B e y o n d t h e B a s i c s STEP by Step

Soizick Meister The anatomy of a flashback Use it sparingly, but when you do, do it skillfully. Here’s how.

By Peter Selgin

e are all like mance. Without scenes to house them, across his bed to impress Daisy—that’s a Scheherazade’s our stories remain at best synoptic, at scene. Rose of Sharon breastfeeding the husband,” E.M. worst naked abstractions. They are left dying man at the close of The Grapes of Forster reminds us, out in the cold. Wrath—that’s a scene. What we remem- “in that we all like to Strung like beads along a thread of ber most in great stories are the scenes. know what happens causation, scenes add up to plot. There They are what Scheherazade spins next.” What happens are two methods of relating scenes, under threat of death. next in a story is called a scene. The summary being the narrative method, Narrative’s suitcases, scenes hold not Wword comes from the Latin “scena,” or scene the dramatic one. Summary is only action and dialogue—the prime stage, by way of the Greek word for a expedient, scene elaborate; summary elements of dramatic writing—but sum- temporary tent or shelter forming the tells, scene shows. Gatsby flinging his mary, description, background, stream background for a dramatic perfor- silk shirts “in many colored disarray” of consciousness—even other scenes, or

writermag.com • The Writer | 37 flashbacks. Dislodged from scene, even John Updike offers a take readers on a side trip to our most “vivid” descriptions go beg- masterful flashback— New York. The detour burns ging, while our characters wander the journeying through up 750 words (or roughly stage like actors in search of a play. Like six distinct layers of three pages) and tunnels gangrenous limbs, our narratives go time—in his early through no fewer than six cold, shrivel and die. When narrative novel The Centaur. distinct layers of time. detaches itself in this way from scene, Such long, complicated the result is called a digression: a passage tiple scenes can work, flashbacks are often called that snatches us so irrevocably out of a and not just well, but “portmanteau,” after those moment that, like lovers interrupted superbly. Why and Victorian suitcases of mid-coitus, we never return to it intact. how do they work? leather or cloth that car- A flashback is a digression that, if What keeps them from ried so much. But before skillfully done, works. But very often being digressive? To we get to the flashback, they don’t; they break the backs of the find out, let’s tour let’s dip into the main scenes they’re meant to ride on. If, after through one gorgeous scene itself, in which, despite their four pages chronicling the origins of the flashback, with how-to steps along the tardiness, Peter’s father picks up a hitch- gin blossoms on Aunt Stonemaiden’s way. Step 1 being: hiker. Space prevents my quoting nose, we’ve entirely forgotten her storm- Updike whole. Here’s my truncation: ing into the parlor with a meat cleaver Have a strong scene to depart to castrate her dissolute nephew, some- from. In his brilliant early novel “I was living with a guy up in Albany,” thing has gone wrong. Like the caboose The Centaur, John Updike inter- the hitchhiker said reluctantly. on a train, the flashback has come 1rupts a tense, carefully built-up scene in ... “A friend?” [my father] asked. uncoupled. It is no longer part of the which Peter, his adolescent narrator- “Yeah. Kinda.” scene, but a distraction from it. protagonist, is being driven to school on “What happened? He pull the old dou- Yet when handled expertly, even long an icy winter morning by his self-depre- ble-cross?” flashbacks holding not just one but mul- catory father (who teaches history) to In his delight the hitchhiker lurched forward behind me. “That’s right, buddy,” before and after he told my father. “That’s just what the f— —— sucker did. Sorry, boy.”

Flashback helps illuminate the past On behalf of his son, dad accepts the apology, adding that Peter “hears more Problem one-room buildings erected in the horrible stuff in a day than I have in a My short story “Boy-B” is about a parking lot. As the substitute took roll lifetime.” We are still in the main or “pri- man visiting his twin who has survived a Lloyd sat at my desk. When my name mary” scene. Updike has gone to great suicide attempt. The twist is that the was called, he got up, went to the win- pains to construct a tense situation in suicidal twin has always bullied and oth- dow, opened it and jumped out. The which the consequences of his characters’ erwise dominated the brother. I needed substitute was still recovering from tardiness are well established. With the a flashback to compress the twins’ past, this act of gross impertinence when reader’s involvement thus secure, Updike and to express the full dynamic of their she heard a knocking coming from has not only bought himself some narra- relationship in concise yet vivid terms. the supply closet. She opened the tive “slack,” he’s obliged to milk things a door and I calmly stepped out. She bit. Hence the hitchhiker, a “benevolent Solution ran off to get Mr. Cleary, the vice digression”—benevolent for the reader, The flashback I came up with begins principal, and we never saw her again. but not to poor Peter: after the narrator, a struggling painter, This story represents one of the has gone to sleep in his brother’s show- few moments when, instead of fight- ... I vividly resented that [my father] piece Victorian house, and ends as he ing each other, Lloyd and I pooled our should even speak of me to this man, that wakes up to the smell of bacon frying. resources to triumph over the outside he should dip the shadow of my personal- Here’s part of it. world. Otherwise we were by no ity into this reservoir of slime. That my means the Doublemint Twins. We did existence at one extremity should be tan- In sixth grade my brother and I not walk around in matching sweaters gent to Vermeer [Peter is smitten with this pulled the ol’ switcheroo. Mr. Barnes, with matching tennis rackets slung artist] and at the other to the hitchhiker my regular teacher, was sick that day, blithely over our shoulders. As far seemed an unendurable strain. and we had a new substitute. Due to back as I can remember we were overcrowding, class was held in a so- adversaries … Will the hitchhiker turn out to be called portable unit, one of a dozen —Peter Selgin truly evil? Will Peter and his father get to school on time? If not, will Peter be sus-

38 | The Writer • October 2006 pended? Will his father get fired? All this back. Same paragraph: Updike gives us to chew on. As if our w o r k o u t teeth aren’t busy enough, he tosses us a ... Up to this moment my father had failed flashback. But unlike dogs, readers are Write a scene of 500 to me. Throughout our trip, an overnight fussy: They won’t chase any bone. Our 1,000 words in which a character visit to his sister, he had been frightened flashbacks should have some meat on is going from Point A to Point B. He and frustrated. The city was bigger than them, and more: They should be earned. (or she) may be traveling on foot the kind he understood. The money in or by car, or by some other means. his pocket dwindled without our buying Make sure flashbacks are moti- Whatever the means or destina- anything. ... vated. Since long before Proust bit tion, there should be some urgency into that tea-soaked cookie, attached to the journey. Into this This brings us to Level IV, wherein the 2authors have used mnemonics—sensory scene, introduce a flashback of New York trip is first broadly summa- phenomenon that assist or help to assist about 250 words. The flashback rized. From there the focus tightens on memory—to motivate flashbacks. should be motivated by and should Peter’s devoutly wished-for encounter Rather than write (in essence), “For no relate thematically to the present with his two favorite Vermeers. good reason at all, Jack remembered the scene. For an extra challenge, time when ... ,” they use material within have the scene within the flashback ... That these paintings, which I had wor- the primary scene as kindling to fuel include some dialogue. shipped in reproduction, had a simple their flashbacks. Updike being Updike, —P.S. physical existence seemed a profound mys- he does so brilliantly: tery to me: to come within touching dis- tance of their surfaces, to see with my eyes But relief was approaching. ... We road we’re transported to Grand Central the truth of their color, the tracery of the passed a trailer truck laboring toward the Station and to what I’ll call “Level II” of cracks whereby time had inserted itself like crest so slowly its peeling paint seemed to Updike’s scene, “Level I” being the pri- a mystery within a mystery, would have have weathered in transit. Well back from mary ride-to-school scene in which the been for me to enter a Real Presence so the road, Rudy Essick’s great brown man- flashback is embedded. Note the sly ultimate I would not have been surprised sion sluggishly climbed through the insertion of that “had been,” the past to die in the encounter. downslipping trees. perfect tense, which tells us, lest there be any confusion, that we’ve dipped into Arguably we’ve descended to Level V, Here comes the flashback. Note how another layer of time. Updike having sketched a conjectural deftly Updike slips into it by means of scene where boy confronts Dutch Master. not one but two mnemonics, first a sign, When writing in past tense, to On this illusion the next short, blunt sen- then a smell. The best flashbacks are make it clear that you’re writing tence comes down like a sledgehammer: always motivated by sensory stimuli. a flashback, dip into the past 3perfect. Once having established the My father’s blundering blocked it. Coughdrop Hill took its name from its temporal shift, you can drop the perfect owner, whose coughdrops (“Sick? Suck an tense—as Updike does promptly. From If the rules of Fiction 101 say, “never Essick!”) were congealed by the million in here the flashback descends, elevator- put a flashback in a flashback,” Updike’s an Alton factory that flavored whole like, through layers of scene. The same hammer does a good job of smashing blocks of the city with the smell of men- paragraph continues: that, too. Having paid this hypothetical thol. They sold, in their little tangerine- visit to Vermeer’s masterpieces, we’re colored boxes, throughout the East; the ... In disbelief I bought a box. Sure enough, now reeled back to the hotel room one time in my life I had been to Manhat- on the back, beneath an imposing miniature where Peter’s been stuck the whole time. tan, I had been astonished to find, right in portrait of the factory, the fine print stated the throat of Paradise, on a counter in Made in Alton, Pa. And the box, opened, We never entered the museums; I never Grand Central Station, a homely ruddy released the chill, ectoplasmic smell of Bru- saw the paintings. Instead I saw the inside row of them. ... baker Street. The two cities of my life, the of my father’s sister’s hotel room [Level imaginary and the actual, were superim- VI]. ... Aunt Alma sipped a yellow drink From a strip of wintry Pennsylvania posed ... a hollow mile beneath the ceiling and dribbled the smoke of Kools from her that on an aqua sky displayed the constella- very thin red lips. She had white, white tions with sallow electric stars ... skin and her eyes were absolutely transpar- ent with intelligence. ... When handled expertly, even long The elevator has dropped to Level flashbacks holding not just one III, to a scene in which father waits as Though they belong to a flashback, but multiple scenes can work, and son buys cough drops in Grand Central the details here are as rich as can be; Station. A minor scene, true, but a nothing is spared. not just well, but superbly. scene, leading us deeper into the flash- Well, almost nothing.

writermag.com • The Writer | 39 ... They talked all evening of pranks and Now, with a new paragraph of but character or a relationship? Does it pro- crises in a vanished Passaic parsonage two sentences, the flashback screeches vide needed background? In the end, it whose very mention made me sick and to a halt, landing us back on Level I: comes down to what a story needs. giddy, as if I were suspended over a can- And what will keep King Schariar’s yon of time ... Instead of breaking, my father by some sword off our necks. # mistake plunged past the Olinger turnoff. I cried, “Hey!” Peter Selgin Summarize dialogue. Within a Peter Selgin of New York City has published many stories flashback, it’s best to avoid direct From here the primary scene takes and essays and an award-winning children’s book. His work dialogue in favor of summarized or over again and continues nine more is forthcoming in several anthologies, including Best Ameri- 4indirect dialogue. Dialogue broken into pages to its resolution. Updike knows he can Essays 2006. He is co-editor of Alimentum: The Literature paragraphs undermines not only a flash- has exhausted the good faith (read: ten- of Food and an instructor for the Gotham Writers’ Workshop back’s integrity but its humility, suggest- sion) accrued within the primary scene; and Montclair State University. ing that the flashback has staged a palace he’s milked it to the limit, and possibly coup and usurped the primary scene. beyond. Does he get away with it? I say r e s o u r c e s yes, but then I’ve read the scene in its ... During the day, Aunt Alma, here as an entirety and in its proper context; you out-of-town children’s clothes buyer, left us haven’t. That Updike writes some of the Those wishing to subject them- to ourselves. The strangers my father best prose around doesn’t hurt, either. selves to works that flout every single stopped on the street resisted entanglement rule I’ve set down with such piety may in his earnest, circular questioning. Keep flashbacks to one para- wish to dip into Julio Cortázar’s Hop- graph. Yet while in flashback even scotch, a novel consisting entirely of Here (still in the same paragraph) Mr. Updike doesn’t risk breaking flashbacks—or, if you prefer, flash-for- Updike switches gears again, backtrack- 5into full-blown dramatic scene. We wards, since the chapters may be read ing to the day that has led to this evening remain listeners, not spectators. Nor in any order. in the hotel. The elevator goes express, does he allow himself more than a single Likewise, in his novel Tristam ascending up through generalities— paragraph, however long. Shandy, Lawrence Stern makes mince- Which brings me to my final break- meat of chronological order, writing his Their rudeness and his ignorance humili- able rule, one that embraces nearly all preface halfway through his narrative ated me, and my irritation had been build- I’ve said. when the main characters are asleep. ing toward a tantrum that the cough drop Elsewhere, having asked to digress for dissolved. Within flashback, summarize, half an hour, he does so for five min- don’t dramatize. Once trans- utes longer, forcing him to accomplish —back to the scene in Grand Central ported via flashback into a new “in five minutes less than no time at all” Station. Did your ears pop? No wonder, 6scene containing action and dialogue, the all that his digression has left undone. since we’re suddenly back on Level II! reader typically either forgets the pri- You may also want to pick up mary scene or resents the “bait and James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, with I forgave him. In a temple of pale brown switch.” When flashbacks take over, it this warning: Since the novel has no marble I forgave him and wanted to thank sometimes indicates that our primary beginning or ending—or rather, since him for conceiving me to be born in a scene is in fact a framing device, a vessel the beginning is the ending and vice- county that could insert its candy into into which we’ve poured the story we versa—you may never put it down. the throat of Paradise ... and even now, really wanted to tell. Such framing For the less iconoclastic among you, two years later, whenever in our daily devices tend to be both awkward and for examples of extraordinary flash- journey we went up or down Coughdrop unnecessary, suggesting two remedies: a) backs I recommend Michael Ondaatje’s Hill, there was for me an undercurrent of get rid of the frame, or b) lose the paint- The English Patient, specifically the sec- New York and the constellations that ing and make the frame the subject. tions where the spy Caravaggio turns seemed to let us soar, free together of the up (though the novel as a whole is local earth. Avoid flashbacks—unless your infused with flashbacks). Then, of story demands them. Not to dis- course, there’s that early flashback in courage, I’ve saved this advice for Lolita, in which Humbert’s fixation with Ask: Does the flashback deepen our 7last. But the burden of our narratives— the ur-Lolita, Annabel, is recounted. and on Scheherazade’s head—is one of And no survey of flashbacks is com- understanding of a character or forward movement. By all means use plete without The Great Gatsby, which a relationship? Does it provide flashbacks, but for good reason: not be- holds at least two great ones, including needed background? In the end, it cause you want to use them, but because the one where we learn how Daisy and your story demands them. Ask: Does the Gatsby first met. comes down to what a story needs. flashback deepen our understanding of a

40 | The Writer • October 2006