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What have you learnt about the art of writing from Dan Rhodes?

Dan Rhodes has a consistent style of writing inherent within all of his works. He

has been quoted to write ‘very short, darkly humorous stories about romantic

relationships’1 which has been a style inuential to my own pieces. His

contemporary form of micro ction is a form which has interested me and has

become a style in which en!oy writing. He is a particularly dened writer

because of the narrative structure he uses to e"plore his motifs# he sets up the

characters before creating a tension or having some drama continuing on to

either subvert or conform to the readers’e"pectations. $his layout of

subversion was something e"perimented with in my own ash ction piece

‘Reection’.

n addition to the way he subverts idealised institutions, from a

sociological rather than from a merely literary standpoint, Rhodes is also

interesting to read for the ways he epitomi%es another type of relationship, that

between novelists, the literary establishment and political power in the post&

modern world.'

1http://literature.britishcouncil.org/dan-rhodes 05/01/15

2http://literature.britishcouncil.org/dan-rhodes 05/01/15

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n Anthropology  and Marry Me Rhodes takes the basic idea of heterose"ual

relationships and e"plores the di(erent facets of which they can lead to. n all

of the stories in Anthropology  he situates the female in the dominant role and

has the male dotting on her usually to the point of desperation. )or e"ample in

‘)ace’the boyfriend is parading around illuminating his obsessional adoration

for his girlfriend as he directs attention to her using a giant picture. His

stupidity and devotion highlighted by his submissiveness is shown when he is

ignorant to the fact that other men have “Had her”. $his use of black humour is

something which e"plored in my short story ‘*ater’in which also mimicked

Rhodes’layout and style with a relationship in which the woman is dominant

and the man blind to all her indelities.

nterestingly Rhodes claims that the band $he +miths has been a great

inuence on his writing this is notable from how his

short&stories and novels display the same sentimental unhappiness and

deep melancholy. $he +miths’s music is also notable for its combination of !oy

and sadness and for delivering distressing lines with an ironic edge. $he same

pessimism tinged of irony is present in Rhodes’s ction.

en!oy the hint of cynicism in his work and the use of irony# this is something

with which have tried to tinge my work, for e"ample in ‘*ater’ attempted to

3http://literature.britishcouncil.org/dan-rhodes 05/01/15

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model the cynicism and black humour by having a teetotal wife have her ashes

spread amongst a vineyard and have her husband purchase a bottle of -odka

after she died.

can understand how Anthropology has been compared to Raymond ueneau’s

Exercises in Style as each of Rhodes’stories, although akin in style, looks at an

absurd aspect of a heterose"ual relationship by ‘e"ploring their imbalances,

dysfunctions and distortions.’4

found ‘the blank style displayed in Anthropology  and in his other ction points

to /be0 a detached witticism in the face of even the most tragic events such as

death and violence.’5

t has been said that in Rhodes’lighter ction This is Life there is an underlying

‘message is that darkness is always looming on, and even a part of, human

e"perience.’6

 

4http://literature.britishcouncil.org/dan-rhodes 05/01/15

5http://literature.britishcouncil.org/dan-rhodes 05/01/15

6http://literature.britishcouncil.org/dan-rhodes 05/01/15

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had always written about relationships but found that Rhodes described and

e"plored them in an unusual manner, not only relationships but he ‘openly

embraced the sub!ect of se"’and he quotes that

12efore that was writing about girls, but in a very, very veiled way,1 he says.

13d hide all the emotional stu( behind gags and cartoonish characters. $hen

started to be emotionally honest, rather than using stupidity and wordplay as a

mask.”

n my story ‘4emory’ felt like phrased the fornication how Rhodes’e"plores it

in ‘5pen’# ‘low moans of a threesome’.

would like to try conforming to a set word count how Rhodes does in

 Anthropology  as each vignette is 676 words long# nd that technique very

interesting especially how intriguing the narrative is for such a short space. $he

fact that he has such a short word count helped me both with the micro and

macro of my stories as Rhodes shows !ust how important the economy of words

is. 8ou have to get straight to the point and make every word count.

Rhodes’titles were also ingenious# the one word encompassing the whole

vignette,alluding to ambiguity. $his was something attempted with my own

work by having titles such as ‘Reection’, ‘4emory’and ‘*ater’. n his book

Don’t Tell Me the Truth About Love he e"plores this idea further, ‘his settings

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are deliberately indenite. $his ingenious narrative thread provides Rhodes

with a prete"t to analyse romantic love and its decay.’7

Rhodes writes in a similar style throughout his pieces in Anthropology  he

begins with a declarative, this sets up the story and then there are usually

comple" sentences to e"plore the tension and9or drama and the conclusion

sentence types vary depending if there is a resolution or subversion for

e"ample in ‘+traight’he decided to end with dialogue as there are a multitude

of conclusions for 4iracle it is a conrmation yet for the male it is a subversion

and there are both outcomes for the reader#‘:re you seriously trying to say

that wasn’t straight with you;’whereas in ‘ $runcheon’he chooses to end with

a declarative ‘+he didn’t visit’which heightens and reinforces the humour from

the previous information. have tried a mi"ture of these techniques in my own

writing and like the short snappy declarative as the opening, something which

shall e"plore further in my own work. n a review of Little Clapping Hands 

Rhodes has been quoted to have ‘written more e"pansively since, but his

sentences still retain a distinctive resonance that is at once luminous and

mundane, like those from a fairy tale.’8

7http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3592073/A-writers-life-Dan-Rhodes.html By Lloyd

Evans12:00AM GMT 22 Mar 2003 05/01/15

8http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/7265013/Little-Hands-Clapping-by-Dan-

Rhodes-review.htmlBy Toby Clements6:00AM GMT 22 Feb 2010 05/01/15

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Dan Rhodes has been inuential to my writing in a variety of ways such as his

layout and melange of sentence types to embellish his endings, he has been

quoted as being ‘quality froth infused with restrained comic irony, some very

nice touches of dark humour and one or two genuinely arresting moments’9and

‘prose that at rst seems to verge on banality quickly becomes poignant and

ultimately heartbreaking.’10 $hese ideas which strive to achieve, and hope to

e"plore further, by intertwining writing with banality and demotic language

with underlying deeper, darker issues.

Word Count: 1089

9http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9146124/This-is-Life-by-Dan-Rhodes-

review.htmlBy Toby Clements4:23PM GMT 15 Mar 2012 05/01/15

10http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/3556497/Book-of-the-day-Gold-by-Dan-

Rhodes.html Toby Clements12:01AM BST 15 Jul 2008

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2ibliography

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