JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #49
April 22, 2021
A couple of weeks ago, Beverly Cleary died at the age of 104. When I heard the news, I pulled Ramona the Pest off my shelf, the same copy I read many times when I was a kid and had an incalculable influence on me. I read it slowly, savoring it in little chunks over a couple of days, and I was reminded of so much that had captured my imagination long ago. And of course, given the strange zealot I have become, I noticed how it was written.
Cleary was a spectacular writer. Her prose is smooth and well-mannered, maybe a little bit too tight, but perfectly economical: every word earns its place, every sentence accomplishes exactly what it needs to, and there is nothing extraneous. I can imagine structuring a course in prose-craft around the study of Ramona the Pest, how dialogue and exposition are balanced, how character is expressed in nearly every line. We spend that entire book in a five-year-old’s mind, and the point of view never breaks. We’re utterly convinced of Ramona. There are world-class authors of adult literary fiction that do not exceed Cleary’s command of character.
Check out this passage from page 2:
Ramona went on with her singing and skipping. "This is a great day, a great day, a great day!" she sang, and to Ramona, who was feeling grown up in a dress instead of play clothes, this was a great day, the greatest day of her whole life. No longer would she have to sit on her tricycle watching Beezus and Henry Huggins and the rest of the boys and girls in the neighborhood go off to school. Today she was going to school, too. Today she was going to learn to read and write and do all the things that would help her catch up with Beezus.
This paragraph establishes the dramatic situation of the entire book, which is Ramona’s excitement to finally at long last be old enough to go to school, and we learn about it firmly embedded within her perspective. We get details and scene through her eyes, through her memories and what she notices and cares about. The shift from narrative exposition to internal thought is nearly invisible so that Romona’s very thoughts seem expository.
I could probably go on, and maybe my lauding this children’s chapter book would eventually feel disingenuous. It’s not. I do think that despite its apparent simplicity, Cleary’s prose is masterful. We writers can learn quite a bit just studying her control, how she makes shifts, and how the dynamics of perspective work in her writing.
Next: On Killing Your Darlings