Stylin'

Before we go further in our explorations of Frederick Busch’s The Night Inspector, let’s comment on the structure of the book.

If we must.

The Night Inspector is written in first person simple past tense. It begins: “’No mouth,’ I told him.” This implies the writing is occurring at a future point in time, and that the writer is centering the narrative on himself. By contrast, “’No mouth,’ he tells him,” would imply a writer showing action by another entity in the present.

Oh, well then, it’s auto-fiction.

Incorrect. Auto-fiction is a genre that combines autobiography/memoir and fiction.

Yes, but—

Auto-fiction generally features a protagonist whose life story is similar to the author. Frederick Busch was a distinguished writer and teacher of fiction who died in 2006. Billy Bartholomew is an American Civil War veteran, a sharpshooter whose face was shot off in battle, and, although it is not indicated, would have died around 1925. (if he was real).

‘Kay?  

Why is this significant?

Central components of style, tense and perspective establish time and character. It’s easy to take them for granted. We begin a work of fiction and orient our reading by understanding these markers intuitively. We are trained to do so as we learn to read.

The Night Inspector is written as a fictional memoir with the protagonist, Billy Bartholomew, looking back from an unspecified present on actions that occurred chiefly in 1867 but also earlier, before and during and after the Civil War, and in different places. Thus, the narrator says, “Did you know that in my time there were miniature broughams drawn through Central Park by teams of goats?” By “in my time,” he is referring to the time of the story, which, as said, is a fifteen-year period. (I’m estimating).

Time and place are very fluid. Shifts are not always marked in a traditional sense by line or paragraph breaks. The first scene, which occurs in the present time of the story, is followed by a scene which goes back say, five years, and recounts Billy’s early days as a Union sharpshooter. The place is unmarked, but we can certainly infer that it is not New York City In this case, there is a paragraph break; however the tense does not change. The new section begins: “I did hear of several who used a buffalo gun…” The reader is expected to make sense of this, knowing that we first encounter a badly wounded Billy being fitted with a prosthetic device, so this first scene must have occurred after he began life as a soldier.

Other time shifts are marked even less. Thus, the scene describing Billy’s early days as a soldier ends with: “I was, finally, a hunter, and I killed them.” Without anything more than a new paragraph, we next read: “At Yale College, where I was to study theology ancient and modern…” This scene occurs farther back, pre-war., and continues backwards in time and in yet again a different place: “Although I must say, Uncle Sidney Cowper did not dislike me…” This reference to the time before Billy attended Yale probably occurs around 1850, when Billy’s father has died and his brother, Cowper, moved into the family, residing in rural New York.  

We return to the present time and place of the story with no more than a new paragraph: “At Yale College, I learned enough to learn enough, and I was therefore situated in Cheerie’s Chop House on an evening in 1867…” And this scene shows Billy’s first encounter with M.

So, in the course of four pages, we the reader are expected to travel in space and time, the one constant being we experience everything through the perspective of Billy. And, I think it’s fair to say that with a little effort, we always know where we are in time and space.

Really. Where are we?

However, the effect is intentionally dizzying. It forces us to cling for dear life to Billy, who is, let’s say, at least a compromised narrator. He is, in the course of the book, a man who commits great violence, although he is ultimately redeemed.

 What else can be said about the story’s structure and style?

The prose is distinctive in that Billy’s narration does not use contractions, and this gives the story an historical accuracy. Contractions are used in quoted speech, although sparingly. Contractions in English began appearing in writing dated from the sixteenth-century, although they were certainly used before that in speech. They were often regarded as a marker of education, and that is why Billy’s non-use of contractions—rarely even in his quoted speech, indicates he is educated. This is also true of M. The standard for literature during the nineteenth century was not to use contractions except to indicate that a character was less educated. I think too, that the lack of contractions in The Night Inspector gives a seriousness to the characters. This is a serious book, meaning there’s not much comedy to be found. The tone is serious, my friends.

Finally, the text is peppered with expressions like: “although I must say,” “thank you one and all,” and “I reckoned” —all recognizable as common during the nineteenth century.

Kay, till next time.