Narration and Editorialising

- The concept of editorialising in Great Falls - The implications - Application

6/3/12

Editorialising
Told in the past tense...by an adult speaker who structures his story carefully, editorializing and revising incidents that changed the course of his teenage years and shaped him his attitude towards others. Significantly, this mature perspective confirms the speakers ability to recast an emotionally volatile time as an open ended story. - Elinor Ann Walker in Redeeming Loneliness in Richard Fords Great Falls and Wildlife.

An element of style: Earl and Jackie

Both Earl and Jackie editorialise. It is what stops their stories being solely confessional and is what makes their stories more personal and important to the speaker themselves. It is what allows the stories to become meditations and reflections, rather than simply confessions of times gone bad. Editorial moments in the text are moments of self-reflection. These are moments where the narrator adds in thinking from the present, stuff that the younger version of the narrator couldnt have known in the past. It tends to come when the narrator is commenting on the action.

Example
He smiled at me, and it was not the worried, nervous smile from before, but a smile that meant he was pleased. And I dont remember him ever smiling at me that way again. - p.44 The young Jackie could not know that his father would never smile at him again. In fact, the young Jackie could not know that his father only had five more years to live. This is the narrator inserting their voice and commenting on the situation as it stands. It stands out because it is not something that young Jackie could speak about. It is a moment of reflection on the part of the speaker. So, you can identify these moments by asking could the young Jackie know this?.

So what?
There are two strategies here: 1) The narrators editorial comments re-shape the whole event and story. They determine the tone, they determine our attitude towards the story, the deviate from pure fact telling and into the realm of construction and representation. They work as examples of the narrator recasting the experience as a story. At this level, the editorialising is about turning experience into story, chaos into fiction. 2) The other strategy works around what the editorialising is doing for the narrator. His desire to insert himself into the story, to comment on the situation, is a representation of the narrator actively using the story to establish meaning. When that reflective voice drops in, there is often a clear sense that it is trying to discover something, to figure out a truth or see some significance that wasnt available at the immediate time. This is story imposing meaning on existence.

Argument
The purpose of this work is to provide with a technical device that allows you to prove Fords interest in the power of story. This allows you to argue that Fords narrators are actively constructing their stories. It allows you to prove that the narrators are interested in representing their stories, rather than simply confessing their moments of loss. Ultimately, this can help you build arguments around Fords fiction as stories about stories. The narrators consciously craft their stories. And the reason why they carefully craft them is so that they can work to locate and establish meaning in experiences where that meaning didnt exist in the moment of experience. By crafting a story, the narrator re-crafts their experience, helping it to become significant and therefore meaningful.

Application
1. Go back through the story and pull out at least three examples of editorialising. They definitely occur on the following pages: 39, 40, 44, 45, 52, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59. Aim to find examples from across the text - not just the beginning or end. 2. Identify which rhetorical strategy the examples fall under. A) Crafting choices - choices where the narrator is clearly constructing how we are meant to read/understand this story B) Reflection - where the narrator is clearly using the story as means to try and figure something out. 3. For each example, explain how you know that it falls into the category youve chosen. Extension: Find equivalent examples in Rock Springs.