letter to Candice and Maximus

LETTER TO CANDICE  AND MAXIMUS



November 19, 2019



Dear Candice and Maximus,



I had planned to write a joint review of your novels, but my guardian angel intervened.  "No, they deserve better than that.  Write a letter of constructive criticism."  I asked if I should itemize flaws in Deserving Grace and Soul Damage regarding plot, character development, sense  of place and sense of time, focalization, diction, beginning and ending, telling and showing, imagery, and so forth.  "No," the angel thundered. "Do not insult their intelligence."  Can I recommend that in the future they read



David Lodge, The Art of Fiction



Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write  Them



Lajs Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing



Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft



Henry James, The Art of the Novel



Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction



and then revisit their novels in light of what they have read? "Sure. you can do that."

Sometimes I listen to my angel.



Both of you chose to write what is loosely called "popular fiction."  It is sobering and instructive to read Candice's chapter "From Writer to Reader: Black Popular Fiction" in The Cambridge History of African American Literature , pages 655-677.  she makes a persuasive argument about the legitimacy of the popular as a cultural category, about the myopia of critics who think only what is canonized has value. Both writers and critics ought to account for historical flux as the category embraces  continuity, disruption, and change; they ought to cultivate a firm sense of where they are located in a tradition.  I had in mind the primal importance of tradition when I asked you to list your AKA and Alpha Phi Alpha literary ancestors.  I wanted to suggest what you might aim for.



Both of you have written engaging stories, and I think I desire more than the readers for whom your stories provide entertainment and insights about the black folk of now (2019).  I suspect those readers are happy to have their prejudices  confirmed.  I want to have my aesthetic prejudices challenged not limited by mechanical formulas that drive Deserving Grace ----she is hot for him, he is hot for her, lust is so wonderful, business differences can be worked out between Kenzo and Grace , their lust can become some kind of love, and culminate in the promised happiness of marriage.  The formulas work against the writer's opportunity to explore nuances and give us the psychological depth that Grace and Kenzo deserve.  For me, the way telling dominates showing (the showing that occurs when images  and metaphors are more powerful  than cliched   descriptions) minimizes opportunities to say something truly fresh about the antics, progressive political consciousness,  and desires of the  black middle class in Jackson, Mississippi.  Perhaps what is wanting is a better balance of reality/actuality and fairytale and  yearning for fantasy , the fantasy of the Afro-future.  Candice, you don't need to modify the basic structure of your story.  You do need to use a greater range of literary and rhetorical strategies to enhance texture.



Maximus, Soul Damage is not a parallel case, because its origins are significantly different from those of Candice's novel.  As I understand from our conversation during your visit with me, it is an effort to render as fiction what was a treatment or direction score for making a film.  The structuring of the book as  many small paragraphs  resembles a screenplay, a string of episodes.  And the episodic nature of the narrative often gets out of hand, producing confusion where clarity should be.  I follow easily how Sirius the raped and molested child became the brilliant soul damaged man, but the gap between his childhood and adulthood is enormous and quite unexplained.  This is frankly disconcerting for me as a reader.  I think a lack of good transitions between the chapters has the same effect as lack of transition between paragraphs in an essay.  You have more success in the My Name is Lola prequel, but do you really want your readers to piece together two books?



The nice contribution you are making to our tradition is a focus on male spiritual trauma, a subject that few novelists have tackled.  But you need to strengthen that contribution by attending to what your Alpha literary forebears, especially Lance Jeffers and E. Lynn Harris, would have done in rendering a story about a troubled mother and a more severely troubled son.  And as I have mentioned before, you also need to master the art of stunning dialogue we find in the plays of Tennessee Williams.  You have your work cut out for you.



Being a writer in our tradition, the tradition of AKAs and Alphas, is not about fame, bling, and all the prize-dripping hype that circulates in the literary world.  It is about work, love of language, and above all discipline.  It is about things we did long ago in classrooms at Tougaloo College.



You have my blessings, because I am pleased with what you have assiduously tried to achieve.  You'll get even stronger blessings from me when you rise to a higher level in the realm of popular fiction.



Fraternally,



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.