Show and Tell

The first thing that occurs to me in considering these two excerpts is the fact that one of them was written, while the other was transcribed. 

This begs the question, in Left Handed’s transcripted memoir, who is responsible for the craft choices, the speaker or the transcriber?  And is it fair to compare these authors and their choices when the modes of storytelling are themselves so different?

In any case, the differences in this reader’s experience of each story were striking.  Left Handed’s memoir is easier to “hear” than to “see.”  His storytelling has a rhythm and a movement that engages the reader.  We are concerned with his action, where he is going from this crossroads he has come to.  Hamlin Garland’s account of the changing seasons and daily toils of a boy’s life on an Iowa farm, by contrast, contains almost an excess of imagery.  Time crawls, seems almost to stand still, as Garland’s narrator describes the birds, the gophers, and the plant life, the sounds, the smells, and the texture of every minute detail of his surroundings.  The narrator, in a distant, formal first person recounts his experiences not in a linear narrative, but in a series of scenes that capture first and foremost the sensory.  He seems to be attempting not to tell a story but to evoke an atmosphere.  “As I write I am back in that marvelous time. – The cornfield, dark-green and sweetly cool, is beginning to ripple in the wind with multitudinous stir of shining, swirling leaf.  Waves of dusk and green and gold, circle across the ripening barley, and long leaves upthrust at intervals, like spears.”(129) 

Left Handed’s account, on the other hand, is distinctly linear.  We know what the narrator does, where he goes, who he meets and what he says to them, but he gives almost no information about his environment, except insofar as he travels through it, on it, or over it.  The story moves as the narrator’s herd flows over the landscape.  There is also a spare, repetitive quality to the prose, such as:

“Down I went with my herd, going lower and lower all the time, toward Where the Green Valley Enters.  There was a point there, I was just going straight for that point, a little ways above Where the Green Valley Enters.”(319) This contrasts with the flowery, lyrical style, with which Harlan describes similar activity, “In herding the cattle we came to know all the open country round about and found it very beautiful.  On the uplands a short, light-green, hair-like grass grew, intermixed with various resinous weeds, while in the lowland feeding grounds luxuriant patches of blue-joint, wild oats, and other tall forage plants waved in the wind.”(125)

Garland’s narrator seems to understand that his audience is not familiar with the life he describes, and to compensate for this he makes repeated use of quotation marks to highlight his use of jargon, as well as parenthetical asides to add explanation.  “It was also necessary to “lap-half” and this requirement made careful driving needful for father could not be fooled.  He saw every “balk.”(122) Left Handed treats his reader as more of an insider.  He doesn’t treat words or ideas specific to his culture (hogans vs. brush hogans, Red Clay People vs. Bitter Water) with any special care, nor does he go to any lengths to explain them.

In describing feelings, too, the two authors are vastly different.  While Garland describes his attitudes towards farm work or the circus, he uses language that inspires sympathy:

“As the ground dried off the dust arose from under the teeth of the harrow and flew so thickly that my face was not only coated with it but tears of rebellious rage stained my cheeks with comic lines.  At such times it seemed unprofitable to be the twelve year old son of a western farmer.”(122)

“To rob me of my memories of the circus would leave me as poor as those to whom life was a drab and hopeless round of toil.”(129)

The preface to Left Handed tells readers that the author seldom wrote about his feelings, that the excerpt represented one of the few times he wrote about his emotional life.  Yet his descriptions are flat and vague:

“When I went over, I don’t know what I was thinking.  Maybe I was thinking, but I don’t know.  I was out of my mind, I guess.  Looked like I couldn’t even hear or see anything.  It seemed to me that I wasn’t going anyplace.  It seemed to me like I was staying still at one place.  That’s the way it was.” (316)

At the end of the excerpt, he has recovered somewhat, after his conversation with the other Red Clay woman, but he discusses this recovery in similar terms:

“After they left, then I started out with my sheep again, and I found that I was in good shape.  Before that, I almost choked-like, my breast filled with something.  And when I played with this woman, I don’t know how but all at once it disappeared.  Everything that was in me was gone.”(320)

           

The two pieces seem to be on either end of a spectrum.  Garland’s, on one end, is effusive, image-laden, expansive, but lacks movement.  Left Handed’s piece moves, but lacks depth and description.  The different modes they employ have a lot to do with how the stories are meant to be conveyed.    Garland’s story is meant to be read, whereas Left Handed’s story is meant to be told – whether or not a Yale anthropologist decided to write it down, it is an oral history.