A question of Voice

Funny Boy, by Shyam Selvadurai is a book about “growing up gay in Sri Lanka” (Kirkus Reviews) and for that I would love to love this book. Books that can take new information or a difficult topic and make it interesting and engaging to me as a reader are easily my favorite types of books. It is for those reasons that I do like this book. Before reading Funny Boy I probably couldn’t have found Sri Lanka on a map. I certainly had no understanding of its people, culture, or the violent tensions that have been tearing the country apart for a very long time. In terms of educating me about the setting, the people, and the culture of Sri Lanka, this book was extremely effective. 

The problem, for me, arises when confronting the rest of the book. Arjie is the main character, the “funny boy” who grows up in front of us and it is through his slow understanding of his own sexuality and his immersion into the tension filled adult world that we are introduced to all of those things. He is the medium through which the information in the book is presented and he is blindingly uninteresting.

One of the most important aspects the Main Character of a book should have is willful activity. In order to relate to a character, the audience needs to see in that person something they think they are. We, as humans, believe that we have wants and needs and that we are actively pursuing the things we want. Therefore, a main character should have distinct wants and needs and be actively pursuing them. For the most part Arjie doesn’t. Yes, he fights at the beginning to stay in the girls’ group, so that he can keep playing bride-bride, but after one serious confrontation about the issue he simply gives up. Later we see him make a decision and stand up for himself and his boyfriend by messing up the poetry reading in front of the school. But what does it get him? He does it to defend himself and his boyfriend against the principal but we never see if it works or not. Is Shehan saved? Does the Principal lose control of the school? There is no emotional pay-off for the reader in that conflict. Instead we are merely dumped into the next bit of plot, completely unconnected in almost every way from the previous issues. In a way just like Arjie is dragged along by other, far more interesting and willful characters, into their lives and their stories. In a way, it almost seems like this story would be more interesting with just about any of the supporting characters replacing Arjie as the main narrator. 

The other thing that bothered me about the book was its one-foot-in-each-world feeling, not about the conflicting emotions Arjie has, but the writing style. In a lot of ways, this books seems like it can’t decide if it’s supposed to be an adult novel or a YA novel. It has many of the criteria of YA lit, with the first person narrator, the teenage main character, and the coming of age issues, but it is written in the voice of an adult. It isn’t merely first person past tense, it is first person nostalgic, a look back at the narrator’s childhood. It puts a distance between the audience and the immediacy of what is happening that detracts from the action. 

That being said, the prose in this book is very pretty and, as I said, the book is very informative. But overall I would say that reading this book is like drinking a glass of apple juice with a layer of salt in the bottom. Everything tastes just a little bit off and every so often you get a really nasty mouthful. 

Works Cited:

Selvadurai, Shyam. Funny Boy. San Diego, CA: Harvest, 1994. Print.

What Are You Trying To Say?

INT. BRAIN – DAY

Unsure of how to approach the dense topic of Monster, SARAH, 24, English Major, turns to outside sources for input.

FRIEND 1 (V.O.)

Monster? Yeah, I’ve read it. I love that book, but…

FRIEND 2 (V.O.)

Oooh. That book was so good, but…

FRIEND 3 (V.O.)

For a kid’s book it was really thoughtful. I

loved reading it, but…

Friend after classmate after coworker,  I was shocked by the number of people who had read Monster, surprised to find that almost everyone loved it. Loved it, but…

But what? But I couldn’t understand the script stuff. But I read scripts all the time and I could barely get through this, it was so bad. But I don’t know if he did it! I could never figure it out! It sounds like two different issues, but they really amount to the same thing. What everyone was talking about are authorial choices of format. The issues presented to me by my audience are not really about the plot or the characters. They aren’t complaining about the dark themes in the novel. In fact, they greatly enjoyed and appreciated the social commentary that saturates Monster. The problems, instead, are about how Myers chose to package all of that information for consumption.

If ever there was a novel that begs for a discussion of format, it is Monster. Written in a strange mix of 1st and 3rd person, we are still only given one point of view. Steve’s. This is accomplished through the use of the screenplay format, with a majority of the story told as a script written by the main character. 

In the first section, on page 4, Steve says “I think to get used to this I will have to give up what I think is real and take up something else. I wish I could make sense of it.” (Myer 4) To do this, Steve begins writing down the events of his incarceration and trial as a screenplay.  That screenplay takes the place of the traditional narrative form and provides Steve, and subsequently the audience, with an emotional distance from the action. We are told what is happening and what people are feeling instead of being shown it, breaking the first rule of fiction writing. Yet, this is intentional and not the downfall of the script format. 

The problem has nothing to do with the choice of using a script as a literary tool, but rather the issues of translating a script onto a novel-sized page. The point of the script format, the way it works, is through the use of white space and sentence style. It is designed to allow the reader to read through it at a rapid pace, visualizing the scene as it progresses. Therefore, the first issue should be obvious. The amount of white space available on the pages of a novel is much less than the amount in a script, which is printed on standard 8.5” x 11” paper.  This cuts down on the readability. It takes the short paragraphs of action, description, and dialogue, and makes them narrower and longer, distorting the clear reading style of the screenplay. 

While this might not be irredeemable, Myers also chooses to include all kinds of camera shot information, which is not something normally placed in a Spec script. (A Spec script is the kind meant to be read by regular people and not professionals.) This adds additional blocks of text, packed with shorthand that is explained but isn’t necessarily something that is easy to read. Finally, Myers chooses to bold everything that isn’t dialogue, further thickening already dense blocks of text. 

These issues are especially present in the beginning and end of the book, during the set-up and the attorney speeches. Considering the feedback on the novel, these are not insurmountable issues. They don’t overpower the story itself, or the message. However, they do make the case that how you write, and the choices you make as an author will directly affect how the story is received.

Works Cited:

Myers, Walter Dean. Monster. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2004. Print.