Inner Workings

In Which the Inner Workings of the Alliterates Are Revealed

Since the beginning, this society has been a fellowship of writers. Rob consciously modeled the group after the Inklings, the social club of Tolkien, Lewis, and other Oxford dons. As with the Inklings, Alliterates meetings include readings of works-in-progress, focused discussions of the fine points of writing, and gripe sessions about the business of writing. Still, these topics are always less important than the opportunity to gather as friends.

The group follows a handful of rules—the foundation of its stability and longevity:

1. Homework is forbidden: No one should feel he must prepare before a meeting.
2. The Alliterates is a quote-free zone: What is said at the table stays at the table.
3. Unanimous vote decides: One dissenter can prevent the whole group from enacting a change.
4. The bartender gets a big tip: After all, she deserves it.

Obviously, Rule 2 precludes any Alliterates discussion from being written down word for word. Given that, the following is a purely fictional reconstruction of one of those early meetings. Even so, it gives a glimpse into the way discussions often run.
ROB: Well, enough about the Packers and Bears—
DOUG: Certainly enough about the Bears.
TIM (simultaneously): You mean the Bears and Packers. Let’s keep the order straight.
ROB (ignoring both): Let’s have a conversation I can dominate for a change. Let’s talk about theme.
DAVE: I don’t think I’ve had enough Jameson’s for this.
JEFF: You mean, enough to discuss theme, or enough to let Rob dominate a conversation?
DAVE: I definitely haven’t had enough.
ROB (ignoring them, too): So, what is theme?
DOUG: A theme is what I used to assign my high school students to write.
TIM: I see a theme emerging.
TROY: I recently read a book that defined theme as the meaning in a story.
ROB: That’s a good start. The theme is the meaning. But do you mean meaning with a capital M?
TROY: Are you talking about a meaning that the author puts into a story?
ROB: I guess so.
LESTER: I think it’s more complicated than that. If you start talking about a single meaning with a capital M, then you don’t really have a story anymore, do you?
DOUG: Then you have propaganda.
LESTER: Right. If a story has only one meaning, at best, it’s an allegory—with one-to-one symbolism. I’m talking Pilgrim’s Progress here, where the character Christian is a Christian, and the Slough of Despond is a Slough of Despond.
TIM: Tolkien hated allegory. He said he despised it from the time he was old enough to recognize it.
DAVE: An unkind comment, given that Lewis was probably sitting beside him when he said it.
JEFF: But even Narnia isn’t really allegory. I mean, try to make one-to-one connections. Sure, Aslan is Jesus, but who is Father Christmas? And why does Bacchus show up?
DOUG: Right. So, Lewis had certain themes that he intended in the Chronicles, but he didn’t say, “That’s it. That’s all this means.”
ROB: So, even if the author has a specific meaning in mind, he or she shouldn’t ever think “That’s it. Anyone who sees something different is just wrong”?
TROY: I’m glad we’re getting away from this capital-M meaning stuff. There are lots of books that mean something completely different to readers than to the authors. Sometimes, the author’s intentional theme isn’t the most important theme.
DAVE: All writers are products of their time. You can’t escape that. In some ways, the most important themes in your stories aren’t ones you consciously put there.
TIM: They’re the ones you just embody—the ones that capture the time you live in.
ROB: So, clearly, there are themes that the author may intend, and there are themes that the author might not even be aware of. And sometimes those are the themes that make a work great.
JEFF: Great in its own time, or great in another time? How many writers have been described as ahead of their time? Lots of them die before the world is ready for what they’re thinking.
ROB: That’s what I’m afraid of.
JEFF: Being ahead of your time?
ROB: Not selling any books until I’m dead.
TIM: Try being behind your time. That’s the real curse.
JEFF: I’ve often thought I should’ve lived in the twenties. I love the old pulps.
ROB: I would’ve been in vaudeville.
DAVE: I would have been a bootlegger.
DOUG: We could’ve had an Alliterates speakeasy. Troy would’ve been the bouncer.
LESTER: I’d be the hit man.
DAVE: You? Lester the Mild-Mannered?
ROB: More like “The Smiling Blackjack.” He just wants to get behind you.
TIM: It’s amazing how all this repressed content just bubbles to the surface.
ROB: At the risk of sticking to our topic—I have to wonder if that’s where most of the themes in a piece of writing come from.
DOUG: You mean the bubbles on the surface? Beer as the universal muse?
TIM: I think he means it comes from sneaking up behind Lester.
ROB: Actually—well, yeah, there’s that—but I meant that if you’re trying to put a specific meaning in a piece of writing, usually it comes off forced and unnatural.
TROY: A theme is something you have to discover while you write.
TIM: You mean, it’s something lying there on the page, like a fossil to be dug out?
TROY: Sort of, but it’s not in the paper or in the computer. You’re digging it out of your own subconscious.
DAVE: That’s why so many writers are schizophrenic. They dig up old bones that other people aren’t even aware of.
ROB: Writing is a therapy—but you can’t spend all your time down with the bones.
JEFF: That’s a topic for another day. But I’m liking this definition of theme. It’s the meaning that you discover in a story.
TIM: And the “you” could be the writer or the reader—anybody.
DOUG: Here’s a toast, to whoever “you” are. “May you find every theme you seek!”
JEFF: And “may you keep buying our books!”
ALL: Cheers!