The English Patient
bluejack
what to make of it. The writing is beautiful; yet I find myself thinking
that it is stilted somehow. Real life is not as beautiful as this, not
even in its ugliness. The world these characters inhabit is dense with
profundity and richness that is disembodied -- neither the characters nor
the invisible narrator own up to it. Does this make it literature, or
does it make it a cheap, if skillful, imitation of literature. Like one
of those fake Rembrandts so good scholars still wrangle over the true origin.
bluejack
Vance Maverick
[first quoting Bluejack and me]
> I don't get it -- y'all seem to have an interesting point here, but I
> don't understand it, that's all. First off, what difference does it make
> that "real life is not as beautiful as this"? I never saw
> _The_English_Patient_ as being about "real life" -- so much of the book
> is in the realm of the marvellous, the fantastic. Second, why would a
> portrayal of a "world ... dense with profundity and richness that is
> disembodied" disqualify the book from being literature?
I'll let Bluejack take up the defense of his own words. What I meant
to agree with in his first post was the general diagnosis of
meretriciousness. It seems to shoot for high-art status (I'll leave
the question of literature vs. nonliterature alone) by doing things
known to have worked in other famous books. (That was the point of my
comparison.) Proust was dreamy and reflective, communicating this
quality by a verbal technique of hypnotic suavity; this is the sort of
effect I felt Ondaatje wanted to make here. Looking back into the
book at random, I find absurdities I don't remember noticing at the
time, so evidently he was partly successful.
The name that still filled our mouths was Gilf Kebir.
When you travel that far in time you need a plane....
(Both from a paragraph on p. 142 of the Vintage edition.) It's always
difficult to find words to say how other words have gone wrong; but in
both these cases I think Ondaatje's desire for a special, magical
authorial voice has led him astray. "Filled our mouths" is clearly a
poeticism for "was on our lips", "recurred in our conversation", etc.,
but I don't think Ondaatje stopped to wonder if the literal sense of
the figure would obtrude. And in the second sentence, he has striven
for the familiar tone of omniscience, drawing us up to heights
of special knowledge by the polite silent assumption that we already
share them with him -- at the cost of all sense. After all, the
context of the voice is European, and the date in question is the
thirteenth century, relics of which lie thick on the ground over
there, as I recall.
Vance
Fiona Webster
>> The writing is beautiful; yet I find myself thinking
>> that it is stilted somehow. Real life is not as beautiful as this, not
>> even in its ugliness. The world these characters inhabit is dense with
>> profundity and richness that is disembodied -- neither the characters
>> nor the invisible narrator own up to it.
>> Does this make it literature, or does it make it a cheap, if
>> skillful, imitation of literature.
Vance agrees with the first point, and says:
>I'd say rather like a skilful, expensive faux-impressionist picture of
>the Muir Woods or Mission San Juan Bautista, on the wall of a fancy
>gallery of California Art in Carmel. Another author who does this is
>Annie Dillard, though Ondaatje really gives it both barrels.
I don't get it -- y'all seem to have an interesting point here, but I
don't understand it, that's all. First off, what difference does it make
that "real life is not as beautiful as this"? I never saw
_The_English_Patient_ as being about "real life" -- so much of the book
is in the realm of the marvellous, the fantastic. Second, why would a
portrayal of a "world ... dense with profundity and richness that is
disembodied" disqualify the book from being literature?
--just curious to hear more,
Fiona W.
Vance Maverick
> Am nearly finished reading _The English Patient_ and am still not sure
> even in its ugliness. The world these characters inhabit is dense with
> profundity and richness that is disembodied -- neither the characters nor
> the invisible narrator own up to it.
I think this is right on.
> Does this make it literature, or does it make it a cheap, if
> skillful, imitation of literature. Like one of those fake Rembrandts
> so good scholars still wrangle over the true origin.
I'd say rather like a skilful, expensive faux-impressionist picture of
the Muir Woods or Mission San Juan Bautista, on the wall of a fancy
gallery of California Art in Carmel. Another author who does this is
Annie Dillard, though Ondaatje really gives it both barrels.
Vance (who was told once, on seeking Lorine Niedecker's
poetry at Serendipity Books in Berkeley, that
Ondaatje had just snapped up all they had)
Jeff Solomon
>I'll let Bluejack take up the defense of his own words. What I meant
>to agree with in his first post was the general diagnosis of
>meretriciousness. It seems to shoot for high-art status (I'll leave
>the question of literature vs. nonliterature alone) by doing things
>known to have worked in other famous books.
Sounds like a frying-into-fire defense. Instead of arguing Lit vs. Non-
Lit, now you sound like you're arguing high art vs. low. I'll repeat
Fi's opinion - I still can't make out your objection. Aren't most novels
you read reminiscent of other more "famous" novels? At least to some
degree?
(That was the point of my
>comparison.) Proust was dreamy and reflective, communicating this
>quality by a verbal technique of hypnotic suavity; this is the sort of
>effect I felt Ondaatje wanted to make here. Looking back into the
>book at random, I find absurdities I don't remember noticing at the
>time, so evidently he was partly successful.
So is it only partly low art? Maybe it's middle art ;-}
> The name that still filled our mouths was Gilf Kebir.
>
> When you travel that far in time you need a plane....
>
>(Both from a paragraph on p. 142 of the Vintage edition.) It's always
>difficult to find words to say how other words have gone wrong; but in
>both these cases I think Ondaatje's desire for a special, magical
>authorial voice has led him astray.
It's also hard to understand out of context. Novels are, after all, more
than a collection of sentences.
jeff
Michael Boggs
In article <MAVERICK.9...@ginkgo.cs.berkeley.edu>, Vance Maverick (mave...@cs.berkeley.edu) writes:
>In article <4ccsmj$6...@news.voicenet.com> blue...@omni.voicenet.com (bluejack) writes
>> Am nearly finished reading _The English Patient_ and am still not sure
>> what to make of it. The writing is beautiful; yet I find myself thinking
>> that it is stilted somehow. Real life is not as beautiful as this, not
>> even in its ugliness. The world these characters inhabit is dense with
>> profundity and richness that is disembodied -- neither the characters nor
>> the invisible narrator own up to it.
>
>I think this is right on.
>
In what sense?? And in what way is statement "Real life is not as
beautiful as this, not even in its ugliness" 'right on'? Because
I have a tough time understanding what you guys seem to be agreeing
on? And is the counterpoint a novel that "has all the ugliness of
real life ugly??" Like what?, _American Psycho_
>> Does this make it literature, or does it make it a cheap, if
>> skillful, imitation of literature. Like one of those fake Rembrandts
>> so good scholars still wrangle over the true origin.
>
>I'd say rather like a skilful, expensive faux-impressionist picture of
>the Muir Woods or Mission San Juan Bautista, on the wall of a fancy
>gallery of California Art in Carmel. Another author who does this is
>Annie Dillard, though Ondaatje really gives it both barrels.
Another author who does what?? I really don't understand any of
this. "a skillful imitation of literature"? means what, exactly?
I thought the book was one of the better books of the last couple
of years, which perhaps is damning with faint praise - but I would
be very curious to hear some criticism that was more than
meaningless metaphor and wordplay.
> Vance (who was told once, on seeking Lorine Niedecker's
> poetry at Serendipity Books in Berkeley, that
> Ondaatje had just snapped up all they had)
Oh, I get it. It's a personal thing. Well, never mind.
----
Michael Boggs "They say everything's OK,
Carmichael's Bookstore They say better days are here,
mbo...@carmikal.win.net They tell us these are the good times
But they don't live around here"
-- Warren Zevon
Vance Maverick
[I wrote]
> > [TEP] seems to shoot for high-art status (I'll leave
> > the question of literature vs. nonliterature alone) by doing things
> > known to have worked in other famous books.
> Sounds like a frying-into-fire defense. Instead of arguing Lit vs. Non-
> Lit, now you sound like you're arguing high art vs. low. I'll repeat
> Fi's opinion - I still can't make out your objection. Aren't most novels
> you read reminiscent of other more "famous" novels? At least to some
> degree?
Hmm. Let me check first before we proceed -- do you think it
reasonable, ever, to call anything pretentious? I'm not claiming the
notion can be made rigorous, or can be proven in any case from
unambiguous features of the work, but I do think it can be useful.
The extent to which "high" and "low" art can be identified from
features in the work is debatable; but that the categories exist, as
describing aspects of a work's reception and reputation, is not, IMHO.
Mickey Spillane and Hermann Broch, for example, are never discussed as
peers except to show off one's cultural cool. (No endorsement of
either, or indeed the reverse, intended.)
Now art can give pleasure in lots of ways. One of them is to give the
receiver the sensation of moving in the social circles with which
"high art" is associated. Proust is worth a look here, as is the
British-costume-drama genre of film and TV...but I digress. Another,
the one I accuse Ondaatje of, is to mimic "superficial" features
associated with high art; one doesn't find dreamy reflective magic in
Spillane. I say "superficial" to imply a contrast, not with "real"
"high art", but with "good art", the exposition of which notion this
margin is too small to contain. The general idea, a commonsense one I
want to use without defining it down to the last lemma, is that these
ways of giving pleasure are illegitimate, or at least unsatisfying, by
comparison to many others, on which I claim our author skimped.
(Whew, maybe I'd better wash my mouth out now.)
To give you some of the context you asked for, here's the paragraph in
question. I think a better writer would have set such pearls as I
picked out before in a richer and stronger syntactic matrix.
The couple entered our world -- the four of us, Prince Kemal el Din,
Bell, Alma'sy and Madox. The name that still filled our mouths was
Gilf Kebir. Somewhere in the Gilf nestled Zerzura, whose name occurs
in Arab writings as far back as the thirteenth century. When you
travel that far in time you need a plane, and young Clifton was rich
and he could fly and he had a plane.
Did you like the book?
Vance
Jeff Solomon
>
>> book (and the language) enjoyable. And you? You seem to be offended by
>> the critical acclaim the book has received.
>
>I didn't actually dislike it as strongly, or resent its praises as
>deeply, as I may have made it seem. Ah, the toils in which an idle
>USENET followup can wind one.
I know EXACTLY what you mean.
> But I didn't think it was good.
>
>> Did you feel the same about his other works (especially the
>> "prequel" _In the Skin of a Lion_)?
>
>Haven't read them. You?
I wouldn't presume to rank them, but this is what I recall:
_In the Skin of a Lion_ is, IMO, better than _TEP_ and also my favorite
by Ondaatje. Similar style, although the setting is the Great White North,
and the time a few years earlier.
_Running in the Family_ is a semi-fictional account of his trip
to Ceylon to visit family members and family ghosts. Much more realism
here (in style if not substance).
_Coming Through Slaughter_ is a fictional biography of a New Orleans blues/
jazz musician (whose name escapes me). I liked sections of this, but I
found it unsatisfying.
_The Collected Works of Billy the Kid_ a fictional autobiography of poems.
I loved this.
I've read sections of his poetry, but the only thing that stands out is one
called (something like) "There's a trick with a knife that I'm learning to
do." I still like this title, but I really don't recall enough about the
poetry to comment.
jeff
Gary Smith
> >Did you like the book?
I enjoyed it enough to search out other works by Ondaatje
> Did you feel the same about his other works
>(especially the "prequel" _In the Skin of a Lion_)?
I didn't find _In the Skin of a Lion_ but enjoyed both:
_Coming Through Slaughter_ and _Running In The Family_
neither of which bares any resemblance to _TEP_
--
Gary Smith
Intergraph Corporation
Advanced Graphics and Development Systems
grsm...@hq.pcmail.ingr.com
gsmit...@aol.com
10220...@compuserve.com
Jeff Solomon
>> > [TEP] seems to shoot for high-art status (I'll leave
>> > the question of literature vs. nonliterature alone) by doing things
>> > known to have worked in other famous books.
>
>> Sounds like a frying-into-fire defense. Instead of arguing Lit vs. Non-
>> Lit, now you sound like you're arguing high art vs. low.
>Hmm. Let me check first before we proceed -- do you think it
>reasonable, ever, to call anything pretentious? I'm not claiming the
>notion can be made rigorous, or can be proven in any case from
>unambiguous features of the work, but I do think it can be useful.
Yes. That's a clear opinion. I understood that was yours re: _TEP_, but
I was still a little stung from the previous poster's opposition of lit
v. non-lit and your (seeming) approval.
I was only semi-serious about the high-art v. low-art. I suppose I should
have made that more obvious.
>The extent to which "high" and "low" art can be identified from
>features in the work is debatable; but that the categories exist, as
>describing aspects of a work's reception and reputation, is not, IMHO.
>Mickey Spillane and Hermann Broch, for example, are never discussed as
>peers except to show off one's cultural cool. (No endorsement of
>either, or indeed the reverse, intended.)
Cool reference.
>Now art can give pleasure in lots of ways. One of them is to give the
>receiver the sensation of moving in the social circles with which
>"high art" is associated. Proust is worth a look here, as is the
>British-costume-drama genre of film and TV...but I digress. Another,
>the one I accuse Ondaatje of, is to mimic "superficial" features
>associated with high art; one doesn't find dreamy reflective magic in
>Spillane. I say "superficial" to imply a contrast, not with "real"
>"high art", but with "good art", the exposition of which notion this
>margin is too small to contain. The general idea, a commonsense one I
>want to use without defining it down to the last lemma, is that these
>ways of giving pleasure are illegitimate, or at least unsatisfying, by
>comparison to many others, on which I claim our author skimped.
>(Whew, maybe I'd better wash my mouth out now.)
Well, 'unsatisfying' is certainly less contentious than 'illegitimate.'
I appreciate the explaination.
Going back to the original post (which I acknowledge was not yours) and
the Rembrandt question: If the fake is good enough to pass as an original,
then it's probably still a good painting. If the fake uses cheap methods
to achieve a similar look, it'll probably be less than satisfying, and
most likely wouldn't pass. Assuming an educated viewer.
I still don't think this example is relevant to this work, but that's just
my opinion.
>Did you like the book?
Probably obvious by now, but - Yes. I read for enjoyment, and I found the
book (and the language) enjoyable. And you? You seem to be offended by
the critical acclaim the book has received. Did you feel the same about
his other works (especially the "prequel" _In the Skin of a Lion_)?
jeff
Scott Inglett
|> In article <4ceaf3$gqg...@news.digex.net> f...@access.digex.net (Fiona Webster) writes:
|> [first quoting Bluejack and me]
|> > don't understand it, that's all. First off, what difference does it make
|> > that "real life is not as beautiful as this"? I never saw
|> > _The_English_Patient_ as being about "real life" -- so much of the book
|> > is in the realm of the marvellous, the fantastic. Second, why would a
|> > portrayal of a "world ... dense with profundity and richness that is
|> > disembodied" disqualify the book from being literature?
|>
|> to agree with in his first post was the general diagnosis of
|> the question of literature vs. nonliterature alone) by doing things
|> comparison.) Proust was dreamy and reflective, communicating this
|> quality by a verbal technique of hypnotic suavity; this is the sort of
|> effect I felt Ondaatje wanted to make here. Looking back into the
|> book at random, I find absurdities I don't remember noticing at the
|> time, so evidently he was partly successful.
|>
|>
|>
|> (Both from a paragraph on p. 142 of the Vintage edition.) It's always
|> difficult to find words to say how other words have gone wrong; but in
|> both these cases I think Ondaatje's desire for a special, magical
|> poeticism for "was on our lips", "recurred in our conversation", etc.,
|> but I don't think Ondaatje stopped to wonder if the literal sense of
|> the figure would obtrude. And in the second sentence, he has striven
|> for the familiar tone of omniscience, drawing us up to heights
|> of special knowledge by the polite silent assumption that we already
|> share them with him -- at the cost of all sense. After all, the
|> context of the voice is European, and the date in question is the
|> thirteenth century, relics of which lie thick on the ground over
|> there, as I recall.
|>
|> Vance
Just a few personal opinions of my own regarding this book. I thoroughly
enjoyed it's dreamy/magical/lyrical style. I haven't read any Proust yet (only
words about him), so I have nothing to say about Ondaatje relative to Proust.
Whatever its stylistic merits might be relative to others, Ondaatje's language
held me fast for the better part of two days, without complaint. I have to
admit though, the colorful human characters were largely responsible for that.
They struck me as verbal vessels for various haunting life traumas.
Ondaatje chose to pump idiosyncratic internal haunts into haunting
external events. Not exactly lifelike, but certainly effective. I'm the
same age as Hannah when the book ends. Her internal
life I can somewhat identify with, along with her reactions to the past. I
put the book aside when finished, and as usual mapped various people I know
into its odd characters (myself included). Not a perfect fit of course, but I
felt much of Ondaatje's wisdom sadly accurate, and beautiful too (only
in literature of course :-)).
As for Vance's comment about 'drawing us up to heights of special knowledge
by the polite silent assumption that we already share them with him', I think
that it's fair to make an observation of that sort, but I'm not sure that
it's necessarily a bad thing. It depends on your point of view. I recall reading
an essay by Italo Calvino on the subject of philosophy and literature that discussed
just that topic (in _The Uses of Literature_). In it Calvino expressed his opinion
that the best philosophical novels are those that do in fact draw you
up to heights of assumed undefined special knowledge somewhere along the line.
I think the idea being that any tight complete philosophical system is ultimately
unconvincing anyway, and to personify any such system by way of a novel results
in a work that is also unconvincing and somewhat dull. Room must be left for
what the system cannot grasp. I think it's assumed of course that the book isn't
constantly winking at you from these undefined cracks.
And of course I also modestly enjoyed the fact that the English Patient happened
to be wrapped in a "grey singlet" (hmmm... images of Sartor Resartus) ;-)
Beautiful book. I'll probably read it again someday.
--
-Scott
Fiona Webster
>I'll let Bluejack take up the defense of his own words. What I meant
>to agree with in his first post was the general diagnosis of
>meretriciousness. It seems to shoot for high-art status (I'll leave
>the question of literature vs. nonliterature alone) by doing things
>known to have worked in other famous books. (That was the point of my
>comparison.) Proust was dreamy and reflective, communicating this
>quality by a verbal technique of hypnotic suavity; this is the sort of
>effect I felt Ondaatje wanted to make here.
>I think Ondaatje's desire for a special, magical
>authorial voice has led him astray.
Thanks for explaining... now I do see what you mean. I guess that the
"special, magical authorial voice" successfully seduced me, so that I
didn't notice the grinding noises and the whirring of the gears.
I don't think of it as an especially worthy trait, but I prefer being
bamboozled by an author, to finding them out in their ploys. You
mentioned Annie Dillard earlier: Annie Dillard is a good example of an
author to whom I willingly surrender, even when she's being quite
noticeably absurd. I enjoy so much the experience of being swept up and
bowled over by words, I'm willing to read with only half my brain, if
necessary.
Silly me.
--Fiona W.
P.S. If any wishes to console me in my misery for being the wife of a
government scientist who is literally *forbidden* to do his science,
I welcome any comfort you may have to offer. In other words, "Arrrggh!!"
Vance Maverick
[I wrote:]
> > Did you like the book?
> Probably obvious by now, but - Yes. I read for enjoyment, and I found the
> book (and the language) enjoyable. And you? You seem to be offended by
> the critical acclaim the book has received.
I didn't actually dislike it as strongly, or resent its praises as
deeply, as I may have made it seem. Ah, the toils in which an idle
USENET followup can wind one. But I didn't think it was good.
> Did you feel the same about his other works (especially the
> "prequel" _In the Skin of a Lion_)?
Haven't read them. You?
Vance
bluejack
Am following up to clarify my original question, to attempt an answer
at it myself (now that I have read further and honed my thoughts), and to
thank those who posted for a lively discussion.
1. In asking whether _The English Patient_ was literature, or merely
masquerading as literature, I raised a larger issue than I intended. I
did not mean to get into definitions of literature, or art, especially
high vs. low, or good vs. bad. These are distinctions that cannot be
objectively defined, in my opinion. Or rather, precise and quantitative
definitions never capture the whole idea. What I was suggesting was that
the book had a hollow ring to it, to me. Am I missing something? Have
others felt this way? More specifically: the beautiful language and the
small profundities seem contrived, particularly since there is no
narrator to take credit for them, and they are not uttered by the
characters.
2. After further reading, I can quite confidently say that while I am
enjoying the book, I do not much like the book. The characters do not
arouse much interest in me, but the anecdotes that surround them are
amusing. Perhaps were I British, or perhaps if I experienced the War,
this book would have more meaning for me, but it does not resonate with
my life, nor does it bring anything particularly inspiring into my
awareness. I might contrast it with _The Shipping News_ which evoked a
very inspiring vision of the far North coast of Canada, even though I had
never been there; or with Patrick O'Brian who paints an incredible dream
of a time long past that is as unlike my life as virtually any I can
imagine; or even with _Suttree_ by Cormac McCarthy, which called to my
imagination a time, place, and status that I did not know, but now feel
as though I might. At any rate, were I to wake up drunk in a ramshackle
houseboat on some greasy southern river in the forties, I would feel like
I had been there before.
Anyway, the English Patient just isn't doing much for me, although I
perceive an admirable skill with the craft of writing, and am enjoying
the stories within the story.
3. Thanks for the lively discussion.
bluejack
Heather Henderson
wonderful, couldn't put it down, when all of a sudden, somewhere
in the middle, I put it down (I thought it was because I'd gotten
really busy) and didn't pick it up again until many weeks later.
After that, the magic was no longer there. I finished the book
and had a positive feeling about it, but didn't feel bowled over
the way I'd expected to.
I thought I'd ruined the reading experience by stopping in the
middle and restarting some time later. But talking to someone else
about the book, I found that the same thing had happened to him.
I think there may be some point in the book where the story, or the
style, falters and the momentum dies. Someday I'll reread it and
keep an eye out for this.
I did like the book, though. Beats the hell out of Tom Clancy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Heather Henderson hea...@hq.media.mit.edu
my home page: http://www.media.mit.edu/~heather
my fiction: http://www.media.mit.edu/~heather/fiction.html
my baseball gallery: http://www.media.mit.edu/~heather/baseball.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------
bluejack
: Hmmm... I had thought that part of the distinctive form of modern
: fiction is that frequently there is no obvious authorial persona, no
: narrator or point-of-view character. Why do the "profundities" seem
: more "contrived" for not being attributed to anyone in particular?
: What do you mean by "taking credit"?
Fiona,
That may be... I have not made a study of it. However, the sound bites
of profundity that Ondaatje presents seem like custom-made cliches: they
are not presented as the viewpoint of a character who has experienced
them, nor from some third person observer commenting upon those
characters, but merely from out of nothing. Words that sound beautiful
and hint at deep meaning, but do not within the context of the situation
actually convey any deeper understanding of the characters, or of ourselves.
What I mean, then, is simply that clever language that sounds like it
might be deep needs some grounding reality, some context to actually BE
deep. The characters and their stories come to life out of the text in
our imaginations. If there is going to be wisdom, it has to be within
that storytelling event, not in an aside from the absent authorial persona.
bluejack
bluejack
: The narrator of the _EP_ says himself that the novel is like a mirror.
: Why quibble over whether the reflection is less valid than any other?
Carrie? Walter?
Some mirrors, however, are cleaner and clearer than others.
bluejack
Fiona Webster
time ago I wrote:
> Why do the "profundities" seem more "contrived" for not being
> attributed to anyone in particular?
bluejack replied:
> What I mean, then, is simply that clever language that sounds like it
>might be deep needs some grounding reality, some context to actually BE
>deep. The characters and their stories come to life out of the text in
>our imaginations. If there is going to be wisdom, it has to be within
>that storytelling event, not in an aside from the absent authorial
>persona.
This sounds good to me at first pass, but then I start to have a
problem with it, which is the emphasis on characters and storytelling.
Why does a book have to have either? Or rather, just because there
are some fictional constructs one could call characters and some events
one might call a story, in _The_English_Patient_, why does all, or even
the bulk, of the language need to relate to those constructs and events?
It sounds to me as though you're talking about so-called "realistic" or
"naturalistic" fiction, not fiction in general. When I read
_The_English_Patient_, I found it not to fit into that category, but
rather to have a lot in common with poetry and literary non-fiction, and
even fantasy fiction, in its combination of evocative images and musical
language. Ondaatje's reflections on maps and cartography, for example,
stimulated my thoughts most agreeably, much as they would if they'd been
written in an essay -- and yet *better* than an essay, because the
construct of the English patient himself, engaged in a cartography of the
mind, helped to get Ondaatje's point across. Sometimes, often even, what
I want out of fiction is not "life," but chains of ideas and images.
I'm not interested in a narrow defense of _The_English_Patient_ here, but
rather in the broader issue of why fiction, or any literature, needs to
have a "grounding reality" or to "come to life" in order to be called
"profound," rather than just "clever." Or maybe to ask the question of
what reality that reality has to consist in? Is it the reality of a few
odd human beings in a villa in Italy, or the reality of the allusive
beauty of the text? I'm no scholar on the subject, but I thought the
whole point of the modern movement is that it frees us from the need for
literature to be strictly realistic or character-driven, or even to tell
a story. How do we classify works of literature like Italo Calvino's
_Invisible_Cities_, for example? Surely the characters, story, and
verismilitude, such as they are, in that book are a very small part of
its effectiveness as a work of art.
I wouldn't have so much to say on this point if I didn't keep
encountering it in writing forums such as misc.writing. We had an
extended thread there recently in which I seemed to be the only person
arguing that "accuracy" (meaning: loyalty to factual reality) was not
only not obligatory, but not even always desirable, in a work of fiction.
I'm confused by how often I read critiques of fiction based on whether
the characters are well-rounded, whether the story is "alive," and so on.
Don't those comments precede from an assumption that all fiction needs to
be of a certain type?
--Fiona W.
Ken MacIver
> We had an extended thread [in misc.writing]there recently in
which I seemed to be the only person arguing that "accuracy"
(meaning: loyalty to factual reality) was not
> only not obligatory, but not even always desirable, in a work of
fiction. I'm confused by how often I read critiques of fiction based
on whether the characters are well-rounded, whether the story is
"alive," and so on.
> Don't those comments precede from an assumption that all fiction needs to
> be of a certain type?
--Fiona W.
No. IME, such comments are generally contextual; that is, directed
at a particular genre. Comments about magic realism, for example,
are often very different from, for example, comments about detective
fiction.
Ken MacIver
Fiona Webster
>I see a lot of the same kind of prejudice in
>rec.arts.movies.past_films - films such as the red, blue and white
>trilogy are frequently criticized as being unrealistic, uneventful
>etc. The curse of naturalism seems to have a strong hold on the
>american psyche (no reference to BEE intended). I loved Woody Allen's
>recent movie for the very reason that it dared to laugh in the face of
>naturalism, by introducing the greek chorus. Ondaatje also introduces
>contrivances that are there for artistic purposes, and more power to
>him. His writing is beautiful - but unfortunately when you take a
>microscope to beauty, you tend to find all its flaws.
It's interesting how reading Usenet exposes certain recurring
predilections, whether they're American, or more general than that. On
the alt.cult-movies newsgroup, for example, a frequently recurring
question is, "What does David Lynch's 'Eraserhead' mean?" What I've
noticed is that the people posing these questions are quite annoyed that
an artwork would present itself to them in a non-naturalistic (to use
your term) framework, and since many of them play games of various sorts,
they expect that the "answer" is in some game-like mapping of X symbol to
Y entity and so on.
It makes me wonder about the state of education in the arts. Are we
looking at an untutored demand for naturalism, or have these people
learned in classes to expect reductive formulas for understanding
literature and film?
Another question is, why are people relatively more accepting of beauty
that comes in the form of a collage of images, or in non-naturalistic
abstractions, in the visual arts, than they are in literature? (I think
film is somewhere between the two...)
--Fiona W.
paul ilechko
#>I wouldn't have so much to say on this point if I didn't keep
#>encountering it in writing forums such as misc.writing. We had an
#>extended thread there recently in which I seemed to be the only person
#>arguing that "accuracy" (meaning: loyalty to factual reality) was not
#>only not obligatory, but not even always desirable, in a work of fiction.
#>I'm confused by how often I read critiques of fiction based on whether
#>the characters are well-rounded, whether the story is "alive," and so on.
#>Don't those comments precede from an assumption that all fiction needs to
#>be of a certain type?
I see a lot of the same kind of prejudice in
rec.arts.movies.past_films - films such as the red, blue and white
trilogy are frequently criticized as being unrealistic, uneventful
etc. The curse of naturalism seems to have a strong hold on the
american psyche (no reference to BEE intended). I loved Woody Allen's
recent movie for the very reason that it dared to laugh in the face of
naturalism, by introducing the greek chorus. Ondaatje also introduces
contrivances that are there for artistic purposes, and more power to
him. His writing is beautiful - but unfortunately when you take a
microscope to beauty, you tend to find all its flaws.
Paul.
This story is fiction, not a report. It describes a reality
which is not necessarily that of the reader's own experience...
Vance Maverick
[of Ondaatje]
> His writing is beautiful - but unfortunately when you take a
> microscope to beauty, you tend to find all its flaws.
Do you find this of, say, Joyce?
Vance
Fiona Webster
>> We had an extended thread [in misc.writing]there recently in
>> which I seemed to be the only person arguing that "accuracy"
>> (meaning: loyalty to factual reality) was not
>> on whether the characters are well-rounded, whether the story is
>> "alive," and so on.
Ken MacIver writes:
>No. IME, such comments are generally contextual; that is, directed
>at a particular genre.
But that was not the case with the writers on misc.writing. They write in all
different genres of fiction. Statements such as "a writer has an obligation
to their readers, to be as accurate as possible" (a literal quote) were being
made without reference to genre.
--Fiona W.
Fiona Webster
>In that case, I would agree with you that the comments confuse the
>nature of fiction. I've never checked inon misc.writing; is it
>worthwhile?
Misc.writing is a large and friendly community of writers of all stripes
who mostly use the newsgroup for chatting amongst themselves -- about writing
and miscellaneous lightweight topics. There are some witty people there who
excel in puns, so many of the postings are short and silly. To a lesser
extent, it's an information forum for things like markets, publishers,
software, etc. There's also a virtual community -- a newsgroup within a
newsgroup -- called Misc.Writing.Ville, which is labeled by "MWV" in the
subject headings -- I believe it's supposed to be a fictional town where
people take fictional names and occupations, but I don't read that section, so
I don't know much about it. The only disadvantage of misc.writing is that
it's really high-volume, even more so than r.a.b.
--Fiona W.
Ken MacIver
In that case, I would agree with you that the comments confuse the
nature of fiction. I've never checked inon misc.writing; is it
worthwhile?
Ken MacIver
Chris Loar
[snip]
>What I've
>noticed is that the people posing these questions are quite annoyed that
>an artwork would present itself to them in a non-naturalistic (to use
>your term) framework, and since many of them play games of various >sorts, they expect that the "answer" is in some game-like mapping of X
>symbol to Y entity and so on.
>
>It makes me wonder about the state of education in the arts. Are we
>looking at an untutored demand for naturalism, or have these people
>learned in classes to expect reductive formulas for understanding
>literature and film?
Although I may be off base, I suspect there's a link between these
reductive tendencies and the notorious pragmatism of Anglo-Americans.
That this pragmatism is alive and well on Usenet has been both discussed
and exemplified on recent (seemingly endless) threads on deconstruction
and postmodernism. It's common among people with brows of all
elevations. And these pragmatic minds (mine, all too often, included!)
don't like it when there's no relatively easy answer. Hence a preference
for stories that simply tell a story, apparently telling it like it is.
The endless play of possibilities embedded in an obviously indeterminate
text just doesn't go down very well with pretzels and beer. Similarly,
educators often don't like to admit that they don't have solid answers
.. for some it may be easier, and much more authoritative, to apply a
rigid diagramable formula to a story than to confess that there may be no
one solid meaning in the story/novel/poem they're teaching.
--
| One bath
Chris Loar | after another --
cl...@cgsadmpc.cgs.edu | how stupid.
| --Issa
paul ilechko
snip
#>It makes me wonder about the state of education in the arts. Are we
#>looking at an untutored demand for naturalism, or have these people
#>learned in classes to expect reductive formulas for understanding
#>literature and film?
probably, from that great educator - Television !
#>Another question is, why are people relatively more accepting of beauty
#>that comes in the form of a collage of images, or in non-naturalistic
#>abstractions, in the visual arts, than they are in literature? (I think
#>film is somewhere between the two...)
Probably because the prevalence of abstract art in public spaces and
the workplace has reduced it to mere decoration for the great unwashed
masses ...