High Five: Tania James

Tania Janes Discusses Five Things of Beauty

A thing of beauty: I remember this phrase from the best writing workshop I ever took, wherein each week, a different student had to bring in a paragraph to read aloud to the class, not from his or her own work, but from the work of a published writer. The only requirement was that the paragraph had to be "a thing of beauty."

There were many diverse offerings brought before us over the weeks—strange, plain, lyrical, harsh—and they could have crushed the spirit of a slightly frustrated student, who might have seen in them perfectly finished structures while she struggled along with the brick and mortar of her untitled, unlovable first drafts. But that cynicism would pass in an instant, because each thing of beauty also delivered a shot of adrenalin and hope. Each was an invitation to enter those perfect structures and spend time in the rooms.

Here I've tried to recall five things of beauty, some of which were introduced to me in that class, and despite the many times I've read and re-read the lines, they always compel me to pick up the entire book, and stay awhile.

I. LE MOT JUSTE BEAUTY: "The Wig" by Nathan Englander

Taking out a braid, Ruchama pulls her thumb across a blunt end, letting the tips fan back with natural spring. Like a paintbrush. Good and thick. She holds it up to the light, checking color...There are over one million shades of auburn, two million meanings for 'chestnut brown.' They now work in similes: 'Darker or lighter than pumpernickel bread?' 'Newsprint black? Or black like black beetles in black ink?'

As precise and perfect as the naming of wig colors is the language throughout this entire story, from Englander's collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. When I read Englander's work, I get the sense that each word has been considered, and then chosen. With that same linguistic rigor and care, he draws upon the voices of his characters, gently excavating their pains, their vulnerabilities, their vanities. And there's a sweet satisfaction in reading les mots justes all in a row, as with "black like black beetles in black ink." The rhythm, the acoustics, the voice all converge in a way that makes me pleasantly hungry for more.

II. NAUSEATING BEAUTY: Being Dead, by Jim Crace

Brace yourself. Here's a line describing the elongated moment when a woman's head has just been clubbed:

Her brain, once breached and ripped, was as pale and mushy as a honeycomb, a kilogram of dripping honeycomb. It was as if a honeycomb had been exposed below the thin bark of a log by someone with a trenching spade. Her honeycomb had hemorrhaged; its substance had been split.

There are few writers, aside from Jim Crace, who can bring both lyricism and wisdom to brain spillage. Beyond the level of language there's also a structural elegance to Being Dead, as the writing weaves backward and forward in time, retracing the murder, exploring the lives and memories of Celice and Joseph, the victims. Ultimately, Crace transcends the gore through language that gives the victims a kind of post-mortem grace. It's a relatively slim book that weighs heavily on the mind.

III. WEIRD BEAUTY: In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan

I was introduced to this book by a classmate who read aloud the following sentence:

Some of the bridges are made of wood, old and stained silver like rain, and some of the bridges are made of stone gathered from a great distance and built in the order of that distance, and some of the bridges are made of watermelon sugar. I like those bridges best.

Hearing those words, I had no idea what watermelon sugar was referring to exactly, but my mind kept muttering that phrase over and over, just for the music of those syllables. So I bought the book In Watermelon Sugar; it tells the story of a peaceful commune in which watermelon sugar is the base element of everything the commune members make and use, like the narrator’s shack (made from pine, watermelon sugar, and stones) or the lantern "that burns watermelontrout oil at night." The story of the commune provides an overall narrative spine, but the book is made up of short, discrete sections, each pearl-like and perfect. It's rare to find a book in which you can flip to any page and find pleasure, but with Brautigan, it happens again, again, again. (I'm alluding to one of the pearls that make up the book (of which I'm a particular fan) called "Margaret Again, Again, Again.")

IV. TORRENTIAL BEAUTY: Seize the Day by Saul Bellow

On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight, and sawdust footprints lay about the doorways of butcher shops and fruit stores. And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence—I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want.

I cannot count all the ways in which I love this novella, and this paragraph in particular; I'm taken with its lyricism, its images, its force, its evocation of the endless currents of life in which the protagonist, Tommy Wilhem, finds himself lost. In its entirety, this paragraph feels like a flying leap, an authorial attempt toward articulating the way he sees the world, which I think is incredibly hard to do without sacrificing the characters. In clumsier hands, such a leap would leave our guy Wilhelm behind. But somehow, Bellow's vision emerges from Wilhelm's perspective with seamless grace.

V. HUMBLE BEAUTY: "Mlle. Dias de Corta" by Mavis Gallant

You need not call to make an appointment. I prefer to live in the expectation of hearing the elevator stop at my floor and then your ring, and of having you tell me you have come home.

Maybe I should steer clear of superlatives, but this might be the most beautiful final line of a story that I've ever read (until I read more Gallant, that is).

It's a great feat of compassion that Gallant is somehow able to begin a story with a sour, slightly nasty older woman, and gradually, with a subtle hand, allow the reader to feel deeply for her. Here, it seems to me that the beauty is in the restraint, in the way that the language quietly and subtly reveals the deep stripe of loneliness running throughout the story, an emotion that could have been easily romanticized. (Little old lady, sitting alone, with only couch cushions to keep her company.) Such restraint gives the woman dignity. Also poignant is the way the story’s ending never quite ends, but instead hovers in a beautifully suspended moment of longing.