by Joe Miller
I started Catherynne Valente’s 2015 novel “Radiance” for the third time. This might be the time I finish it.
In my previous attempts, I’ve just sort of lost interest partway through. I don’t find any of the characters particularly compelling and I don’t care all that much about the plot.
Life is too short to read uninteresting books. I start and then abandon at least a half dozen novels every year.
“Radiance” is the only one I keep trying to read.
I keep coming back to “Radiance” for the prose. It is mesmerizing.
You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I think in words. I have a sort of running monologue in my head – I process the world in sentence format.
My internal monologue has a voice that sounds – well, frankly, it sounds a lot like this column. I do sometimes adopt different voices for other types of writing. My academic writing, for example, doesn’t sound very much like this column. I’ve ghostwritten things for other people using their voice.
But my default, nonfiction prose style sounds like my inner monologue.
When I spend a half hour or so reading “Radiance” my inner monologue starts to sound like Valente’s prose. My thoughts take on the rhythm of her prose; the sentences in my head begin to sound like the sentences in Valente’s novel.
It’s an exceedingly strange experience, not unpleasant, but also like I’m not fully in control of my own voice. Here’s the opening paragraph from “Radiance’s” prologue:
“Come forward. Come in from the summer heat and the flies. Come in from that assault on all senses, that pummeling of rod and cone and drum and cilia. Come in from the great spotlight of the sun, sweeping across the white sands, making everyone, and therefore no one, a star. Come inside and meet the prologue.”
It’s a beautiful piece of prose. It carries on for another 400 pages.
Thinking in someone else’s voice is a topic that’s been very much on my mind recently. Indeed, that’s why I embarked on my latest attempt at “Radiance.”
I’m trying to figure out how to sound like different people.
I’ve been cast in a medium-sized role in the Pocahontas County Drama Workshop’s upcoming production of “Catch Me If You Can.” I don’t have much background in acting – this will be just my second role ever – so figuring out how to embody a person whose experiences are foreign to me and who speaks in words that are not mine is new territory.
My undergraduate advisor described Thomas Carlyle, the Victorian essayist and historian, as a “prose poet.” I didn’t fully understand what that meant at the time. Victorian writing was too unfamiliar for me to understand how Carlyle’s prose differed from other writers.
It was only after years of reading and studying Victorian philosophy and literature that I began to appreciate the poetic nature of Carlyle’s prose.
You can’t really understand someone’s voice without first understanding the context in which they are operating.
I’m applying that same lesson to my acting. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be immersing myself in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Mad Men” and “The Bells of St. Mary’s.” If you want to understand why those references, you’ll have to check out the play in September.
When I’m not running lines (or writing this column or doing the information architecture work that pays the bills), you’ll find me working on a piece of experimental fiction.
The scaffolding for that piece is a revision to an academic journal article that explores the philosophical implications of a (made up) series of science fiction novels. In the years between the first publication of the article and the revision, the author of those science fiction novels has gone on to do terrible things in the real world.
The real story takes place in the footnotes, where our fictional scholar slowly realizes that his initial interpretation completely missed a series of clues that telegraphed the author’s future misdeeds.
It’s a project that requires writing in three different voices: the academic prose of the article itself, the more informal voice of that work’s footnotes and excerpts from the science fiction novels our scholar is analyzing.
There’s a thrill in taking on someone else’s voice, whether it’s one I’ve created myself, one I’m interpreting for an audience or one that is thrust upon me in the quiet of my office.
It’s also exhausting. And a little dangerous, particularly when the voices in question belong to unsavory characters. Extreme method actors have sustained actual physical and mental trauma after spending months immersed in dark roles.
Of course, that extreme version involves spending 12+ hours per day in character. We’re volunteers practicing six hours a week at the Pocahontas County Opera House.
Still, I’m enjoying my summer of thinking in other people’s voices.
