The School style
Fred Welden
possible without sacrificing readability, combined with descriptions that
border on the lyrical. The narrative focus stays close to one or two
central characters, and is very personal. These central characters reveal
things to the reader that would be painfully personal to reveal to a
friend--and they may be pained to reveal them in the narration, as well,
but reveal them they do.
Strange and unlikely events are treated as a matter of fact, without much
ado. Unlike magical realism, where the impossible happens but the
novelist makes certain the reader finds it remarkable, a School writer
should use such impossibilities without comment for specific purposes.
This means you canąt have someone get so angry he flies up into the air
and explodes unless some useful narrative purpose is served by having him
do so, because the mere fact that he does it isnąt the point of the story.
Above all else, the School style is calm and unruffled.
Donąt like being told the right way to tell a story? Great! You tell me
for a change. Better jump on this thing fast, Iąm defining the hell out
of this School idea. Take it away from me, make it over in your own
image, quick--unless, of course, youąd prefer another round of łThe
Passive Voice--Is It Truly Evil?˛
--Fred | wel...@nando.net
| "Made in Dobonia:" your guarantee of quantity.
D. Y.
I've tried to pin the references to the School on the References line:
there are 3 articles which Fred Welden posted:
1. What I want from misc.writing <welden-0712...@vyger307.nando.net>
2. The School: Central Concerns <welden-0712...@vyger307.nando.net>
3. The School Style <welden-0712...@vyger307.nando.net>
What I gather from Fred's discussion from #1 (what I want) is that through
a forum such as misc.writing, that a new form or new style, or to put it
mildly, something novel (in the strict sense of the word Novel -- something
new) would develop in fiction writing, specifically the genre of the Novel.
Misc.writing, it was hoped, would be like an Agora or Forum, where
interested writers could talk technical details of the craft. By this
I know Grammar would inevitably be part of it, but grammar is only
a tiny tiny part of the techincal aspects of writing. Far deeper would
be getting to the technical and much harder aspects of a writing movement,
to start a literary movement or the such, which would have happened in
any congregation of writers interested in exploring new ways to use
their talents of writing.
There is an excitement, a beauty, a novelty to being at the forefront
of pushing the craft of writing to its ultimate technical limits, and
stretching and overcoming the present technical limitations of
expression, so that the writer can express, develop, and ultimately
make that special something that hitherto the English Language was
insufficient to handle. There is an excellence to writing, to a new
style of writing, an excellence which although may get some criticism,
somehow those who have caught the vision would know that they are on
the right track.
These moments are very difficult to define, since in defining the moment,
one must express them in language, and if so, the language currently
used is insufficient to express the excellency of the new that we wish
to create. Hence, in defining the new style, we must also define a
new language, with new symbols, and a life all to its own.
This kind of movement, I envision, would be somewhat like the Impressionist
Movement (in painting), as a reaction to the current stilted establishment
which existed at that time. The Impressionists came up with something
new, a new style, a new way of looking, a new language of art, which
hitherto did not exist. However, the Impressionists did not act as one
person alone, there were many many who contributed. Most of the major
artists are known: Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, etc. but there are
also a lot of artists who are not as well known who may have contributed
in addition to defining the style.
Let us look at one movement in literature.
Apparantly, the Haiku did not exist as a term until well into the
1800's. It would be overly simplistic to say that it is a direct
descendent of the older form known as the Waka, but there are other
forms of Japanese poetry, e.g. the Haibun and the Tanka which also
influenced the Haiku. Basho, one of the most famous of the Haiku
poets, didn't even know the term.
Haiku, oddly enough, developed out of Poetry Drinking Parties in which
the drunken folk would write poetry that would be, er, unpublishable.
There was some effort to clean up the poetry and make it more along
classical lines. The upshot of this (eventually) was a very sleek and
trim form of poetry known as Haiku. There were several rounds of
reaction/overreaction/counterreaction before the form became established.
Two tips for writing Haiku:
1) Everything that you can take out, take it out.
2) You have to have a Beginner's mind -- i.e. like seeing something for
the first time (My grandmother, who writes Haiku, mentioned this one)
#2 is an essential part for any movement in literature, painting, music,
or any art form, since the person must be painfully aware of and be looking
at old things anew. It is not that the artist is seeing things that are
not there, quite the contrary: the items in front of us are the same thing,
but we have to look at them with a child's heart, being young at heart,
with the passion and excitement of seeing something for the first time.
The hardest part of the School movement, and for any movement in literature
or art, is to get that new spark or vision. It is not merely form,
usually a form is dead by the time it is well defined (e.g. Sonata form
wasn't well defined until Czerny's time, by which, it was dead).
The works within the style must define the style, since at first, the style
cannot be pinned down accurately. There is a vision of the style, a rhythm
and sound for the style, but the style itself is about as easy to hunt as
a wild turkey -- you have to be really careful and quiet.
Fred writes:
>Above all else, the School style is calm and unruffled.
This is almost Lonesome Accordion-isque, although the Lonesome
Accordion style is completely different in idea and vision. The
Lonesome Accordion style, for instance, had a specific vision (usually
soggy and nostalgic), and specific ideas behind it, all gathered
behind the image of some dude wandering around with an Accordion,
being terribly out of place. The Lonesome Accordion had its own
tunes, its own rhythms, and its own way of expressing things. One of
the more fun aspects of the Lonesome Accordion, for me at least, was
that writing the Lonesome Accordion pieces gave me a chance to develop
a kind of style that I liked, which didn't have to agree with anything
else that was going on. Misc.writingville seemed to have a lot of
people writing period pieces in a particular style that did not sit
well with me, so the Lonesome Accordion had to appear out of nowhere
in the way that it did, to express things in a somewhat different
(although not all that new) way.
The bottom line of all of this, is that the School will have to have
some kind of vision, and the only way to get this is to have some
pieces which demonstrate this style. As time goes on, and people start
working with the style, the style will have to take a life of its own
on.
For this we will need some few examples to demonstrate for us what
this style is, and what this style encompasses, since descriptions of
the style will never tell us what the style is itself. Describing a
car is not the same as knowning a car intimately -- for that, you will
need a car of your own.
One would welcome what other people would have to say about this. There
is a something that is difficult to describe in making a new movement.
There are so many wrong ways to go about doing it, and I have heard
many of them in Modern Music. I hope that I have made sense in this
article: if I did not, perhaps someone would be able to explain it better.
I would appreciate feedback on this article, most of my articles do not
get feedback, so I'm not sure if my articles are really getting out.
What does the reader think is that undefinable something or the vision
that the school should have? Most people talk about the same old grammar
problems or whatnot, because they just don't have experience with
new movements in literature, or that the just don't understand what
these things are all about. In this way, almost all of us will have
to forget all that we learned about Literary Movements in our High
Schools and Colleges, and really get down to the techinical Brass Tacks
about what these things REALLY are.
I have already put down some of my observations in this matter in this
article, and if there is sufficent interest, and if I have some more ideas,
maybe I'll put a few more in. The problem I have with this article is that
I am trying to give a picture of something that is undefinable, since it
just cannot be defined into a nice cut-and-dried set of rules. I have just
a glimmering glimpse of it. Perhaps someone who has better vision (I
wear very thick glasses, about -8 diopters) could give us a better idea?
I may have sounded a little squishy and rambly, but that's because I am
trying to say something that I am not quite sure how to express, since
I don't understand it fully. Sigh.
It may take me some time to follow up -- sometimes I don't get postings
until 4-6 days later. Some of the School postings that I see are dated
from Saturday (9 December).
DY :-)
--
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D M Yoshikami :-) ;-) :-) | Internet: yosh...@usuhsb.usuhs.mil
+1 (301) 295-3304 | Bitnet : yosh...@usuhsb.bitnet
Yetre modem, seeyonem ganum, ende atmavin anandamay!
Fred Welden
[much that is worth reading in the original]
In a lot of ways DY is right on the money in his discussion of literary
movements. I certainly hope the Lonesome Accordion will join us in trying
to make something happen. What it is that we make happen, of course, is
anybody's guess at this point. Personally, I'm just fed up with not
trying.
I also applaud his stepping forward with a discussion of his own efforts
in the Lonesome Accordion posts. This is what we need--folks who know
what they are trying to do, and want to talk about how, and whether, they
are doing it. My own take on the LA is that what the pieces lacked was a
sense of conflict, either the internal conflict I described in an earlier
School post, or external conflict between the LA and some other person or
force. However, I greatly enjoyed the spirit of the pieces, the muted,
wry nostalgia.
Returning to a much earlier post, in which I said that I value literature
that practices seduction and subversion rather than bold, in-your-face
confrontation, *this* is what I felt the LA had going for him--a seductive
simplicity that lulled the reader into accepting some fairly strong
implicit criticism of MWV.
(Unless of course DY thinks I've completely misread the LA. I'm sure
he'll correct me if I'm way off base.)
We will need samples of our work out in a public place in order to make
this kind of discussion possible. Anyone care to help us set up a Web
page to this end? (My own Internet service provider does not allow
personal Web pages, or I'd lend my own.)
claguire
thoughts I had while reading your post.
We all have different weaknesses (and they change from story to story).
In the process of dealing with them, we tend to come up with lots of
interesting topics and questions. Sometimes we just think them through
ourselves, when perhaps the question might make for a useful discussion.
I don't believe this can lead to a school of writing, because we aren't a
small cohesive group. However, I think the other points of view are
useful in helping me see things from another angle.
Okay; so right now I have been reading police procedurals. I don't write
anything like police procedurals, and except for a few authors, I don't
usually read many of them either. I write for children, and fantasy and
adventure. Not what you'd call real grounded fiction. Police procedurals
tend to be very heavily grounded in research; geographical, cultural and
vocational. Suddenly I can't get enough of certain authors. I thought,
at first, that it was because one of my characters was a cop, and I was
just getting into the mood or something--but I know that what I'm trying
to get from these books is something deeper, something in the structure
and style of them.
So I've been thinking about starting a thread to talk about this, but I'm
still vague on which direction to start it in. Should I start a thread on
what we get out of different kinds of books, or should I start something
on the style of police procedurals? I'll make up my mind and start it
soon, but in the meantime, I saw your post, and the references to talking
about specific works and such, and now I wonder: Is this what you mean?
Is that the sort of topic you yearn for? Let's try to get down to
specifics here, and see if we can negotiate out something that works for
all of us.
Camille
Rick Waugh
You're writing is clear, but I'm not sure of the concept. (Your posts are too
long! Well written, but too long...)
The idea of "coming up" with a new school of writing is difficult. I'm not
sure if I understood your own vision. Are you merely proposing that we do
something different, or are you proposing some kind of a format?
When great movements in art have occurred in the past, they were not so
planned. They grew out of people spontaneouly discovering a different way of
working, that meant something to an audience.
I'm content with the modern novel as a style. This might be lazy, but for
now, it meets my creative needs. If something new and interesting came up, I
might try it, but it would have to have some meaning to me personally, and an
audience. I like to write just for writing, but I really do hope it will be
read.
Jensen
wel...@nando.net (Fred Welden) wrote:
>We will need samples of our work out in a public place in
order to make
>this kind of discussion possible. Anyone care to help us set
up a Web
>page to this end?
Well, I guess that could be me. I've already started
collecting the posts in a directory! I've missed a few
(notably Susan Taylor Brown's and Bill Oliver's), but I know
they're still on my server.
jen
Elizabeth A. Hendricks
: This kind of movement, I envision, would be somewhat like the Impressionist
: Movement (in painting), as a reaction to the current stilted establishment
: which existed at that time. The Impressionists came up with something
: new, a new style, a new way of looking, a new language of art, which
: hitherto did not exist. However, the Impressionists did not act as one
I am ignorant on the how stylistic movements came about, but I never
thought that the Impressionists (or what have you) sat down and pounded
out a manifesto of style. I have to agree with Rick and Alan in the idea
that such movements came out of artists' works. One artists did something
a certain way and other artists reacted and carried the style further and
the original artist reacted to their reactions, or several artists found
they were striving for the same thing and reacted to the ways in which
they had each approached it, and the style developed through reaction and
influence.
It seems to me that the only way to "create" a School would be for
people with similar goals to share their work as they pursue those goals,
discussing what approaches seem to work and what don't, or if those goals
change as they go along. Naturally, those goals would have to be
discussed, as well as possible methods for achieving them, in order that
people could figure out if they share these goals. But at the moment, I
can't tell what the goal is, other than the desire for a new style. Why a
new style? What's wrong with the old one? I tend to think that a new
style comes into play when you run into stories you just can't tell in an
old style. What are the problems, where does the old style restrict? And
so on.
Maybe I ask these questions because I'm more concerned with story and
subject matter than style. I tend to like style that comes out of content
rather than style for the sake of style. But these are some of the first
questions that come to my mind---the heck with all these rules for The
School. Why do we need a new School? What do we hope will come of it,
besides the pleasure (or pain) of identifying with a School? What's in it
for us? What will it be besides yet another rule book in the brain,
freezing our hands at the keyboard?
Elizabeth
Jensen
e...@prairienet.org (Elizabeth A. Hendricks) wrote:
>
>I am ignorant on the how stylistic movements came about, but
I never
>thought that the Impressionists (or what have you) sat down
and pounded
>out a manifesto of style.
Probably not, but perhaps this is as close as a cafe or bar we
can get on the internet. The way I've been viewing the posts
is as a rough outline. Fred has specific interests in writing
that not everybody shares (or should share for that matter).
But a few people do share his thoughts and vision. The very
fact that we're discussing this illustrates an evolution of
thought on the school.
I have to agree with Rick and Alan in the idea
>that such movements came out of artists' works.
I believe Fred posted a request for web space in order to do
this. I've volunteered to provide it. Perhaps those posts
have been caught in some back eddy <g>.
One artists did something
>a certain way and other artists reacted and carried the style
further and
>the original artist reacted to their reactions, or several
artists found
>they were striving for the same thing and reacted to the ways
in which
>they had each approached it, and the style developed through
reaction and
>influence.
Yes! As far as I'm concerned, that is *exactly* what the
school is trying to achieve.
> Why a
>new style? What's wrong with the old one?
Nothing. Perhaps this is an old style for some of us. I've
been writing this way since I began to write.
>
>Maybe I ask these questions because I'm more concerned with
story and
>subject matter than style.
IMO, the story is similar to the wire frame work of a
sculpture. Style changes the features of that sculpture,
makes it look different and feel different without changing
the content.
---the heck with all these rules for The
>School.
What rules? Challenge them, argue them, define your own.
That's the spirit I'm taking to the school.
Why do we need a new School? What do we hope will come of it,
>besides the pleasure (or pain) of identifying with a School?
What's in it
>for us?
Exactly what you wrote above . . . to interact with other
writers with similar concerns, similar issues and through that
interaction, evolve and grow.
Cheers,
jen
Alan Langford
: The bottom line of all of this, is that the School will have to have
: some kind of vision, and the only way to get this is to have some
: pieces which demonstrate this style. As time goes on, and people start
: working with the style, the style will have to take a life of its own
: on.
Is it possible to manufacture a style? My admittedly limited
understanding of the developent of styles is that they are evolutionary
in nature. Someone does a thing in a new way, someone else takes that as
the basis for furhter innovation, and so on. The fundamental problem
that I have with this school idea is that it is structured as a
proactive attempt to create a thing, rather than a reactive
understanding that some newly created thing is novel, and that the
innovation may have enduring merit.
: For this we will need some few examples to demonstrate for us what
: this style is, and what this style encompasses, since descriptions of
: the style will never tell us what the style is itself. Describing a
: car is not the same as knowning a car intimately -- for that, you will
: need a car of your own.
Perhaps we should all be back on the "what I want" topic, except more
along the lines of "what I want to create is...". For example, I am
intrigued by what I see as distinct approaches to writing based on the
gender of many authors (but not all, I do not want to generalize more
than I have to). One of the things that I would like to achieve in my
work is a synthesis of these stylistic differentials into a work where
the seams between the styles are hard to detect. If some others in MWV
have the same goals, then maybe we have the foundation for a school of
thought.
I'm only going to contribute peripherally to the school concept, because
it has already adopted some fundamental precepts, such as being
unruffled, which I see no merit in. Odds are that there is no school
that I could become a full member of, since part of my character
involves turning sharply whenever I discover I'm in a pack.
: I would appreciate feedback on this article, most of my articles do not
: get feedback, so I'm not sure if my articles are really getting out.
From the few posts I've read, they are most interesting. Unfortunately,
the tone of this group, and the volume of messages, I tend to be in a
fairly superficial read-it-and-post-quick-rejoinder mode. I'm likely to
skip any block of text as dense as your posts simply because I'm not in
the mood to extract the essence of the comment.
Over the time I've been here, I have seen many a "lets start a subgroup"
proposal fail, usually for good reason. In this case, I think the school
needs to break a fundamantal of MWV... in order to continue the
discussion, fair amounts of illustrative prose will need to be posted.
: these things are all about. In this way, almost all of us will have
: to forget all that we learned about Literary Movements in our High
: Schools and Colleges, and really get down to the techinical Brass Tacks
: about what these things REALLY are.
What if the really turn out to be almost purely spontaneous?
Alan (Mr. Spontaneity) Langford
Fred Welden
(Rick Waugh) wrote:
> When great movements in art have occurred in the past, they were not so
> planned. They grew out of people spontaneouly discovering a different way of
> working, that meant something to an audience.
I don't think this School idea is so planned as you're making it out to be.
Basically, if I had a bunch of writer friends I hung out with, I imagine
the time would come when someone would say "Hey, why doesn't anybody write
novels that do <blah, blah, blah>?" and I'd say, "Well, what'd be the
point? It'd be boring" and they'd answer, "Not if you did it all in
present tense, second person, and put the reader at the center of the
action" and we'd argue about it, and maybe one or two of us would try it
out to see what it read like, and then. . . . you get the point.
But I don't have a bunch of writer friends I hang out with--wait a minute,
I *do*, right here on misc.writing! Again, you get the point.
>
> I'm content with the modern novel as a style. This might be lazy, but for
> now, it meets my creative needs. If something new and interesting came up, I
> might try it, but it would have to have some meaning to me personally, and an
> audience. I like to write just for writing, but I really do hope it will be
> read.
That's good. You can be the person you says "Why bother to write like
that? The modern novel does all that, and the readers like to read 'em."
I'll be the person who points out that we don't really know what readers
want to read. We only know that, given the selection available to them at
the bookstore, they buy books of a certain sort at a certain rate relative
to the other books that are available. We don't know (or even have decent
market research on, for that matter) *why* they buy the books they do buy.
So even from a strictly commercial point of view, which is far from my
usual one, there's incentive to seek out new literary forms and experiment
with them, just as citrus fruit growers need to try crossing tangerines
and grapefruit sometimes to see what they get, and who'll eat it.
Alan Langford
: I don't think this School idea is so planned as you're making it out to be.
: Basically, if I had a bunch of writer friends I hung out with, I imagine
: the time would come when someone would say "Hey, why doesn't anybody write
: novels that do <blah, blah, blah>?" and I'd say, "Well, what'd be the
: point? It'd be boring" and they'd answer, "Not if you did it all in
: present tense, second person, and put the reader at the center of the
: action" and we'd argue about it, and maybe one or two of us would try it
: out to see what it read like, and then. . . . you get the point.
I think that one of us would just say something along the lines of "hey
I just read <title> by <author>, and they did something I've never seen
before..." Then one of us Bright Lights would say "yeah, but they only
went half way, you can develop that idea by..." and so on.
Instead, we have you attempting to define something with the intent of
inciting us to some intellectual discussion: "the school uses only fifth
tense inverse double-whammy nine phase six act plot character devices
with a cherry on top."
It's an admirable intent, but I'm afraid I can't work up any enthusiasm
for it. There hasn't been an original, seminal work that's caused us all
to take a new look at how we relate to that blank page and revise our
writing style. Without that, the school is just a pile of bricks that
someone built a few walls out of, it's not a thing with life. Not yet.
Elizabeth A. Hendricks
: I think that one of us would just say something along the lines of "hey
: before..." Then one of us Bright Lights would say "yeah, but they only
: went half way, you can develop that idea by..." and so on.
: Instead, we have you attempting to define something with the intent of
: inciting us to some intellectual discussion: "the school uses only fifth
: tense inverse double-whammy nine phase six act plot character devices
: with a cherry on top."
My feelings exactly. I've read most of the School postings, but I
couldn't tell you what I thought about this style because I haven't seen
it yet. I don't know if I agree or disagree because I don't know the
difference between "naturalistic" and "realistic," for one. I can't
really picture the other stuff either. The few times I have read literary
theory, I have been intrigued by styles in theory, only to be bored silly
by them in practice, and vice versa. If I were good at this kind of
thing, I probably would have gotten an MFA and a job in academia!
Jen said something about putting together a Web page where such writings
could be posted. Until then, maybe it would help to identify well-known
works that approach the School style or share elements with it, or perhaps
illustrate the need for this new style.
Elizabeth