Buckwaldo Mudthumper
Renaldo Rapunsel
Mary Hennypenny
Flapjack Magoo
Buttcheeks Halitosis
Emanuel Cant
Florida Rhymer
Irmalinda Pitkaginkel
Joseph Turnipseed
Rebecca Florescent
John Whipsnade
Laura Galinule
Lota Coupdose
Mandanger Ellipsis
Trufaldo Knickaragua
Beneficio Calendarado
Smiley Sheckles
Bubba Fatcheeks

At night he dreams of ice cream.

Certainly, great works like Secret Life, which everyone should go buy and no one should be allowed to read until they’re old enough to run with scissors, rises above such petty concerns. It would be ruinous, completely against the mood created by the liquid presentation of images. Go, dear reader, and seek out Life.

But for the stories I’ve run across, the absence of name is matched by attenuated access to the characters. Don’t try this at home. This technique should only be used by trained professionals on our studio lot.

I’m also not claiming it works in Secret Life, although I know why I chose not to name characters in some stories.

Actually, part of the above is what you were already saying.

JeffV

But interesting observation!

Trent

Thanks to both of you. I hope the readers of this blog are paying attention because there’s a lot of weighted, carefully considered experience behind these gentlemen.

Trent -

I could easily see first person being tough to work a name into–especially in the short form–and I wouldn’t want an author to strain for something arbitrary. That was certainly my assumption when I started writing the article: 3rd person, give me a name; first person, probably not. But then I realized it might be easier than I thought, that you could pick a verbal conflict that reveals the name of "I."

That’s what I love about these discussions. I can’t participate without learning something. In the case of "Taking Names for the Purge," it was that I’m an asshole.

I was off in my conclusion of "give me a name or give me a search for identity." Jeff enlarges the answer and makes it more useful with his test: "does it serve the story?" I like that attitude. I’m a functionalist. Any wild shit goes as long as it serves the story.

After Jeff’s post I’ll have to go dink out some story in which I play games with the relationship between name and identity. I don’t like the idea of predestination, therefore I don’t like the idea that names either reveal or dictate personality. Of course, in the fictive world, they’re supposed to.

I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and reformulate what really bothered me about namelessness. Jeff is right. Merely assigning a name (can’t tell the players without a scorecard) isn’t going to suddenly make any of these stories more interesting or coherent. Possibly I’m looking at three results–no name; minimal sense of identity; rather generic character–where the cause is something else and I just lack the balls to come out and say the character wasn’t accessible to me as a reader.

I don’t know if its my place to come forward to say "and I think it’s because the writer doesn’t have good access to the characgter." If it was someone I really, really liked and respected, I might tell them in private. Where it’s clearly within my realm to comment about the text as it appears on the page, I don’t think its any of my stinking business how it got there.

Since I’m feeling my way through the dark on this, I’m certainly open to input.

As always, best regards,
Alan

So far, she’s sold three orders this week. It won’t even cover the fees she paid for all of the addresses. She wonders if she should try "work at home" stuffing envelopes instead.

One of the orders is to a P. O. box right here in Roxbury, right up the road from where she lives. She wonders if it could be for her husband, now two months divorced.