Monday, June 1: The Scribbler
WEATHER THOU GOEST
by James Lincoln Warren
The Santa Ana wind, which makes you crazy, is the most famous weather phenomenon in Southern California, but the most persistent weather phenomenon out here is during the overcast weeks of June Gloom, which just makes you depressed. Of course, Southern Californians have a reputation for mental aberration in the first place, but I really think that has more to do with Hollywood than with nature. The weather out here is usually, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s usually perfect. The Santa Anas and mudslides and wildfires, and even the regular-as- clockwork June Gloom, are the exceptions rather than the rule. Those of us who’ve lived the SoCal life for any length of time are rarely surprised by anything nature has to toss at us. Too bad.
It struck me recently how big a part weather plays in story-telling. (We’ve discussed Raymond Chandler’s “Red Wind” to death here, so I will the spare the Gentle Reader any further mention of it. This time, anyway.) C. S. Lewis’s classic (and quite short) 1938 science fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet begins thus:
The last drops of the thundershower hard hardly ceased falling when the Pedestrian stuffed his map into his pocket, settled his pack more comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped out from the shelter of a large chestnut-tree into the middle of the road.
Dutch Leonard’s dictum to the contrary notwithstanding, I think this is a strong beginning, especially for a story about a man being shanghaied to Mars. The story begins with the end of a storm—a lull in the action, as it were. It paints an evocative pastoral scene in a couple bold strokes—the chestnut tree is a nice touch and puts us squarely in the temperate zone, almost certainly somewhere in Europe, where chestnuts are relatively common. (We’re actually in England. It is C. S. Lewis, after all.)
The end of a storm is a special time and brings unique sensations—things smell different, water is gently dripping off the foliage instead of pounding into the earth, and there’s a cool stillness in the air. It’s a between time. What Lewis is doing is setting us up for the confined and artificial environment of the spaceship to come, and the even stranger environment of Malacandra, by emphasizing the familiar. He’s also setting up a mood. Weather is almost always used in stories to establish an emotional ambience.
Ancient humans thought that the weather was an indication of the temper of the gods. We might name our winds as Santa Ana, chinook, sirocco, mistral, and tehuantepecer, but they had Boreas, Eurus, Notus, and Zephyrus. There is nothing more basic to human psychology than interpreting swings in the environment as manifestations of an unseen power, seeing omens in the weather and other celestial phenomena, lightning and rainbows, solar and lunar eclipses, the retrograde motion of the planets and the unheralded appearances of comets (Halley excepted).
My latest story begins with the following quote:
And meteors fright the fixed starres of Heaven;
The pale-fac’d Moone looks bloody on the Earth,
And leane-look’d Prophets whisper fearefull change.—Wm. Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard II, II. iv.
(The word “meteor” originally meant “atmospheric phenomenon”, from the Greek metšwron1; hence “meteorology” is the study of weather.)
Bulwer-Lytton‘s novel Paul Clifford would have been a very different story if it hadn’t been a dark and stormy night.
Which only goes to show that characters aren’t the only characters in story-telling. As far as the daily forecast is concerned, this can be blatant—e.g., the character driving the action in “Key Largo” is a hurricane, and Man vs. the Elements is a staple in adventure stories—or it can be symbolic—all the old Universal Studios Sherlock Holmes pictures begin with a shot of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce walking in a thick fog. One of my stories, “The Iphis Incident”, partially takes place inside a creaky old coaching inn being buffeted by a whistling night wind. Cozy and secretive inside, you see, threatening and hostile outside, a metaphor for the story’s theme of searching for one’s inmost identity.
Right now, the weather in normally bright and sunny Los Angeles is at its most featureless. June Gloom. It’s as if it has no character at all. The sky is an indistinct gray void. The temperature is so mild it’s almost like being in a sensory deprivation tank. On the other hand, a blank canvas is featureless until the painter picks up his brush.
Back to work.
James, you omitted a word: HOT. Los Angeles can be hot in a way seldom experienced here in the Western Reserve. We utter bitter complaints when the thermometer reads much above 80. On the rarest of occasions it has been known to hit 90 and this triggers suicides and mass murders.
I once spent a week admiring the beauty of Marina del Rey, the intriguing sights at the Burbank Studio and other fascinating attractions. I left with one memory that has persisted for 25 years – my God, it was hot!
Mark Twain published a minor novel named THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT in 1891. It may be best remembered today for the prefatory note that begins:
“No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather.”
Twain aussres the reader that he has compiled a collection of great literary descriptions of weather and any time a reader feels the need he can flip to the back of the book and read one at random.
The last sample in his collection is: “And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”
Dick, I grew up in San Antonio. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for over twenty years. L.A. doesn’t get hot — not like South Texas. Not even like New York City. In my neighborhood (about three miles from the Santa Monica beach), temps in the 90s are rare, even in August.
But Palm Springs is just a two-hour drive away. There, it gets hot.
I think Harlan Ellison’s short story “Soft Monkey” has the best first sentence that uses the weather to set the story up. “At twenty-five minutes past midnight on 51st Street, the wind chill factor was so sharp it could carve you a new a**hole.”
That sentence sets you up for some of the coldest characters I’ve ever met in a story.
Anybody out there know a literary description of Albuquerque heat??? (Used to vacation there!)