San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research Spring 2014 Mistakes Were Made Michael Paul Adams San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Adams, Michael Paul, "Mistakes Were Made" (2014). Master's Theses. 4408. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.esy8-uc4s https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/4408 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MISTAKES WERE MADE A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English and Comparative Literature San José State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts by Michael P. Adams May 2014 © 2014 Michael P. Adams ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled MISTAKES WERE MADE by Michael P. Adams APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY May 2014 Nicholas Taylor Department of English and Comparative Literature Barnaby Dallas Department of Radio, Television and Film Alan Soldofsky Department of English and Comparative Literature ABSTRACT MISTAKES WERE MADE by Michael P. Adams In Mistakes Were Made , Daniel Sorlin wants out of his troubled sixteen-year marriage, but his narcissism will not allow him to be the one to end it. Daniel proposes that he and his wife, Claire, engage in an open marriage. Daniel, an English professor who trades sexual favors for higher grades, has already been cheating on Claire for years, so the open marriage provides him with an excuse to stop feeling guilty for being a philanderer. Little does he know that Claire has fantasized about having an affair with one of their neighbors, an artist named Greg. Claire takes Daniel up on his offer, leading to an exploration of what happens to a relationship when the idea of fidelity is removed. The accidental death of Daniel and Claire’s three-year-old daughter, Ellie, contributes to their marital problems. Claire suffers from major depression, is institutionalized, and must essentially fend for herself while Daniel carries on with his affairs. When Claire starts seeing Greg, Daniel’s unexpected jealousy makes him wonder if their marriage might be worth saving after all, even as he starts dating one of his students, Shelley, exclusively. The novel shows how a series of unplanned events (Claire’s pregnancy, an early marriage, Daniel’s affairs, Ellie’s death) have made a once-promising relationship wither, leaving Daniel and Claire to figure out if their bond is strong enough to salvage what is broken. Trust and redemption form the basis for the novel, which also examines how much work people are willing to do to better themselves. DEDICATION For Cristina, Jefferson, Henry, and Claire v TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface…………………………………………………………………………………...vii Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………..xiv Chapter One……………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter Two……………………………………………………………………………...13 Chapter Three…………………………………………………………………………….22 Chapter Four……………………………………………………………………………..37 Chapter Five……………………………………………………………………………...54 Chapter Six……………………………………………………………………………….68 Chapter Seven……………………………………………………………………………85 Chapter Eight…………………………………………………………………………...104 Chapter Nine……………………………………………………………………………126 Chapter Ten……………………………………………………………………………..158 vi PREFACE Creative endeavors require a certain amount of influence and inspiration to help bring them to fruition. My thesis project, a novel entitled Mistakes Were Made , which details one couple’s attempt to either fix or destroy their relationship by engaging in an open marriage, is no exception. There have been many authors who have shaped my writing over the years, but three in particular proved useful as I worked on this manuscript. For his confident abilities with dialogue, I attempted to emulate television writer David E. Kelley. Ernest Hemingway’s economy of words motivated me as I tried to keep my descriptions sparse and vital. And novelist Jodi Picoult’s fragmented time structure helped me as I ventured on a project that would take my main characters from the present day back to the key moments that lead to their current situation. When done well, television can be as impactful as literature, and the medium has been a major influence on me from a young age. When I was 15, I was inspired to start writing after watching the series Picket Fences , created by David E. Kelley, who also wrote every episode of the show’s first season. During the summer of my sophomore year of high school, I began working on a novel with Kelley’s stylistic voice ringing in my ears. While that novel was unsuccessful on many levels (I was a teenager after all), Kelley’s words continue to spur me on to this day. Through dialogue, he takes important issues—the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, Native American rights, teenage sexuality, to name just a few—and presents them in ways that are not only entertaining but enlightening. In the episode called “Fetal Attraction,” Jimmy and Jill Brock, small town sheriff and doctor, respectively, examine their relationship after Jimmy catches Jill vii kissing an old flame who is in town to help Jill with a medical case. The following example shows how Kelley writes crisp, pointed, and meaningful dialogue. (It should be noted that the ellipses and underlines are not mine.) BROCK: I know you well enough to know you don’t kiss a man just because you find him attractive. There’s more to it. He’s staring straight into her. Daring her to be honest. A beat. Then— JILL: Sometimes… I feel very alone with you. (his stare says “go on”) My emotional needs are met by you. My sexual needs and mostly my intellectual needs. BROCK: Mostly? JILL: Part of who I am… is a doctor. My creative and intellectual… well, fulfillment… comes from medicine. And I can’t share that with you. I can’t come home at the end of a day and discuss the discovery of a new enzyme or… being with David made me realize how much I miss that. Brock just stares at her. JILL: (painful truth) I feel I sacrificed my professional potential… to come to this town. BROCK: Your choice. JILL: Subject to your influence. You were adamant about living in Rome [Wisconsin]. The truth is, Jimmy… you can max out here as town sheriff, I can’t as town doctor. I see in David what I could’ve been. And maybe I resent you for what I’m not (39-40). Kelley’s characters never shy away from difficult conversations. At certain points in this passage, Jill stumbles a bit as she tries to explain away her lapse in judgment. But the words she chooses are measured, direct, and powerful. She tells Jimmy exactly how she feels, prepared to deal with the consequences of her honesty. Kelley creates a more literary world than one might expect to find in a television show, where slates typically get washed clean at the end of every episode. In fact, Kelley re-ignites this argument in a second-season episode that comes a full year after the events in “Fetal Attraction” take place. Kelley uses his characters in a very novelistic way, showing that what happens in one episode will continue to come into play far down the line. viii In Mistakes Were Made , I model Kelley’s ability to pare dialogue down to its essence, particularly in exchanges between Daniel and Claire, whose damaged marriage could benefit from some frank communication. Dialogue is my favorite thing to write, and, like Kelley, I aim to conjure dialogue that propels the action forward while remaining natural and incisive. A moment in my novel that I hope serves as a good example of this is an early scene that puts Daniel and Claire at odds with each other in a restaurant, a demonstration that, for them, civility is hard to come by, even in a public venue. As Claire needles Daniel for an honest answer about the state of their relationship, Daniel finally erupts: “What do you want me to say, Claire?” He continued to soak up the water with his napkin. “That we’re a fucking joke? That we made the wrong choices? That we wasted our youth on each other? Is that what you want to hear? ‘Cause that’s how I feel most of the time.” The manager approached the table. “I’m sorry, folks, but if you can’t keep your voices down, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You’re distur—” “Fuck off,” Daniel said. “Both of you.” (31) Because my book has such a narrow scope, it is even more important for the characters’ interactions to feel personal and intimate. After years of watching David E. Kelley’s shows and seeing how his dialogue puts characters’ emotions at the fore, deepening their understanding of each other as well as the audience’s understanding of them, I hope that I have accomplished the same feat in Mistakes Were Made . Just as dialogue moves a story along at a faster clip, so does spare description. Long, narrative passages tend to weigh a story down, so I gravitate to the writing style of Ernest Hemingway, who can set the scene in just a few words. Because Hemingway’s descriptions are so frugal, the reader gets the sense that he chooses his words much more ix deliberately than a writer whose style contains paragraph upon paragraph of detailed description. Consider this example from “Cat in the Rain,” a story featured in Hemingway’s collection In Our Time , in which a woman reenters a hotel after going outside to rescue the titular kitty: As the American girl passed the office, the padrone bowed from his desk.