Story #23: Universal connections
Blue teddy bears, purple sweaters and piano dogs
Reading is magic. When we read, we transfer an image or an idea from the writer’s head into the reader’s head, and it happens in a way that transcends space and time. I can read a book by a dead person who I’ve never met before and never will and have them beam their ideas straight into my brain. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.
So how do you make that magic happen? By being specific. The more specific the writing, the more universal it becomes. That’s counter-intuitive, but we see it all the time. There are universal experiences that we can all connect to—the need to be loved, to meet someone’s approval, to have the thing that’s just out of reach—and specific examples, ripe with details, can connect writer and reader.
With that in mind, let’s look at a few examples from Shirley Jackson’s Raising Demons, in which specificity about her life allows her to connect to the universality of the human experience.
The story
Small infuriated face
In this first passage, the Jackson’s family has just gotten a new car. Her youngest, Barry, is obsessed with the new car in a way that only a two-year-old could be. At this point in the book, he’s known as Beekman. (In fact, his name changes several times in the book, and in a couple of issues, we’ll look at how Jackson uses them as a proxy for the passage of time.)
Given Beekman’s obsession, Jackson takes extreme measures to get the car out of the drive without him noticing. Note that Dikidiki is a blue teddy bear that Beekman received at Christmas. On page 103:
I used to try letting the car roll backward out of the driveway without starting the motor, but Beekman's room was in the front and as soon as I got as far as the gateposts he would apparently catch some reflection of light and I would see his small infuriated face pressed against the window and hear the crash as Dikidiki hit the wall, and after a minute my husband or Laurie or Jannie or Sally would open the front door and call that I was to wait, they were just putting on Beekman's jacket.
This is, hands down, my favourite passage in the entire book. And that says a lot.
First, it is hilarious. Picture Jackson, dressed up and trying to get out the door with some semblance of dignity, but reduced to sneaking the car out of the drive so her toddler doesn’t notice. She’s foiled by some random reflection of light. And then we get this priceless scene of Beekman’s small infuriated face pressed against the window and hear the crash as Dikidiki [hits] the wall, sight and sound encapsulating the enormous emotions that emanate from small humans. And, of course, the futility of Jackson’s endeavour in the first place, because after all that, Beekman’s coming in the car.1
The specificity of the scene comes down to the details. It’s not just Jackson trying to sneak out of the driveway: she gives us the detail of the car rolling backward, that she gets as far as the gateposts. She doesn’t just say that Beekman’s upset—she shows us his scrunched-up little face smushed against the window. I would have expected a howl to come with it, especially given the aural detail of Dikidiki hitting the wall, which makes me think that Beekman is so upset that he can’t even scream. And there’s comic timing here, too, a delay as after a minute someone else comes to the door to let us know that Beekman will be ready shortly. It’s not a punchline, exactly—more a resignation.
I like everything about Dikidiki. I like his name, the spelling, the fact that he is a blue teddy bear. The name itself, with the repetition of nonsense syllables, strikes me as such a child-truth name, the kind of name that comes from the gut and not from some preconceived notion of what a name should sound like.
Part of the effect of this passage is that Jackson is stingy with adjectives and adverbs. She includes one adverb—she lets the car roll out backward. And there are just two adjectives in this 95-word sentence, when she describes Beekman’s small infuriated face. The rarity of these descriptors creates emphasis, and they’re a sneaky way of drawing attention to the state of Beekman’s face. Whether we realize it or not, our brain picks up on the fact that she has strategically used adverbs and adjectives here—and therefore, these descriptions are important.
This passage resonates with me as the parent of a young child. First, Jackson does an exquisite job of capturing the disproportionately sized emotions that come out of a small human, and how they can be attached to seemingly mundane things. Meanwhile, she captures the hilarity of those moments, or at least the hilarity you would appreciate if you weren’t facing the third or fourth meltdown of the day.
There’s also a sense of acceptance. Yes, Jackson was trying to leave the house like a dignified, independent adult, but as any parent learns, these are mere dreams when you have children in tow. I say this breezily now, but it’s been a tough lesson to learn: being willing to let go of my expectations for control, and being willing to accept situations (and ahem, people) as they are, not as I want them to be.
If I were not a parent, I might read this, laugh and move on. But because I am a parent, and because I can identify with the feeling that Jackson is expressing here, her specificity allows me to connect her experience with mine. In so doing, her specific story becomes universal.
The Purple Kid
Halfway through the book, Jackson describes the shift in her family as all four children end up in school and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, takes up a post teaching at the local girls’ college. In Story #22, we looked at a passage in which Jackson examines her feeling about being a faculty wife—by taking sharp aim at her faculty husband.
On Page 151, she describes some of the students at the college:
I learned to have nothing but admiration for the student’s faith in her teachers, and the kind of innocent devotion which was frequently so touching; I am reminded of the student who crept up, one spring dawning, to leave a basket of fresh strawberries upon her teacher’s pillow. Or the student who resolutely refused to remove a lilac sweater her teacher had once admired, and became known, by her junior year, as “The Purple Kid,” although she dropped out, abruptly, during one Christmas vacation and was only seen once thereafter, in Paris with a retired manufacturer of pinball machines.
Examples are one way to be specific, and Jackson uses them to explore the questionable boundaries between students and faculty. Once again, it’s instructive to look at Jackson’s spare use of adjectives: innocent devotion, fresh strawberries, lilac sweater.
The last sentence is packed with specific details that add layers upon layers. Consider the internal dialogue that’s going on with this sentence:
The student resolutely refused to remove a lilac sweater. [Note: lilac, not purple. Also, alliteration!]
Why?
Because her teacher had once admired it.
And what happened as a result?
She wore it so much that by junior year she was nicknamed The Purple Kid. [Note: that means she wore it for about two years straight.]
And then what happened?
She dropped out. Abruptly.
When?
During one Christmas vacation.
Was she ever seen again?
Only once thereafter.
Where?
In Paris.
With whom?
A retired manufacturer of pinball machines. [Note: a description which is itself laden with details.]
I think Jackson’s being particularly coy with this paragraph. On first read it seems an ordinary description of schoolgirls with crushes. But in researching this newsletter, I learned that Jackson’s husband, a college professor and staff writer with The New Yorker, was a serial philanderer and had multiple affairs with his students. Is there more to the basket of fresh strawberries on the pillow, some psychological darkness to The Purple Kid? Is this a paragraph about daddy issues? A cautionary tale about infidelity on college campuses?
There is also, maybe, a sense of envy or amazement at The Purple Kid’s sudden willingness to throw off the shackles, not just of her adopted moniker but also her New England college education, and take up in Paris (which is a stand-in for any number of exotic and/or romantic locales) with someone clearly her senior (there are those daddy issues again), someone clearly quirky, clearly non-conformist.
Finally, notice how Jackson is describing what the students do, and not necessarily what they say or think. Actions speak louder than words, so we’re told, and in this passage actions show us what might be going on in these students’ heads—maybe more than they know themselves.
Attacked by fiends
Jackson spends most of the book talking about her children, but she also has dogs and cats. One of the dogs, Toby, is a big mutt of a dog who is in turns afraid of the cats—and grasshoppers.
On page 254, Jackson writes:
On Wednesday, Toby was badly frightened by the last grasshopper of the season and took the back screen door off its hinges trying to get in fast and crawl under the piano, where he hid whenever he was attacked by fiends, such as grasshoppers, wedging himself in head first with his eyes tight shut, hoping that no one would notice the piano shaking and the great dog feet tucked in under the pedals.
This is no Beekman-Dikidiki passage, but it’s still hilarious. Toby’s not just frightened, he’s badly frightened. And by what? Not just a grasshopper, but the last grasshopper of the season. Jackson shows us just how frightened he is (took the back screen door off its hinges trying to get in fast) so that he can take refuge under the piano. We get a bit of context—this is where he goes whenever he’s attacked by fiends. He hides a particular way: head first, eyes tight shut (not shut tight), and the futility of it all, with the shaking piano and great dog feet tucked in under the pedals.
We also get the repetition of grasshopper: frightened by the last grasshopper of the season and where he hid whenever he was attacked by fiends, such as grasshoppers, to emphasize the ridiculousness of the fear.
For demonstration’s sake, we could write this purely as an expository statement, without any of the detail:
On Wednesday, Toby was scared by a grasshopper, came into the house quickly and crawled under the piano.
I’m being facetious here, of course, but you can see the difference. The details bring Toby to life, this galumph of a dog who’s afraid of small things, and they take this vaguely relevant piece of information and turn it into a scene.
By being specific, Jackson highlights the irrationality of fear. Toby is a giant dog and grasshoppers are small, and he deals with his fear irrationally, causing collateral damage to the house, trying to hide in a place that is clearly not appropriate nor effective and giving himself away in the process.
She makes it funny and we can laugh about it, but there’s also a darkness—a demon?—to our laughter. Who hasn’t felt afraid of something that turned out, with some perspective, to be so small? Who hasn’t tried to hide from their fears, only to realize afterward that it wasn’t so scary after all? We may not be Toby making the piano quiver with fear, but we can certainly identify with wanting to hide away from it all.
There are, of course, other ways to read this passage. I’m not a dog owner but I imagine that dog owners would connect with this passage for all the kooky ways that dogs…do dog things. And it’s just as likely that someone could read this passage, appreciate the humour, and move on.
That’s the beauty of specificity—in drawing the scene as vividly as possible, Jackson offers a point of connection for whomever the reader may be, and whatever underlying truth they need to extract at that moment.
Why it works
Being specific is really a variation on “show, don’t tell,” which we explored in Story #20.
You can tell me that Beekman always want to go in the car, but that’s a pale comparison to when Jackson shows us his small infuriated face or describes the sound of a toddler slamming a blue bear into the wall. And those details elevate the scene, make it stick in our heads, draw us into her world. Those details create points of connection.
The trick is that as a writer, you have no idea what your readers will connect with. I’d argue that if you have created a scene to the full extent that you can, that there should be some way for a reader to extract some universal understanding out of it. But hey, maybe they don’t. Maybe they enjoy it, laugh with it, move on. That’s still a point of them stopping to engage with the story, rather than scrolling on past. Create enough points of connection and you start to draw people in.
Maybe some of those connecting points are surface in nature. But some of them may go deeper and illuminate some deeper truth. I know that when I’ve read a book that expresses just how I feel, it feels divine—like I’ve been seen by someone else, like what I’m experiencing is simultaneously mine to experience but also part of some bigger, broader human picture.
What we can learn from it
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: show, don’t tell. Don’t tell me that Toby’s afraid of grasshoppers, show him tearing the back door off the hinges and cowering under the piano with his big dog feet poking out.
The thing about details is that they’re not just for the reader. In acquiring those details, we as writers have to be clear on the worlds and scenes we’re describing. If they’re real, then we have to go back into our memory, back into our physical bodies that occupied that time and space, and re-experience the scene. If they’re fictional, then we have to create some of those elements for ourselves, and they can be every bit as vivid or even more so.
In doing so, we force ourselves to be present, attentive and aware—qualities that are hard to embody. It’s hard not to judge what we should be seeing or what we should be feeling. I talked about this way back in Story #5, when I compared twin reviews of Robyn’s 2018 album, Honey—the chief point of difference being that one critic brought her whole, authentic self to the review, while the other put distance between him and his readers in pursuit of achieving status as a Critic (with a capital C).
What I’m trying to say, rather inelegantly, is that it takes guts to go all the way into a story, to sort out the story from our personal baggage and assumptions, to lay it on the page for the reader and to do that repeatedly in edits until you get to the truth of the story.
Put another way, if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in writing, we bring more to the page. And in being more vulnerable and empathetic writers, we also become more vulnerable and empathetic humans—and that changes everything.2
Share this newsletter like you would share your life story with Bruce Springsteen.
I’m going to leave sentence structure alone this week, but I will point out the length of this paragraph (95 words!) and the strategic use of punctuation. In typical Jackson style, there’s an extended section with no punctuation, and the entire sentence uses just three commas. For bonus points, you could try to analyze why she uses commas, where she uses them, and the resulting effect on style.
I also have to point out how nicely this paragraph highlights the basic principles of storytelling. First, you have a character with an objective: Shirley Jackson wants to leave the house like a normal human being. Then, you have an adversary who wants the same thing—or sometimes the opposite thing: Beekman also wants to be in the car. You have conflict as they battle it out, and you have a moment of utter darkness: when Dikidiki hits the wall. And you have resolution as we wait for Beekman to come out of the house with this coat. He’s won this round (again).
To be clear, this is a very difficult thing to do. I’ve twice workshopped an essay about my Grandmother, who passed away several years ago. At the time, I was conflicted about our lack of relationship and my culpability, and I tried writing through my feelings. At both workshops I felt like I was wrenching my still-beating heart out of my chest and displaying it on a table for everyone else to read, and both times the feedback has been something similar to “I feel like she’s holding back from the reader.” Will I get there eventually? Maybe, if I choose to keep pursuing it.
I also feel like I’ve matured a lot since then and have better perspective on the situation—more acceptance of how things were and less self-flaggelation over what I did or didn’t do. So maybe I’ve worked through my feelings and don’t need to finish the essay? I’m not sure.