Review: Brooklyn

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Context is a crucial element to understand for reading any text. Whether this is the context in which a text was created, the context of the author's own biases or judgements, and the context in which you personally are reading the text. Or in the case of this review, the context in which I read Brooklyn.

This is important, because for the last six months I have been inactive on Goodreads due to five major reasons. The first is that I moved to the country at the start of the year. The second is that I became a provisionally-registered English teacher. The third is that on June 25th I married my beautiful wife. The fourth is that I have been busy as a result of the previous three. The fifth however, is that I have during my few moments of free time begun writing consistently on the concept for a novel, and also have taken to blogging over at jterrington22.blogspot.com.au (which is also where my Goodreads reviews will simultaneously be published along with other thoughts, opinions and reviews of other things such as films or video games etc.)

It is in this context that I found myself picking up Brooklyn as a Year Twelve VCE English text. Upon reading through it I found myself impressed by the manner of its construction and the variety of themes it tackles. It is in many ways a highly feminist text (in other words it positively tackles issues that do and have affected women), a beautiful literary historical novel, and an interesting look into one young Irish girl's transitioning life from girlhood to womanhood.

Eilis Lacey is an intriguingly passive character, a young girl offered the opportunity of a lifetime - to travel to Brooklyn where a steady job and better lifestyle awaits her than offered in Ireland. The one issue is that Eilis never wanted to travel to America. She is, at the novel's opening, presented as perfectly content to remain in a state of simplicity in Ireland. However, because her family (her mother and her elder sister Rose) insist, Eilis never complains and obeys their desires. The question hovering over the story from the beginning revolves around whether Eilis can ever become an active agent in her own lifestory. And it is this question which Colm Tóibín seeks to answer as Eilis transformatively finds herself captivated by her own spontaneous love story.

While hardly the most elaborately written novel, there is a beauty in the simplicity that Tóibín constructs his tale with. The entirety of the plot is presented as if the reader is directly hovering above Eilis' shoulder, viewing her every decision and occasionally deriding her naivete. It is this which allows the author the authority to channel secrets and hidden character motives across the plot. (Why did Eilis' sister want Eilis to be the one to travel to America? (view spoiler)[Why does Eilis keep her romance hidden from her family? (hide spoiler)])

The novel rotates through a myriad of thematic content: racism, feminism, family, migration. All themes entirely relevant for today's audiences, given the lack of stability in the modern world due to these themes. It is the ways in which the novel presents these themes however, that is truly excellent: African American women shopping amongst 1950s white-Americans, Eilis gradually developing the ability to choose what she wants, Eilis leaving her family behind.

For all of these reasons, I classify Brooklyn as a satisfying and entirely 'neat' novel. It is a novel that displays technique, editing polish and clever thought without the 'purple prose' that some authors lavish upon their work. It is a novel which some readers may find lacks in terms of its emotional pull, with such a passive protagonist. However, it is the way in which Colm Tóibín presents Eilis as passive which provides a wonderful frame for him to display the potent and important thematic elements.

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My Writing Journey

 In this past year I have seen God work in incredible ways in my life. I have seen Him move me four hours away from friends and family to the country, I have seen Him provide the right accommodation, free electricity for three months, a church with newfound responsibilities and spiritual family, and of course a beautiful wife in Jeanille. In that same time I have had people in my life pushing me and reminding me about my writing gifts and talents.

I am not simply referring to my students. While they do keep telling me that I should write a book (which I jokingly refer to as Mr Terrington's History of the World in 1001 Pages) I have had the desire to write long before. It is for this reason that I also began blogging, in a quest to find some outlet to write down my thoughts and practice my word-smithing.

Currently I have two stories/novels on the burners, one is a science-fiction/fantasy set in a world of superhuman individuals. The novel will tackle the idea of authority, power and leadership, and I am four chapters (over 10,000 words at present) into the writing. I also have another story which is simply in the idea stage, which will be another science-fiction/fantasy hybrid set in a mythical world. This is a novel which I intend to be more allegorical in nature, focusing on a 'magic' system and struggle between good and evil which will be representative of how I see the spiritual struggle between the same things on Earth. 

Writing is something which takes time, unfortunately. Which means I have been putting aside time each day to push through and write my story. I have, through the process been learning many lessons. Some are purely literature lessons. Others are life lessons. However, I have been left considering what it is that I want to convey to others through my words (both in novel form and through this blog).

For this reason I have decided to unite both my blogs under the banner of this one blog. I will continue writing my reflections on life. However, I have also created a separate page with links to reviews of anything creative (novels, films, games etc.) which inspire me and will be posting some blog posts which are reviews of those fictional works. I will also post some thoughts about the process of writing and literature in general. 

In short follow my blog: if you are interested in writing, reading, my life, God, Christianity, spirituality, thoughts, opinions, or any combination of these!

The Literacy of Empathy

From my other blog: 15 May 2015

I felt the need earlier in the week to begin a new blog given that my other blog is primarily focused around my thoughts on spiritual ideas that I am learning. I recognised that I also had many literary or education based thoughts that I wanted to write down (for my own benefit if no one else's). So here is my first blog post on my Ironic Contradictions Blog.

Empathy is a topic that we have been considering in one of my educational units at university. The point of this consideration revolving around the ability to think from student's perspectives and the fact that empathy is an important social skill that all teachers should be aware of. This concept was put into practice for me when in another task I created a resource for teachers to be able to teach on pop culture in the classroom: https://prezi.com/kxo40lzbooji/. This resource enabled me to reflect on the idea that a teacher should, where practical, be able to think from the perspective of their students and come up with ways of teaching material on a level that engages with and reaches them. From my perspective, true education is not about grades and numbers. It's about leading a student to a point where they take on board the lesson for themselves (kind of how preaching should lead individuals to personal revelation on spiritual ideas).

I wanted to call this concept the literacy of empathy, given the amount of focus placed on literacy. Literacy being the practical use of language in essence - and being literate revolving around: social skills, reading, writing; and analytically or critically thinking etc. So for me the concept of a literacy of empathy is being able to practically think in another person's shoes. It doesn't mean that the shoes have to fit you or agree with you, it simply means that individuals should learn to think about how another person might view their actions. As a teacher I believe this means planning lessons so that students' interests are reached. As an individual I believe it means moral responsibility for ones' actions.

I suppose one thing that sparked my thinking on this issue was a comment I received on an essay recently. I felt that I had engaged with enough reading material and references for this essay, however I was told by the marker that I should have used more of the readings. And this made me stop and reassess. I wasn't told to use more referential material (although maybe they did mean that full-stop). I was told to use more of the specific, unit reading. And I thought to myself 'how closeted is that?'

It's not the first time I've been told off for going outside of the assigned texts either. Once I was told off for using J.R.R. Tolkien and the essence of the reasoning was that he was too Christian and I should use a secular point of view for the same point (Particularly ironic because we were undertaking a unit on the Philosophies of Heaven and Hell).

You see, being told that I have to use specific course materials is fine every now and then, but I have an issue if they don't accept my use of wider reading material that says the exact same thing. Is the goal of education to promote a systematic brainwashing whereby students all use the same texts and provide the same answers and get the same marks? If so, by all means insist that only course material be used. If however, you wish for personal education on the student's level to take place, then you must allow students to use wider resources that they connect to on a personal level.

I suppose if I saw two essays of a similar standard and one drew solely from the text provided while the other incorporated texts and materials of interest to that student, I would be more inclined to respond to the second essay with more enthusiasm. To me that is what an empathetic individual should do: encourage the healthy interests of others and try to see those interests as they do. I know that I have several friends (and one girlfriend) who don't quite see why I love superheroes and sci-fi on the level that I do. However, they still try and take an interest in those things when I talk about them - that is empathy. They don't act in a sympathetic surface level of 'oh that's nice for you', it's a genuine interest because they are interested in me as an individual.

This is my reflection: we should become literate in empathy. I feel that it has so many practical implications from understanding how characters in fiction work through to understanding your friends and family on that deeper level. Empathy is about looking deeper and too often people become trained in a literacy of sympathy: to feel sorry and understand on a surface level, but they rarely delve deeper. I know I want to train/educate students in the future to become deep thinkers - to be empathetic and not sympathetic. I know I want myself to think in the same way and truly care about people and who they are and how they see the world. I think it holds spiritual, emotional and practical applications for a healthy life. What about you?

Persuasive Writing

From my other blog: 2 June 2015

I'm currently helping Jeanille prepare for some English testing which will help her as she continues to follow her dream. I'm very proud of her for chasing her dream, much as I am proud of anyone who chases their dream (I'm just especially proud of her for the obvious reasons). As part of this English testing she has to learn how to write better persuasive pieces. This is something that I've often worked on with students during my placements and so it's something I wanted to write a blog post about.

Obviously it's important for me to note that there are plenty of other and better resources for you to learn how to write persuasively. I merely want to share my own unique methods of constructing arguments.

1.     The first step for me is to always consider my intended audience. This revolves entirely around the idea of empathy. I want to use empathy to consider how my audience will respond to what I am saying. I would estimate that ninety percent of the time if you hit your audience with the right emotional tugs you can manipulate them to feel the way you want them to. And persuasive writing is essentially that: manipulation of the heartstrings. It's something that the persuasive writer must enjoy and attempt - reading the audience and then working out a series of arguments and counter-arguments that will target them more closely.

2. The second step is to consider what type of style I should adopt. This involves considering the question of whether I am writing a persuasive piece on the internet or for friends, creating a mini-essay, or writing academically. Each of these involves different methods, registers and lexicons that I need to be using in a calculated method (i.e. I would not be as colloquial in an academic essay as in this piece).

3. The third step involves actually writing the persuasive piece once all the thinking about how to respond has been considered. Trust me, however, most writing is all about the thinking and pre-planning. Even something as spontaneous as writing of this sort is the result of half-cooked ideas which have been marinating in the brain until they are baked to perfection.

This is where you structure your piece clearly, working out the techniques that you want to use (I tend to find simile, metaphor, alliteration and allusive, emotive language the best myself) and creating something that flows together neatly. No matter what you are writing about, the best persuasive writing (or any writing) flows in a polished fashion. This is also the reason why it is best to edit your work when you are finished. Even the best authors edit their work thoroughly once finished.


4. In short, persuasive writing is all about appearing as if you have the most reasonable idea to say in any discussion. The question of whether you truly have the most reasonable argument is another issue. It's about bluffing your audience, manipulating them to agree with you and to suspend their cynicism. This of course is why there is one final thing which I must point out to you about persuasive writing. The key element of persuasive writing is to be self-aware and self-informed even before you begin writing. You need to understand your own points of view on various issues, and you need to be able to shift that point of view to argue for issues you may not agree with through empathy. Until you understand an issue from both sides you cannot properly argue the issue. And so, as with most writing, it is understanding that plays a key role in the final product.

Challenging the Norm in Writing

From my other blog: 11 June 2015

There's this interesting concept which is all the rage in modern literature: subversion. Essentially it's the idea of challenging the norm (hence the blog title - isn't that obvious!) in writing. You see it in popular fantasy for instance, which is a genre I do read plenty of, whereby new authors attempt to make their work stand out from the mass of 'Tolkien clones' (read: Eragon, The Sword of Shannara, The Wheel of Time etc.) that all follow a kind of Joseph Campbell's 'hero's journey' concept. What I would like to touch on, therefore is that there is this idea that doing the subversive is somehow equivalent to strong writing. And I wish to insist that this is certainly not the case.

It's an amusing concept because every so often there are fantasy books that come out where a whole bunch of readers go 'oh that's new and different' because of one key fantasy trope or archetype that is subverted. For example how Game of Thrones has most of the main characters killed off at different stages or how Prince of Thorns (to use an obscure example) has a villain as the main protagonist. Or again how some authors like China Mieville write fantasy fiction which is just weird. But these subversions do not equal a great novel. If they did then all anyone would need to do to write a great, new, unique novel is research all the common archetypes and simply write a novel that does precisely the opposite. I expect that such a novel would last a mere ten pages before the protagonist falls off a cliff and the dark lord (who was actually the supposed hero) conquers the known world because no prophecy about the chosen one who would stop them by discovering their weakness (and by the way this dark lord has no weakness) came true.

I have read novels which subverted common ideas in their genre which were terrible. I have read novels which did the same and were terrific. I have read novels which were mediocre subversions. The one thing which separated these novels regardless of whether they used ideas which were 'the norm' in their genre or not was the quality of the writing and the storytelling. Novels like The Lord of the Rings, Mistborn and The Name of the Wind all follow a kind of 'hero's journey' archetype in a sense and while Mistborn subverts some key fantasy ideas it is still a kind of formulaic plot at its core. What made those novels stand out to me, however, is the fact that they all were beautifully written or told a story in a manner which was so thrilling or enticing. What readers want is not some superficial 'new idea' that will hold them for all of twenty seconds, they want depth to a story, something to hold onto and remember - though I do not like Game of Thrones I will admit that G.R.R Martin has done a great job of holding on to a large audience with some deeper qualities.

I feel that any new or aspiring authors can learn from this and need to know this before they write. Know your target audience and write a good strong, enticing story. If the story cannot be enjoyed by individuals outside of your target audience then it's probably not the greatest story. If your story is too fixated on one particular idea then it's probably not a strong story. However, if your story has heart, soul, a great plot and characters that people will care about then you are onto something,

What Is A Worthy Text?

From my other blog: 13th July 2015

Today in my first week of uni for trimester two, we looked at the English Education VCE text list. One idea that was presented is that texts for selection must be found: 'worthy'. Or else:

"-have literary merit and be worthy of close study
-be an excellent example of form and genre

- sustain intensive study, raising interesting issues and providing challenging ideas 

- be appropriate for both male and female students 

- be appropriate for the age and development of students and, in that context, reflect current community standards and expectations."

I further ran into this Stephen Fry quote on the worth or value of particular texts today: “I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each.”

This is in essence the problem with considering certain texts to be worthy - it inevitably creates a dichotomy in which other texts are not. And texts encompass a whole range of media: invariably anything you can read and analyse with your eyes from recipes, to films, to t-shirts become a text. Who am I as a critic to say that one individual may derive less value from Twilight or a Nickleback t-shirt than I do from Great Expectations and a dinner suit? 

Here we encounter a tricky literary idea. One further expounded upon by a discussion of critical literacy. Critical literacy being the analysis of the ideas that lie behind language and texts. The idea that language works to shape reality and promote particular relations of power. Texts may be constructed (photographs are a great example) as one particular snapshot that the author wishes to convey and so they speak through as much as what is being left out as what is being left in. A film is an edited work with sound (or lack of it), VFX or practical effects, different camera angles and a whole array of directorial decisions in how the scenes are arranged to tell the story. A novel like a poem or short story uses 

So what provides a text worth? What makes it worthy? Here I think you must take into account the cultural and social context in which the text is found. If we talk about clothing as text then it is not appropriate for someone to wear the aforementioned Nickleback tee in a fine dining establishment. Much as it would be odd and jarring for a dinner suit to be worn to a rock concert. But each text in their corresponding environment is worthy. 

This to me is most likely what the VCE guidelines are aiming to establish: the notion of worth across cultures, genres and individuals. And it is here where critics of films and novels must be able to consider whether the text has worth outside of the environment of their own personal preferences. Does the text promote morals which are healthy to a wider audience? Is it a great example of its format? Is it well written? I love The Hunger Games but were I to decide upon a text better exemplifying its themes then I would suggest any of Brave New World, 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. Yet were I to pick out what The Hunger Games is worth I would suggest it is a valuable example of writing with pace, imagination and of giving a form of entertainment which challenges as much as entertains. It may not have the same worth in one context but it may have greater worth in another. 

This to me is what a worthy text should be about: how worthy is a text across multiple contexts? And I believe critics should judge texts on both levels: on worth within its own context (genre etc.) and worth in other contexts. 

Dealing With Worldbuilding

From my other blog: 23rd July 2015

I have been contemplating the following quote recently and come to decide upon my own stance in regards to it which I wish to share with you.

"Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid."

- John M Harrison

I am, and have been, a huge fan of the concept of worldbuilding. I like nothing better than to sit down and enjoy a film or a book with a fascinating universe or different world to explore. Works from Tolkien to the Marvel superhero universe to television shows like Doctor Who fascinate me with their expansion and exploration of mythical or fictional places and ideas. So to read from an author who says that worldbuilding is a problem is in itself problematic to me. I feel that he misunderstands the very concept of worldbuilding. Maybe because of the problems listed in the following article: http://io9.com/7-deadly-sins-of-worldbuilding-998817537

The issue is that worldbuilding often becomes an excuse to focus on the setting rather than on the characters, If you went to a stage play and the background was fantastic and the set pieces, lighting and music yelled WOW at you but the acting stunk and the plot was terrible you'd feel rather let down. The same goes for fiction and worldbuilding. It cannot be all about the worldbuilding, but to that matter neither can you just focus on the story in a fictionalised sci-fi/fantasy setting without setting down some kind of worldbuilding rules. It just doesn't make sense if you're mentioning fictional places without explanation or rules etc.

So it's not worldbuilding that is bad but it is how worldbuilding is often used that can be very bad indeed and I fear this is what John M Harrison has encountered as an author. My response is that I think readers (and film viewers) deserve a touch of worldbuilding. What would Lord of the Rings be like without the setting of Middle Earth? What would fans think of Harry Potter without Hogwarts? Or Doctor Who without the various alien races of Daleks, Cybermen, Time Lords etc. What would any fantasy novel be without its magical rules? The problem in dealing with worldbuilding therefore lies in utilising it in moderation. But using anything in moderation, in balance, is in essence the art of quality writing and makes all the difference. Leave your reader wanting more, but not too much.