Week 9: Linked vignettes or literary pointillism.

Many readers want every i dotted and every t crossed, and there is a place for that sort of writing. But a lot of nonfiction works on a different principle. It asks the reader to collaborate with the writer, to fill in some blanks. It might even leave the ending hanging on a certain note without offering the reader full closure or certainty.

It's not that the writer is lazy.

When the reader works in harness with the writer, the writing flows differently, often faster, often better. And if the reader understands a subtle hint and doesn't need coddling, he and the writer enter into a much deeper relationship. They are partners, not mere acquaintances. The reader becomes a little bit of a writer too, and both parties are winners.

So, for those readers hankering after total certainty on the page, this assignment may not be for them. Others can not only live with a bit of uncertainty but can actually find uncertainty a pleasant place to stop and ponder meaning.

So, now we come to linked vignettes or literary pointillism. Pointillism (point-tee-ism) in art is the technique of making a picture by using a million dabs of paint. Here's a famous sample.

In linked vignettes or literary pointillism, we have a zillion small, discrete facts and moments eventually revealing a full picture. Or a series of separate scenes or vignettes (you remember vignettes!)that nevertheless wind up telling a tale when looked at as a whole. Often the linkage or connection or transition between these scenes is simply dropped: no "So, the next day...." or "What happened next surprised everyone...." Instead, just bam, bam, bam.

Here's a sample of a piece offering a series of vignettes or bam bam bam moments that add up to a complete non-fiction piece.


In the parking lot after our workout at Champions. I open my car door. Instead of coming over to say goodby, she goes to her car, speaks over the roof of my car and over the roof of her car. She seems a long way off. "I went to the doctor yesterday. I have to go in today for more tests."
***
We're alone in the hot tub. She lets her legs slide over my mine. The bubble maker bounces her up and down, up and down.

In the sauna. She leans over, exposing most of her breasts over the bikini top. "Take a good look, buddy boy," she says. "Last chance."
***
In the hospital lobby. She sits down next to me, shakes her head. Gets out of her seat and climbs onto my lap. "Security," I say.

"Fuck 'em." she says, and she turns her face into my shoulder.

The hospital social worker asks about her family and as she names them, she begins crying.
***
The fifteen or twenty friends and relatives wait in one room. A few of us try to read newspapers. The patients go into a changing room. We are called out after a few minutes and there are the patients now in hospital johnnies. Each patient has a nurse escort him or her to a cot. Friends and relatives tag along behind. There are no windows here. 40 beds, perhaps, each holding someone who'll be operated on in the next few hours.

A doctor with a Russian accent appears and picks up her paperwork. She says, "I thought you'd never come."

The doctor raises his eyebrows. She says, "We have to stop meeting like this."

He gets it. "Ah, I will send the nurse away now! Just you and me, together at last."

She is laughing and then, without any transition, is crying.
***
I'm on Huntington Avenue, walking away from the hospitals. I look toward the Richardson House where I was born. I have never in my life been so glad to be outside, in the open air, and walking. At about the time her surgery is scheduled, I am sitting in Jake Wirth's ordering sauerbraten and beer. Another never: never has anything tasted so good. I am so glad to be alive. So ashamed. So glad.

Here's another series of linked vignettes:


There she was, 14 long years after her diagnosis. She had Lupus, which is much worse than a flower. It is one of the most miss diagnosed diseases. But not her, the doctors hit it right with her. Her cells were attacking her inside out; slowly, and then progressing to faster. The disease was able to strike the joints, kidneys, heart, lungs, brain, and skin, but it hit her joints and lungs. Her body had swelled, and she became very tired. Then she had to leave home.

Her swollen body laid in the white sheets, in and out of conciousness. The massive amounts of morphine made her sleepy; sleepy but not in pain. She would wake up and talk like everything was going to be alright; it wasnt.

Most of the family were there, not the grandchildren. Her body had attacked her to death at the young age of 56. She had so much more living to do, but, her body killed her. Not JUST her, but it killed her family too.

***
He asks the same questions, over and over again. He cant remember his grandson's name. He cant remember the year, or season. He has become such a burden on his family, he has to live in this place with others who cant remember. His family does come to visit, but he doesnt remember. They brought him roses, but he doesnt recognize the smell. He has pictures in his room, but cant recall the faces. His roomate has been the same for 6 months, his name is Ed. Two letters, yet his mind doest allow him to recollect. He opens the same door everyday wondering what is in there; a toliet and sink. His meals are the same time everyday; 8, 12, 4. He always asks. He was a capenter, but when he sees a picture of a hammer, he doesnt know what it is. He has a stuffed dog; he thinks it is real. He pats it and kisses it. His shoes have always been black; there is always a fight because 'his shoes have always been brown and those are not his shoes!'

Its getting worse for him. He says he is hungry, there is food in front of him, but he doesnt precieve it; he doesnt remember to pick up his fork and place it in his mouth. He is getting combative and abusive becuse his mind is now haywire. He is forgetting how to toliet, so now he lays in his own soil; and he has fogotten the smell. He has forgotten the call light to bring in a nurse. He is there, smelling and stinking, such a poor site, such a sad end.
***

She thanks the people looking down on her from above everyday. She knows it has been them all along. They are gone now, from this life, but havent completly forgot her. There is no other way he would have been brought to her. Everything changed after she laid eyes on him.

She was in a bad relationship at the time, full of lies, cheats, drugs, and incidences of abuse. Her family had dispised this man, but she didnt listen. Her grandmother even hated him on her death bed. Maybe thats the reason why her Gram brought this new one to her.

He showered her in kisses, roses, and loved to show her off; all things that she had never had. This wasnt a tough decision for her, but it was. She had know her boyfriend for ten years. Sucide became his motive to get her back. It was difficult, she kept with the sweet boy, and everything for her has been perfect since.

***

The funniest of funny, the most generous, and the most hardworking, gone. He was a lobsterfisherman, just finished hauling out his boat and all his gear that day.
His friend was home from the army, got him out of bed for a few drinks at the bar. A few turned into too many. He got dropped off, stummbled into his house for what his driver thought was going to be a good night's rest. She was wrong.
He lived the length of a football field away from the pier. After a few minutes inside its suspected, he wanted to take a ride to the pier; he had done it a thousand times before. He jumped into his red dodge and drove off. It was cold; a blanket of snow was covering the ground. His truck slipped, hit the cement barrier and bursted into flames. He was in there, and that was his last ride to the pier.

Copyright (c) 2006 by Meghan Ruhlin

Write on your own blog a theme incorporating linked vignettes or literary pointillism.

PS. 3/13/2009.

Still hazy on vignettes? I was talking to a student today about the difference between narrative and vignette and suggested that a short and nasty approach might be to write a story and then cut off the beginning and ending and that might yield a vignette.

You could start a story, 'Once upon a time,' and describe a prince, a princess, an evil spell turning the prince into a frog, a kiss from the princess, and...'They lived happily ever after.' That's a story or narrative.

Or you could just have a frog on a lily pad and a beautiful woman walking by stops, kneels, stretches herself across the stream toward the rock the frog sits on. She lowers her face, her lips toward the frog...lower, lower, and kisses the frog....

And that's where you stop. That's a vignette. Kinda leaves you there hanging, wondering, hoping, speculating, guessing, dreaming....