Free From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler Page A

we know who speaks. There's an after-image of the cat until Hemingway puts in the character.
    " 'I'll do it,' her husband offered from the bed." Notice that we don't have any equivalent to "The American wife stood at the window." We know he's on the bed but don't know what his physical position is; we do not see him fully, and so for the moment it's a close up of him as he speaks.
    " 'No, I'll get it. The poor kitty out trying to keep dry under a table.'" No dialogue tag this time. So we stay with him as her voice floats through. We know it's her because of the conventions of paragraphing in dialogue. But our attention is not brought back to her. We stay with him, and we're still close on him. And then, the husband "went on reading, lying propped up with the two pillows at the foot of the bed." The camera pulls back slowly, revealing him finally in full figure, reading and lying propped up at the foot of the bed." 'Don't get wet,' he said."
    When I read that, a number of you smiled. Why? Because he has not moved a muscle. You do not have to say, "I'll do it," her husband offered insincerely from the bed. You do not need to abstract that, because all of the affect is embedded in the cin-ematically sensual way Hemingway directs the scene. The revelation comes through montage. The husband says "I'll do it," we see him lying there doing nothing, and next comes, "Don't get wet." It's raining out; of course she's going to get wet.
    So much is said about the relationship in so few words!— because Hemingway was a brilliant filmmaker.
    Fast action, slow motion: what I want to show you now is how these venerable film techniques have always worked for us writers of narrative. This passage is from the Book of Judges, twenty-five hundred years old. The Old Testament— King James Version, of course. The passage is self-explanatory except for the character of Sisera—a bad guy who's bringing his armies to face Israel.
    Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be; blessed shall she be above women in the tent.
    He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish.
    She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.
    At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet, he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.
    The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming?
    This is utterly cinematic: ". .. he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet, he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead." That is slow-motion violence a la Sam Peckinpah. He is falling forever. And then that wonderful cut, that wonderful bit of montage, sans transitional device: ". .. he fell down dead"; "The mother of Sisera looked out at a window ..." You can see the latticework, the shadow of it on her face. "Why is his chariot so long in coming?" He should be finished raping and pillaging by now. Time for dinner.
    Next I want to read you a little bit of Henry James with some ellipses in it. I want to give you a cheek-by-jowl example of three speeds in a brief section of "The Siege of London." Here is an example of appropriate summary—I've used summary as an epithet in these lectures, but the summary that's destructive races through what needs to be done in the moment; it is summary that has no sensual impact on the reader. Sensual, carefully and judiciously used summary can be effective and, indeed, is how you mostly achieve fast motion—fast action—in fiction.
    The "glass" referred to here is an opera glass; that is, a little pair of binoculars.
    That solemn piece of upholstery, the curtain of the Comedie Francaise, had fallen upon the first act of the piece, and our two Americans had taken advantage of the interval to pass out of the huge, hot theatre, in company with the other occupants