Attack of the Literary Gimmicks

Time is a goon, and a gimmick is a goldfish. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I get a little sensitive when it comes to gimmicks in writing.

When I was in college, I got yelled at by a writing instructor for using 2^nd person present tense in a story (hey, it was a “quick write,” and he told us to experiment!!!).  The rest of the students nodded their heads as he lectured me about how gimmicks like 2^nd person AND present tense took away from any merit my story had.

When Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney came out a few months later with a lot of critical acclaim, I wanted to storm into the writing  class with it and read dramatically to show them I had been (unintentionally) a trend setter (“trend” might be a bit strong), but it was a new semester, and all the students had different classes and we would never see each other again.

It was probably for the best.  I didn’t like Bright Lights, Big City.  All it did was prove that my writing instructor had been correct.

*****

A Visit from the Goon Squad triggered this memory because I just finished reading it, and it uses a lot of (what I think of as) gimmicks.  Normally, if I begin a novel that relies on a gimmick, I get annoyed and toss it aside.  However, A Visit from the Goon Squad is the most recent novel to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, so its use of literary gimmicks is worth looking at.

Gimmicks are pretty common in some critically acclaimed fiction.  Ulysses had stream-of-consciousness multiplied by infinity.  The Shipping News had choppy sentences and fragments.  Slaughterhouse-Five had “So it goes.”  Holden Caulfield whines like hell in The Catcher in the Rye (or says …”like hell” a lot).  When I think of these novels (I’m sure there are others, but I’m typing furiously and am probably missing something obvious), that’s what I think about, the gimmicks.  The novels might have been great even without the gimmicks, and the gimmicks aren’t necessarily bad, but the gimmicks are what I think about.

A Visit from the Goon Squad doesn’t use just one or two gimmicks.  It uses a bunch:

1.  Telling the story out of order.

2.  Switching points of view (3^rd  to 1^st to 3^rd…)

3.  Switching tenses (past to present to past…)

4.  power point/ flow charts (don’t use an e-reader for this book)

5.  lots of stream-of-consciousness

6. And the worst gimmick ever… 2^nd person present tense!

That’s a lot of literary gimmicks for one book.  There were so many literary gimmicks, I expected the author to resort to the 1^st person present tense narration death scene.  I was wrong.  Instead, she used the 2^nd person present tense narration death scene.    I hate being wrong.

Having so many literary gimmicks in one novel makes it look (to me) like the author is trying too hard.  My writing instructor might have declared that using all these gimmicks took away from any merits A Visit from the Goon Squad had as a story.  But he probably would have shut up once he realized the novel won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

If I had been the author of A Visit from the Goon Squad and my editor had told me to choose two literary gimmicks (instead of six), I would have chosen the charts and the out of sequence storytelling (and kept everything in third person point of view, past tense).  I don’t mind novels where the events are out of order.  And I like power points.  I just don’t care for the presenter who reads the power point word for word to the audience and then says, “Um, okay?” after each screen.

Years from now when I look back on A Visit from the Goon Squad, I think I’m going to remember the gimmicks more than the content.

*****

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan  (This is my original review before it got out of control.)

This is a very uneven novel.  Chapter 8 “Selling The General” might be the best 20 pages I’ve read in a really long time.  Then there’s a wretched 2^nd person present tense chapter (“Out of Body”) that made me cringe (because I thought it was predictable with overdone stream-of-consciousness).  If the literary gimmicks thing doesn’t bother you, then you’ll probably appreciate this novel.

I’m not wild about literary gimmicks (except for parentheses), but I still really liked several sections of this book.

I think Pulitzer Prize judges don’t mind the literary gimmicks.

*****

It’s weird how seemingly minor events can change a person.  If I hadn’t been chewed out by my college writing instructor, I might not be so sensitive about literary gimmicks, and I might enjoy literary fiction more.  But instead, he inadvertently turned me to the dark side, and my dysfunctional literacy (which had always been a part of me) grew stronger.  If not for that writing instructor, I might have turned into the kind of person who could read Ulysses and take the time to savor each phrase and appreciate every observation that James Joyce made.  Instead, I count days until football season begins.

*****

The above article “Attack of the Literary Gimmicks” was written by the author of the two fine ebooks below!!

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