But Val, even with her laughing, narrow eyes, the kind certain Asian girls can have, with that wonderful hint of an upward lilt and dark sparkle when they gaze at you that says in a most generous way, Really?, looked like she wanted to don a crown of thorns and climb atop a Viking pyre, so without a beat I paid for their food and was heading off with my own steamer basket of xiaolongbao when she asked if she could meet my parents to say what a gallant young man I was.
My Year Abroad, by Chang-Rae Lee
Lee’s sentences are long, sweeping you up and immersing you in the story, and it feels as if you’re in a very large body of water with land in the distance—meaning, you can’t easily step on shore and get out. But you’re glad you’re swimming in his fictive world because of the story and his style. This sentence takes up about one-fifth of the page, and you move smoothly and easily through the story on waves of long sentences.
This sentence accomplishes a lot. We see Val physically--those laughing narrow eyes--and then the sentence does a vertical spike, peering at the physicality of certain Asian girls. The sentence zooms back down to Val and her current situation. In the story, she’s with her son in a food court at the Hong Kong International Airport and her credit card doesn’t work. Her son starts crying and Val, well, she’s mortified.
Lee could have written Val looked pained, guilt-ridden. Instead, Lee uses synecdoche, in which a part is used to represent the whole. Or, less commonly, the whole is used to represent a part. (“France won the World Cup”). Here, “don a crown” is part of the whole of suffering or bearing a burden, a la Jesus. And “Viking pyre,” is part of the whole of dying and being cremated.
Why bother with this? The beauty of synecdoche is that an abstract concept, such as suffering or death, is made concrete and sensate via a specific image. I can picture the crown of thorns, I can feel the pointy thorns. It’s also original, addressing the lament of Gertrude Stein that we’re writing in the period of late language, meaning just about everything has been done. (Stein: “It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”)
The images also resonate and reverberate with the story’s themes. Note: Lee is also playing with hyperbole, or exaggeration with these images.
This is a good time to bring up metonymy, which is similar to synecdoche. Metonymy involves one word or phrase substituted for another with which it's closely associated. For instance, “wallets” for wallet-size photos or “lab coats” for scientists. But, really, don’t get too entangled in the difference between synecdoche and metonymy because they are almost twins.
The Making
This is a mid-branching sentence, with the subject “Val” separated from the verb “looked.” What comes between the subject and verb is modifying information that refers back to the subject.
So begin with your subject and add a physical description. Can you include a generalization about the subject as Lee does: “the kind certain Asian girls can have, with that wonderful hint of an upward lilt and dark sparkle when they gaze at you…”?
Next comes your verb. Here, Lee used “looked” and then elaborates on how Val looked. Lee built in a contrast, so this description is different from the first description. Here’s where you get to use synecdoche. One way to do this is to come up with an abstraction, such as suffering, death, faith, joy, and then think of images that are part of the domain of the abstraction.
Now add a subordinate clause. Lee uses “so without a beat,” which leads to a new base clause, “I paid for their food and was heading off…”
Then add one more subordinate clause.
Try it!
How did it go?