Misdirected Messages as a theme in Connie Willis

[pegkerr]

Okay, I'm on a Connie Willis binge. I had held off reading her for a long time out of sheer superstitious fear, because my agent once made the mistake of remarking that my writing reminded him of hers. But I finally just read (for the first time) The Doomsday Book and Lincoln's Dreams. I have read some of her short stories--"The Last of the Winnebagos" and "At the Rialto" in particular spring to mind. (It turns out that my uneasiness was needless. Whatever it was that my agent saw in similarity between her work and mine is perfectly opaque to me.)

I'll review these books in greater detail in my book list at the end of the month. I want to mull them over a bit first. But was struck me most on first impression was that I could certainly see that it was the author of "At the Rialto" who wrote The Doomsday Book, particularly in the modern era section.

The other was to marvel at how she keeps using as a plot device again and again the idea of a message being imperfectly conveyed. The message is muddled, or maddeningly repeated in all sorts of reiterations, and the listener is left wondering what it all means. I was struck by how often in those works the protagonist was listening to answering machine messages, furious that he'd missed the call he wanted, or ducking somebody's calls that he wanted to avoid. Including, oddly enough, in Oxford in 2058--she needs to use this as a plot device so much that she does not take cell phones into account at all. Much of the conversation with secondary characters takes place because messages are being passed on--or the secondary character is explaining why the protagonist cannot speak with the person he desperately needs to see.

Discuss, if you like.

Edited to add: Okay, now that I think about it, the similarities between The Doomsday Book and The Wild Swans are certainly there. Plague, and double time alternating chapter structure. Duh.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Huh. I'll have to re-read Doomsday Book, which I haven't read since about 1994. Do you suppose the cellphone thing is because they weren't nearly so ubiquitous in 1993, when the book was published?

[splagxna.livejournal.com]

I adore Connie Willis. And I know what you mean about feeling similarities between her works; there's a certain 'voice' that comes through.

I would be interested to hear your take on Bellwether - and what makes it a science fiction novel.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I have a cell phone, as do most of my friends, and I still miss calls (even accidentally when I've got my cellphone in my pocket, which still impresses me so far as my utter obliviousness to the rest of the world) and get other people's voice mail all the time.

In both of those cases, I'd assume it was product of the time, but she does use the missed/mangled message other places for the same result as well--I'm remembering a part of Bellwether (which you simply *must* read, and at least twice, as the second reading is needed to appreciate all that she did that you didn't pay attention to the first time through) where the main character gets a cell phone call that cuts out before the message is conveyed properly.

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

I absolutely love Bellwether. And a number of her short stories. :>

[ajodasso.livejournal.com]

Her use of the illness lapsing in and out on Badri is brilliant, I agree: it's a catch in the throat that just won't quit, and I remember it driving me absolutely mad the first time I read it. It's wickedly effective.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

When I read Doomsday Book, I caught the same thing. It might be a factor of when the book was written (it was first published in '92) but it definitely catches the reader as unusual now.

The mixed-communications theme is also prevalent in Bellwether and To Say Nothing of the Dog (humorously) and Passage (humorously and somberly). (I highly recommend all three.) The more recent books are less technologically impaired. ;)

Bellwether, a romantic comedy, is more about the miscommunication of the heart and soul, and about beginnings. To Say Nothing... is in the same world as Doomsday Book, but with themes similar to Bellwether. It's a wonderful read, especially if you're fond of Sayers and all that. ;)

Passage focuses on both external miscommunications (people ignore messages, avoid beepers, misunderstand each other, etc.) and internal miscommunications -- one character has Alzheimer's, for example; another character is in a coma. And ... oh, I can't really say more because it would give the plot away, but there's a general running theme about communication between body and mind. Passage will amaze you -- it takes some of the themes from Lincoln's Dreams (which I read after P) and goes even deeper, explores them more thoroughly.

If I had to pinpoint a similarity between your work and Willis's (keeping in mind I've only read Wild Swans), I'd say it's that you both deeply involve the reader in your characters' worlds, and aren't afraid of the emotional impact of that involvement. I'd call it brave writing, because you aren't afraid to explore sorrow and pain and anger in a very direct and plainspoken way. (says she who sobbed through the end of Wild Swans)

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

"The Sidon and the Mirror" is one of the trickiest and creepiest stories I've ever read. The working out of the plot is just brilliant. I say this, and no more, in case you haven't read it but have it lying around (it's in Fire Watch).

Generally I love her serious stuff and tire of her humor, though god knows she's funnier than 98% of what passes for humor in the field (juvenile puns and heavyhanded satire, mostly -- though she's done her share of the latter as well, unfortunately). When she's dark, she's unflinching.

[rusty76.livejournal.com]

Have you read _Passage_ ? It deals with missed and mis-communication as well, as the primary plot, and it's emotionally a tremendously wrenching story.

Perhaps it's the feeling of having the *right* ending - not necessarily the *happy* ending - that seems similar?

[wintercreek]

I also adore Connie Willis and am delighted that you're reading her!

Another theme I've found is that of scientific principles as applied to human relationships. Bellweather and some of the short stories (I can't remember titles at the moment!) spring to mind for this.

Along the imperfect-message-plot-device direction, I'd like to strongly recommend Passage, one of her most recent novels.

From the same setting as Doomsday Book there is also To Say Nothing of the Dog, the first Connie Willis book I read and still one of my favorites. Can't wait to hear your thoughts on all these ... I hope you won't mind a sudden influx of comments from me on this subject!

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I vividly remember the first time I ran across the idea of a cell phone in an SF novel. Not a skiffy device like a Star Trek communicator, or a Dick Tracy radio wrist watch, but an actual personal telephone just for one person. It was George Alec Effinger's When Gravity Fails, published in January 1987, and I distinctly remember thinking, carrying a phone, so you can never get away from it? Weird.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

It's the little things that are the hardest to predict about the future. Everyone knew that the Internet would revolutionize communications, for example, but no one predicted eBay.

B

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

Okay, another author gets added to the list of People I Have To Read Real Soon Now.

In the Strib, this weeks "Dilbert", so far, have been on the theme of messed up communication.

And Mercury went retrograde yesterday.

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

I will read Impossible Things over and over. I'm on my third copy, since the others keep wearing out.

I think her theme is more than just mistaken messages. I think it's simple mistake. How many times do we hear those answering machine messages because someone decided to not pick up the phone? Or was out of the house on some random whim?

And Doomsday Book was all about mistake. The numbers were wrong. Something was wrong. It was all human error. The Last Winnebago was all about mistakes and hubris. And Even the Queen, to me, is more about how we don't hear one another when we talk than it is about Womens Issues.

I think that's why I like her. She doesn't rely on technology or villany or etc. They're there. They're present. But the root of the story and the reason it all becomes interesting and worth telling is because someone made a mistake.

Lincoln's Dreams... "I have picked up a nail". And so on.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how I still feel about cell phones! :)

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

It IS a bit odd that, according to Willis, the technology in 2058 still leads to message snafus. She must not read much SF; my husband's always reading whatever Greg Bear has put out most recently, and I think one thing he mentioned after reading a Bear book (which gives him nightmares, but he keeps reading anyway) was implants in our brains to handle what cell phones do now. Not liking the idea myself.

We're not at the brain-implant stage yet, however, and it is true that, even now that I have a cell phone, I miss calls. I cannot hear the damn thing when I am outdoors AT ALL. It's just too noisy in the city. If I lived in the country I might be able to hear it, but city traffic drowns everything out. (And one time when I was aware of it vibrating in my handbag while I was on the bus I answered it and discovered that I couldn't hear what the caller was saying over the racket of the bus engine.) You can also miss calls when you're already on the phone, when you're out of the signal area and when you've turned the phone off to view a film or for some other reason.

As for similarities between Swans and Doomsday (which I've not read), I'm also using an alternating chapter structure for Animal Control, but it wasn't until about six months after I read your book that I thought about that "similarity." Your book and my work-in-progress aren't really similar. (For one thing, you didn't write about people bitten by werewolves.) You were telling parallel stories with protagonists whose names were deliberately similar that took place in very different times; I'm using the odd-numbered chapters for the backstory to the even-numbered chapters, which I think is actually more similar to what Louis Sachar did with Holes. (His weren't alternating chapters, just short backstory chapters slipped in wherever he wanted the information to be communicated.) Although my backstory is taking place in another time, it's not too far off the main story, only about twelve years earlier. (Some of Sachar's backstory was many decades earlier than his main story, but some of it went back much further than that.) And while both of my stories have protagonists bitten by werewolves, the circumstances are drastically different. (It's not even immediately apparent that the backstory chapters are serving that purpose.)

I'm fairly certain that other authors have used this structure and for your agent to say your books are similar based purely on this and one theme (plague) doesn't show a very deep analysis of either book, IMO. It's no wonder you were originally mystified by his saying there was a similarity; you understandably probably looked at the actual WRITING.

[akamarykate.livejournal.com]

I thought my day was going to end on a sour note, and then you bring the Willis! Yay! And thank you.

I had my moment (which lasted about a month) of, "Shoot, she already wrote my novel, and did it far better than I ever could," with Doomsday Book, but I got over it, mostly because I love that book (the Black Plague, yay!), and re-read it every year around Christmas. As others have said, Passages is all about misdirected messages, in a way that will mess with your heart as well as your head. (Plus, those lost messages were more a part of the plot than the plot device they were in DB.) I recommend Passages more highly than I can coherently say. I have most of her other books, but I'm parceling them out slowly. I don't want to be done with everything and left waiting for more--I'm that way about Patricia McKillip, too.

I don't know which similarities your agent meant, but I can tell you that when I read The Wild Swans it did indeed slot in with the Willis books I've read--but not because of structural similarities. You both genuinely care about your characters, but in an unflinching way--you're not going to sugarcoat their fates or smooth the way for them, and you manage to find something beautiful and true in even the darkest situations. There's a very small group of my favorite books in which that compassion and humanity comes through--you, Connie Willis, Neverwhere, The Bean Trees, To Kill a Mockingbird...nothing to do with the content or even the genre. Everything to do with what is, for me, emotional truth.

*pedant*

[shusu.livejournal.com]

She does use a cell phone in Bellwether. To create miscommunication. *g*

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

When I was in New York visiting friends, actually a year ago this week, one of them recommended that I read To Say Nothing of the Dog as my starter book, my entrance into the world of sci-fi/fantasy, since I have been in many ways resistant of it. I wound up getting Passage instead. There are a lot of things that I had issues with when I read it, but there are passages and strong images from that book that haunt me even now. And I think that you would like it a lot actually--I can see the similarities in your writing styles and thematic material. You should definitely check it out. :)

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

<>i>carrying a phone, so you can never get away from it? Weird.

Why I do not have a cell phone and plan not ever to have one, nor a beeper, or one of those portable instant messenger thingies. Electronic leashes, all of them.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

TAG! I'm it.

you must read Passage.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

my agent once made the mistake of remarking that my writing reminded him of hers

Hunh. Even after your pointing out the similarity between The Doomsday Book and The Wild Swans, I think that's more a sort of accidental plot coincidence -- the two of you certainly do different things with it -- and stylistically I find the two of you quite different. (I can't imagine Willis writing the fairy-tale sections of TWS, frex.) You're both v emotionally engaging writers, which is maybe what he meant -- creating v vivid characters the reader cares about.

The Doomsday Book and Lincoln's Dreams

Lincoln's Dreams is really something -- that may be my personal favorite of all her novels. It's so short, yet contains so much, and it's SO well-written it makes my teeth hurt, and it just....it doesn't read like a first novel at all, that's all I'll say. I actually liked Doomsday Book less than the short story which inspired it, "Fire Watch," which I wept over, although DB is indeed quite good.

it was the author of "At the Rialto" who wrote The Doomsday Book, particularly in the modern era section.

Oh yeah, she's got a really unmistakeable voice and a sort of v modern sensibility, I think -- her voice is so distinctive sometimes I get distracted from the story. But it's v good writing.

The other was to marvel at how she keeps using as a plot device again and again the idea of a message being imperfectly conveyed. The message is muddled, or maddeningly repeated in all sorts of reiterations, and the listener is left wondering what it all means.

OK, you have to go out, and get Passage, like, n o w. That's the culmination of all the mixed-up messages themes in her work and it brings them to this huge conclusion that really takes your breath away when you read it. It's got about 4-5 different levels of meaning in that novel itself and it's just beautiful. I myself thought the book could've used a little bit of editing -- it's v long and the plots get maybe a little overinvolved -- but it's stunning. It's ALL about the missed message thing.

I didn't read Bellweather, but I did read Remake, which I liked quite a bit -- for me there's quite a bit of difference between Early Willis Novels and Later Willis Novels. The early ones are all trimmed-down and fast-moving and often spin round a central conceit -- the later ones are much more expansive, take a lot more time setting things up and have several intricate interlayered plots. I'm always v interested to see what she'll do next....

[ambar.livejournal.com]

While I enjoy reading Willis' work, I often find her comedy frustrating, because she achieves the effect by cranking up the pressure on her characters (who are otherwise presented as intelligent) to get them to do stupid (and therefore funny) things. The misdirected messages are just one of the ways she works this out. I see enough stupid in my daily life; in a novel I'm reading for pleasure, it's more frustrating than funny.

I have particular difficulty with Lincoln's Dreams, because the behavior of the erstwhile villain just doesn't seem to justify the amount of terror and paranoia expended by the viewpoint character.

I am fondest of To Say Nothing of the Dog and Passages, albeit for entirely different reasons.

Connie Willis--I am a "fangirl," I suppose

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

I ran across this thread and had to chime in to tell y'all how much I enjoyed your remarks. I had somehow never really identified the recurring theme of miscommunication, although much of Bellwether is hilarious because what Person One says is not at all what Person Two hears or gets out of the transaction (and because Flip is so MUCH like the people I've worked with at large corporations.) But now that you bring it up, yes, I can see the overall themes that pop up again and again! I think Willis is underrated by the "mainstream" types and I expect her to become a firm "mainstream" novelist soon, if she hasn't already escaped the SF/F label with her part-romance novels (such as Bellwether, actually).

I don't see Willis always making her smart characters do dumb things, but rather I see her finding their weaknesses and Achilles heels and exploiting them. For example, my husband is rational until you mention the name of one of the Presidential candidates, and after that mention, you might as well stand far away while he rants on. And my aunt has a "thing" about people who don't care for Texas roadhouse/Western swing music. (Don't go there with her.) These people are otherwise intelligent, but when you get them into particular situations, you can predict that those hot buttons that you pressed are going to make them "stooopid" until it wears off. It's a somewhat more sophisticated brand of humor, and it's tough to pull off, but I believe Willis usually succeeds at it.

Someone said: "her voice is so distinctive sometimes I get distracted from the story." Yes, perhaps . . . but that (for me) is a real plus, even perhaps the main attraction I have for some authors. I find that I don't really READ for story (or PLOT, that bummer) so much as I read for voice and a tour of another person's mind and experiences. This explains why I can enjoy a book greatly and then pass it along to hubby and have him say, "Nothing is happening! What is all this thinking? Why don't they just come out and SAY what they MEAN?" and so forth. You also can't really ruin a film or book for me by telling me "spoilers"; since I'm not primarily reading for a surprise in the story, this usually just whets my appetite for the actual book. It's only disappointing when you make the book or film sound TRES neat, and then I get into it and it turns out your explanation was SO much better and more entertaining (sometimes because of your hand gestures and doing the "voices" for it, I'll admit.) I believe this stems from early childhood, when Mother was unable to provide new books for me to read daily, so she insisted that I re-read the ones I had and shut up about it . . . except that was really frustrating, because I could soon quote the books and was memorizing them and couldn't enjoy them . . . and when I complained to her again, she told me to forget the books so I could enjoy rereading them, and to read for other reasons, or to just go outside and play with the other kids while she took a headache pill. So I somehow can forget the book while remembering it in vague outlines, unless I "try" to remember it because I really want to. This sounds very esoteric, and perhaps it is. Perhaps what it reveals is that I am an extremely self-focused, self-aware, self-centered navel gazer. *sigh* Which probably leads back to why I have such a loud, distinctive internal monologue and writing voice.

And I always pick up on cool quotations from people with great "voices."

(I'll have to pick up your Wild Swans if it's at all like Willis!)

I'm also going to refer to this post in my next LJ post, if that's OK.