Where You Will End Up, #1-3 /P

Part One

I'm afraid to read this. Really – I'm trembling in my… bare feet? Yeah. It's long. You have moderators critiquing it. And you *are* a moderator. All that together equals one terrified JFW1415.

But you asked for a critique, and I shall give you one. I don't know if it will be any good, but I can try? And if I ramble about stupid stuff, ignore me. I tend to be a little… eccentric in my critiques.

So, hopefully I will help, and hopefully these long paragraphs don't murder me before I post.

Nit-Picks

My poetry received responses, usually rejections, with notes dashed across the page, or atop a line: "searing but unfocused," "radiant if schizophrenic," "apocalyptic without an apocalypse."

Pretty good start, but a bit too rambly and cut up. I'd skip the comma between 'page' and 'or' to avoid this. Also, shouldn't it be 'receives?' The tense feels a little odd here, but I'm pretty sure that's right… Anyways, you have my attention. Continue.

Thankfully, I was reborn into this as well: a would-be world where threats hold as much if not more weight than actions, where words bear the responsibility of meaning, where language is not just a medium but a message as well.

I'd ditch the comma after 'thankfully.' Also, what was the point of that colon? It seemed to slow the piece down, turn it into a list unnecessarily. I'd reword to avoid it.

My body knows all this, too.

I’d ditch the comma – it slows us down too much

I prefer Beckett's response: No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Italicize or use apostrophes – I had to search for the ending.

It's advice some people should take more time to consider: after all, [s]a [/s]we only know a thing works when it fails.

I am a temporary interruption of service, a broken phone line that stretches to connect here to there.

I'm pretty sure this is your first 'I' in this paragraph, and that bugs me. I had completely forgotten about the narrator, and then BAM! You're back.

Thankfully the entire twenty-first century is filled with ghosts like me.

I think it flows better with the previous sentence when you ditch 'thankfully.

It was actually this morning that I picked up the phone before it ought to ring, which I should have known meant something bad.

I cheated. I read Snoink's review, looked up a different meaning for 'ought,' and understood this. A bit confusing.

Maybe if I believed in myself more, I would fling myself less to the moment and concern myself less with untoward activities like dialectics.

Skip the comma. And what's with the repetition of 'myself?' It doesn't sound particularly pretty.

What they sought to see in the darkness of my bedroom, I'll never know.

I'd ditch that comma – it slows us down too much.

[Perhaps I should have believed in signs].

Hmm… Since you are speaking of signs again, I go back to that phone call. But that was a girl speaking – where'd this guy come from?

It said, "Mother of God, how the street lamp faintly flickered!" and I thought of him.

The 'it said' really pulled the quote down – it made it un-dramatic and out of place.

And then I thought of myself, and how without him, I would never see the same again.

Ditch the comma after 'him.'

Reader, you must know that what follows [s]follows [/s]only out of fear.

Ditch the 'reader' – it's redundant and annoying when you just started another like that.

I wish the events that followed were only a fiction.

I don't like the 'a' in there, but I suppose it works.

Overall Comments

I am going to give you the stupid critique now, okay?

I was very confused. I know you're incorporating poetry into this though, so that's fine. But the action bothered me. Apparently some phone rang – what else? You sprinkled in notes about that phone call, but I kept forgetting about it. You can't ramble for ages, give me a fact, ramble, fact, etc. Us readers are forgetful. (In short, remind us of the action a bit more, or ditch it altogether.)

And I don't see a point yet, but it's only the first part, so I'm assuming this will be changed.

Things To Look Out For:

- Saying 'though' too much – it really slows the piece.

- Too many commas! Read it out loud, and really pause at every one. Then read it without the comma. Which sounds better?

- I guess it might work both ways, but I've always learned the words 'something' and 'everything' as one word. You split them (twice for 'something,' once for 'everything.')

- Paragraph length. Personally, I hate trudging through something that long, but that's personal taste. The part I'm commenting on is the structure. They're all the *same*! Nearly every paragraph is the same length. How boring is that? It's the same as sentences – throw in some short ones amidst your long ones. (Clicking Print Preview lets you see this problem much easier than scrolling down the page.)

- I know nothing about [ and ] so I didn't comment on them. It doesn't mean they're good or bad – it just means that you chose a stupid critiquer.

- Tenses! I already see this in the next section. It seems you can't decide. You have both of these in your rambles:

My body knows all this, too.
[...]
Maybe if I believed in myself more, I would fling myself less to the moment and concern myself less with untoward activities like dialectics.

Which tense do you want? Are the rambles past, the action present? The other way around? You must decide.

Part Two

I prefer to leave the loss unnamed; by which I mean, or, rather, I prefer to leave him unnamed—once you die, you should not have a name.

The 'I mean, or, rather, I' has *way* too many commas. Fix this. Also, you have so many different punctuation marks! Anyway to split them up a bit? Yes, dashes and semi-colons split up your sentence, but it still feels run-on.

This is what I mean when I say that that the three of us were each suffering the violence of form. It was mostly our own, and, like the violence of all forms, it was a violence bred of absence. What was four became three. The violence was thus a specter that exacted its revenge in the brief, hollow space between our words. When asked how many would be sitting with us tonight, we would catch ourselves mid-sentence saying four and correct to three.

I'm… beginning to get it? This is the amount of rambling I understand. I know that one of their friends died. I know he tries to forget him, but they all miss him. I now can figure out that the girl is another friend, but they drifted apart, and that the boy was the third. This is what a stupid reader can understand.

In the aftermath, I refused to remove him from my phonebook, my email, my picture frames.

Ditch the first comma

"Are you OK?" one of them—who I recognized as Tyler several seconds after his voice had died—asked. I broke my stare at the plate in front of me and looked up at him.

Either let us be aware that he's with others a bit more clearly (I thought the whole saying four then changing to three was rambles, stuff that happened in the past) or don't give us this much at once. Don't let us see the plate yet – only let us hear the voice. Slowly bring us out of the rambles.

I didn't need food which would only pass through me like religion.

Maybe 'I didn't need food – it would only pass through me like religion.' The 'food which' sounded odd.

I picked up my glass of water and fished the lime from its bowels before taking a sip.

This just seems like you added it as a second thought. There's nothing leading up to it.

"Are you sure you're OK?" Tyler asks again. His eyes move over my body as though something foreign has inhabited my skin. It isn't non-recognition; it's a recognition of form and only form, not of function. I nodded again, clearing my throat this time as though that explained something significant about my behavior, and noticed Marie's disconcerted, silent expression. She looked away before I could understand her reaction.

Pick a tense.

"I think love is THE abstract emotion. It's the one that abstracts everything the most," Marie was saying quietly. It fascinated me that in a place filled with such noise, being quiet actually made you louder than the others. Perhaps it was the difference in the form of the sound: on the one hand, static, and on the other, a voice, an articulation, which could thus cut through the white noise in the same way an electronic voice phenomena device could pick up the voice of a ghost. In the same way a dog can be trained to find a small child by smell—the eyes are unnecessary, what must be trusted is the invisible. On the other [s]other [/s]hand, which also holds my Bible, perhaps I heard her because her voice was forever scratched into my eardrum. Perhaps, if I were to stand outside on a still night, I could hear her laughing.

*This* is a wonderful rant. I'm not startled by the next dialogue because, while you did rant, you never went completely off subject. *Claps* But why is 'the' capitalized?

"Hey.[s],[/s]" [s]h[/s]His voice is unsteady.[s],[/s] "[s]c[/s]Can you come with me for a moment?"

He is still talking, but my mind gets hooked to the last sentence: We want you to come back.

Again, you need italics or apostrophes or something.

I reach up to my face and feel water against my skin, which I hadn't noticed before.

The comma feels odd, and I think it would be more powerful if you split that up into two sentences.

"Stop stop stop stop, stop." He grabs my arm forcefully, sternly.

Only one arm? Odd position, no? Also, why do you suddenly put a comma in the dialogue?

Overall Comments

I'm going to make you look stupid, okay? Go up to your room. Bring this with you. Act it out.

You have action now, but it's unnatural. Grabbing one arm? Shuffling your feet so you turn in a whole circle? Smirking sadly? Random sniffling that doesn't fit the dialogue?

That was my main problem here – the action. It was easier to understand, but now I see that you may have switched tenses on purpose? I'm not sure – I'm still confused.

This is way too big a difference from the first one, though. Find a happy medium, or you will confuse us all.

Anyways, look over my notes, ignore me when I'm being stupid, and PM me or post in my thread when you get more up.

(This is why I don't critique poetry. You mixed it in, and look at the lame critique I came up with?)

PM me for anything.

~JFW1415

P.S. The first part ended leaving me so confused I didn't want me. (Which led to a good hour haunting people in chat.) The second part left me confused enough to want to read more.

P.P.S. I just *had* to post this when my Internet was being stupid and slow, didn't I?

P.P.P.S. You have some *amazing* points in here.

On to part II - I'm keeping the paragraph format

I. First sentence:

I had never truly lost anyone close before.

Second sentence:

As if any man can control the forms of geography.

The topic you're talking about is incredibly emotional, so the contrast is stark when discussed in such official terms. This secular writing style is getting tiresome, especially when sentimental themes are discussed. However intentional it may be, it's not interesting when it doesn't come out of the paper and connect to you. Your prose is just sitting there.

The opening has nothing to do with the beginning, and it's not a united thought. It's a baffling stream of metaphors upon metaphors which dilutes the impact of every sentence.

2.
You have a habit of tripping us up, only to bring us back to the writing with a strong paragraph. This is one of the strongest, although I think you could split it into two paragraphs, the first ending with "being a connected number" and the second proceeding on from there. I think the "disconnected number" bit deserves to stand on it's own. The haiku metaphor is confusing, either explain it to me, or don't use metaphor for the sake of metaphor.

3.
What?

4.
Waste of a paragraph. Advance the story and stop delaying.

5.

She looked away before I could understand her reaction.

This line seemed terribly pedestrian and out of place.

6.

If the prose is thicker than the plot, that isn't my fault—this is to bear witness to a society loosed upon the constellation of itself, which can only happen in the present tense.

I disagree. It's your duty to make it interesting to read, or else people won't.

Nothing meaningful has happened yet.

7.
Something is finally happening, though more reminiscent of a Tom Stoppard "drama" then a story. This paragraph can be halved in length, your point is proven after "ghost". Cut all after that.

8, 9, & 10.
Is the narrator speaking? This really unclear. Then John Ashberry (whoever the hell he is) says something. Then Tyler and Marie forget about the deep philosopical discussion she herself started and look meaningfully at each other. At least something is happening.

11.
Good, the description is refreshing. Don't say "but it didn't work" until it doesn't work. The character can't know. Perhaps he'll say "it won't work".

12, 13 & 14.
These are good too. We do get a real sense for the first time that these musings are occurring in space and time, not just in an instantaneous brain-wave.

15.

It's just that sometimes the prose gets thicker than the plot, and then I'm drowning, but I keep trying to fill things in, to bring this together because I know somebody is watching me. I feel them reading this and whether they acknowledge it or not, I'm them, too."

When I get lines like this, it makes me think this whole thing is a fantastic joke. You sound just like me, right now. Do intend for this to ever be read? Follow the advice in quotes.

The rest.

eyes full of bewilderment

Please, you can do better than that.

I want the mourning to stop. I want the morning to stop.

It looks great written, but if it's spoken (like your story, remember) than it's useless.

Tyler smirks

Sure that's the right word?

The last line is pointless.

***

The first couple of paragraphs can go straight into the recycling.
Also, I thought there were only three at the table but we have:
Narrator
Marie
Tyler
John Ashberry
So which one died? Are we not supposed to know? Is there any point?

I think the if the first part was Jack Kerouac, then this paragraph is Tom Stoppard. Tom is an very good playwright, but every once in a while, he writes something like Coast of Utopia which ought to pay it's audience, because only the hardy few would brave it for three successive nights. When Tom Stoppard writes dialogue, it sounds like Blaaaaah blah blahaaaahh blaaaaaah blaaaaaaah blaaah. Part two is similar.

For every line of dialogue, we get an earful on the nature of the universe. For every trivial observation, we get an treatise on meaning of life. We're two paragraphs in and we have little to no plot, characterization for only one character, and a lot of nothing.

OKAY, so I only have a third of the crit, because the silly site ate it and I'm sick of typing it again, and it's midnight, and I have had NO sleep, middle of exam WHY AM I WRITING THIS NOW IN THE FIRST PLACE. Mutcha-futcha-puppet-show-curse-words...

But it is to be continued, when I'm less or more enraged.

***

"My poetry received responses, usually rejections, with notes dashed across the page, or atop a line: "searing but unfocused," "radiant if schizophrenic," "apocalyptic without an apocalypse."

First line pedantic as I am, I'd like to see how this would feel with a more concrete opening image. I like the line, and I'm not looking for bumper sticker characterization, but the younglings are frightened by the abstract and polysyllabic, you have to lure them into it with candy, cursing, maybe some boobs. No, really, "searing but unfocused", "radient if schitzophrenic", "apocalyptic without an apocalypse", isolated, they're genius, but in their first line they're a briar thicket. Refine. Heat the branding iron of rage, allow the apathy to breathe with the turpentine. Frankly, I do think it would wound your tone tearing it, but as it still feels like your groping up your persona sometimes, it may help make him more solid if you have to defend him with rapiers at dawn. 'Dashed' and 'atop'? Lightfooted that, immediately distinctive style.

" The comments were in general a note that I should concentrate and redouble my efforts at cohesion, and then resubmit them for another read a few months later. I tried to assimilate them in my practice—the procedure of erecting white space in mourning over the black specks along its flanks in such a way that the mourning weren't also a celebration—but nothing seemed to work."

Truly delicious imagery, schmick verisimilitude, you have the visuals but would a tactile sense kill you? Good use of lingual palate in orientation and establishing the protagonist.
Dashing dashes, they allow light into your phrases. 'errecting white space in mourning over the black..." is vivid. The persona's logic and language is reminiscent of Svevo's "La conscienza di Zeno", favouring character nuance over pandering to the audience.

"It was like a dialectic of light and dark, so that as soon as I moved towards one, I sacrificed the other. It was like trying to reign back the temporary lapses in synaptic transmission in favor of some other kind of lapsing. Probably the kind of lapsing that produces a soundproof narrative instead of a handful of phrases that echo against the words of others before effervescing into thin air."

Go for the full pretense. "...dialectic of chiaroscuro." Then involve the light and dark. You know you want to. I know, I go on about the opening lines and then push art vocab on you, but the little children aren't going to know dialectic in that context anyway, you may as well have some fun. "..some other kind of lapsing. Probably the kind of lapsing.." is awful awful phrasing, Awful. It's laboured and cumbersome and I hate it, I hate it so much I have to stay up all night because there are just not enough hours in the day to hate it so. Smooth it with your tongue. Why the sonic metaphors? They work well enough, although effervescing into thin air could be sured up, maybe with onomatopaeia to bend the sonic with the textural quality.

"But then, the air is never really thin here. Some times it's so thick I can feel myself choking on the dehumidified voices from the past: Hegel, Lorca, Auden, Eliot. Some times it's so thick with the sweat of my body and my own idle warmth. Most times it rains before I die, and I can feel the voices and sweat and humidity being pummeled to the soft ground. I am even deaf to those voices that cry out. I thank the liquid bullets that drop from the atmosphere and dissolve upon impact for that. I thank the foundation that supports the storm clouds and purports to bring them here. Thank you, Cherokees. Thank you, Paparuda and Perperuna. Thanks to you, I have only died twice in my life to be reborn as a poet, as this poet. A would-be poet, to be exact. Like our would-be war and our would-be marriages and our would-be families. Thankfully, I was reborn into this as well: a would-be world where threats hold as much if not more weight than actions, where words bear the responsibility of meaning, where language is not just a medium but a message as well."

And when you least suspect it, BAM! Setting! Or so I suspected. Lorca, I can understand, but what do the Brit and the Germans have that allows them to inhabit such heat? Amalgamate the sweat and the heat, one force, with the dry dead voices. 'Most times it rains before I die' is downright South American magic realist, 'pummeled' is a vivid verb of which I approve. "I am even deaf to those voices that cry out"- You're groping. The liquid bullets are tollorable. The "foundation" is an interesting little tangent. The shape of this piece is illusive. I like the transition between the high poetics back to the omphakepsis, "A would-be poet, to be exact". The musing beyond it, of the "would-be"s is eloquent if meandering. The language is an important point, can give that more room.

"My body knows all this, too. It realizes it is both an artifice for life and life itself, and the autonomy scares it. It wishes to be an aphorism or a baobab with a little prince to pull it by the roots. I prefer Beckett's response: No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. It's advice some people should take more time to consider: after all, a we only know a thing works when it fails."

Yay for personified body, looking forward to its development within the plot. The body is good, it reminds me of this ancient housewife's cookbook, where it was talking about how you should memorize the cuts of meat by imagining you're a nihilistic cow. I know, I know, no tangents. Bless your socks for referencing "The Little Prince". Yay for Beckett. Give thy references roots and thy roots rain. "Some people" sounds rather directed, and tell me you weren't going to start singing Cyndy Lauper.... "Paved Paradise.." never mind. It's a good sentiment. Sentiments, though, so far it's all sentiment, it's all musing. Give us something small in the way of physicality, even if it is the continuing of the thread of the sweat.

"Like our hearts. Like our bodies"

What's that inherant? It's a bird, it's a plain, it's SUPERFLUOUS! Don't spell it out when it's already there, or it reeks of pontification.

"Nobody thinks they can love until they can't, when their heart is broken, and then they realize all their lives they've been loving and loving and loving this world and their families and the black night sky like a jeweler's velvet cloth."

I understand the passion of persona, but aphorism and then comparing the night sky to a 'jeweler's velvet cloth', do you really want me to dignify that?

"The seconds before and behind us; the seconds we take after dinner to get seconds."

From any other pen, cheap pun. In this, the rich, bitter-sweet mire of dark molasses, vaguely reminiscent of "the Body Artist"'s enveloping introspection.

"All of it moves through me. I am a temporary interruption of service, a broken phone line that stretches to connect here to there. It's okay. I'm not alone in my indeterminacy. Thankfully the entire twenty-first century is filled with ghosts like me. We move from one place to the next looking for what we don't have and are only faintly aware that our searching is the object of our search. Nobody even needs to leave the comfort of their homes anymore. I can search the globe in a few minutes on my computer; I can find someone to love me through a website. I can find a best friend and presence is irrelevant. I suppose that's the truth of it all along, though. We don't friend bodies."

This is glorious. No, really, this is glorious. This is exactly right. You know how ages ago you mensioned how no one had found the voice of our generation, no one had got it exactly right. This comes pretty damn close. I think we've all felt an incarnation of this. Change one iota, I light things on fire. Not kidding.

"Every once in a while, I will rise in the morning and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I won't recognize myself, so maybe we don't even friend our own bodies. [That was actually this morning, after it had stormed all night. I pretended not to notice my slight start at seeing another person in the mirror, and I realized my body is always smaller than I imagine it in my head. Compared to the buildings of the city, the baobabs, the music on the radio, I am almost a sleight of light, a trick of perception. There is no way of perceiving me in the alethosphere—that area between outer space and atmosphere where sound waves and light can still transpire, and things are recorded for someone's viewing pleasure; earthly life, TiVoed by the sky—but that's okay, for the most part. "

God knows I never recognise myself in the mirror. Stud, quit hacking into my naked spy camera. Where did the aside go, "[That was actually.." oh, hey, there's the end. I would be more inclined to break the paragraph before with a hyphen or something then have the aside separate, it's still too buried, it slips into the rest of the paragraph too easily. Yay for sleight of light and those baobabas again. Alethosphere is intriguing, it reminds me of (don't spank me for this) a passage in "The Raw Shark Text" about how arbitrary place and identity is when we hurtle at the speed we do through space. But yours is obviously better. Very lovely, ravishingly so.

"Not being perceived means you are not really reading this, which means I'm not writing this; I'm breathing it. There goes the humidity]. It was actually this morning that I picked up the phone before it ought to ring, which I should have known meant something bad."

Almost Calvino this little abstract line, grounded with the humidity. The phone. Genius.
***

TBC (no really it will be)

Brad! I'm sorry for getting this up so late, but I had a few things needing to get accomplished within my life outside of YWS. It hurt me to stay away, and it killed me more when I was pushed critiques back. And back. Till I fell behind. So! You're first on my list!

Paragraph count won't last long.

Paragraph Eins

Grammar and First Impressions

I prefer to leave the loss unnamed; by which I mean, [no comma] or, rather, I prefer to leave him unnamed—once you die, you should not have a name.

It kind of got confusing with those commas so close together.

Overall Impressions

I followed this very easily compared to the opening in the previous chapter. This may be because I'm growing used to your style, or it may be because I'm awake now. I think the former of the two would make us both happier to hear.

I'm starting to place your writing where it should be in my mind. It's more in the hard-to-read literature category. I'm appreciating it much more. The introduction really is fantastic. I liked it. I followed it. It shows the MC's opinion in this matter, showing personality. It's really excellent.

Paragraph Zwei

Grammar and First Impressions

, and I can only bear witness to the manifestations of my own life, which are mostly inessential.

Aww! xD

I was trapped in a three-line sonnet, but you'd think it were a haiku if the syllables ever came out right.

I liked this! Though this may be because I understood it? I liked it though. ^_^

Overall Impressions

This is still very good. However, I'm starting to get a monotone voice out of your MC like the little guy in my head just reads the lines and doesn't talk to the reader. I don't know how to explain it, but it does. Believe me!

Paragraph Drei

Grammar and First Impressions

What I should have done was break the plate. What I should have done was let the plate break me in place of holding food.

I don't think I understand where your frustration is coming from to let the plate break you. xD

I didn't need food which would only pass through me like religion.

Hah, I like this. More personality. ^^

Overall Impressions

Sweet, we're starting to get some action.

Paragraph Vier

Overall Impressions

The glass history might throw readers off, but I've seen writing like this go into such tangents? So I'm not going to complain about it, especially since it's very short.

Paragraph Fünf

Grammar and First Impressions

It isn't non-recognition; it's a recognition of form and only form, not of function.

So here's the point of all that talk about form. Very nice.

Overall Impressions

Now I'm starting to wonder what's wrong, even after your lovely chapter introduction. Let's start tying the loose ends, yes?

Paragraph Sechs

Grammar and First Impressions

The author acknowledges Marx, [no comma] since all language is bound to rise up against its oppressors and exploiters.

If the prose is thicker than the plot, that isn't my fault—this is to bear witness to a society loosed upon the constellation of itself, which can only happen in the present tense.

This kind of confuses me.

Overall Impressions

You kind of lost me around the prose/plot part. I've read it several times and am still kinda confused. It could be me, though. ^_^

Paragraph Sieben

Grammar and First Impressions

on the one hand, static, and on the other, a voice, an articulation, which could thus cut through the white noise in the same way an electronic voice phenomena device could pick up the voice of a ghost.

We got a lot of commas. I've noticed you tend to overuse commas in some of your sentences, and this would be one of those. Dashes can be helpful as well as parentheses in these cases.

In the same way a dog can be trained to find a small child by smell—the eyes are unnecessary, [semi instead] what must be trusted is the invisible.

Commas do not separate sentences. There are plenty of other punctuation marks to do that. The commas have enough jobs already. We don't want any egotistic commas, now, do we?

Overall Impressions

No complaints here. I can be such an analyzer, so I have no complaints with the MC analyzing the reason for hearing Marie.

Paragraph Acht

Grammar and First Impressions

I mean looking in the mirror, [no comma] or at a photograph.

Overall Impressions

This is definitely one deep conversation they're having. Is it natural? Also, I don't know who said the quote in the beginning. I'm assuming it's the MC. Hopefully, I made a correct assumption.

Paragraph Neun, Zehn, und Elf

Grammar and First Impressions

I look up at Tyler and Marie who are finishing eating.

Finishing eating is just an awkward phrase to me. Can't they just finish their lunch or something? ^^;

Overall Impressions

Hey-hey! We're back to the story with clear imagery and stuff. The reader's following your every word right now if they weren't before.

Paragraph Zwölf

Grammar and First Impressions

Turning is a kind of transformation: [s]you[/s] You are propped from the world you exist into some other kind of experience, and while there, your experiences may, and most likely are, different than what they are before.

When a colon is in front of a sentence, that sentence is usually capitalized. ^^

The question is whether, in the process of re-turning, the transformation restores you to your original form with new functions, [no comma] or a new form with the same functions.

The list of choices contains only two items, so a comma is unnecessary.

Overall Impressions

Meh. I zoned out at one point or another, but I was still kind of there. I think the explanation between Tyler's quotes is a bit long and tedious, but that's all. ^^

Paragraph Dreizehn, Vierzehn, und Fünfzehn

Grammar and First Impressions

I feel them reading this, and whether they acknowledge it or not, I'm them, too."

This was a bit confusing to read at first, but I think the comma should alert the reader that a complete phrase is coming up, not a second item of a list. That's kinda confusing, but yeah.

Overall Impressions

I'm getting a weird déjà vu right now. Like... the MC's writing this? I dunno, I guess I shall read on!

Paragraph Sechzehn zu die Ende

Grammar and First Impressions

I nod. Something inside of my body is moving, and whether it's the lentil from the dinner—yes, the dinner which I didn't eat—or a fetus, I can't tell. I'm not pregnant, though. I'm not female. Right? No. I'm not.

LOL! Aww, poor guy. I just wanna go hug him. xD

"Stop stop stop stop, stop." He grabs my arm forcefully, sternly.

Maybe separate with commas or join them with hyphens. It's your choice of course, but the random comma at the end was like... woah.

Overall Impressions

This was very easy to follow and understand. The reader doesn't have a bodiless voice in the back of their head telling them so much stuff now. They have a picture of two guys talking, and the dialogue just rolls. It's very easy to understand, despite the MC's jabbering.

The last line was another woah reaction. Maybe the next chapter will explain that more?

Overall Comments

The more I read this, the more happy I get about it. I kinda want to read more. It's kind of weird, but I do. A small part of the reason is probably the question: What's the point? There's a point to every story -- usually something to do with the plot -- but we haven't really found one yet. Hopefully we will encounter a plot soon, but some books just take a long time to get to introducing the plot because they need to give so much background information. *cough*mysummerhomework*cough*

I ultra-apologize for such a late crit! Please don't hold that against me! I really am slowly enjoying this. Maybe I'm just in the mood for a heavy read now, but it's getting very interesting now. Not gonna lie.

Keep writing!

Jabber, the One and Only!

3. is posted.

As a note, 3 and 4 were originally going to be chapter 3. However, I think splitting them and leaving 3 as a clearly demarcated panorama (of sorts) of the city will be advantageous.


Thanks to all of you who've taken the time to read and comment, as well--even when you do find the writing unsavory, the style terse and dense and (perhaps) misleading. The metaphor-upon-metaphor layering is no doubt a struggle for those not fond of poetry (and, indeed, it would be fair to call this a sequence of prose-poems, or a system of prose/poetry, but the lines are blurry). But I appreciate your perseverance and patience with the telling, even if it does, at times, seem slow and uncoordinated.

I'll post the fourth chapter ASAP.


Grazie,
Brad

This one was actually pretty short.

1. As a random side note, I thought the description of the city was interesting to read, but I felt it kind of stepped away from the story a bit. Not in the bad way. Again, it gave insight to N's thoughts and developed him from those. Perhaps I'm just getting used to him, but while the thoughts matched him perfectly, there seemed to be less development than normal. I suppose it's due to the fact that, while we gained his viewpoints and thoughts, we failed to gain his responses to situations. You seemed to set the tone well, though, so that it was somewhat gloomy. Not that the story so far has been all pink and happy, but it seemed lower in spirits, for lack of better, than the rest of the story. I take the plot bit back though. I think, if nothing else, The city matches the story. I don't know how much it does to move the plot forward, but I thought the same about ch. 1. Also, it sets the tone for N's mood.


But yeah, definitely no longer than that.


2. I vote next chapter is posted either on its own thread or in reply to this... this post is becoming a monster to scroll through, and with all the long critiques on here, tapping the up or down arrow sends us several paragraphs above or below our goal.


Onward!

Where we think we're going is his home. What our bodies know and our minds don't is that the going always ends with another body.

^^ Cool line. Poetic, and it shows his attitude. Not all that different from the rest of the piece, when I think about it, but it stands out more when surrounded by the city description.

What this means is that if God could see us before, he can't anymore.

^^ Nice. Liked how you brought that back. Gave the sense that there was more to it all than general thoughts. I knew there was a thread because you made everything flow smoothly. But it was nice to have it come in a circle.

It is both remembrance and amnesia. A monstrosity of human innovation which, in the harsh winter night, barely looks like a scratch on the earth.

Awesome ending. I liked the whole last paragraph. It was an okay conclusion to the chapter, but it sounded really neat as far as wording and ideas go.

Overall: It was good. It got a little tiring around the 3rd paragraph, but the first line of number 4, the one that brought it in a circle, made up for lost points. Well done there. Definitely don't add more description, lol. The chapter itself was interesting, but at the same time, hearing mention of Tyler only where he clapped his phone shut after the awesome end scene above... it was okay, I think it fits in well. Any more on him would be out of place. But it felt off that after the end of ch 2, all we see of N and Tyler is N's thoughts on the city and Tyler's phone clapping. So I'm a bit torn. On one hand, more on the two of them wouldn't work, but at the same time, the mention of Tyler, while it ties it together with the last chapter, makes it feel like there should be more mention of him. I'm hesitant on suggesting you delete it because it fits well with the chapter and provides at least a glimpse of the real world outside of thoughts, so I'll leave it up to you to figure out what to do with it, if anything.

Part two:

Uno:

There's some really clever trains of thought in this paragraph but I think it's a little too much. There again, it depends on who your intended reader is. If it's other writers then it's fine, in fact it's better than fine because the links between life and writing are interesting to people like you and me but I've got the feeling that if your average person read this, they'd find this paragraph a little wordy. There again, your average person might find the entire piece of writing too wordy and it's already constructed around quite a selective audience.

Dos:

This paragraph is absolutely genius. I love how beautifully it begins, just flowing straight from the previous paragraph and directly back into real life. I think we can all connect with the idea of losing a friend and the feeling that something/ someone's missing. And the idea of being a disconnected number is so chilling, it's just too awful to even try to imagine. And then, after that very sobering line of thought, suddenly you slip straight back into the comparrisson of life to different writing techniques. It's dizzying and at the same time amazing how you're able to represent your Narrator's mine and how it jumps around.

Tres:

A short but effective little paragraph. I'm glad you didn't expand on the Narrator's ideas/ view of religion: it's good to make your reader think and interpret in their own way every now and then.

Cuatro:

Some great imagery towards the end and the discussion about glass is interesting. I don't really have any comments to make on this paragraph. It's interesting, but at the same time, it feels like it's starting to drift a little. I think you should try to make the glass discussion sound a little less like a history lecture and a little more like a general, if rather philosophical, observation.

Cinco:

A nice little paragraph. Already the reader is starting to get a good feel for the other two characters.

Seis:

This paragraph starts a little jerkily, moving so suddenly from a character observation back towards the Narrator's inward thoughts but once there, it runs smoothly and covers all my favourites aspects of your style. It has the literary context, the reader awareness and the stream of consciousness and yes, the prose is much thicker than the plot but at the same time, your prose is your plot and it works wonderfully.

Siete:

This paragraph is so incredibly beautiful and real. It's perfect and you portray such a clear view of Marie and the Narrator's feelings towards her. However, I don't like your use of capitals for 'THE' because I'm finding it hard to place in my mind with someone speaking quietly. It makes me want to imagine the word as shouted and yet, you say the sentence is spoken quietly. Maybe use italics? That's just as effective for showing emphasis.

Ocho:

An interesting view of plastic surgery. Your Narrator continues to surprise me, he has such strange and yet such sensible thoughts.

Nueve:

(I'm counting the two disjointed lines and the next more substantial block of text as a single paragraph, just to make it easier for me to critique.)

You have a good description of body language and it's easy to imagine this, though in a distant way but that's a clever technique too because your Narrator really does seem to be distanced from the scene and I'm finding it so easy to imagine myself in the Narrator's place.

Diez:

(I'm including the next few lines of dialogue with this one.)

Turning is a kind of transformation: you are propped from the world you exist into some other kind of experience, and while there, your experiences may and most likely are different than what they are before.

Part of this needs rephrasing. I think you need to either say '...are propped from the world where you exist, into some...' or '...are propped from your existing world into some other...' because it feels like there's a word missing but you can't have in and then into if you see what I mean.

The great many of them, for sure.

I think this would make more sense as 'The great majority of them, for sure.'

This is a good paragraph. I love how you're able to display Tyler's emotion while showing very little from your Narrator.

Once:

I'm not sure about his claim that he's warned us to stop reading but as for the rest, I love his speech about the reader and how he does seem to mmuddle himself up with us. It's great. I think this guy is seriously crazy like but at the same time, he's such a unique, brilliant Narrator that we just have to love him.

Doce:

(I'm going to cover the rest of part two here.)

I love the Narrator's switch from mourning to morning, that was really cleverly done so that i almost didn't realise that you wasn't just repeating mourning and this really does just conclude beautifully. The Narrator's sudden flood of emotion is excellent, as is the characterization of Tyler and the final line of speech fits so snugly. I really can't criticise this. I'm sorry but I just like it too much!

__________________________________________________

Part three is on my list =) If I have a chance to finish it when I get back from Rangers, I'll edit it into this post and if not, you'll have it by tomorrow xx

Duuude. I told you there was a reason I didn't critique poetry. Poetry disguised as prose doesn't make it any better.

Anyways, the one critique I actually could notice while forcing my way through was the second paragraph. The jump into it was a giant slap on the face, and the paragraphs after totally ignore it. Smooth transitions are key.

Eh, yeah. I'm not helpful here.

You definitely make me think, and you have some amazing points.

PM me if you need anything else. I don't know if I'll critique anymore of this - I'm not helpful. Let me know if you want me to, though.

~JFW1415

Brad!

Paragraph Eins

Grammar and First Impressions[/b]

The first frost from winter was breathing through the city like a [?] disease.

The cold stillness made the asphalt glitter black, [no comma] and forced the homeless into churches.

I was confused here. It sounded like the homeless went into churches because of the asphalt, though I think you mean the cold?

And clearly to be homeless, one need not be without a house or a job.

That phrase sounds really awkward.

But to truly be homeless is a displacement: [s]it's[/s] It's the ordinary ordering of things which one day you wake to find unsatisfying and strange.

[i]Overall Impressions

I have no complaints here except its length. xD I started zoning about halfway through, but I didn't get much sleep last night either. So. Besides that, I think it's good. I liked how you started it. I really did, and it branched off into an explanation of the homeless. This all was good. Near the end, it got a bit more tedious.

Paragraph Zwei

Grammar and First Impressions

Er...

Overall Impressions

You had a great hold on me this entire paragraph, and I really don't know why. xD I was kinda fascinated about the layout of the streets. That was fun to learn, lol. And I did like how you started and ended with the storyline again. We know where they are. Good stuff. ^^ This was an awesome paragraph (especially if I was following the entire time xD).

Paragraph Drei

Grammar and First Impressions

That's the crime of postmodernity: [s]time[/s] Time and space have been reflected against each other, and the victim is also the perpetrator.

Time, [no comma] and, with it, speed, [no comma] became important.

With the invention of the news channel—a development our language is unprepared for—events were reported as they happened, instantaneously.

*snort*

Overall Impressions

I was losing myself in this paragraph. It was a bit tedious again. Besides the fact I was zoning constantly, it was good. xD

Paragraph Vier

Grammar and First Impressions

Er...

Overall Impressions

This was a good closure. It tied things together. It was very nice. At first I followed, the middle-end started getting blurry as I zoned out, but then I came back. So it was still good.

Overall

I'm not sure if this was a little over detailed or not. It was short, so I don't think it would be a surprise if I said a third of it I zoned out on. The other two-thirds I enjoyed. You're still doing well, though!

Keep writing!

Jabber, the One and Only!

Part three:

Uno:

You provide a very interesting definition of what it is to be homeless but it feels so distant and so intellectual that it doesn't quite touch the reader. In one instant it's a description of the people in the city but at the same time, it's just another thought and I felt a strong dislike for your narrator by the end of this paragraph. I can see how your definition thus makes him one of the homeless and to me, his constant musings and twisting of the world around him is beginning to feel selfish and he's starting to sound smug, talking down to the reader about how he knows what the politicians are really talking about. I don't know if that was intentional?

I think it would work better if you had another paragraph before this one, describing the city properly and working towards the discussion as to the definition of the homeless. I'd like you to give the reader a chance to develop their own opinion of the city before the narrator gives us his.

Dos:

I didn't like this paragraph quite as much as the previous but it was good. I found that the talk of ways became a little tedious (perhaps because I've discussed that before with my history class?) and the inclusion of seeing the Great Wall from the moon struck me as a bit random and a bit too ordinary a fact for your narrator to cite. However, I liked the insight into his religious views as I think that a person's moral and religious ideals is an essential part of their character and the infusion of 'real' events was good.

Tres:

This is good but I think you should add just another sentence or two linking back with what you've said previously: that each era dreams of the one to follow. That would fit in snugly. And other than that, I have no suggestions or criticism; it was nicely written.

Cuatro:

A good conclusion. Nothing in particular stands out as fantastic but it flowed nicely and it brought all your narrator's strands of thoughts together.

“If I believed in signs, I wouldn't have answered it. I would have buried my head under pillows and blankets until I couldn't hear it or the voices or the rain. I wouldn't have stumbled in my sleepy stupor to its obnoxious chirping, but eventually, though. Eventually I would have picked up after bracing myself, after preparing myself for the acid of emptiness that would cauterize my stomach. I could have eviscerated myself and made a few bucks on the black market.”
Bahaha, you seriously alluded to Tim Winton’s shifting shadow from “Cloudstreet”. I mock. I don’t like “buried my head under pillows”, it’s cliché and really it doesn’t fit the action as well as I’d like. “it or the voices or the rain” has good rhythm, however. Nice little alliteration, but I question your adjectives; ‘sleepy’ and ‘obnoxious’, seem sloppy from Mr Sonics, they don’t further the image they’re just filigree. “Eventually, though. Eventually…” – What the hell is that? You want to wander off and pause you break and spring for a new paragraph or stop wasting my wrath. The acid and the evisceration: nice casual gore, quite evocative.
“But I don't believe in signs, and I did answer.”
I’d cut these paragraphs more, as I said to make them more conversational. You are perhaps one of three maybe four writers who can pull off the protagonist directly narrating to the reader without being film noir, though.
“As soon as I heard her voice, I knew the words it was carrying. I didn't have to understand every thing she said to hate her. Suddenly, she was not my friend of seven years; her voice was not familiar or loving, but atonal, artificially buoyed by her fatalism for my sake, and insubstantial. It was a thin cover for the raw, animalistic, scathed-by-loss voice people should have.”
Turgid noise. Turgid turgid turgid noise. ‘atonal, artificially buoyed by her fatalism’, really? Empty pretty words, they do nothing to further the imagery, and ‘my friend of seven years’, self conscious exposition or what? I get that you’re capturing the impalpable, which usually you’re so good at, but the cover for the raw, I didn’t feel either. I’m putting you on adjective and adverb probation.
“When we hung up, the dialectic switched on me, without my knowing, until I drove my shin into the coffee table. That's what the dialectic was good for: reminding me that I am neither light nor dark but an object in their struggle, a word in a language I don't know. “
Which prompts the question, is there a whole synonym for dialectic, I mean, there are the shallower conversations, interchange, whatever whatever, but dialectic being more than that… it’s frustrating, because that’s why it’s a different word… sorry, off in my own little world. But dialectic doesn’t mesh within its context to create a more direct meaning like it should, you know, not when it’s repeated like that. Shin into the coffee table is good, as is the reiteration of the chiaroscuro, with the ‘a word in a language I don’t know’, that’s elegant and genius.

“Maybe if I believed in myself more, I would fling myself less to the moment and concern myself less with untoward activities like dialectics. [What, if anything, did Hegel really accomplish besides provoking two centuries of quibbling gentlemen?]. But I don't have content enough in myself for waiting—not even for idling—as Nietzsche would say.”
Namedrop namedrop. Although, bringing in Hegel with the dialectics is only fair, and everyone needs Nietzsche. Quibbling is awesome.
“So I move around constantly. Not physically, necessarily, but psychically I shift gears as often as my mind will allow: focusing like this for so long, to say so much and so little, is uncommon. I jump from one place to the next without realizing I've made a leap, and if it seems like a stream of consciousness, it's been polluted by my body. My body which, unlike my mind, is not an amalgam of free associations of particles pushed endlessly towards the salt point—where fresh water becomes salty, where the ocean begins and the river ends, and where neither exist for very long.”
That is glorious. Dear GOD use a fish analogy, you know you want to, oceans and constantly moving, leaping, he is a salmon in the stream of consciousness.
“If my writing (or breathing, as it were) is to liberate itself from the weight of my life and my body, then that liberation can only happen with a reader, to whom the story will attach itself forever. The moments of transference from my body to theirs, when the story is on their screen or in their shopping bag and yet to be read, is when it finally exists by itself. That freedom I rank as a miracle in the order of things.”
Vary the punctuation to air it out. Moments of transference, that whole concept is so delicious, and quite tactile. “That freedom I rank as a miracle in the order of things”: No.
“I wasn't sure what to do afterwards: if I should get my shoes or try returning to sleep. In some sense, I knew before I tried that sleep was no option; it was the way a static charge sat between my mouth and my heart and made my breathing tingle that I should have taken as indicative of my dilemma. But despite that, I curled up against the sheets feeling smaller than before and closed my eyes, which quickly became an arduous task. The weight that had rested upon them before was suddenly gone and holding them down was a miracle in itself.”
Good observation, good sense imagery with the tingling breath particularly. Watch for hysterical realism, but you’ve got an ironic check on it, I think. Makes me think of Jeff Buckley when he said, "Sensitivity isn't being wimpy, it's about being so painfully aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom."
Further third to come.