Let's take you from the first moment you step into the barbershop, Sandra. Pick us up there, and understand that the goal is to articulate only in the moment through the senses.
Sandra: I can see a lot of men pushing around me.
ROB: OK, you've just now generalized. "A lot of men" is a generality. You take that first step in the door and you stop. You place yourself in that room and I want you, like the camera eye, to see it in its fullness — look from left to right, up to down, whatever, but let's see what you're seeing in the moment.
Sandra: There are men sitting.
ROB: You've generalized once again. Let's start at one specific spot in the room. If you're taking in a generalized view of the room, it's not really general because, in fact, there's a picture full of detail, but because we're not painters — we're fiction writers — we have to place those details in a sequence, don't we? So take the step in, and I want you to look at a specific spot and see that spot, then move your eyes, and move them, and move them.
Sandra: OK, I go through the door.
ROB: That's also summarized: "I go through the door." There's no engagement of the moment with the doorknob, no sound of the door opening, no feeling of the exchange of air between the outside and barbershop. Do you understand? There are so many moment-to-moment sense impressions going through the door that were left out. What we're looking for is every moment-to-moment detail. But let's not get hung up at the door. You have entered and have just closed the door behind you. You are in your first moment completely in the barbershop. Let your eye fall on one specific thing right now.
Sandra: It's a man.
ROB: Now you've started this with a summarizing state-ment. I want you to see it in the moment specifically. What is the first feature on that man's whole being? What's the first thing your eyes come to? Engage him with your eyes in the moment. So tell me the first thing you see about that man.
Sandra: I can't see him properly.
ROB: OK, that's probably because you're trying to remember him from the literal event. What I want you to do now is invent him. Make him a sensual reality in this cinema of your mind, in your imagination. Take a moment. You've just touched the brass of that doorknob and it felt cool in the very center of the palm of your hand. You've turned it and you've leaned into the door and it has creaked open and a little bell tinkles at the top and the smell of powder and..
Sandra: Shaving cream..
ROB: Good. Pick it up. What else comes out of the air as you're just stepping through the door.
Sandra: The sound of the strap as he presses the blade.
ROB: OK, the sound of the strap — what is that sound? — give me that sound.
Sandra: Kind of like a dull little whack against the leather strap.
ROB: Good. What else? What else is coming out of you as you're inside.
Sandra: Coughing. Talking.
ROB: OK, you're generalizing those. Let's hear a specific cough, and tell me about that cough. And a fragment of talk. Tell me those things in narrative.
Sandra: A man's coughing.
ROB: Not too much removed from a cough. Tell me about that cough?
Sandra: It's a dry cough.
ROB: From where is it coming?
Sandra: It's coming from his throat.
ROB: All right. Hear a fragment of something that's spoken.
Sandra: I actually hear my grandfather's voice.
ROB: You've just summarized that for me, OK? What is he saying?
Sandra: He's talking about dogs.
ROB: You've summarized what he's talking about. Absolutely drop into the center of the conversation and let me hear a fragment of what he's saying.
Sandra: "Sheila's a beautiful bitch."
ROB: Good, very nice.
Sandra: "Sheila."
ROB: All right. Let your grandfather look in your direction. Tell me what you see and how you see him and what you see him do.
Sandra: He has the razor in his hand.
ROB: That's generalized for me. If that's the sentence, how is he holding it? Give me all the details.
Sandra: He has it pointed out. He's holding his forefinger to the back of the blade, balancing it, holding it very delicately. He's such a big man, he has such a big hand. He's holding the razor very gently and delicately.
ROB: OK, now those are abstractions — gentleness and delicacy. Tell me in the moment through the senses what you are seeing there that you have abstracted as delicate.
Sandra: Lightly. It's a kind of a shape of the hand.
ROB: What shape? How are the fingers arranged?
Sandra: The forefinger's out in front of the blade.
ROB: Where's the pinkie?
Sandra: It's balancing the very end of the razor.
ROB: Let his face turn to you. Let me see his face in the moment.
Sandra: He is not surprised to see me.
ROB: OK, you have just analyzed his face. He's not surprised to see you. We're not seeing a not-there; what are we seeing?
Sandra: He's looking as though he was expecting me to walk in.
ROB: You just analyzed it again. What do you read in the face? Because the little girl standing there perhaps rightly analyzes the look on his face, but what is it that's on the face she sees that leads her to that analysis? That's what we're after.
Sandra: That's abstraction?
ROB: That's abstraction. The thwack of that razor on the strop tells me that you have a very fine sense memory and also that you should drop into "She was a beautiful bitch" as the first words out of his mouth. Those are fine, striking moments, Sandra. Now what you need to do is turn that same faculty to this face.
Sandra: He seems to gaze at me with a very level expression. His expression hardly seems to change.
ROB: OK. From what?
Sandra: From what I would have expected him to.
ROB: OK, now you're begging the question. What feature on his face are you looking at? Focus on one feature.
Sandra: His eyes.
ROB: Tell me about his eyes.
Sandra: He's gazing.
ROB: Gazing is a kind of generalized thing, isn't it? There is an infinite variety of gazes. What are those eyes? Look at those eyes and let me see precisely what they are.
Sandra: They're blue.
ROB: Blue like what?
Sandra: Actually like a steely kind of blue-gray.
ROB: What do you smell?
Sandra: Tobacco.
ROB: What's that like? There are a lot of different kinds of tobacco. How do you experience that smell?
Sandra: I associate that with men.
ROB: Yeah, that's kind of generalizing for me now. There's a lot of different modulations of tobacco smell and they come to you in various ways. So let me smell that specific tobacco smell.
Sandra: It's sweet. And dark.
ROB: Sweet and dark. That's good. What part of your body does it make you conscious of? Where does it impact your body?
Sandra: In the stomach. It seems to go straight down into me when I smell it.
ROB: Good! OK, thank you Sandra. [Applause and much laughter.] It's very difficult. But so is writing literary fiction. And, you know, you must place these demands on yourself to be in the moment and through the senses. All the time, in everything you write in your fiction, this must be the standard mode of discourse unless and until the organic object not only allows but demands, from deep, resonant, dream-driven places, that the mode of discourse in a particular passage vary into other modes. What I'm trying to get you to do — though the details will be organically driven, as they are not now; and though the details will have yearning as their center of gravity or engine, as they do not now — nevertheless, that moment-to-moment sensual flow is your normal mode of speaking in literary fiction. As hard as it is. If you think this is hard, where you're free to make up anything, what if your choices are circumscribed by all the other detailed choices you've already made? See, this is what you're buying into, folks, coming to this university and wanting to be an artist.