Chorusing

When I think of my favourite literary works they each have one thing in common: the use of a literary device called 'chorusing'.

So what is chorusing? It is the word used to describe when a writer repeats various words, motifs or phrases throughout a text to reflect either the obsessions of characters or the central ideas of the story.

Kurt Vonnegut is said to have pioneered the technique in his novel 'Slaughterhouse Five', a story which centres on soldier Billy Pilgrim, his World War II experiences and journeys through time.

The phrase "so it goes" is repeated a total of one-hundred and six times throughout the work according to vonnegutweb.com and is used when dying, death or mortality occur or to move the narrative from one subject to another. Here is an example:

"Those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. The world was better off without them. And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes."

Another novel which uses chorusing to great effect ( and, allong with 'Lolita' has influenced much of my own style) is Chuck Palahnuik's 'Fight Club', where the narrator uses titles from old Readers Digests where human organs write about themselves in first person to demonstrate the obsessive, all-consuming nature of Fight Club as well as his own mental instability. Example :

" I am Joe's Prostrate. I am Joe's Gallbladder. I am Joe's Raging Bile Duct. I am Joe's Grinding Teeth. I am Joe's Inflamed Flaring Nostrils. I am Joe's White Knuckles. I am Joe's Enraged, Inflamed Sense of Rejection. I am Joe's Clenching Bowels. "

I think chorusing, when used correctly can be used to illustrate characters, ideas and central themes of importance within a text. The technique creates a faster pace for writing and assists readers by reminding them of previous passages and returning their focus to the core of the work. I hope I can employ this device in my own submission in order to create this effect.

The Broken Heart and Violent Fantasies of Lady Gaga.

One of the topics explored in literary journalism class throughout the semester has been the painting of 'characters' used by writers covering celebrities and public figures. With Lynn Herschberg's piece ' M.I.A's Agitprop Pop' in mind, I set out in search of examples of articles about celebrities which went beyond the classic question and answer format to further explore the 'character' of the star. A piece which stood out was Neil Strauss' 'The Broken Heart and Violent Fantasies of Lady Gaga' published in Rolling Stone Magazine's September 2010 issue.

While the article also contains mouthwatering photography from Terry Richardson, Strauss goes beyond the basics of the genre to expose a vulnerable, intelligent side of Gaga and delve into the mindset of one of the world's biggest stars.

I particularly liked how he begins the piece by describing her dressing room, segueing into a plug for her latest single and then finally surveying the chaotic state of her private life. " Her grandfather is in hospital, her father recently had heart surgery and she was just told by doctors that she is at risk of developing lupus, an autoimmune disease that killed her aunt before Gaga was born," is used to establish the fast pace of the article and imitate the speed and stress of Gaga's world.

Short, sharp sentences such as "her success is the ultimate misfit's revenge" add to the article's witty, bullet-speed appeal. Another device which caught my attention was the use of records to mark shifts in time with "Billy Joel spinning on the record player while we talk in Nottingham" and "Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run' on vinyl in Birmingham" used to show Gaga's varied taste in music as well as the movement of her tour across England.

The work seamlessly flows from a narrative style to a question and answer format- a technique I hope to employ in my own writing. An example of the movement between the two styles is evident in the passage " After the break-up, she promised to herself that she would never love again and would make him rue the day he doubted her. And this may be the origin of her transformation from Stefani to Gaga. And so I ask " do you think that all that love you directed towards men now goes towards your fans instead?"" This creates an easy-to-read movement between Strauss' observations and the formal interview while providing background information on the subject and the basis for his questioning.

Lastly, what I most admire about Strauss' work is his ability to let the subject define themselves through quotes, rather than by describing their personality for the reader. He ends the piece with Gaga asking him to "use the stuff that's going to make me a legend. I want to be a legend. Is that wrong," which in my opinion perfectly exposes her drive, deliberate provocation and love affair with fame.


Below: Images from the article.

Writing Practice: Describing a Situation.

Today I tried to practice my literary journalism skills by writing about a period of my day: rowing training at North Wollongong beach. In the following sample I have aimed to focus on the thoughts running through my head, the sights, smells and sounds around me and the feeling of rowing through the waves.

There we stood in the harbour: four young women shivering in the afternoon wind, swimmer pants ‘wedged up’, lily-white derrieres exposed for all to see. “ Guns up”, we wait for the call, “ boat”. Time to row.

I count the strokes in my mind as we push our boat through the break. The vessel resembles a flapping pelican as oars slap the water, narrowly missing dense clumps of seaweed. I can ear the blades turning in the rollicks. “ Clack clack, clack clack”. Perfect timing.

As the boat thuds off the peak of a surging green wave my mind begins to wander. ‘Did I ring my boss back to tell her I couldn't do the Thursday Shift? How will I be able to write three essays, two blogs and a major project over the next two weeks? Would the guy from the gym call me again?’ the questions are never ending.

Just as I feel my heart beat rising, increasing in intensity with the height of the waves, I’m jolted back to reality. “Jenna, lean back. Focus on the blade,” our sweep, a short, stocky man with a penchant for stubbies and singlets screams. ‘ That’s right,’ I remind myself as the worry subsides ‘focus’.

‘Twenty five, twenty six’ I count once more, my arms pulsating, legs burning. We glide around the buoy and head back for the beach. ‘twenty seven, twenty eight’. As the water glistens beneath my blade and the sun warms my back a thought hits me. ‘This is kind of like flying’. And it is.

The pelican’s wings clack in a frenzy as we stroke for an up-coming wave. ‘Twenty nine, thirty’. The boat is swept up in the emerald barrel and rushed to shore. Surprisingly, I think of nothing as we soar past the surfers and jetskis to the shore. Peace. Serenity. A drug dispensed only by the fresh North Wollongong waters.

The Score

Stephen Elliott's 'The Score' was offered in class as an example of literary journalism. While I was disinterested in some of the previous examples ( particular 'Anatomy of a Miracle' , which I found very dry and slow), Elliott's work kept me hooked to the very end as he explored Theo Van Gogh's death, his ex-girlfriend's triple infidelity and his own fractured emotional state.

I was hypnotised by Elliott’s poetic notion of loving like “we didn’t care if we lived or died”and felt compelled to read the entire piece to try and understand why the couple’s love was doomed.

Another technique used to great effect was the motif of basketball and its use to move the story between time periods. I noticed that Elliott replaces "I" ( which is often used in the text) with "we" when he is reflecting on the game and the fact that basketball also acts as a metaphor for the happiness he felt in Chicago and juxtaposes with the dark, seedy lifestyle he goes on to live in LA.

‘The Score’ is littered with beautiful description such as “the Tenderloin was full of fog. It floated near my knee caps,” and “he had long black hair and wiry arms. When he wore makeup he looked like a dragon woman.” The detail of Elliott’s prose is something that could only ever be gleaned from personal experience. The matter-of-fact way he seems to drop references to bisexuality, prostitution, sadomachism, domestic abuse, drug abuse, depression and suicide show that despair was a continuous aspect of his life and offer only a glimpse into the other stories he has to tell.

While these are only some of the literary devices used in the piece, 'The Score' appealed to me in a way that other in-class examples didn't. It opened my eyes to the fact that literary journalism doesn't have to be based soley on interviews of other people- it can centre on personal experience and have an almost confessional function for the author.

I hope that my own work can somehow express the honesty, black-humour and visual imagery of Elliott's 'The Score'. Read the 'The Score' for yourself.

In Class Task- Emulate Your Favourite Author.

For this task the class was asked to read an excerpt from our favourite piece. I chose Vladimir Nabokov's 'Lolita', one of my favorite books. Here is the excerpt I chose below:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee.Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

Vladimir Nabokov- ‘Lolita’.

Have a look at the trailer for the film based on the novel.

Why do I like it?: The first few paragraphs of Nabokov’s masterpiece perfectly encapsulate the tone of the entire novel. I love the obsession. The sounding out, repetition and lingering over the narrator’s lover’s name. The way that Nabokov juxtaposes the narrator’s perception of ‘Lolita’ with the real Dolores Haze showcases his insanity, fixation with the girl and unrealistic view of the world.

The pace of ‘to tap, at three, on the teeth’ reflects the narrator’s erratic mind and attention to detail. ‘ You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style’ demonstrates his wicked, warped black humour.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury’ sets the scene for the rest of the book ( the actions which led him to his jail cell). ‘ Look at this tangle of thorns’ makes the reader feel interested in the crime and acts as the perfect metaphor of the eventual demise of both Lolita and the story’s narrator, Humbert Humbert.

Below is my attempt to emulateNabokov’s style in a recount about my high-school woodwork teacher. I tried to copy the passage’s sense of mystery and sombreness and to swap its obsession for contempt. In an attempt to echo Nabokov's use of variations of Delores' name to create tension and rhythm, I have borrowed the lyrics from the tune used in the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' films.

‘Mr Fredricks’.

Mr Fredricks. The bane of my existence, the reason I hated school. Long-limbed, buck toothed, grey haired. Freak. Face. Fredricks. The reeking breath spiralling down my neck, seeping through the fabric of my blouse. The snap of the ruler, cracking through hard wood. The beady eyes. The long socks. Mothballs.

Freddy Krueger.

One. Two. "Good morning class.” Freddy’s coming for you. “Time to have a look at your woodwork.” Three. Four. Better lock your door. "Jenna, what the hell is that?”

Was there ever a time when I tried in woodwork? Of course there was. When I was young and stupid and thought teachers were there to help students learn. Before the taunts. Before the jibes. Before detention.

Trust hours of staring mindlessly at a blackboard to teach me to write.

Mum, Dad, this is why I failed class. This is the reason behind the notes, the phone calls, the parent-teacher meetings. Time to meet my teacher. My monster.