A small discovery
Sep. 25th, 2006 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbI suppose that what I am about to say will come as no surprise to anyone else, but to me it was.
Let me start from the fact that, as a writer, I am almost wholly self-taught. I have never been to a single creative writing class, and all I know about writing comes from criticism from friends and other readers, and from my fondness for the great literary critics of the past - Longinus, Dr.Johnson, Matthew Arnold, Benedetto Croce, A.C.Bradley, G.K.Chesterton, C.S.Lewis, Walther Benjamin, to name a few. What is more, my experience begins with comics, a medium which shares with cinema the presumption of an objective or largely objective camera eye.
I have, therefore, been both annoyed and bewildered by the frequent critical squelches I received from betas and other readers, to do with Point Of View. I could not understand why a narrative or description that seemed to me to cover points clearly and in the necessary detail should be condemned because of (the details of the fault not even explained) POV. And not only was it strange to me, but nobody even bothered to explain it. POV was called in to condemn whole items on the assumption that failures in it should be as obvious as mistakes in elementary grammar.
As so often in cases of this kind, what was needed was to understand a whole set of different categories. This came to me all of a sudden, going over the notes of a (this needs to be said) particularly intelligent and careful beta. It occurred to me that this person regarded the so-called omniscient narrator as suspect from the word go, and took it for granted that any narrative must be done from a particular point of view, that is, that any narrative must be - understand, not may be, must be - subjective, slanted, and unreliable.
This was where I simply did not think the same way. To me, once I realized what the beta was assuming, it immediately sounded as nonsense. And that is not to criticize that beta, who, as I said, is a highly intelligent person, most of whose suggestions were very useful. No, it is a criticism of the whole culture. Not only did it conflict with the way I wanted to write, which is largely from an impersonal if not omniscient position, it also condemned the vast majority of the literature of mankind. Most cultures and most of our own history have assumed that a story should be told from an impersonal point of view. Indeed, it condemns whole genres such as epic and theatre to utter impotence. A theatre writer has only his characters and the stage to deal with: while any character may be shown with his or her foibles and slants clearly visible, unless the writer him/herself assumes an impersonal position with respect to his/her narrative, you could have no narrative at all. How does anyone stage a Hamlet that implies the unreliability, not of this or that character, but of the whole narrative structure? Perhaps here we have the root of so many indigestible and irrelevant modern stagings of classics. And as for the epic, imagine what a damned nuisance it would be to have to spend twelve or twenty-four books of narrative verse trying to determine whose POV is being taken and how that is slanted and unreliable. I think that anyone who starts reading Homer or the Mahabharata assumes an impersonal narrator as a matter of course; if they didn't, I very much doubt whether they could read more than a few verses. And above all, they would miss the point of everything they read.
Narrative with a personal accent, narrative built from a definite POV, is a highly useful device, and I hope I can handle it no worse than most; but POV raised to a fundamental and inevitable constructive principle of the whole art of narration, seems to me no more than a piece of intellectual dictatorship - of that "dictatorship of relativism" that the Pope, himself no mean artist with words, warned against. Far from enlarging the range and depth of literary art, it narrows it. It demands an extra layer of attention from writer and reader all the time, and that for no good reason.
Worst of all, it seems to me an intrusion of an omniscient-narrator of a peculiarly poisonous and arrogant stripe. If I, like Trollope or even Tolstoy, simply start out by saying, "it was this way, and this way, and then this happened," I think that the stupidest reader will not forget that this is, after all, my narrative, and the way I see things. But if my narrative - which never ceases to be my narrative - starts from the presumption that I can, as narrator, catch the different accents, mentalities and views of all my characters, and write from their point of view rather than mine, then I am exercising the most appaling presumption and tyranny over both my characters and my readers. I am assuming that I am impartial enough to hear each of their voices exactly as they are, and to transmit them to the readers without the interference of myself as "omniscient narrator." In other words, I claim to be omniscient enough to be twenty, forty, a hundred narrators. The truth, of course, is that I never once cease to be myself.
Let me start from the fact that, as a writer, I am almost wholly self-taught. I have never been to a single creative writing class, and all I know about writing comes from criticism from friends and other readers, and from my fondness for the great literary critics of the past - Longinus, Dr.Johnson, Matthew Arnold, Benedetto Croce, A.C.Bradley, G.K.Chesterton, C.S.Lewis, Walther Benjamin, to name a few. What is more, my experience begins with comics, a medium which shares with cinema the presumption of an objective or largely objective camera eye.
I have, therefore, been both annoyed and bewildered by the frequent critical squelches I received from betas and other readers, to do with Point Of View. I could not understand why a narrative or description that seemed to me to cover points clearly and in the necessary detail should be condemned because of (the details of the fault not even explained) POV. And not only was it strange to me, but nobody even bothered to explain it. POV was called in to condemn whole items on the assumption that failures in it should be as obvious as mistakes in elementary grammar.
As so often in cases of this kind, what was needed was to understand a whole set of different categories. This came to me all of a sudden, going over the notes of a (this needs to be said) particularly intelligent and careful beta. It occurred to me that this person regarded the so-called omniscient narrator as suspect from the word go, and took it for granted that any narrative must be done from a particular point of view, that is, that any narrative must be - understand, not may be, must be - subjective, slanted, and unreliable.
This was where I simply did not think the same way. To me, once I realized what the beta was assuming, it immediately sounded as nonsense. And that is not to criticize that beta, who, as I said, is a highly intelligent person, most of whose suggestions were very useful. No, it is a criticism of the whole culture. Not only did it conflict with the way I wanted to write, which is largely from an impersonal if not omniscient position, it also condemned the vast majority of the literature of mankind. Most cultures and most of our own history have assumed that a story should be told from an impersonal point of view. Indeed, it condemns whole genres such as epic and theatre to utter impotence. A theatre writer has only his characters and the stage to deal with: while any character may be shown with his or her foibles and slants clearly visible, unless the writer him/herself assumes an impersonal position with respect to his/her narrative, you could have no narrative at all. How does anyone stage a Hamlet that implies the unreliability, not of this or that character, but of the whole narrative structure? Perhaps here we have the root of so many indigestible and irrelevant modern stagings of classics. And as for the epic, imagine what a damned nuisance it would be to have to spend twelve or twenty-four books of narrative verse trying to determine whose POV is being taken and how that is slanted and unreliable. I think that anyone who starts reading Homer or the Mahabharata assumes an impersonal narrator as a matter of course; if they didn't, I very much doubt whether they could read more than a few verses. And above all, they would miss the point of everything they read.
Narrative with a personal accent, narrative built from a definite POV, is a highly useful device, and I hope I can handle it no worse than most; but POV raised to a fundamental and inevitable constructive principle of the whole art of narration, seems to me no more than a piece of intellectual dictatorship - of that "dictatorship of relativism" that the Pope, himself no mean artist with words, warned against. Far from enlarging the range and depth of literary art, it narrows it. It demands an extra layer of attention from writer and reader all the time, and that for no good reason.
Worst of all, it seems to me an intrusion of an omniscient-narrator of a peculiarly poisonous and arrogant stripe. If I, like Trollope or even Tolstoy, simply start out by saying, "it was this way, and this way, and then this happened," I think that the stupidest reader will not forget that this is, after all, my narrative, and the way I see things. But if my narrative - which never ceases to be my narrative - starts from the presumption that I can, as narrator, catch the different accents, mentalities and views of all my characters, and write from their point of view rather than mine, then I am exercising the most appaling presumption and tyranny over both my characters and my readers. I am assuming that I am impartial enough to hear each of their voices exactly as they are, and to transmit them to the readers without the interference of myself as "omniscient narrator." In other words, I claim to be omniscient enough to be twenty, forty, a hundred narrators. The truth, of course, is that I never once cease to be myself.
You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 12:03 am (UTC)I have a set of expectations for fiction, just as I do for amusement park rides. Mysteries give me a funhouse of perception with the reader two steps behind. Suspense gives me a rollercoaster with the reader two steps in front. I expect certain POV to drag me along or push me ahead.
If you're writing Menelaus's marital problems, third person won't do the job. Big stories can have more remote narrators and bigger action. Smaller, tighter focus for smaller characters and less heroic stories. You're setting yourself up for a fall if you try to write fanfic like Homer. (He's had a few centuries of beta's to help him and make sure his teens aren't annoying.)
You read lots of essays. You write excellent essays. But you don't need a reader's sympathy in essays - you catch them with 'honeyd logic.' Fanfic readers are there for the characters - that's the ride they bought tickets for. They need the ride to fullfill an expectation. JKR writes in Harry's POV (up until the last book exclusively in unreliable limited third). Her readers expect a certain intimacy with the characters. (Maybe Illiad fanfic is more a style you like?.)
If I sip a lemonade and get a coffee taste, my expectations are not satisfied, no matter how much I love coffee. Write a Romance with a female lead, who cheats on her husband and ends the story divorced and alone, and my expectations are not met. It's not high art - it's fanfic. Genres have a certain structure, just like epics. If you write your story with your prefered style, it sounds like a half-serious lecture. I don't think that's a style you want to mimic - it's more a parody of yourself than the truth. *rfachir*
Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 12:48 am (UTC)I'm not trying to play devil's advocate, exactly, here...but one thing I love about fanfic is the proliferation and variety of genres. I am a "gen" reader and writer, so the romance is not something I seek out. Action/adveture, mystery, myth or fairy tale, pseduohistory, narrative poetry (or really amazing filks--someone wrote a Harry Potter version/parody of T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland" and it's completely brilliant), pretty much whatever you write.
And it needn't match the genre of the source, either.
Approach it from a different genre and reveal new things about the source, or take a new tack with it.
I guess what I'm saying is that fic isn't exactly a genre, in the typical sense of the word. It's more like a form--and it's broader even than those catagories.
Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 02:27 am (UTC)Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 09:54 pm (UTC)Well, I never said that wasn't true. It's just that I have occasionally seen fic done from an outsider's or an omniscient pov, when the source itself uses a tight pov, and the fic has worked both as a storytelling and as an addition to the source.
I agree, two characters bickering is hardly the subject of epic (unless they are gods, and the bickering involves sending their human pawns against each other in open war--then you have the Illiad). Nor is a narrow pov entirely appropriate to epic (though I would say it's very appropriate to scenes within the epic--Tolkien tells his battles magnificently, but it's from right inside Samwise the hobbit's head that we see the destruction of the Ring, that final struggle).
Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 09:59 pm (UTC)Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 10:43 pm (UTC)[btw, indeed, the Illiad begins with a quarrel, but it grows into something on a much grander scale. I would say that only rarely (which means it does happen) is a simple quarrel worthy of epic treatment; what happens as a consequence of said quarrel, though, is what most epics are made of.]
Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 03:43 am (UTC)I had this nonsense in comics: people running around with stupid inferiority complexes, talking about "comics" as opposed to "real life". To which I told them, real life is TV and tabloid readers. You are following some of the greatest artists who will ever live - beginning with the two giants, Kirby and Miyazaki - so stop being apologetic and start treating ignorant outsiders as ignorant outsiders. Great writing comes from any kind of side, from private letters (Madame de Sevigne'), from hackwork done for cash down (Poe), from the forgotten work of a poetic hobbyist (Emily Dickinson), from a lecherous adventurer sitting down to recall a dissolute life (Casanova de Seingalt), from odious political propaganda for a corrupt leadership (Burke), from journalistic piecework (Orwell, Mencken, Chesterton), from a bankrupt adventurer having to pay his debts (Cervantes), from amateur publications exactly like modern fanzines (Lovecraft), from antrhopological research (the Brothers Grimm) and so on and so forth and so following... Not only is there no reason why fanfics should not be "high art" any more than any of these things certainly were, but there is evidence, which only a closed mind will not accept, that certain fanfics certainly are "high art".
Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 01:05 am (UTC)Not always. Think Columbo.
Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 02:14 am (UTC)Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 02:17 am (UTC)Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 03:45 am (UTC)Re: You're writing epic poetry?
Date: 2006-09-26 09:56 am (UTC)You created a chorus character, and you made him by virtue of POV into a lead. That is boring. The character who knows everything, has super-powers, and whose opinion can't be argued with drains tension from the story. I can't invest myself in a story where I don't trust an all-knowing narrator. A smaller POV I might try, but if I'm looking at it as a reader, it's too sad to have an amoral chorus acting like a jerk. The higher the POV goes, the more removed from the sweeping action the story gets, the less chance a narrator has to talk. Editorial comments are nescessarily a limited POV.