Cody Klippenstein #005: A gentle touch with personification…

          Is it day five already? Our final day of looking at some of the writing technique Cody Klippenstein uses in “Case Studies in Ascension”? It’s gone by quickly. For today, I decided to end with a tool familiar to most every writer: personification. Let’s read the passage first:

Neither Obaa-san nor I have been in here since my mother ascended. The air is damp—the big bay window through which my mother made her escape was never shut again. The white sheets that hang over the fireplace mantle, the rosewood armchairs, the fainting couch, the baby grand piano—they are all weathered and reek of earth and rot. Even the lacquered floor feels swollen against my wavering feet.

A few beads of cut crystal are scattered across the center of the room, beneath the behemoth chandelier. My eyes float up to its underbelly and trace what I believe to be the thread of a cobweb, twisting through the chains. Yet then I squint and realize it is a hair—long, straight, black.

This room is disturbing, unsettling, uncomfortable. Like the father’s pool table we read about yesterday, this room too has been left alone, untouched after her mother’s ascension. The room has its own personality, and words like “hang,” “fainting,” “weathered,” “reek,” “swollen,” “behemoth,” “underbelly,” and the single, long black hair add to that description. It’s like that person you don’t want to be near, and you find yourself stuck right next to him or her in a crowded elevator. But this is a ROOM we’re talking about, right?

Klippenstein shows a gentle touch here. We don’t see “leaves dancing to the ground,” not anything so overt that an English teacher (ahem) might use as an example. Instead, it’s a series of tiny details—a word here, a word there—that together combine to give the room its personality. That’s the reason I chose to end with this technique—she’s gentle with the personification, but it has a strong effect. Soft and hard, blended together.

Try this:

We’ve seen ugliness with a gentle touch. Your job is to describe a scene from the point of view of a homeless person who sees beauty in a junkyard.

Well, that ends our time with Cody Klippenstein and her award-winning story, “Case Studies in Ascension.” She is certainly one of my favourite short fiction writers, and I encourage all readers to be on the lookout for more of her work. There is much poetry–a bit of painting with prose–in her short fiction. The brush strokes are there, if you look closely.

Coming tomorrow: A break from all this serious study we’ve been doing. I have a VERY gimmicky poetry exercise for you to try that I hope will be a heap of fun! See you tomorrow…