There are some very nice things here; I think the paragraph where you introduce the convention of treating chemical names like biological ones is particularly good, for instance, though the convention isn’t as effective after that when the chemical names are no longer pairs of words. Generally, I like your writing style at the word/phrase/sentence level, at least as it manifests in this particular piece of writing.
Many things about this piece leave me puzzled. That may be intentional (leave lots of intriguing dangling threads to keep the reader’s attention; leave ’em wanting more, not less), or it may indicate that this piece should really be considered as part of something larger that ties some of the loose ends together (it’s clear that this piece is depicting a specific moment in a longer life—“before we left”, “before I left the state”, “I often thought of it before I did things”, etc.). Though there are puzzles that I don’t think any context would resolve. For me, the resulting sense of not being sure what’s going on was disagreeable, but other readers might well differ.
The thing I liked least about this piece is that it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. That may just indicate that there’s something I didn’t grasp, of course. There are a number of things that seem like themes (pollution and waste; the pin oak, considered as a character who sees things on a timescale longer than ours; what happens to houses and neighbourhoods over time; childhood) but there doesn’t seem to be much development of those themes, and accordingly I’m left not sure what the point is (if there is a “point”, which of course there need not be).
The very end suggests that perhaps the point is something to do with insidious invisible pollution? Our narrator, as a child, thinks something is water but in fact it’s water, trichloroethylene, 1-1-dichloroethene. That doesn’t seem like enough of a shock, somehow, to pull its weight.
So it seems more as if it’s just drawing a sketch of one particular moment in the past—no “point” necessary—but it’s hard to square that with what seems like the very strong emphasis on pollution, waste and decay. Having said that, as a sketch of one moment in the past I think it does a good job.
There are a number of little details that don’t serve an obvious “structural” purpose but give the impression that some care has been taken over them stylistically. The back door that you didn’t use. The absence of gloves on your hands. Not thinking of your mother’s possible reaction to the rubbish-bagging. Often thinking of it on other occasions. Perhaps they’re there just for vividity, in which case I feel like maybe some of them are a bit too obtrusive. Or perhaps there’s some subtext I’m supposed to infer from them and am failing to get? I dunno. I don’t want to say “take them out” because they’re nicely written and they do add vividity, but I get a slight sense of a Chekhov’s gun left unfired.
Also puzzling (and also suggesting that maybe there’s some point I’ve failed to grasp): what’s the bag of rubbish for? Invasive treasures, you say; is our narrator packaging up the rubbish in order to hang it in pride of place on the bedroom wall? (Hard to square that with the word “invasive”, I think.) Or to throw it out? (But then why the suggestion that their mother might disapprove?) Or to hang it off a branch of that pin oak? (Seems unlikely, given how the oak is portrayed.) Or just a thing a child decided to do on a sudden whim? Since this rubbish-bagging is kinda the central event of this vignette, and our narrator seems to be quite excited about doing it (running home, putting shoes on without stopping to untie and tie them), I want to understand why it’s important to the narrator, and I don’t.
A few quibbles: There’s a slight mismatch between “It was good to be near it” and “I think all running water is like that” (like what? the previous sentence isn’t, strictly, describing the water). “Sock feet” feels odd; is there a reason for that rather than, say, just “socks”? Why trichloroethylene but dichloroethene? The pin oak is almost always “he”, which I like, but at one point we suddenly have “unless someone came to destroy it”. What’s “them” in the sentence beginning “I took the cigarette box”? Maybe “destroy themselves piecemeal” flows better than “piecemeal destroy themselves”.
The paragraph beginning “I characterized him alternately” feels like it wants to be nudged in the showing-versus-telling direction somehow. (I’m not very sure about this.) Elsewhere, you just state matter-of-factly that “he judged that harshly”, “he had been here before they put these houses up”, “he did watch”. But here, for one paragraph, you’re looking at it indirectly: I characterized him … . It seems like this breaks the spell a little.
Even though I’m not sure what the very ending is doing I like its craftsmanship, with the parallel between the drainage ditch / babbling brook at the start echoed by the rivulet at the very end.
Thank you so much (for both your kind words and your constructive criticism)!
The point was intended to be about pollution and I appreciate you pointing out that it wasn’t strong/clear enough—that’s something I want to work on. In the same vein, the narrator’s intention with the garbage fished out of the creek would be to throw it out so it isn’t litter, but I agree I don’t really make that clear, especially since they call it “treasures” and say that they don’t see it as unnatural. This is one of a few pieces that I’ve written inspired by various Superfund sites in New Jersey. The specific one in question, https://semspub.epa.gov/work/02/437463.pdf, is not as serious as some of the other ones I’ve written about on the Passaic River, or the American Cyanamid site (here are some cool photos) near where I grew up. It was both a major fear and inspiration to me as a kid.
I also really like all the suggestions you made about the oak, both avoiding the “I characterized him” and making sure that I continue to use “he” and not “it”. That and the gimmick of the chemical names not being necessary throughout the whole piece—I was on and off about that myself, whether I should keep them in just that one paragraph or leave them in the whole piece, but now that I have a second opinion it makes sense to take the extras out.
Will make changes based on this and consider the ideas you describe here in my future writing—I appreciate you taking the time to write this. :)
I’m not sure that I’m necessarily advocating taking the other chemical names out. After all, they play a necessary role right at the very end, and I don’t know how that would work without all the previous use.
I didn’t mean to imply that there was any doubt that pollution was a central topic! That would be hard to miss. But it’s not so clear what you’re trying to say about it. (Or whether you’re neutrally refraining from saying anything in particular, and just showing it in its natural habitat, as it were.) Perhaps if I were less ignorant that last parenthesis would tell me a clearer story. (Though I guess googling the chemical names would probably have sufficed.)
Some rather scattered thoughts:
There are some very nice things here; I think the paragraph where you introduce the convention of treating chemical names like biological ones is particularly good, for instance, though the convention isn’t as effective after that when the chemical names are no longer pairs of words. Generally, I like your writing style at the word/phrase/sentence level, at least as it manifests in this particular piece of writing.
Many things about this piece leave me puzzled. That may be intentional (leave lots of intriguing dangling threads to keep the reader’s attention; leave ’em wanting more, not less), or it may indicate that this piece should really be considered as part of something larger that ties some of the loose ends together (it’s clear that this piece is depicting a specific moment in a longer life—“before we left”, “before I left the state”, “I often thought of it before I did things”, etc.). Though there are puzzles that I don’t think any context would resolve. For me, the resulting sense of not being sure what’s going on was disagreeable, but other readers might well differ.
The thing I liked least about this piece is that it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. That may just indicate that there’s something I didn’t grasp, of course. There are a number of things that seem like themes (pollution and waste; the pin oak, considered as a character who sees things on a timescale longer than ours; what happens to houses and neighbourhoods over time; childhood) but there doesn’t seem to be much development of those themes, and accordingly I’m left not sure what the point is (if there is a “point”, which of course there need not be).
The very end suggests that perhaps the point is something to do with insidious invisible pollution? Our narrator, as a child, thinks something is water but in fact it’s water, trichloroethylene, 1-1-dichloroethene. That doesn’t seem like enough of a shock, somehow, to pull its weight.
So it seems more as if it’s just drawing a sketch of one particular moment in the past—no “point” necessary—but it’s hard to square that with what seems like the very strong emphasis on pollution, waste and decay. Having said that, as a sketch of one moment in the past I think it does a good job.
There are a number of little details that don’t serve an obvious “structural” purpose but give the impression that some care has been taken over them stylistically. The back door that you didn’t use. The absence of gloves on your hands. Not thinking of your mother’s possible reaction to the rubbish-bagging. Often thinking of it on other occasions. Perhaps they’re there just for vividity, in which case I feel like maybe some of them are a bit too obtrusive. Or perhaps there’s some subtext I’m supposed to infer from them and am failing to get? I dunno. I don’t want to say “take them out” because they’re nicely written and they do add vividity, but I get a slight sense of a Chekhov’s gun left unfired.
Also puzzling (and also suggesting that maybe there’s some point I’ve failed to grasp): what’s the bag of rubbish for? Invasive treasures, you say; is our narrator packaging up the rubbish in order to hang it in pride of place on the bedroom wall? (Hard to square that with the word “invasive”, I think.) Or to throw it out? (But then why the suggestion that their mother might disapprove?) Or to hang it off a branch of that pin oak? (Seems unlikely, given how the oak is portrayed.) Or just a thing a child decided to do on a sudden whim? Since this rubbish-bagging is kinda the central event of this vignette, and our narrator seems to be quite excited about doing it (running home, putting shoes on without stopping to untie and tie them), I want to understand why it’s important to the narrator, and I don’t.
A few quibbles: There’s a slight mismatch between “It was good to be near it” and “I think all running water is like that” (like what? the previous sentence isn’t, strictly, describing the water). “Sock feet” feels odd; is there a reason for that rather than, say, just “socks”? Why trichloroethylene but dichloroethene? The pin oak is almost always “he”, which I like, but at one point we suddenly have “unless someone came to destroy it”. What’s “them” in the sentence beginning “I took the cigarette box”? Maybe “destroy themselves piecemeal” flows better than “piecemeal destroy themselves”.
The paragraph beginning “I characterized him alternately” feels like it wants to be nudged in the showing-versus-telling direction somehow. (I’m not very sure about this.) Elsewhere, you just state matter-of-factly that “he judged that harshly”, “he had been here before they put these houses up”, “he did watch”. But here, for one paragraph, you’re looking at it indirectly: I characterized him … . It seems like this breaks the spell a little.
Even though I’m not sure what the very ending is doing I like its craftsmanship, with the parallel between the drainage ditch / babbling brook at the start echoed by the rivulet at the very end.
Thank you so much (for both your kind words and your constructive criticism)!
The point was intended to be about pollution and I appreciate you pointing out that it wasn’t strong/clear enough—that’s something I want to work on. In the same vein, the narrator’s intention with the garbage fished out of the creek would be to throw it out so it isn’t litter, but I agree I don’t really make that clear, especially since they call it “treasures” and say that they don’t see it as unnatural. This is one of a few pieces that I’ve written inspired by various Superfund sites in New Jersey. The specific one in question, https://semspub.epa.gov/work/02/437463.pdf, is not as serious as some of the other ones I’ve written about on the Passaic River, or the American Cyanamid site (here are some cool photos) near where I grew up. It was both a major fear and inspiration to me as a kid.
I also really like all the suggestions you made about the oak, both avoiding the “I characterized him” and making sure that I continue to use “he” and not “it”. That and the gimmick of the chemical names not being necessary throughout the whole piece—I was on and off about that myself, whether I should keep them in just that one paragraph or leave them in the whole piece, but now that I have a second opinion it makes sense to take the extras out.
Will make changes based on this and consider the ideas you describe here in my future writing—I appreciate you taking the time to write this. :)
I’m not sure that I’m necessarily advocating taking the other chemical names out. After all, they play a necessary role right at the very end, and I don’t know how that would work without all the previous use.
I didn’t mean to imply that there was any doubt that pollution was a central topic! That would be hard to miss. But it’s not so clear what you’re trying to say about it. (Or whether you’re neutrally refraining from saying anything in particular, and just showing it in its natural habitat, as it were.) Perhaps if I were less ignorant that last parenthesis would tell me a clearer story. (Though I guess googling the chemical names would probably have sufficed.)