The Core Personality

Posted on by July 4, 2015
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Shrek.

Shrek.

In setting up my new novel, a sequel to the android novel I just finished, I listed my cast of characters, and wrote a few sentences under each name to describe what that person is like.

But who are these people? What are their personalities?  I don’t know where to get those answers.

Standard character tropes can be had from television, movies, and novels, but they’re often flat and cartoony, not believable, usually clichés, and of course, they’ve all been done.

As many writers do, I fill out a character worksheet on each player, which covers everything from size, shape, colors and age, to habits, education and spiritual beliefs. That’s all helpful but none of that information has ever led me to the character’s core personality. What would?

I’ve tried using the Myers-Briggs dichotomies, changing them into continuous scales rather than poles:

Myers-Briggs Traits:

  • E to I: Extraverted to Introverted (whether a person thrives more on human engagement or privacy);
  • S to N: Sensing to Intuition (focus on the information given or jump right to contextual patterns and impressions);
  • F to T: Feeling to Thinking (decisions based more on feelings or facts);
  • J to P: Judging to Perceiving (lifestyle more structured and fixed by values or flexible and adaptable to circumstances).

I’ve tried using the Big Five personality traits, which at least have the advantage of being empirically derived:

Big Five types (not showing their implied opposites):

  1. Extraversion: excitability, sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness and emotional expressiveness.
  2. Agreeableness: trust, altruism, kindness, affection, prosocial behavior and attitudes.
  3. Conscientiousness: thoughtfulness, good impulse control, goal-directed behavior, organized and mindful of details.
  4. Neuroticism: emotional instability, anxiety, moodiness, irritability, and sadness.
  5. Openness: imagination and insight, broad range of interests, curiosity, IQ.

And I’ve tried using Maslow’s well-known hierarchy of motivation:

Maslow Types, driven by abundance or lack of:

  1. Physical sustenance;
  2. Safety (physical, financial, social);
  3. Love (belonging, intimacy, family, friends);
  4. Esteem
    • of others: status, recognition, attention;
    • of self: confidence, freedom, mastery, strength;
  5. Self-actualization (morality, aesthetic, creative, empathic, transcendent).

These templates are all helpful for thinking about character but they’re choices on a menu. None brings me to what I want: a coherent visualization of the character. In struggling with this problem for the umpteenth time, I think I’ve invented something that works for me.

Being-With Others:

In this schema, core personality comes down to how you feel in the context of others. A person’s being-with style arises from three factors:

  • Bio capacity (empathy, physical embodiment, brain function)
  • Prenatal, infant and early childhood attachment/synchrony
  • Early to middle childhood achievement and SES.

From these three factors you learn at a sub-articulate level how to be with others. The result is “instinctive.” You spontaneously feel the feelings and act the actions without understanding. It’s your unchanging atomic structure That’s the core personality I want to get at for my characters. Everyone goes on to develop a conscious public persona on top of the core. That difference is what makes characters interesting.

The factors:

The bio factor is mainly about brain development. Brains develop at different rates. Some characters are intellectually and socially sophisticated at an early age because of early brain maturation, while others are late bloomers for the opposite reason. The results show in intellect, language, and social performance throughout life.

An unusual aspect of embodiment (short stature, well-coordinated, bad eyes, fast hands) can have a profound influence on the development of the core personality, depending on how the socialization around that goes. Everybody has one or two extremes of embodiment, whether they show or not.

The second main factor is early childhood socialization, focusing on two aspects: Attachment (John Bowlby) and synchrony (Daniel Stern). You can look those up.

Infants and children who make a strong attachment with their primary caregiver will forever be attracted to others as a positive source of solace, help, and satisfaction. Those who do not make a good attachment (e.g., because of abandonment, abuse, distant or incompetent parenting) will have a socially avoidant personality (shy, fearful, or overcompensating aggression).

Synchrony arises from early interaction between an infant and the primary caregiver (e.g “baby talk”) and has a lifelong effect on the person’s language development, social understanding, and relationship to others.

The last main factor is secondary socialization (e.g., by schools, churches, mass media, friends, etc.) which leads to (or misses) socially desirable achievements in skilled performance, economics, and social status.

By age 18 or so, you’re “cooked.” Your core personality is formed, unchangeable, but not necessarily understood. All the other personality schemas (Myers-Briggs, Maslow, etc.,) can be derived from these three simple factors.

I recognize that you must have some sense of the character syndromes that these three factors produce. For me, this analysis gets me quickly to the heart of my characters.

Examples:

Female X: Her public persona is openness to new experience and people. She’s fearless. She’ll say anything to anyone. That’s partly her early attachment and brain function, but also it “proves” to herself and the world that she’s not hiding anything. The conflict is that she is hiding her felt difference as an immigrant member of two worlds, her non-idealized looks, and her weak early attachment. She has always felt like an outsider, misunderstood. As a result, she “shows” openness and vulnerability, though much of it is manufactured to cover her desperate fear of social rejection.

Man X: His demeanor is “affable,” always a smile, a backslap, everybody is good, no enemies. He’s well-liked and well-known. Inside though, he’s angry, vindictive, aggressive, paranoid, and misogynous.

His brain is slow and dull. He imagines that he merely lacks book-learning, which he disdains anyway, but is full of street smarts and social skills. Which is true.  Early attachment was negative, possibly abusive. His achievements are financial. Has money but only tawdry class.

His main conflict is that he’s dim-witted and always worries about being outwitted or made to look foolish. Basically he has very low self-esteem but papers that over with the opposite.

From these core images, I can develop a well-rounded character. I hope other writers can make some use of the information in this post. Feel free to comment on how you approach the problem of creating characters.

Why Be A Public Defender?

Posted on by July 3, 2015
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AMW LogoWhy would anyone want to be a public defender? The pay is terrible, most of the clients are poor, uneducated and probably guilty; there’s no time to prepare, the caseload is overwhelming, and failure is the most likely outcome. Who chooses that as a career?

I hope to find out at the next Arizona Mystery Writers’ meeting (www.meetup.com/Arizona-Mystery-Writers-of-Tucson/events/223619004/) on July 11th, when a public defender from the Pima County Public Defender’s Office speaks to the group. I will have my direct examination ready!

BA hosting1After the lunch break, we’ll hear from AMW member and mystery writer Elizabeth Gunn (www.elizabethgunn.com/) on how to write a series of novels, among other topics. I am trying to write my first sequel now, and
am keen to learn from an expert.

I’ll be there with the microphone, making introductions, keeping time, and herding kittens, helping the show happen once again.

Writing a Sequel

Posted on by July 2, 2015
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SequelI’d finished my android novel and was brainstorming the next big thing (NBT). I had created a NBT document and made a list of 11 topics I really would like to write about. These ranged over music, money, magical realism, crime, growing up, time travel, and much else; all juicy stuff for me.

Then the unthinkable happened. A New York literary agent agreed to represent my android novel. It took me about one nanosecond to decide. Of course there’s no guarantee he can sell it, but the important point is that he thinks he can. There’s nothing I can do now about that project but wait.

So I went back to the NBT list and tried to focus. But one plain fact blurred the words on the page. If my agent sells my android manuscript, and if it does not totally bomb, then one day the phone will ring and the question will be, “Do you have a sequel?”

So I added an entry to the top of the NBT list: “Androids: The Sequel,” and I stared at it for a long time. How do you write a sequel? What is a sequel, exactly?

A sequel has to be a follow-up of the previous story, but I think all that means is that some of the same characters and  spatiotemporal locations are used. It’s not an epilog, but a whole new adventure having many of the same faces and colors; similar mood, themes, and atmosphere as the first.

In the original android story I wanted to dramatize the idea that most people would flatly refuse to extend empathic respect to any machine, no matter how intelligent it was. Do I have anything else to say about people and intelligent machines? I decided I do, and now I have a six-page sketch for a sprawling story.  It needs a lot of work, but it exists.

But I’m worried about backstory. How much do I have to explain about the previous novel, and how do I do that?  Do I have to re-introduce my recycled characters from scratch, or can I assume readers already know them? And where do I start?  I don’t want to pick it up literally where the last story ended. Maybe I can jump in anywhere and later tie it back somehow.  Do I need to plant seeds for a third sequel? Maybe I should.

Does each sequel have to trump all previous? In the first novel, I ramped up the tension as high as I could, to life-and-death stakes, and then I wrestled that climax to the ground. Now I have to top that?  Hmm. Won’t be easy.

It takes me an intense six months to write a first draft, another six to rewrite, and at the present moment, I’m close to being androided-out. My motivation for diving back into that world needs more coffee. That’s another problem with a sequel.

But I’m betting the phone will ring and that question will be asked, and I know my answer must be, “Yes.”

Can I Write Science Fiction?

Posted on by June 27, 2015
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SpacemanSurprisingly to me, definitions of science fiction differ significantly. I may have just written a sci-fi novel and if so, I’m interested in understanding what I did.

Authors seem to agree that science and technology feature as necessary elements of the story in sci-fi.  Beyond that agreement there are divergences.

“Hard” sci-fi involves stories written on the basis of consensus scientific principles and facts. However, often the science is new and the consensus is wobbly, so there’s wiggle room around the edges. You can have faster than light travel, for example, by using wormholes, which is a theoretical concept in quantum physics, completely not applicable to macro (Newtonian) physics. So to use a wormhole for space travel is a fudge. The science isn’t there. Does that break the boundary of “hard” sci-fi? It’s discussable.

“Mundane” sci-fi is a subtype of “hard,” with no fudges. All the science must be consensus-based, solid, and real. But that might not make such a good story. If you really had an interesting idea for applying current science and technology in a new and important way, you’d be starting a company, wouldn’t you? You’d not be sitting around writing stories about it. Good fiction turns on a lie. So “mundane” sci-fi is a guiding principle, not a straitjacket.

Science fantasy is the other pole from hard sci-fi. Here, a character discovers a magic potion or a secret manuscript or a philosopher’s stone that gives him or her special powers or knowledge. Then the story is about the character arc and the social context. The focus is on what a person is about. The science is incidental. The magic beans don’t have to be scientifically justified. They can be just magic beans.

After having binge-read some current popular sci-fi to get a sense of it, I note that most is in the category of “Mars Westerns,” or “Space Operas.” In this category, the stories are set in space but they might as well be set in Wyoming or in World War II Europe. Characters have exotic names, carry death rays, and travel in space ships, but the science and technology are incidental to the story.

In the books I read, the authors love to make up exotic-sounding names. They seem delighted to point out that names are arbitrary. It’s a cheap shot at defamiliarization. Too cheap for me.

There’s little scientific hardness – authors allude to scientific facts and theories and sometimes even pontificate on them, but they still invoke wormholes and warp drives, and indroduce magical-looking technology without justification when convenient.

Tribalism is deeply embedded in sci-fi stories. The bad guys (often aliens) are the other, they are bad, we are good. No matter what the time and space context, the story centers on us and them – species, tribes, nations, races – the usual stuff. Tribalism is  totally pretheoretic and unexamined (as it is in much of ordinary life).

Dramatic tension in much sci-fi is transposed from current events. Xlyo beings are working on a super bomb and claim to have “every right” to do so even though The Empire has legal rights to inspection. A big disease is sweeping the galaxy. The Nonee people are stealing our mines.  A nearby star is about to explode. The slaves are arising. My mother died. In these stories, the science and technology are incidental to a very mundane, traditional tale.

The current sci-fi that I read is very focused on corporeality – moving meat bodies around, with elaborately described vehicles to do so, and exotic weapons for killing those bodies. The meaning of embodiment itself is rarely questioned. Sometimes characters will be artificially embodied in a manufactured, replaceable, shell, or sometimes embodied by reconstitution of digital schemata, but always embodied, in remarkably humanoid form factors.

Despite the unexamined emphasis on embodiment, there is little or no consideration of intercorporeality, the phenomenon by which we (humans) understand each other via corporeal analogy and inference, and even (earthly) animals by homology.

Death is unquestioned, though never defined. Immortality features large in many stories but simply constitutes a denial of death, without explanation or serious consideration.

Government looms large in sci-fi stories but is rarely questioned. There are evil and benevolent governments, empires, colonies, armies, conquests and suppression of others. However, the very concept of government and why (if) it is needed is never questioned.

Capitalism is generally assumed by default, as is free-market economics. Everybody wants wealth (usually achieved through mining), although why this is so is never questioned, and in any event, actual economics are always vague in sci-fi stories.

Maybe my sample reads were not well-chosen. I went by recommendations from a knowledgeable friend and by online reviews, and by what was readily available in my local bookstore. It was a quasi-random sample.

Now I’m wondering why an author would bother to create another world if the dramatic story issues are the same as in this world today? What’s the point?

I think the sci-fi angle allows you to establish an alternative status quo without having to explain where it came from. Assume the future and assume the inexorable progress of technology and bingo, you can introduce your baseline status quo right at the beginning and get on with the story. Sci-fi used like that is a writer’s gimmick. Why do readers like it?

I think they enjoy imagining small variations on embodied, ordinary everydayness. They like to imagine instantaneous and effortless god-like (embodied) power and knowledge. They don’t want to understand the real world. Sci-fi provides a caricature that presents only certain elements of a world without all the messy complications of reality. It’s simplistic.

I can’t write that stuff. I am hopelessly realistic. Maybe I lack imagination.

What can I write? I can write about the unexplored worlds within the human being.

For me, the mysteries of life are not “out there,” but rather right here. That’s why I wrote my android story, to explore the nature of natural consciousness and to articulate what we know and don’t know about ourselves. It accidentally fell into a sci-fi category, but I never set out to writ sci-fi.

I’m at a crossroads. If I’ve had success producing sci-fi, shouldn’t I do more of that? I can’t. I stumbled into sci-fi by accident. I wouldn’t know how to do it on purpose.

Maybe what I can do is continue to explore the inner reaches of human nature, but feature science and technology a little more in my work.

Mundane Science Fiction

Posted on by June 24, 2015
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Vernes Moon

 

 

 

 

 

I recently discovered a category of sci-fi called “mundane” sci-fi. (See https://sfgenics.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/geoff-ryman-et-al-the-mundane-manifesto/)

Mundane sci-fi eschews aliens, intergalactic travel, and interstellar communication, as these are entirely unrealistic and qualify as fantasy, not sci-fi. Instead, the “mundanes,” as they call themselves, commit to extrapolating current and plausible science and technology right here on planet earth, with ordinary human beings to create their stories. Needless to say, the mundanes are not interested in magic, fantasy or fairy dust of any kind. Mundane sci-fi is a subset of “hard” sci-fi.

I’m sympathetic to the goals of mundane sci-fi. I just finished a story about an android that was set in the near future, on earth, and didn’t involve any aliens or interstellar travel. It explored some of the perplexities of artificial and natural intelligence. I guess my story would qualify as an exercise in mundane sci-fi.

Yet any sci-fi story is based on a lie, otherwise it wouldn’t be science-fiction. In my story, my android robot had cognitive and natural language abilities far, far beyond anything that can be produced with current technology and theory. That was the lie that made the story possible. You just had to suspend your disbelief on that one point.

What about intergalactic travel then? Why can’t we imagine “Warp drive, Mr. Sulu.”  I suspect it’s because there is no basis in current science or technology for a warp drive engine. It’s pure fantasy. Likewise, there is no foundation for imagining routine interstellar communication, since the time lag between electromagnetic transmissions would be on the order of millions of years.

As for aliens, that’s a matter open to more interpretation, I think. The mundanes argue that there is virtually zero evidence of extraterrestrial life, and even if there were “advanced” civilizations out there, they wouldn’t have had any better luck than we have had in overcoming the laws of physics and communications for interstellar exploration. So the probability of earthlings encountering aliens is essentially zero. Fair enough, but much depends on what you think “advanced” means.

I think it is possible and quite probable that there is extraterrestrial life in our own solar system and that it might even be discovered in my lifetime. There is plenty of scientific data to support such a speculation. Chances are that such life forms will be no more “advanced” than bacteria; algae at best, but according to the principles of evolution, every organism alive today is equally adaptive, equally “fit” for having survived.  It’s arbitrary and hubristic for us to declare that another life form is “less advanced” than ourselves.

So until we clarify our notion of “advanced” life forms and the subterranean assumptions about “complexity” and “progress” embedded in that notion, I think the mundanes have gotten ahead of themselves in declaring that there is no scientific basis for sci-fi stories involving aliens.

Lavalle – Big Machine

Posted on by June 24, 2015
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Big-MachineWandering Through the Nonsense

Lavalle, Victor (2010). Big Machine. New York: Spiegel & Grau (366 pp.).

At least a meandering river will reach the sea. This tale just  meanders, as the cover art suggests. The first-person narrator, Ricky Rice, is a heroin addict and a hand-to-mouth janitor in upstate New York. As a character, he is fairly interesting, with acute observations and sharp wit. His voice is the strength of the novel, but that’s about it.

His story is a series of implausible adventures, from becoming a research librarian in Vermont, to a sort of bounty hunter of a cult leader, then a fighter of supernatural demons, then an unwilling father, until in the end, his soul is eaten by a pack of feral cats, or maybe not, since he seems to be in a romantic relationship with a clueless detective in the last scene. None of it makes any sense, so you have to enjoy the book just for the sake of the interesting writing.

Much of the dialog has the sardonic wit of Christopher Moore, and some of the comments on social mores suggest Don DeLillo, so it’s fun, but Ricky Rice is a blunderer, not a man on a mission, and if he comes out the other end of this meat-grinder a changed man, there is no motivation behind the change. Like everything else, it just happens, for no particular reason.

That’s a characteristic of the writing, which was probably done without an outline. When the pace sags, as it often does, a new character appears out of nowhere with some crucial piece of information that kicks the story into a new direction. I made many “DXM” notes in the margins (for “Deus ex Machina”). Sometimes the author just manufactures suspense where there isn’t any:

“And yet, for all that, it wasn’t the Washerwomen who killed my sister, Daphne. It was me.”   (End of chapter. No follow-up until many chapters later. That’s manufactured drama, not real drama.)

Equally clunky, Lavalle handles his backstory by simply dumping it into separate chapters interspersed with the ongoing adventures, with the result that there is no sense of character chronology, let alone development.

The author’s sartorial fixation also becomes grating. Characters’ clothing is described in unnecessary detail and many pages are devoted to dressing and undressing, laundry and ironing, none of it very interesting (to me, at least).

Thematically, there a few intriguing threads. “The Big Machine” is self-doubt. Self-doubt is the only thing that can penetrate self-delusion. It’s a dubious sentiment and remains just that cryptic, not developed or explained.

The main characters are people who suffered abusive, cruel and  life-threatening trauma as children and youth. Several times it is stated that the despised become despicable. Another fine sentiment, if true. So a theme must be redemption, since characters end up getting a second chance to live happily ever after. Again, that theme is merely stated, not explored.

There’s a vague supernatural theme going on, with underworld devils and demons, and “swamp angels” and a whiff of LDS mythology with a great cross-country journey to hide golden treasure, but none of it adds up to anything.

I give the book points for originally, wit, and some passages of good writing, but these virtues were swamped by the arbitrariness of the scenes and lack of an overall through-line. If you don’t mind a story that has no story, you can enjoy this novel just for its creativity.

Barthelme – Natural Selection

Posted on by June 14, 2015
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Natural Selection_Mild Angst in the Suburbs

Barthelme, Frederick (1990). Natural Selection. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint.

White, employed, middle-class, American, suburban guy is annoyed at popular culture. His wife and kid become exasperated with his constant complaining – about TV, magazines, people at work, politicians, and advertisements.

His grumbling is sometimes funny, but consistently ironic, sarcastic, and articulate, so it doesn’t really ring authentic and the character comes across as manufactured. Also, the setting is pre-internet so what he perceives as media intrusiveness is laughably bucolic compared to today’s immersive hypermedia.

The wife and kid are mirrors and backboards for him, not characters in themselves. They also speak in set-pieces, not like real people. The unexpected, violent ending is so contrived, it’s interesting as a writerly aberration.

Samples:

“I don’t want to be in the middle of stuff anymore, you know? I want to cocoon, to hide from these pathetic drooling dicks, these creeps who believe the butt-juice they prattle about.”

“Sorry I asked,” Lily said, waving her hands in front of her and making a bad-smell face… (p. 57).

“The fact is that our workers sit on their butts, smoke cigarettes, spit, scratch themselves, punch out, and ask for more money. That’s the New American Dream. And it goes for all of us, auto unions to university professors.” (p.70).

For disenchantment with popular culture, DeLillo did it a thousand times better and funnier in White Noise. This is but a pale shadow, mildly amusing, just interesting enough for a skim. I picked it up to become acquainted with Frederick Barthelme, who is, after all, a noted writer. Now I am acquainted.

The Delusion of Self-Efficacy

Posted on by June 12, 2015
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Party dogWriting is lonely but exhilarating, a fair balance. What isn’t balanced is the defeat-to-victory ratio. Literally hundreds of rejections are the norm, a steady stream of them. Victories? What are those?

A writer must believe in the delusion of self-efficacy to keep going.

Self-efficacy is the ability to produce your intended result. If you intend to get your work published and noticed, and praised – and what writer doesn’t? – self-efficacy is your ability to accomplish that.

Alas, most of us really don’t have that ability. Statistically, the odds are severely against success. Self-efficacy as a writer is not realistic. Randomness and arbitrary luck are the best hopes we have.

But the delusion of self-efficacy is always available. That’s the belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary, you do have the ability to be successful. It’s not true, but you can believe it anyway.

Delusion is a form of madness, believing in something contrary to fact. Writers must cling to that delusion.

Once in a while, a tiny victory comes floating ashore like a note in a bottle, and that’s enough to sustain the delusion.

This week I had two (count ‘em, TWO) tiny victories. One was a request for a “full” from an agent. That means a fish bit the hook of my query letter and wanted to see the full manuscript. I rushed it off immediately, even though I should have waited a few days to proofread it one more time, which I have now done, correcting dozens and dozens of typos and solecisms. How embarrassing. I was excited. Oh well. Getting a request for a full is still a tiny victory though. Makes me believe I could be successful.

And then I had a sample chapter of another manuscript accepted by a jury, which qualified me to participate in an intensive critique session at an upcoming conference. I have no clue how many entries they had and how many submissions they rejected. Maybe they were desperate for conference attendees and took anything they could get. Doesn’t matter. I deem it a tiny victory. I need it to keep my delusion alive.

Doesn’t take much.

Connecting With Characters

Posted on by June 12, 2015
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Casablanca2I’ve been sending out my android story for the past month. It’s a short novel (73K words) about a man who discovers he is an android, and what he does about that. The story is told from his point of view.

I searched out a list of 100 agents who claim to be interested in sci-fi, even though, as I say in my query letter, this is actually a literary exploration of human consciousness that just happens to involve an android. It’s presented as a character-based drama.

Usually I can count on a 33% reply rate (e.g., polite rejections). The other 67% don’t even bother to reply, which is their rejection. I expect that. What’s disturbing is I’ve already received the dreaded comment, “I couldn’t connect with the characters.” I’ve had that comment on several other manuscripts I’ve sent out in the past.

There’s something wrong with my writing. Why can’t people, or at least agents, “connect” with my characters? I don’t think it’s because in this case, the main character is an android. I paint him as a sympathetic, slightly eccentric engineer, not as R2D2. People should relate to him easily.

I’m at a loss. Should I give him a cat? Should his mother die? Should I make him cry? He does go through a divorce, is that not good enough? Maybe I should have him rescue a cat stranded in a tree. What does it take for the humans to “connect” to a character?

I understand that I am not a sentimental person and I don’t write with sentimentality, nor do I enjoy reading sentimental stories. But my characters are not sentimental, nor bloodless robots, just ordinary people facing the difficulties of life. Maybe that’s the problem?

I wonder if agents are looking for a one-legged immigrant who arrived in New York penniless and suffered severe alienation and discrimination until finding love. Is that the secret? I have to confess I am unable to “connect” to 95% of the characters I read about in literary fiction and that seems to be no impediment to them.

So I’ve signed up for a “master class” (an intense critical review) at an upcoming conference, on “developing character.” I will demand that the instructor tell me what special ingredient I am missing.

Until then, “Live long and prosper.”

Dunn – Geek Love

Posted on by May 31, 2015
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Geek LoveBut Do They Have Sex? 

Dunn, Katherine. (1983/2002). Geek Love. New York: Vintage (348 pp).

You have to give this novel credit for sheer originality. The main characters are a U.S. family of performers in a traveling carnival, in the recent past. All the children are physically deformed in some way and constitute what used to be called the “freak show.”

The main character and first-person narrator is a bald albino dwarf with a hunchback. There is a set of “Siamese” twins – two heads, four arms, and one body from the waist down. The oldest child is a sort of white, hairless creature with flippers for limbs. Mom and Dad are insane, of course, and drink anything from kerosene to insecticide, trying to produce more deformed offspring.

In the course of the novel, which describes the ups and downs of the circus, as well as relatively ordinary family dynamics – jealousies, favoritism, competition, resentments, and so on, the reader has full opportunity to explore physical deformity. No need to avert your eyes in embarrassment or disgust.

You can find out what it would be like to have sex with Siamese twins, and what they would think about it. You can know what it’s like to have a hump on your back and what it would feel like to stroke one. You can learn what it would be like to be a fishlike, maggot-like torso-person. No prurient interest denied! All conceivable body products, functions, and orifices are described in detail. Step right up! Find out what it’s like to be constantly stared at, to be regarded with revulsion by the “norms” (normal people). Hurry, hurry, hurry!

The author goes to considerable effort to shock, disgust, and horrify the reader with this exploration of physical deformity, sacrificing plausibility to do so, with gory surgeries, multiple amputations, incest, murder, artificial insemination, even religion and cultism. The narrative and the characters are so far over the top that I’d characterize the novel as comedy rather than horror. For me, it was sometimes funny, never horrifying, and never even slightly believable; merely imaginative.

Why then is the novel so popular (finalist for the National Book Award) and widely praised? My speculation is that it appeals mainly to teenagers and pre-teens, for whom the body is the greatest secret – and to adults who still think like that. Each person believes they ARE the body and that their own body is uniquely special and secret, a source of pride and shame, delight and disgust. Young people believe that intimacy means exposing your body to another person, and that the main differences between people are their bodies. I fear that this is the mentality of most adult “norms” as well, and the reason most people have such a fascination and revulsion for someone who is severely physically deformed. And it is the reason they would like this book.

Beneath those childish, unexamined attitudes towards one’s body, there is the undercurrent of sexuality. Sex is physical, bodily activity, and since having sex is taboo in decent society, then fascination with deformity is a displacement of fascination about sex. How do freaks have sex, that’s what we want to know, isn’t it? And if you’re physically deformed, then the values of lookism automatically disqualify you from sexual competition, and what a horror that would be, right? And in that case, your self-esteem would have to be in the toilet, except in this novel, the “freaks” take great pride in their “uniqueness” and have nothing but contempt for the norms. They form a family, a tribe, a cult.

One important character believes that any woman who is sexually attractive is doomed to a life obsessed with the body because society will demand it (not far from the truth), so out of compassion, she works to disfigure such women so they can drop out of the sexual rat race and make something significant of themselves.

There are some interesting variations on these themes, such as having one child in the family who is physically normal but psychologically abnormal (he has telekinesis, but no sense of self). There is a minor but important character who is normal, even beautiful, except for her bushy tail, which she is urged to amputate.

However, this isn’t a book about the psychology of embodiment. It’s a novel and its aim is to titillate, horrify and amuse, so none of the deeper themes is well-explored. As a silly, implausible, thinly sketched, slightly repetitive, and ultimately sentimental story, it’s not very enjoyable. If you are confused about the meaning of embodiment, you’ll find it emotionally stimulating. But either way, you’ll remember this book.