out of the voice. Possibly it's the name "Jack." Go with Sebastián.
Repeating the "It was far from unique" sentence annoys me.
I would go with a condensed version, and without the contrasts/contradictions:
In the world of irrational hope, the community bordered on the east by Calle de la Congelacion was a refuge, a sequestered haven, an irresistible beauty, a home for the unapologetic sinner. It was far from unique.
Sebastián lived there because he could afford it and it was close to his work. And because it was a good place to hide.
That kills a lot of your babies, but since this place is far from unique, most of what you say could be said about hundreds of places. I'm more interested in what is unique about it, as I assume that's why you're starting the book here.
9 comments:
Q:Looking only at these few paragraphs, would I read on?
A:Probably not. I might skim ahead to see if the writing gets less listy, or flip through to see if something happens at some point.
Is this from the 259K version or the 150K version? If the former, go for the latter. If the latter, you have room to edit down into something closer to a publishable word count for an unknown writer.
Good luck with your publishing goals.
I actually liked EE's condensed version. It really got my attention. If you could figure out how to do this on your own, you'd have something. I'm not sure what, but I think you'd be a lot closer. As it stands, I doubt a standard editor would touch it for a price you could afford.
Since you're only 67, you've got plenty of time to figure out what you want to do with it.
First paragraph seems to be a test in how many commas you can stick in a single sentence (16 commas). Second main paragraph has five sentences beginning with "Each". Third main paragraph does the same thing, but with the word "It" (13 times).
While this may be a style that can be used in some written works, so far it is giving me the impression that the rest of the book is going to end up boring (considering I got bored reading when I reached "a hated community" and noticed I was only half way through the sentence). By the time I was done I was confused on the fact that each house was surrounded by a forest, meaning the nearest neighbor must be about a half mile away, defining the meaning of "isolated". After thinking on it some more, I realized it must be a metaphor. Right?
And lastly I wonder just how cold Calle de la Congelacion is to be called a Freezing Street.
That, and the fact that Jack seems to have come from an entirely different book. See Jack go. See Jack hide. See Jack run.
EE, are we only seeing half the comments?
To my knowledge I've published all the comments. I've been known to read a comment and forget to publish it, but certainly not half of them. DId you send one that didn't get posted?
K-k, it's just an optical illusion.
OK. No, I didn't send one in.
From the descriptions made by the author I'm getting a 'stream-of-consciousness meets surrealism by way of experimental fiction' vibe. Many have tried similar approaches. With the possible exception of "Ulysses", all have failed. And I personally think that was an interesting failure.
I won't tell how to write your book. All I will say is that, if you do manage to do what you seem to be suggesting, it will be an interesting read.
Writing and art in general are supposed to communicate something, even if that something is 'I don't know'. "Ulysses" fails that test, because it requires a specialized guide to correctly follow both the narrative and the vast, often random, references.
Stream-of-consciousness is extraordinarily difficult to do, let alone do well. "Street" and "comfortable suburbia" are tableaux, rather than writing styles. Even Stepford-type suburbia is a setting, not a style.
You vomited alphabet soup. Pick out the good letters and start over.
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