Narrative Technique
Saturday, August 30th, 2008 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniYesterday was as bad a day of perfesser-herding as I've had at the day-job, surpassing my previous benchmark, last fall. That one took place against the back drop of a Full Departmental Move-In, and Supervising the Unpacking,too, to give you some measure of Sheer Hellishness that was yesterday.
Arriving home by way of the CVS, where the pharmacy was out of my drugs (sigh), and the post office, where my Abney Park CDs were waiting for me (yes!), I found that I Had No Brain left to deal wtih any of the SRM Office Stuff, and certainly not for writing. I therefore stretched out on the couch and listened to From Dreams or Angels, until Steve announced that SRM was closed for the day, and the two of us viewed the latest in from Netflix.
I had a good time with "Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill" (yes, I'm coming to it late; this is why I have a Netflix account; to view all the cool films I've missed), but it got me to thinking, about being a "lesbian drag queen" less than about the architecture of narrative.
In "Dress to Kill," the ...story our narrator tells is interesting because, though it seems to wander, it is in fact built in a tight spiral. Several touch-points are planted early -- Ciao!, the president of Burundi, how planting flags widen empires, cousins marrying is bad, Nazis -- and the narration touches upon them with precision as it seemingly freewheels through a survey of European history, a synopsis of "The Great Escape", the difficulty of making monkeys do as they're told in desperate situations, the invention of the Heimlich Manuever, the building of Stonehenge, the naming of Engelbert Humperdink, and an encapsulation of "Speed" in French.
What I wonder is, if you went back and saw the show again the next night, would the monologue contained within the spiral have changed? That is, is the Whole Thing memorized and told out in exact order, show after show, or if only those key points of structure are immutable. I'm thinking that the narration does change from show to show -- at one point Eddie Izzard delivers a joke, the audience laughs, and he says, "That's such a crap joke. Some nights, I don't even say it."
I'm also interested in the idea of how much variation in the overall narrative you could have, given the same -- eight? dozen? -- touchstones that form the spiral.
Arriving home by way of the CVS, where the pharmacy was out of my drugs (sigh), and the post office, where my Abney Park CDs were waiting for me (yes!), I found that I Had No Brain left to deal wtih any of the SRM Office Stuff, and certainly not for writing. I therefore stretched out on the couch and listened to From Dreams or Angels, until Steve announced that SRM was closed for the day, and the two of us viewed the latest in from Netflix.
I had a good time with "Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill" (yes, I'm coming to it late; this is why I have a Netflix account; to view all the cool films I've missed), but it got me to thinking, about being a "lesbian drag queen" less than about the architecture of narrative.
In "Dress to Kill," the ...story our narrator tells is interesting because, though it seems to wander, it is in fact built in a tight spiral. Several touch-points are planted early -- Ciao!, the president of Burundi, how planting flags widen empires, cousins marrying is bad, Nazis -- and the narration touches upon them with precision as it seemingly freewheels through a survey of European history, a synopsis of "The Great Escape", the difficulty of making monkeys do as they're told in desperate situations, the invention of the Heimlich Manuever, the building of Stonehenge, the naming of Engelbert Humperdink, and an encapsulation of "Speed" in French.
What I wonder is, if you went back and saw the show again the next night, would the monologue contained within the spiral have changed? That is, is the Whole Thing memorized and told out in exact order, show after show, or if only those key points of structure are immutable. I'm thinking that the narration does change from show to show -- at one point Eddie Izzard delivers a joke, the audience laughs, and he says, "That's such a crap joke. Some nights, I don't even say it."
I'm also interested in the idea of how much variation in the overall narrative you could have, given the same -- eight? dozen? -- touchstones that form the spiral.
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Waah I can answer bits of that
Date: 2008-08-30 08:47 pm (UTC)I came across his six live DVD collections after my eye got better: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eddie-Izzard-Unrepeatable-Definite-Glorious/dp/B000J3EG4E/
..and sat down to actually watch the shows. And for example the part about the Speed in French isn't on the CD version! There are actually three shows I like much better on CD, they were obviously taped on different days.
For example Unrepeatable is according to Eddie on the DVD in the middle of the run, the CD has the last show. But the main checkpoints in the flow remain the same.
He seems to keep doing it if current reviews are any indication. Teaching dyslexic kids myself (well and non-dyslexic ones, too) I am soooooooo amazed at his erudition.
http://bostonist.com/2008/04/29/review_eddie_izzard_stripped.php
http://www.youtube.com/results.php?search_query=Eddie+Izzard+Stripped
no subject
Date: 2008-08-31 03:30 am (UTC)To broaden the subject matter a little bit - also in Washington DC there is a play called Shear Madness. It's a murder mystery set in a hair salon. The show has been running for at least fifteen years. Some of the lines are the same, and the plot is of course the same, but the dialog has migrated and metamorphosed over time to accommodate technological changes as well as each actor's particular spin on a character. So while the outline and some of the jokes are the same, the variation over time has been quite broad.
I can't expound further, though. My brain has spun down and it's bedtime now.
russian editions
Date: 2008-08-31 09:21 am (UTC)Covers:
http://fantlab.ru/edition18952
http://fantlab.ru/edition24446
Russian publisher wrote, that "Tomorrow Log" is a beginning of saga, but I can't find another books of it. Do you plan to write seсond book or it was mistake of publisher?
Re: russian editions
Date: 2008-08-31 12:38 pm (UTC)I'm the other author, so I'll answer this if I can.
The original publisher (Meisha Merlin) sold the rights to two books in the series to other publishers at a time when only one book existed. We gave them an outline and sample chapter for the second book, waiting for an advance so that we could start writing the novel. The advance never arrived, and the book was never written. In the meantime, (since we write for our living) we have moved on to other projects. The second book may never be written; if it is it is surely well down on the list of projects we'll start in the next few years.
Re: russian editions
Date: 2008-08-31 02:14 pm (UTC)Eddie's Approach to Stand-up
Date: 2008-09-01 03:22 am (UTC)CJ
no subject
Date: 2008-09-01 12:02 pm (UTC)So I'm certain each performance must be different. But I'm so GLAD you have seen this one, so that if I ask you if you have got a flag....? You'll know why. You mentioned most of my favorite bits - yay!
Duainfey review in Shelfari
Date: 2008-09-01 04:26 pm (UTC)“Interesting characters and flowing writing as I'd expect from Lee and Miller, but Duainfey is rather darker than the Liaden novels, and the subject matter sits somewhere between high fantasy and bodice-ripper. This is clearly the start of a series, and I'm hoping the heroine will have a happier time of it in the next book!”
from: http://www.shelfari.com/books/3930542/Duainfey