Subversive Lit on the Orient Express

Teachers tell us  we have to study the classics in order to understand literary forms.  For tragedy, we look at the works of Shakespeare and the Greeks; for comedy, we read Wilde and Shaw.  Fantasy readers get acquainted with Tolkein and SF fans get a background of Verne, Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke before moving on to the contemporary writers.   All of this sounds like a waste of time to the student who equates "classic" with "boring" and confuses "subversive literature" with subversive political groups.  The truth is that stories earn the "classic" distinction when they are so brilliant and memorable that they are enjoyed and understood by generations of people, and the purpose of subversive fiction is to persuade readers to rethink their assumptions.  Combine those two concepts and you'll find Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.  No "who-dun-it" has more twists in the tale.

A bit of background for this classic "closed door" mystery, for anyone who needs it.  The brilliant Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot is traveling from Istanbul to London on the fabulous Orient Express, a luxury passenger train service.  On the morning after the train is stalled by a snow drift, the passenger berthed next door to Poirot is found stabbed to death.   Poirot is asked by the train director he's traveling with to find the murderer before the local police arrive so the innocent passengers can complete their journey without further delay.    Poirot has to remove the few  legitimate clues from a stack of red herrings left behind to determine the improbable truth behind the murder.

Because the door of of the victim's berth's was locked from the inside and the berth's window is open, it looks like the perpetrator left the train after the crime.  The undisturbed snow around the train proves the murderer is still on board.   The passengers whose berths were in the same car as the victim are from various nations and a comparison of their statements shows almost all have alibis.  These factors would have the average reader making erroneous deductions or concluding the crime is "unsolvable". That conclusion (and every expectation) is incorrect.

When most people learn someone has been killed, they automatically sympathize with the deceased.  When they hear the victim died after enduring a dozen stab wounds, the sympathy factor increases.  Poirot subverts that assumption immediately when he identifies the murdered man as a kidnapper responsible for multiple deaths and the ruin of several lives.  The kidnapper escaped justice through legal technicalities and lived under an assumed name on money he extorted from parents.  (Much of Murder on the Orient Express was influenced by the kidnapping and death of Charles Lindbergh's child, including the suicide of the baby's nurse.)  

  

An ordinary reader would look at a train car full of suspects, from different nations and backgrounds, and see a car full of strangers, some of whom should be cleared as suspects.  Poirot upends this vision by seeing the same car full of people but never assumes this diverse group are all strangers.  Instead he asks himself the question "Where else would one find such a diverse collection of people?"  The answer to that question, and the identity of the victim drive Poirot to the solution and a decision on what to tell government authorities, as this assumption is subverted as well.

1rst UK edition

More than eighty years have passed since Poirot made his first steps onto the pages of Murder on the Orient Express.  Since then, the story's been printed in at least seven editions and been through an untold number of printings.  (Amazon offers it in 180 separate formats!) The story's been adapted into a radio program, a video game,  two theatrical movies, a TV film and there's another film adaptation in the works.  It's been parodied and referred to so often that people with no interest in mysteries or Agatha Christie recognize the title and know the story packs a wallop.  Those who have read it understand the appeal: Christie's mystery undercuts every expectation we have and the solution makes us glad we were wrong.   It's a classic mystery and tale of subversion.

The Structure of a Story

People who read often get overwhelmed when they start to think about writing.   A complete book is the result of such a long, massive effort that most would-be writers get discouraged and quit long before they do a lot of sustained writing.  I understand that.  I never knew how or why successful authors developed the story-telling tempo that could pull me so completely into a book until one of my English professors gave me the low-down on pitch points and pinch points.  These are the spots in the plot that pull a story along and by using these as plot structure (not unlike poles in a circus tent) a writer can drape the line of whatever narrative he or she is writing and get the story-flow right.  Let me explain what they are.

Pitch points are the points in the story where circumstances cause the main character to change his or her usual pattern of responses which alters his or her ultimate destiny.  Pitch points come (roughly) at the quarter point, half-way mark and three-quarter point of the story.  Pinch points are when the protagonist (or the audience) gets reminded about how difficult it will be for the hero to prevail.  Pinch points occur at about the 3/8 ths and 5/8ths of the story.  There's one more point I'll talk about in a minute but first I want to give you an image and an example of the story tent:

I'll admit I'm no artist but you can see the idea of where the points occur. Now let's compare this tent to the plot of a rather famous book I and one of my nephews both love, The Hobbit.  At twenty-five percent of the way into the story, Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves are about to face some nasty trolls.  Until the point, Bilbo has a passenger in his own adventure, swept along by dwarves and a wizard.  Here is the first time he acts.  Instead of crawling back to his companions with the warning "Trolls right in front of us, we should detour" the hobbit decides to live up to title of "burglar" he's been given and tries to pick a pocket.  His idea doesn't work out but he acts and that's important.  At the half-way point, the dwarves are captured by giant spiders in the middle of Mirkwood Forest and Bilbo uses his courage and wits to rescue his friends.   BIG step.  Now we're at the three-quarter point and where's our Mr. Baggins?  Gone down a long scary tunnel, to parlay with a dragon, all by his lonesome.  In each incident, he does something he never would have dreamed of doing when the story began.  Now let's talk pinch points, shall we?

Pinch points are when our hero is at his lowest.  The Hobbit's first pinch point is in the beginning of Chapter Five.  Bilbo's alone, in the dark, in a place he's never seen before and he doesn't know the way out.  Dwarves and wizard are all gone and there's no one to rescue him.  Remember, this is before Bilbo had enough courage to rescue his friends.  This is the point where he must rescue himself and he has no idea on how to do that.  It's a short little spot but it's bad enough to pinch.

The second spot is a bit more elusive but it's still there, with Bilbo astride a floating barrel on the river leading out of Mirkwood.  Anyone else would be thrilled to be away from the forest and free but here is where Bilbo gets his first sight of their ultimate destination, The Lonely Mountain, and it seems to be frowning at him.  All the previous adventures fall back into memory when Bilbo sees his "Big Bad" from a distance.  It's a reminder of how far he still has to go.

You might think that's all there is to story structure but I've saved a key point for last.   Take a look at the new story graph.

See that purple addition after the third pitch point?   That's the eighty percent mark and the point of no return.  At this spot, something happens that makes the rest of the story a race to the climax.  In the final Harry Potter book, it's when Voldemort realizes Harry's been deliberately destroying his Horcruxes.  In To Kill a Mockingbird, it's when Jem and Scout walk to the Halloween pageant by themselves and in The Hobbit, it's when Bilbo picks up the Arkenstone.  The Arkenstone is the heart of The Lonely Mountain's treasure and it's the only piece Thorin won't part with.  By taking it, Bilbo sets up a conflict that will harden Thorin's heart and help bring on the Battle of the Five Armies.  Once this happens, the rest is inevitable.

So how standardized is the formula?  It's talked about in writing classes and it's a good way to edit a story into shape.  I understand professional screenplays are actually calculated down to the page so pitch and pinch points can hit at the right places.  Pull out your favorite movie or book and calculate where the story is by looking at the percentages.  This story structure works.

So now you know the secret of story points: the pitch, the pinch and the one-of-no-return.  Is this cool or what?

The Education of an Educator

Summer is complete again, for all intents and purposes, and school is back in session.  People return to class schedules and assignments, semester projects and extracurricular activities and since school is such an important part of our lives, it's not surprising that it serves as the setting for many books.  However,no story captured the American teacher's perspective of that universe quite like Up the Down Staircase.  This "education of an educator" is more than fifty years old but in terms of what a teacher faces, it's right on the mark.

Most employees have one impossible party to please (retail clerks must please the customers; professional people must please their clients; government pleases itself.) but first-year teacher, Sylvia Barrett, is at the mercy of everyone: there's the MIA Principal who pontificates via memo but wields the power to end her career; the petty tyrant in administration who dispense policies by the metric ton, supplies with an eye-dropper and no mercy whatsoever; the janitor who responds to every request for maintenance with the reply "nobody's down here" and the students, all-knowing, all needy and mostly adverse to the concept of education. Sylvia's opportunities to teach must be sandwiched between episodes of classroom umpiring and responding to directives like this:

TO: ALL TEACHERS

Polio Consent slips are due in Health Office before 3 P.M. today. - School Nurse

Ridiculous memo aside (who would consent to Polio?) the School Nurse is one of the frustrated good in this book, a health-care professional who may not render the aid the students need and she's qualified to give  because the School Board insists "a school nurse may not touch an injured student or administer treatment in any form".  Instead, the nurse is limited to completing health care forms and offering cups of tea to students who need so much more from her.  Her cup of tea are a ludicrous offering until you realize it's the only help she's allowed to give.  If this sounds too outrageous to be fiction, there's a reason why.

The novel's author, Bel Kaufman knew all about this impossible world.  As the immigrant daughter of Russian Jews (her grandfather was the brilliant Sholom Aleichem) she learned to speak English at twelve  when she was put into a class of American first-graders.  She crammed 16 grades of education into the next 11 years, and earned a B. A. from Hunter College and a Masters in Literature from Columbia.  Nevertheless, she wasn't allowed to be a "real" teacher for years.  The Educational Board in New York City that awarded teaching licenses questioned her ability to interpret poetry (Ms. Kaufman won this battle when she submitted a letter from the poet, verifying her interpretation was correct) and her accent during the Oral Examination portion of the of the tests. The Board refused to issue her a teaching license, although they still hired her to teach.

Kaufman at her desk

At that time, unlicensed teachers could be used for temporary assignments  and Bel worked in the system as a "permanent substitute" meaning she did the same classroom work as a tenured instructor (and more non-teaching duties) for lower wages in "less-advantaged" public schools.  Kaufman taught at the "challenging" inner-city schools, and, once licensed, in the city schools where educators pray they'll find work. (They say she became the model for the English Instructor in the movie "Fame".)  The public schools with their ridiculous directives and mini-fiefdoms (imagine a librarian who denies everyone access to the books) good and bad teachers and unforgettable students became grist for her novel composed of "found" material: bureaucratic directives, trashed essay drafts and notes from a teacher's suggestion box.  It's a brilliant format for storytelling.

After Up The Down Staircase spent more than a year on the best-seller's list and was adapted into a movie and a play, Bel became a "teacher of teachers" by speaking at education conferences, but she never completely left the field of education.  At the age of 100, she was still teaching, by then at her alma mater, Hunter College.

The science of education has evolved since Bel's time but the life of a teacher has not.   Any new instructor will find inspiring colleagues and educators unworthy of the title hiding in the faculty lounge as well as underachieving, troubled students and apple-polishers in every classroom.  If the front office contains a visionary, diligent headmaster, there's bound to be a back-biting administrative type who prefers appearances to content  and bedevils the faculty with inane announcements and insane policies.  Our new teacher will bring his or her own problems, talents and skills to the mix and the school year will roll on but, with luck, most of the students will learn.  Despite all the policies, shortages and uninspired teaching, the students will learn and grow and when they leave, others will take their place.  A few  may even decide to come back as teachers themselves. The process is heartbreaking and sweet and as inevitable as the month of September.

The "Off Da Shelf" Book Nerd

This is how book friendships start: Two people meet in line at the bookstore or at some author's appearance or on-line a book-friendly website and within twenty minutes they are best friends, comparing notes about favorite stories and characters like they've known each other for ages.  Paperbacks and contact info are traded and they walk off together like the last scene in Casablanca, saying "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."  Last December I met Mandy Shunnarah, storyteller, book-nut and bloggster extraordinaire (http://www.offthebeatenshelf.com/) and we've been friends ever since.  Mandy's devotion to the printed word embraces all forms.  Her website and social media group (Off Da Beaten Shelf) gives a contemporary update to the old-school book discussion group while she's works for her Masters in Library Science with a specialization in Archivist work.  The gal is in love with words.   I thought I'd introduce Mandy and get some background of this past and future "Book-Nerd."

Me: How did your reader’s journey start? 

MS: Until I came along, my grandmother was really the only reader in the family. She loves Maeve Binchy with an undying passion and reads at least a book a week, yet somehow the reading gene didn't get passed to my mom. When I was born, my grandmother decided she was going to make me a reader come hell or high water. She started reading to me so early that actually I don't remember learning how to read. From my earliest memories I've just always been able to read. I wish I could remember more about that process of letters becoming words and words becoming sentences, but I'm also thankful that I can't remember those dark days before I was able to practice my favorite hobby.

Me: What were your favorite books as a child? Do you still re-read any of them now?

MS: I remember being a big fan of the children's book The Napping House by Audrey Wood and thinking it was the most hilarious story. I remember trying to recreate the tower of napping people and pets with my family, but this resulted in waking them up in the middle of the night, so they weren't too pleased. Because I picked up reading so quickly and loved it so much, my grandmother kind of skipped from young children's books to the young adult classics. For example, I remember reading Black Beauty a couple of times when I was 7 and 8. I don't think I read an actual modern YA book until I was 11. I haven't re-read any of the books I liked as a kid other than Harry Potter and I'm not sure I want to. I'm afraid I won't like them as much as an adult and it'll make the memory of reading them as a kid less dear to me.

Me: I think you may have coined the phrase “book-nerd.” For you, is reading closer to an addiction or a religion?

MS: I wish I'd coined book nerd! I borrowed it from some anonymous, enterprising young book lover before me.

Me: So, is reading closer to an addiction or a religion for you?

MS: For me, reading is an addiction, a religion, and the love of my life all paradoxically rolled into one. Reading is the one thing I've loved wholeheartedly throughout my entire life. You grow up, interests change, people change, the types of boys you fall for change, your taste in clothes changes--but through all the changes I've gone through in 25 years, reading has remained consistent and my love of books has only grown. Reading is the one thing I can't NOT do. Like, if I was told reading was going to be outlawed tomorrow and all the books would be burned, I don't think I'd live for much longer after that because I'd die of grief. To people who don't understand what that's like, they'd probably think I must live this horribly lonely life or the people in my life are insufficient, but that's not it at all. You can have a wonderful, fulfilling life and still feel the call to worship a higher power, right? For me, that higher power is literature. When I'm reading beautiful sentences and all these complex emotions I've had for years have been beautifully articulated in a way that brings a tear to my eye, that's a spiritual experience for me. That's when I feel the closest to the universe and humanity. Being able to spin stories out of mere words and create entire worlds formed in the imagination is the triumph of human achievement in my book.

Mandy, The Story Girl

Me: The electronic format has turned the world of books upside down, from publishing to libraries and book clubs. How do you see this playing out? Any guesses about the future of libraries, etc.?

MS: I think the advent of electronic reading and digital audio-books has been the best thing for readers since we started binding books instead of reading scrolls. While I can sympathize with people who are staunchly anti e-reader to a degree, I think their fears about the downfall of society and literature at the hands of technology are misguided. The fact is that having additional choices of reading format doesn't erase or negate the value of the pre- existing reading format. If you look at the numbers (which I do, intermittently), print books and eBooks are selling at about the same rate, so there are clearly people who still prefer print and the publishing market isn't ignoring that. And as long as the people who love print keep buying books, the market won't ever ignore them. If a reader is worried about the downfall of reading because of e-reading, tell them to speak with their dollars. I would be much more concerned if, 15 years ago when there were only print books, if publishers said, "Well, guys, it looks like the readers aren't reading anymore, so let's just call it quits." But that's not what happened. They said, "Hey, I bet people would read more if we give them more ways to do that," and that's what we're seeing now. More books and audio-books are being published now than ever before in human history. All the reading materials that have come out in the last 10 years thanks to the capabilities the internet provides would eclipse every reading material that's ever been made from all other eras combined. That doesn't sound like the downfall of society to me. All that to say, if reading materials aren't going anywhere, I don't think publishing and libraries will either. They just may have to do things differently and try new things. For example, a lot of libraries are partnered with OverDrive, so their patrons can get eBooks and e-audio-books. Libraries are also renting out pre-filled e-readers and increasing their offerings via electronic database, so doing research is much easier. And libraries buy all these materials, so libraries are helping to keep the publishers in business. In short, the reading world isn't ending and the kids are alright.

Me: A joyous part of literature comes from the joy of reading aloud. Do you have any favorites or memories of books being read out loud?

MS: Since I took to reading so quickly, I really only have one memory of being read aloud to after age 7. My family was headed to Gatlinburg for a long weekend during fall break one year when I was in high school. Over the break, we'd been instructed to read Of Mice and Men, and although it's a short book, I didn't particularly want to spend my vacation doing schoolwork. This had nothing to do with the fact that it was assigned reading because I tended to really like the books I was assigned, but rather because my family rarely went on vacation, so I wanted to savor it. The problem was that I get abysmally car sick and the only time I would've had to read without infringing upon my vacation was on the drive to and from Gatlinburg. So my grandmother, who does not get car sick, read Of Mice and Men to us the whole way there and back. It was so nice being read aloud to and just getting to relax. In truth, my grandmother reading me Of Mice and Men was my first audiobook!

Me: What are your favorite book related memories?

MS: I remember going to the library for the first time when I was 9 and being overcome with the sense of magic and endless possibilities on every shelf. I remember learning about the Civil Rights Movement by reading The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 because my suburban, predominantly white public middle and high school didn't think that was an important topic to cover.

I remember reading Stargirl when I was 10 and realizing that it's totally okay to be the weird kid.

I remember having my Harry Potter books confiscated by my fourth grade teacher and elementary school principal because I went to a private, fundamentalist Baptist school where they thought Harry Potter was of the devil. I also remember me AND my mother ripping into them for taking my books away, so I got them back within a few days.

I remember all the evenings and weekends I spent at home reading because my over-protective mother wouldn't let me have a normal social life--one of the side effects of being the only child of a single mother.

I remember the time my grandmother gave me $200 for my 15th birthday with the directive "Go buy some books."

I remember a high school teacher shouting at me for reading Twilight because I finished my work so fast that she didn't actually believe I'd done the work. I gave her the finger behind her back because she called it trashy reading.

I remember reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower in high school and feeling like someone understood all the feral teenager feelings I was having.

I remember being inexorably depressed in college during the semesters when my English professors didn't assign novels I ended up loving because it felt like I hadn't really read at all. And when you're taking 5 classes at 3 credit hours each and working 25 hours a week, you don't have much time for pleasure reading, unfortunately.

But I also remember the semesters when my English professors assigned books I did end up loving and having that wonderful feeling of not being able to wait until I could do my homework.

I remember reading The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in the college library and crying until my mascara ran down my face in the library lobby. Someone nodded knowingly and passed me a box of tissues.

I remember turning down no less than 3 friends' invitations to fun Friday night plans so I could read The Time Traveler's Wife. I adore my friends, but I made the right decision.

I've lived a thousand lives through books and I've learned something from every one of them.

Me: Imagine your literary godmother has just granted you this wish: you can have supper with five of your favorite literary characters or their creators. Tell me, who’s coming to dinner?

MS: Ooooh, this is a tough one! I would say...

1) Gabriel Garcia Marquez because he's my favorite author and I've read more books by him than anyone else.

2) Hermione Granger because she's my fictional twin sister.

3) Lydia Netzer, the author of Shine Shine Shine and How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky,
because she's just so quirky, funny, and smart all wrapped up in one. I think we'd be best friends.

4) Oscar Wilde. No explanation necessary.

5) Toni Morrison because she cuts open my heart and stuffs all sorts of emotions in just reading her work, so I can't imagine what she'd do in person.

...and if any of those folks were otherwise occupied I'd add Harper Lee and Shakespeare as backups. You could say I've got a few questions for them that I need clarification on.!



Thank you Mandy for your contributions to readers everywhere!