r/DestructiveReaders • u/Wolframquest • 10d ago
Phenomenological [2500] Fever (Marco)
It's one of those in-betweener posts. I just feel like I have to portion it out, I don't know why but somehow it makes sense.
In this one I'm mostly looking for prose and phrasing suggestions, taking the overall style constraints into account, little redundancies. The whole chapter is too long and I currently have no idea how to trim it and preserve what I wanna keep. So yeah, we have this in-betweener post now that signifies a start of Part II in the book. Also I'd like to hear your opinions on the "energy" and "mood" of the text. To me these terms are quite elusive for some reason; I'm seeking to establish a definite standard, bridle my enthusiasm and excitement when I use it to write and in order to do that I think I need to understand what "energy" and "mood" mean in writing.
HSH[1][2][3] RW4[1][2][3][4][5][6][7.1][7.2][7.3]
The story is told through a phenomenological second person point of view. The text uses markdown formatting for italics.
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u/ilovemycatsanddog 10d ago
Well, I did a lot of digging and I think I have finally come to understand what lies beneath but it was no easy feat ( I’m supposed to be working on a rewrite of my own manuscript 🤪) but felt compelled. If you’d like me to explain this, I can unearth most of the spoilers.
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u/Wolframquest 9d ago
go ahead, but don't forget that this is an in-betweener post 😄
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u/ilovemycatsanddog 9d ago
IMO, beneath this coming of age story is an allegory for Freudian psychology and the human psyche are the characters. Marco (you) is the id and starts out as unconscious with no past, driven by wild, untamed impulsives to survive only. The ego is the little voice of “I” who sits on his shoulder (?) and teaches him language and to obey Henry. Once Marco leans to speak he can’t stay in the wilderness and has to integrate into society because he’s now conscious.
He meets Henry who represents “superego” who then names Marco and trains him to become a useful, capable worker in society. Henry represents society’s beliefs, generational trauma, a father figure to Marco, etc. The insects covering him have come from inside of Henry as he unloads the rot from inside. This decay is guilt among other things which he is shedding because he might be going senile?He’s no longer interested in the children’s bible and prophesying. The bible represents guilt as most religions have major components of guilt in order to control or stifle people. The dogs attack Marco because Nature rejects him and he can no longer “go home” now that he’s awakened and become civilized thru language.
I’m still not sure if Henry is a harsh superego or a kind one. Abner might represent a father figure too but he rejects Marco because he’s associated with Henry. Zita is a sort of compassionate superego who tries to help Marco.
I could be completely wrong and off base here but these are my impressions when reading. It’s hard to tell because your clues are not overt. If they were, the reader would pause as clues create curiosity. Maybe they’re buried too deeply but you’re aware cuz you’re the writer. Your coming of age story, itself, is delightful and I particularly like Henry’s dialect. Maybe it could benefit with a jolt of tension here and there?
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u/Wolframquest 9d ago
Well, do you really want me to respond specifically? I can't really impose interpretations, you know. However, I might have already done that by accident as I responded to other comments on these exact topics 😅
I would generally urge the reader to focus on the texture of things, the way they're described and presented - rather than just make an immediate connection to an archetype, an easy kind of interpretation.
Also, some things were literally taken from real life, but I can't elaborate which lol. Sorry for teasing 😁
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u/ilovemycatsanddog 9d ago
So you want the reader to find clues themselves and figure out the “why”. Do as you see fit since you’re the writer and it’s your story. I guess that’s all I have to say and probably won’t investigate further tho I do love a puzzle or mystery. But sometimes the puzzle is too obscure for me. I wrote my opinion of what’s happening but you’ve decided not to comment on it.
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u/Wolframquest 9d ago
But I *have* commented on it, more than once! I'm just upset you're not seeing the positive things I tried to present in it. nuff said anyway
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u/ilovemycatsanddog 9d ago
I’m not really sure what you mean and I’m sorry you feel upset. Not my intention at all. I’ve said numerous times that I really enjoy your second person perspective and that your book is pretty mind blowing coming from someone who has never read 2nd person before.
I told you yesterday that I think I’ve figured out the underlying mystery and would post today if you were cool with that. You said to go ahead.
So I posted specifically about the mystery, not about positive things you’ve tried to present in your story. You already know how I feel about your story so far.
In the past you have commented on others trying to figure out the mystery. So I laid out what I believe but today you don’t want to comment on it.
I think you’re an incredible writer and your story is quite captivating and using a very difficult way of writing
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u/Lisez-le-lui Not GlowyLaptop 9d ago
You didn't cut off this chapter mid-sentence to make it exactly 2500 words, did you? Cause if you did... Lets out a deep sigh
If I remember my Harbor Springs Hotel from half a year ago, Marco is able to spend the day with Zita making pizza, playing Scrabble, and engaging in other strange activities because Henry lets him off work. I'm guessing this "in-between" chapter is the story of how he accomplished that, and that after this he's off to the hotel.
I see what you mean about this chapter being too long. It's got a lot of "stuff"--matter for the sake of it, reveling in the glory and joy of physical existence. The catalogue of hardware in the barn is the most egregious example. But at the same time, that particular collection of hardware lends a very specific mood to the scene. The barn feels old, well-stocked, somewhat neglected and past its prime, and Marco is a force of new vitality coming to make real use of it for the first time in a while. Have you seen any of the short films of Jan Švankmajer? He loves to put mass-produced clutter in the corners and backgrounds of his shots for exactly that reason.
But to go more in order. The chapter is called "Fever"; presumably Marco has one after getting bitten by a feral dog and stuffing toilet paper into the wound. I had to read very carefully a couple of times to catch that, though. "I" never mentions feeling hot or cold, but Marco displays an extreme thirst and has trouble parsing his sensory inputs (does he mistake the doctor for Henry?), which is consistent with the mental derangement of a fever. The dream that opens the chapter is probably a fever dream, even if, like the second sentence says, normal dreams are often just as chaotic.
Marco doesn't seem to care about being sick, though, and it's not clear that he's even aware that he is. ("You understood, even though I didn't"--maybe he instinctively knows something is wrong, but doesn't have the mental category of "sick" to classify himself into.) He never thinks about, let alone resents, suffering any pain (except for the syringe, which is the only source of exogenous pain), and he attempts to engage in his normal activities as though nothing has changed. It's an interesting reaction, because it's so unlike how most people would behave, but very consistent with how an animal would probably act.
The first section, before the triple asterisk, is very compact prose-wise. I don't think you could delete anything without losing meaning.
On the other hand, the first few paragraphs after the triple asterisk feel a little diffuse. "Nails scraping against the floor" is such an odd and distracting detail, given the rest of the sentence, and the sky description could lose a few adjectives. Potential underwear sharing doesn't seem terribly relevant, even if there's a case to be made that it seals Marco's initiation into society. Not sure what the "mustard-like" chemical is; that paragraph can probably be shortened, as it seems to be largely an excuse to get Marco to open the window. Then the musings about whether the floor will fall away come out of nowhere and are never adequately explained.
Then Marco has breakfast with Henry, which he hazes himself into making inedibly spicy in a relatable and entertaining way, and then he gets assigned the wood-splitting (love the "you lie shamelessly"!), which lasts the rest of the chapter. As long as Henry is around, the prose is pretty compact, except for the two paragraphs describing the wood (there's that love of "stuff" again). Would Marco be able to recognize that the logs are from "a sawed-up fir"? But the rest of that paragraph is fine. Then--"a few more smaller chunks"? Surely (pace the Mad Hatter) just "a few smaller chunks"? And what exactly is Marco kicking, and why does it matter that its irregular shape makes it roll "away to the store"?
You gather the order of things. The wood is here, and you need something else. The tools!
Probably not relevant: "Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"--here delete "fire," and read "axe" for "lamb for a burnt offering."
Now Marco has gotten in over his head and claimed expertise he doesn't have, so, even though all tools are made with a particular teleology in mind, since he never learned any of that teleology, he'll have to treat them as pluripotent products of nature and risk using them the wrong way and damaging them as he grapples empirically with the problem of wood-splitting with absolutely no guidance from Henry.
That struggle occupies the entire rest of the chapter. That's where you can trim things, if anywhere. Did you ever read Philosophus Autodidacticus? It's a good example of how to frame a narrative out of the scientific process that excludes most of the irrelevant portions. But like I said, there's a sense of naturalism, of overwhelming bewilderment and not immediately relevant, never-resolved mystery that comes from listing out the full contents of the barn and detailing every step of Marco's experiments. It all depends on what you want to achieve.
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u/Wolframquest 9d ago
> Did you ever read Philosophus Autodidacticus
Oh yeah I did, I took some digging and tried to find a nice version. I did find a few very nice similarities (mostly related to the origin of the
> reveling in the glory and joy of physical existence
I'm so glad you get it cause I've constantly been thinking recently if I should go ahead and try to make this argument more clear, see if anyone likes or gets this idea at all. I keep having EXTREMELY violent impulses telling me to cut it all down but somehow I always find a way to tell myself to stay strong against that impulse even though I'm continuously unsure. More is more than less, isn't it?
Truth is, while chapters 1-7 were double- or even triple-prepared in advance this chapter is a pretty radical reframe and a rewrite and rebuilding of another chapter featuring a character that'll show up later. In other words, this one wasn't as "pre-prepared".
The more I think about it, the more I believe in re-writing. I wish it was as easy as recording music cause you can just make a take after a take and sometimes over a hundred takes and nothing really gets taken away, but that's because when you record the music it is double- or triple- prepared, it's usually already written and directed.
> Then--"a few more smaller chunks"?
It took me quite some digging and doubting, the old headache, but I think "a few more" can be used like that. I did two or three rounds of surface-level edits and there is a lot of stuff that intermeshes with Marco's own narration, mild illiteracy. It's funny how different second-round edits are though... "More" plays a role, I have to argue, that little nervous recounting, trying to keep everything in your hands... Also I found a bunch of little filters that definitely are a mirror of my own nervosity, a little too much "you feel X and Y etc". Trying to get my stuff together and give this one another read...
> delete "fire," and read "axe" for "lamb for a burnt offering."
😂😂
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u/Lisez-le-lui Not GlowyLaptop 8d ago
(mostly related to the origin of the
Are you doing this cutting-off thing on purpose, or did text get accidentally deleted?
I think you should keep the praise of matter that you currently have. It's something that always helps to remember, especially these days when it's out of fashion. If you're going to cut anything in this chapter, just cut some of the flowery descriptions from when Marco wakes up after the shot and a little of the "irrelevant" set-dressing in the barn.
I think I mentioned elsewhere that I'm reading through a book of short stories by Matthew Phipps Shiel, Here Comes the Lady. He has something of the same celebration, if you ever happen to be interested. He even finds a way to make engineering romantic:
[The mechanic] says "Now, how shall I manage this job?" and the very Hand of God is in it; the very Voice of God, ladies and gentlemen, pronounces sentence on his thoughts, leaves no doubt as to their truth or untruth. If he thought rightly, no man may recognise it, but Heaven knows; he has been in harmony with the stars; ten thousand dumb tongues shout of him "well done." If he thought wrongly, it is with him somewhat as with me, if I think wrongly two seconds in my pastime of flying: the Divine sentence is—death.
That's the thing about rewrites: They tend to go in a direction you didn't anticipate or even particularly want. Interesting point about the difficulty. Maybe if you blocked out the entire scene and learned its every beat by heart, and you were only interested in telling it in the best prose possible, then it would be more like a musical retake?
Now that you explain it, I think "a few more smaller chunks" is fine. It's a nervous fusion of "a few more chunks" (which is right, since the stumps are also chunks) and "a few smaller chunks" (which is right, since the other chunks are smaller).
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u/SweetEverest 8d ago edited 8d ago
My understanding of surface-level happenings: Marco dreams of alienation. Wakes, goes downstairs, and Henry sends him up to bed again, where a doctor injects him with something. Goes back down and "earns" working out by chopping wood and leaving Henry alone. Long wood-chopping scene ensues.
Chronological thoughts:
(No need to answer the questions. Just showing where I was confused.)
- I would tighten the start of the first paragraph and clean up the fragmented bits between the commas so that they make sense together. I know you're going for a choppy, dreamy feel but right now it's not clear what's modifying what.
- How does he find himself sucking water from a sink? Did he black out on the way there? Maybe there's something wrong with him. Maybe that's also why Henry "said something" that we don't get to hear. Maybe Marco's perception is unreliable or glitching.
- "You understood, even though I didn't." First person wall break! What does it meeeean!
- "Light and sound played outside" seems generic for a Marco observation. And suddenly the light room is dark. This might be more of his perception blinking out... I didn't get that at all on first read.
- I also didn't get that the small, white-clad Henry was actually a doctor. I wonder what he's injecting him with and why. Did he get rabies from the dogs?
- "Clean water, not dirty" Why would it be dirty?
- "On feet, nails scraping against the floor as you mash your face against the glass; it fogs up." This had me picturing him bending forward as if to touch his toes with his face smashed up against a sliding glass door.
- "He gestures from the sky-white entryway to the shadow-stuffed back"
Love this
- "Yes," you lie shamelessly - can't wait to get to it!"
I like his little inner exclamations, especially the ones that contrast with how he's presenting himself
- I like "wiggle and squeak" and the chilly wind puffing up his overalls. The atmosphere of the old dusty shed.
Overall, the point of this story seems to be physicality itself as experienced from this childlike, almost alien perspective. My main critique is that it's almost wall-to-wall minute sensory detail rendered in 4K from unexpected angles—which is amazing at times but makes it hard to discern what's being emphasized, what's significant on the macro-level. It's like the story is being relayed pixel by pixel no matter what's happening, never pulling back to look at a larger chunk or suggesting a larger order or concern underlying the whole.
It almost feels like reading a list, so that too much at once exhausts my brain. As it is, I want to cut most of the wood chopping. I wonder if veering into a different mode of narration would feel like a respite from the relentless cataloguing of physical details or whether that would disrupt the exact thing you're going for.
Edit:
You don't even have to switch goals. What I mean is: It's not like you'd need to pause narrating physical phenomena to give these chapters more shape. You could just vary the pacing or distance you tell it from. Instead of moment-by-moment action, you could summarize the physical experience of an entire afternoon in his typical poetic, peculiar way. Or you could linger on one activity in a way that makes it its own mini story. Just so that our minds can make some kind of shape out of things, if even on a limited basis.
There are things you can do to ease the burden on readers to track all these details with the same high, steady level of attentiveness. I just think it needs a sense of progress, or emphasis. Mystery and relief, attention and repose. Let us cycle in and out of having to pay attention to stuff so hard. Maybe think of each chapter as a series of subtle arcs.
Hopefully this makes sense or can spark some ideas. I'm trying to figure out how to keep what makes this special while making it easier to take in.
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u/ilovemycatsanddog 10d ago edited 10d ago
I want to preface with “not for crit points”.
I find the energy and mood to be upbeat and mostly happy thru Marco’s eyes, tho he sometimes loses his temper but I don’t feel that temper concretely because of how it’s written. We don’t seem to get much from insight into his internal thoughts. He doesn’t seem to have a wide range of emotions but maybe that’s due to writing in second person. We don’t really know how he feels about certain things like for example, the insects which is a bizarre thing to see but he doesn’t react to it other than just accept it.
Surface level I enjoy this story. I know many hidden meanings are below the surface, but I find it’s too hard to figure out what. Some strange things happen and I’m not sure if the reader is supposed to take these things at face value or go start digging. It seems to need more obvious clues. Or even subtle threads which pull in and guide the reader IMO. Otherwise I think readers will simply read and understand the surface level of the story.
Some writers use subtle symbolism to alert the readers that more is going on. Like in Lord Of The Flies or The Metamorphosis or 1984, etc. These are just books off the top of my head. You might not be going for symbolism. How do you think you are alerting the reader that more is going on besides your labeling of the genre? Or your summations?
It’s not a criticism of your story or how you write. But I just feel it might be needed instead of readers gathering this info thru the comment section.