The Weird Ways of Wideman

The Weird Ways of Wideman “Our Time” is an interesting story that displays many different styles of writing that not everyone is accustomed to. The author twists and turns the story many different directions throughout, which provides for an alluring read. The story “Our Time” by John Edgar Wideman attempts to tell the sad tale of Wideman’s brother, Robby. Robby is in jail at the time and Wideman is trying to piece together the parts of his younger brother’s life that landed him in prison. Throughout the story Wideman encounters many problems with his writing that some of the time he brings up, and tries to find solutions to, while going over the events that led to Robby’s downfall. “Our Time” uses quite a different writing style compared to what is taught in your typical English classroom, and it has changed the way I think as a writer. There are many difficulties that Wideman comes across as he struggles to explain Robby’s story to the reader. One of the main problems that he encounters is staying on topic. Wideman finds it difficult to tell Robby’s story without attaching his own flavor to it. Wideman is traditionally a fiction writer, so it appears challenging for him to not add his own parts into Robby’s story. This is observed when Wideman himself writes, “Do I write to escape, to make a fiction of my life? If I can’t be trusted with the story of my own life, how could I ask my brother to trust me with his?” (Wideman 672). All through the story Wideman takes time, such as this, to stop himself in the middle of writing to discuss an issue he is having with it. This is a style of writing that most readers have never seen before. Another problem that Wideman comes across is his ability to listen to Robby. His whole life he had been rejecting a fair amount of the things that came out of Robby’s mouth, and for the first time he had to actually listen to, and record what was being said. While visiting Robby, John explains how he listened to his brother in the past. Wideman confers, “In the prison visiting lounge I acted toward my brother the way I’d been acting toward him all my life, heard what I wanted to hear, rejected the rest” (Wideman 682). This quote provides the reader with a good example of one of the complications that Wideman is having, as well as how he interrupts the text to explain it to the reader. I believe writing it out in the text helps Wideman think about the problems he is having more audibly, which in turn, aids him in finding a solution to the writing issue at hand. Wideman uses his interesting ways of writing to fix a problem he finds with his writing right after he notices it. For example, the text on the entire first page is in Italics. Wideman says nothing about it, but as soon as the reader flips the page they see that the words have changed to a regular type of font. Even though he doesn’t specifically write about the italics, John clearly saw it as a problem, and switched it to better his story. Why were the italics an issue for John? Who knows? It’s quite possible that he believed that a normal font was just easier on the eyes, and would better keep the reader reading. Another interesting thing about “Our Time” is the way Wideman switches up the perspective in which he is writing. Each perspective he uses tells a little different type of a tale, because every person sees things a different way. On page 671 Wideman claims, “I was hearing a new voice. Something about the voice struck me then, but I missed what was novel and crucial. I’d lost my Homewood ear” (Wideman 671). John notes this while talking about what his mother is saying. I think it is a good representation of why Wideman feels the need to have the story in many different perspectives throughout. Doing this provides the story with multiple emotions from multiple people that give the reader a chance to choose one or many of them to empathize with. One more reason our author might switch up the perspective in which he’s writing is that he simply may not like the way he is writing. To fix this he decides to write in a different style, and while he does that, he adds more emotion and outlooks towards the events that have happened throughout the story. This is another good example of one of the solutions Wideman uses to help solve his, at least to him it seems, ever-prevalent writing problems. Writing “Our Time” through many people’s eyes, such as: his own, Robby’s, and his mother’s, is a style of writing that I have never seen before, and that not a lot of people are used to. Wideman has many interesting ways of improving his writing. He has trouble staying on topic, and in order to fix that, he uses other people to write. He gives up some of the formality to his writing to stay on topic by having Robby tell his own story. Wideman can’t remember all the parts to the story he’s trying to tell, which is what causes him to go off topic. He goes off topic when he is trying to fill in the spaces in between. Here Wideman admits: “I just remember it differently. Different parts of the incident he’s describing come back. Strange thing is my recollections return through the door he opened. My memories needed his. Maybe the fact that we recall different things is crucial. Maybe they are foreground and background propping each other up” (Wideman 688).
Soon after this Wideman switches the text to Robby’s writing. He knows that Robby can better tell the complete story with the correct emotions, and he uses that as the solution to his problem. Wideman organizing the story in such a way is quite unusual, however, I think it made the story more of an interesting read, and ended up improving the story as a whole. Wideman is experimenting with his writing all through the story. In turn, I will be experimenting with my writing in this class. His writing is very new to me, and not at all similar to what I have learned in school. If I had included many aspects of Wideman’s writing style into the papers I wrote in high school, I’m almost sure that I would have received a bad grade because it seems so sporadic. His writing is all over the place; it dips and dives at some points when the reader isn’t even expecting it. For example, not once in the story does Wideman include quotation marks. If I were to quote somebody, or a writing, on the final draft of a paper in high school and I didn’t use quotation marks, I would immediately be docked a letter grade. Wideman must have looked at his story and thought it better to leave the quotation marks out, possibly to help the flow of the reading, or maybe so it feels like the story is coming from one place, not multiple people being quoted all over the place. As I look back I realized that I didn’t take notice as to who was speaking in the story, as much as I would have when I have the quotation marks right in front of my eyes. It’s interesting to me to see all of these irregularities in what is considered a professionally written piece of work. One of the main peculiarities that I noticed was that Wideman had three different beginnings that he was thinking about using for the book, and he even mentions to the reader the other ones he was contemplating using. This is seen when Wideman writes, “Another place to start could be December 29, 1950 – the date of Robby’s birth” (Wideman 683). It’s as if Wideman is trying to have a conversation with the reader, and wants to let us know his exact thought process. Even with him explaining himself some of the time, the story seemed very random. Everything that I had learned about writing, up to this point, was that it has to follow a specific set up. John, it seems, goes out of his way to not follow a strict rubric. Reading “Our Time” was unlike anything that I have ever read, and it provided me with information on the many different ways of writing. Reading this story has served me as a student in a multitude of ways. It opened my eyes to a whole new world of writing because of all the twists and turns the style of writing in this story took. In everything that I have written so far in my life I have followed a template. Looking back it feels as if I was just following a monotonous writing routine because it’s what I was told to do, and if I strayed from the routine I would be writing a bad paper. After reading “Our Time” a student will be more inclined to step outside of the box, and encounter an entirely new way of writing. The problems that Wideman interrupts the text with to try to find a solution for, provides a different style of writing that is unfamiliar to most readers. Despite being unusual, it seemed to help his story as a whole, and he used it to successfully draw the reader in. The way he wrote brought me closer to the story, and seemed to attach me to certain characters because I was able to hear their voice and their emotions throughout. Any person that reads this story is shown a different style of writing that has yet to be exploited by most all writers. The story can be used to teach, as well as entertain, which in my mind, makes it a good read for many.