Aly Hawkins

When we moved, lo these two months ago, we unboxed about half our library, the entirety of which had been in storage for several years. When we packed them up, we hadn’t the room and yet couldn’t bear to be parted from them, so into the dark they’d gone until such a time as we again had space. They seemed mighty happy to see us, the 250 or so we unboxed and lined up on shelves, and the feeling was mutual.

Plucking a few of these neglected friends from their perch during the last few weeks and putting them to the use for which God intended, I discovered something interesting: I missed a lot of the writing the first time. I don’t mean that I forgot the stories or the characters (I’ve mainly been re-reading novels)—I’ve always had rather a good head for remembering plots and the people who people them. What I mean is that, the first time I read these stories, the craft with which the authors told them got right by me.

So far as I can determine, this is for one or both of these reasons: 1) I read scary-fast, and once I’m caught in the current of a swiftly moving tale, I can’t steer my attention toward anything but What Happens Next, and/or 2) I read these books before I got into the word business and couldn’t be bothered to notice something that clearly didn’t concern me.

Either way, I sure as heck am enjoying the return trip. Who knew all the tricky shenanigans writers can conjure in service of a good story?

I’m re-reading Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet at the moment, which I think I must have read (the first time) not too long after it came out in 1999. Ten or so years on, I remembered that it’s a rock n’ roll re-imagining of Orpheus and Eurydice, and that it takes place in a parallel universe not so very different from our own, except that Elvis’s name is Jesse Garon and Kennedy serves out two terms before being killed in L.A. by the same bullet that offs his brother Robert. What I didn’t catch, ten years ago, is the craftiness with which Rushdie made these and similar “adjustments.” Twinship and brotherhood, and the competitive and creative intimacy inherent to these relationships, are thematic threads woven in and around the broader myth. In Rushdie’s crafty hands, Jesse Garon is the twin who grows up to light the world on fire with “Blue Suede Shoes,” long after his younger brother, Elvis Aron, is stillborn. Jack Kennedy gets his chance to shine for eight years, but then his life and Robert’s are cut short—by the same bullet, because he’s standing behind Robert!—just when he’s ready to help his brother move out from behind his shadow.

Crafty craftiness.

I could go on and on about minor characters who are hanged portending momentous change in major characters’ arcs, about fathers’ and mothers’ choices foreshadowing their children’s destinies, about characters’ names shedding indirect light on their roles in the narrative. But you probably noticed it all without my help.

How on earth could I have missed all that craft? And, more importantly, how do I get some craft to call my own?