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The Literary Sociopath


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There is a certain kind of writer who seems to feel that unless he is breaking apart everything that came before him, composing something that in his own view is astonishingly new, he is not writing great literature. Though he is sincere in his wish to be a great writer (and in that sense might seem almost naive), his preferred mode of public address is sarcasm or heavy irony, both of which are meant to suggest his sophistication, his superiority to banal questions about reality, authenticity, and truth. He has no interest in accurately representing human behavior, partly because he has no interest in accuracy and partly because he has very little interest in other people; what concerns him most is the working of his own mind. He hates with a passion the realist novelists and formalist poets who came just before him, and he is convinced that only he, among all the writers who ever lived, is producing work that will matter to the future. In this respect, he evidently imagines a future filled with people who are nothing like him—people who will be content to rest with the innovations he has produced and will not feel obliged to stomp on their forebears.

Writers like this have given novelty a bad name.

This is from an article on Salon.com entitled The Joy of Literary Destruction. I strongly recommend it.

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/19/the_joy_of_literary_destruction_writers_who_broke_all_the_rules/

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Actually, I wasn't thinking of anyone in particular here, except myself after two people who aren't members here read the first six chapters of the sequel to Wicked Boys and accused me of what the article discusses. I've been put in my place. However, I thought it was an interesting article and might generate some discussion.

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I'm with Dabeagle on this. Unless your style has undergone a dramatic change since Wicked Boys I would recommend that you trust the acclaim that your work has received in the past.

Remember that it's your work. Writing the story that someone else thinks you should have written in a style that someone else thinks you should have used seems a poor use of editors and beta-readers. It's why my stuff still has typos!

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Well, I have read an early version of the sequel to Wicked Boys I think there is no problem with the style. Freethinker, it is your writing, it is your style, we read it because we like your style, stick with it.

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Although the article is sweepingly prone to over-generalization and the writer seems anxious to touch base with every literary conundrum he has come across, the part of his essay I found most intriguing was this: 'Does the book exist in its own time or in the time when you are reading it, and does that mean it exists in a different way for each new reader?... Can the past, in this sense, be made to live again, and if so, can the nonexistent, purely fictional past also be brought to life?\

As a devoted reader of most anything, I find I depend upon much of what I read to furnish the raw material for my own imaginings, and the extent to which I've allowed 'the nonexistent, purely fictional past' to be brought to life within my own mind is quite astonishing. It often competes with what I think I know of "real" history, and I have experienced on a number of occasions the problem of distinguishing between what has actually taken place from what I "learned" by reading some writer's fictional view of that same event or era. It's a lot like depending exclusively on Wikipedia for one's knowledge base.

I've reached the point where I now steer clear of any fiction billing itself as a 'historical' treatment of some past time, for I am easily confused. In much the same way, I think, movie-goers in the generations after mine, people who seem to venerate film, may have gained a warped sense of what is actual and what is allowable within our troubled culture. Today the internet appears to be the medium most providing that false sense of reality for our youth.


I am certainly not calling for some sort of censorship with this observation, nor would I support any sort of Truth Police monitoring what fictions we writers are feeding our readers. But I am calling attention to the notion that some readers, like myself, can be easily led astray. Whether or not this poses a moral dilemma may be an apt question for each of us as writers, particularly those writing within our own specialized LGBT genre, where, in most of the world, reality has yet to support the fantasies we so often spin for our readers.

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James, you made me realize, not for the first time, that 'history' is really a weird concept. My history of 1950, for example, is certainly different from your 'history' of it. I was in Indiana in 1950, and my history is firmly entrenched in my head. I have what I feel are accurate memories of my house, my yard, my elementary school, Butler University's football field and quite a few other places.

Of course, when I went back for the first time 30 years later, the same places looked entirely different than they did in my memory. In the same way, events we remember will be different for the people who witnessed them because of their backgrounds and perspectives.

Which makes me wonder, can the past really be created with any sense of reality? Is anything that relates to the past really fiction? If not for the one relating it, certainly for anyone else?

Of course the scary corollary of that is that the present is also really fiction. And it's too early in the morning for me to think hard about that.

C

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The author of this article is rather subjective since who knows what Shakespeare and Chaucer really thought about what they were writing. Most analysis of early authors is compounded by the passing of years and subjected to new generations of thought.

As Cole suggests, point of view does a lot to obscure a true vision of persons and places once they are gone. The author's intent on any piece of writing is often misinterpreted by readers and scholars alike. The reader has their own sense of what's in the story based upon personal experience and knowledge. Just because they accept the story as fiction doesn't mean they can put aside personal prejudice in an attempt to order the facts of the story in their own image. On the other hand scholars often seem to think they must discover something new and establish their reputation with everything they touch, even if it is wrong.

I would not abandon history as part of the stories I write because the reality of events so long ago often provide masterful moments for the characters to act out. Yes, history is subject to POV and I would not accept the Wiki view as a sole source for anything. Anyone who quotes the past must do enough research to recreate the events in their mind long enough to find the most credible view. I do understand the need to twist and turn the facts in history to fit the plot, and confess that the fiction label is very forgiving.

I think it is the reader's responsibility to judge the author's intent. The author's responsibility in fiction is to entertain.

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Actually, I wasn't thinking of anyone in particular here, except myself after two people who aren't members here read the first six chapters of the sequel to Wicked Boys and accused me of what the article discusses. I've been put in my place. However, I thought it was an interesting article and might generate some discussion.

Naw, Wicked Boys is a terrific story. Don't listen to the criticism.

I think there are people out there who have rigid, inflexible rules on certain aspects of writing. The only two that I can think of that are inarguable are 1) don't be boring, and 2) keep your readers wanting to read more. Everything else is just fillagree.

I'm not a fan of doing stuff like mixing tenses, writing in second person, writing in present tense, or changing points of view, but even I admit that there are brilliant writers who can pull that off under specific circumstances. I haven't come across too many examples on the net, but there are a handful of examples in published fiction.

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I think there are people out there who have rigid, inflexible rules on certain aspects of writing. The only two that I can think of that are inarguable are 1) don't be boring, and 2) keep your readers wanting to read more. Everything else is just fillagree.

I'm not a fan of doing stuff like mixing tenses, writing in second person, writing in present tense, or changing points of view, but even I admit that there are brilliant writers who can pull that off under specific circumstances. I haven't come across too many examples on the net, but there are a handful of examples in published fiction.

Only a handful of examples? Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Shelley's Frankenstein, Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Tolkein's Lord Of The Rings, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles are all frame stories with multiple points of view. As are the movies Amadeus, Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, The Princess Bride, and The Neverending Story.

You're right though, Pec. There are people out there with rigid, inflexible ideas on certain aspects of writing.

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Only a handful of examples? Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Shelley's Frankenstein, Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Tolkein's Lord Of The Rings, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles are all frame stories with multiple points of view. As are the movies Amadeus, Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, The Princess Bride, and The Neverending Story.

Movies don't count. Then can switch points of view and not knock you out of the story. I would say that none of the movies you mentioned were multiple point-of-view -- I'd say they were all omniscient point of view, strictly 3rd person. I've seen Titanic about 20 times -- I had to do a lot of foreign audio work on it for Fox back in 1998 -- so that one I know very well. Amadeus is pretty much told only from Soliari's point of view, since he's dying and telling the story as a flashback; we don't see anything that isn't known to him. Saving Private Ryan is strictly 3rd person, very detached. Neverending Story is all told from the kid's point of view, very 1st person for the most part, with isolated moments that are 3rd person. Movie convention makes that all work very well.

I did say it's possible to pull off if you have extraordinary skill, but I don't see a lot of that out on the web. I think fiction works a lot better if you just keep it simple and don't pull any fancy stunts. Just tell the story and get to the point in the fewest words possible, make it interesting, and make the reader care about the characters. Anything more just mucks it up, to me.

There are some famous mysteries where they deliberately fog things up with an unreliable narrator. The best movie I can think of that pulls that off is The Usual Suspects, which is a hoot when you see it for the first time. Another good one is The Sixth Sense. Each of these has an incredible gimmick that's extremely powerful, and it would work just as well in a novel as it did in the films. I'm sure there are many more examples.

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