Emotional Responsibility

As an off-shoot of this post, and since reading some Philip Roth a while back, I’ve been thinking a lot about the responsibility a writer has to the reader.  While this is likely a topic that everyone views very differently, here’s my take on a small slice of it:

Roth’s writing cemented my belief that a novel should never be an author’s primary vehicle to explore his or her emotions, or to sort through a personal experience.  It’s selfish and, ultimately, boring.  Yes, writing can be cathartic.  But writing a novel that reads like a mostly one-sided counseling session is just draining for the reader, and it’s a luxury that only an established author can indulge in and still be published.  A first novel written in the vein of Indignation, or even American Pastoral, would never be published.  But because Roth was well into his career with these novels, he was able to take liberties that a new author wouldn’t be allowed.

Using a novel as a veil for a personal experience is more than acceptable – I’d go so far as to say it’s an important style of writing.  But it’s the author’s responsibility to have worked through his or her emotions regarding the experience before writing the novel, so that it can be written clearly.  The reader should not have to walk hand-in-hand with the writer on a journey of emotional incoherence – they should be guided through the waters, the path already mapped, the explanation clear and detailed.

Updike is guilty of it, too, though any reader of this blog will know how much it pains me to admit that.  The Rabbit novels were exempt from this indulgent type of self-exploration, but some of his other work was not.  Updike used Pigeon Feathers and In the Beauty of the Lilies to seemingly attempt to formulate his stance on religion.  He was clearly very interested in it while simultaneously being uncomfortable with it, and this was demonstrated by the vacillation of his characters in these books.  The writing was, as Updike’s always is, beautiful.  But the tendency to linger in these waters, to use the writing as a way to personally explore without ever coming to a conclusion, was an incredible disappointment.

This kind of writing seems almost like an amateurish mistake, but it’s really a hazard of a more established, confident writer.  The only excuse for this may be the fact that these writers view their writing as truly an extension of themselves, and that’s not only understandable, but expected.  I firmly believe, however, that one must be self-aware enough to not use a novel as a personal journal.  The two must be kept separate, and it must always be remembered that fiction is a craft, which carries obligations.

I’ll say it. Amis is self-indulgent. So there.

Amis’ Money left a bad taste in my mouth, which was a surprising disappointment.  I love to read metafiction done well -  At Swim-Two-Birds, for instance.  It’s amazingly complex and endlessly entertaining.  The style itself is, however, inherently self-indulgent.  It allows an author to play around in the intricacies of writing, making sure the reader knows just what a process writing a novel is.  It’s almost easy to write because it truly is writing what an author knows best.  But, done well, it can be one hell of a project.

Amis didn’t do it well.  He came close, but he ruined it when he wrote in a character called…you guessed it…Martin Amis.  An author, no less.  I nearly tossed the book aside at that point; I was disgusted.  I kept going, hoping he’d redeem himself somehow later on, but it never happened.  The character played a critical role in the story, and I lost respect for Amis as a creator.  I felt the same way about Stephen King writing himself into the last two Dark Tower novels. It’s inappropriate.  Don’t do that.

But, hey, maybe I’m just intolerant.  I’ll own that, because I know I’m overly critical of style.  I’m all for experimentation, but coloring too far outside the lines just makes a mess.  Fiction is about the art of creating a world for the reader using the sheer power of language.  There’s no reliance on any of the senses, it’s all purely imagination.  It’s a waste of everyone’s time to draw a line under personal fame and write oneself into a novel.  It’s uncreative and lewd.  Seriously, don’t do that.

Amis’ self-indulgence here ruined for me what would have otherwise been one of my favorite books.  John Self is witty and intelligent, crass and mean.  He’s one of those guys we love to hate.  For me, he ranks right up there with Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces.  Amis uses words so beautifully that I can’t imagine him editing or deleting anything because it all just flows so smoothly.  The snags come in his story, in his indulgence – never in the prose.

It really makes me wonder about what an author’s responsibilities are to the reader…

I Heart Falconer

From the very limited research I’ve done on this (read: glanced at four websites in less than two minutes), this novel is one of those “love it or hate it” pieces that are cause for deep discussion.  I, quite frankly, adored it.  Yep, it was simple.  Nope, there wasn’t a lot of introspection and analysis.  Not overtly, anyway.  Does there have to be in order for a novel to be good?

I confess – my first draft of the previous sentence was “Does there have to be in order for a novel to affect someone?”  After thinking about that for a minute, I realized that when I judge a novel, I tend to judge it in what seems to be a different way than the norm.  My mark of good or bad is whether or not it changed my view on something – on anything, really.  If a book doesn’t make me think, doesn’t draw on some personal experience or open my eyes to a new perspective, I don’t consider it a “good book”.  A book with no plot and great prose can do that; so can a book with horrible prose and an amazing plot.  There are no hard and fast rules, but it’s easy to tell when it works.  There are hundreds of more intellectual theories on what makes writing “good”, but this is my blog, and I don’t have to write academically, so I’m not going to!

Falconer was a combination of both good plot and good prose.  Nothing is better than a skilled writer flexing his muscles.  This novel was important, and strong, in ways that books rarely seem to be.  It wasn’t groundbreaking.  It didn’t broach any incredible subject.  What made it especially interesting, for me, at least, was the way it approached an atypical circumstance with such mundane tones, but never let the characters suffer for it.  There was still enough depth and exploration to make it dynamic and enjoyable, and that, in itself, is enough to appreciate.  That’s true talent.

I haven’t read anything else by Cheever, but I intend to.  After Falconer, comparison to other works is a must.  It’s impossible to form an opinion of an author from one novel.

Taking Risks

First, a disclaimer: I haven’t kept up with this blog the way I meant to.  I’ve skipped posts on Falconer and Money, even though I have strong opinions about certain aspects of both.  Well, skipped may be the wrong word.  Postponed.  That’s more accurate.  I really will post about them.  Soon.  Skeptic.

For right now, though, I’m too focused on Stephen King’s Under the Dome to write about much else.  I mowed my way through all 1,100 pages of this book in just under 36 hours, and I’ve been trying to work through my “official” reaction to it since I closed it yesterday evening.  Now, I’ve read a lot of Stephen King books in my time; I’ve certainly read enough to know how much he clearly enjoyed writing this one, and how it fits so snugly into the world he’s created up there in almost-fiction Maine.  For that, I adored reading this book.

For a lot of other reasons, however, I didn’t.  My biggest problem with Stephen King, and with the majority of the authors that have written more books than the number of years I’ve been alive, is that they don’t take risks.  I don’t just mean big risks, either – I’m talking no risks.  None.  Zero.  It’s safe city.  Reading novels like these is like watching a person who’s poor but think he’s rich.  He follows the same routine, gets by, but doesn’t stretch out of the comfort zone.  It’s a problem with The Bestseller, which I’ll address in a later post.  Let’s get back to The Dome.

I’ve read reviews in different outlets that I normally respect that raved about this novel.  King writes great characters.  I can’t deny that, and I wouldn’t try.  They stay with you long after the novel is done.  You can predict their actions and their thoughts.  They’re almost always uncomplicated, but that’s part of what makes them so lovable.  They’re black and white.  Two-dimensional.  Simple, with only a hint of complexity.  The plot itself was an amazing idea.  I was able to read this novel so quickly because I felt like King was sitting there next to me on the sofa, just telling me the story as he thought of it.  It was filled with phrases like “and this guy said XXX and that guy said YYY and then they started fighting!”  The simplicity was endearing, and the length made the simplicity seem deeper.

All those pluses are, oddly, also the downsides of this novel.  King didn’t take the time to polish the prose.  He didn’t develop the characters to the point of empathy, he stopped at likability.  He gave the reader exactly what we always want, on the basest level: entertainment.  This novel was palatable, and likely enjoyable, to anyone literate.  That’s a talent, don’t get me wrong.  But what bothers me is that King clearly has the potential for greatness.  If he pushed, even just a little bit, his writing could be amazing.  If he bucked the routine and said “Man up, reader.  Deal with the unexpected,” his novels would elevate to another level, to a place where they could reach people beyond sheer entertainment.  They could be…dare I say…literature.

This post is first in a series entitled The Bestseller Epidemic.

A Change of Climate – Write what you know.

Write what you know.  It’s a phrase tossed around in writing and literature classes.  It’s the first piece of advice a new writer will hear.  The success of this statement is debatable, but not in the case of A Change of Climate.  In this novel, Mantel used her experiences to create a beautiful, intricate novel that was as impressive as it was insightful.

A Change of Climate delved deep into the discomfort of overwhelming emotion, but did so in a way that made reading that emotion not only tolerable, but relatable.  The novel was far from one-dimensional, and the motivation and results of the different shapes of compassion were thoroughly explored, along with themes of infidelity and parental influence.  The sheer truth of this novel is what really drew me in (to say nothing of the beautiful prose), and when I finished the book, I immediately began researching it to see what had inspired it.  Sure enough, Mantel wrote what she knew.

Of all the themes explored in this novel, the personality shared by her most intensely charitable characters resonated with me the most.  The deeply personal and slightly shameful act of treating strangers better than those you love the most is a concept that, I feel, is next to impossible to fabricate.  Mantel most clearly knows how it feels to be both sacrificed and sacrificial, and she navigates these concepts cleverly throughout the course of the novel.

Writing what you know is certainly not the only ingredient of a great novel, but, when there’s a story to be told and a writer with the talent and patience to tell it as well as Mantel told her own story, it’s nearly impossible to fail.

The Dew Breaker, and Immigration Fiction on the Whole

I don’t like it.

It’s taken me a while to be able to say that, confidently, about the entire genre.  I’ll admit, maybe it’s because I can’t empathize.  I’m not an immigrant.  Frankly, I don’t know how, or if, the older generations of my family struggled with immigration.  I personally don’t feel connected to my heritage and, though I’ve lived here all my life, I barely feel connected to this country.  I’ll shoulder the blame for lacking those experiences and, to be politically correct, I’ll even say that’s the reason that I just don’t like immigration fiction.

Let’s imagine for a minute, though, that I’m not politically correct.

In that case, the argument would be that the standards for quality are lower within this sub-genre.  Every hot-button issue of a given time will garner a lot of attention, and the increased attention inevitably lowers the standards.  Couple the popularity of the issue with the fact that it’s politically sensitive, and the standards plunge even further.  There are stories and novels that are published under the guise of literary fiction, but are really just a platform to give a voice to the issue.  The focus flips from the prose to the plot, and any trauma sustained by the characters unquestionably results in laudation.

The irresponsibility of this ruffles my feathers every time, and that irritation was significant at the end of The Dew Breaker.  Now, don’t get me wrong, the book was publishable.  There was nothing too wrong with it.  What really had me so incensed was the praise written all over the back cover and inside pages.  Words like courageous and beautiful are peppered through the criticisms, and it’s hailed by some as Danticat’s best work.

No.  I’m sorry, but no.  Telling a story isn’t the same as telling a story well.  If these types of novels are going to be praised so highly, they need to be placed in the proper category, and that’s certainly not literary fiction.  Perhaps a new category is yet to be defined…what’s a more palatable term for “relevant but mediocre”?

Danticat’s stories were interesting, but they were poorly told.  The narrative was confusing, jumped around too much, and didn’t offer enough emotional connection to the characters for their experiences to have anything more than a superficial effect on the reader.  If she had told the same stories more skillfully, I would jump on the courageous and beautiful bandwagon without hesitation.  Since she didn’t, all I can say is that it’s disheartening when current political issues can dictate what’s hailed as good writing.

The Perfection of the First Novel

I can always tell when I’m reading an author’s first novel.  It has a different feel, a different tone.  The plot may be clumsy, it may be flawless, or fall anywhere in between.  It’s not the mechanics of the story that make a first novel stand out from a second, or from a twenty-ninth, it’s the telling that’s different.

We all have, or know people who have, more than one child.  Think about the first baby.  Everything is important.  All the baby books are followed to the letter.  Sonogram photos are emailed to friends and displayed at every opportunity.  Pictures are taken at every stage, journals are written, family is involved.  And once that child is born, it continues.  The care, the cataloging, the savoring of the new experience.  The second and third children don’t go through that process.  There are fewer pictures, more incomplete baby books.   The love is still there, and stronger than ever, but the process has been explored already.  The journey is no longer the focus.

In a first novel, there’s an almost palpable love for the characters that winds through every sentence of every chapter.  The story of a first novel is so packed with emotion, regardless of genre, that it feels like the author is almost present.  All of the energy put into the journey is translated to the page in a way that can’t occur with a later book, because the newness and excitement of the process have faded.

A first novel is written because the author had a story to tell, and it’s personal.  Always.  Later books are written for different reasons.  Sure, there’s still a story to tell, but that burning desire to share it, to create, to put it out in the world, was quenched with the first book.  Later writing is usually better-crafted, but the sweat and tears that stained every page of the first novel are absent.

Reading the first novel of a talented author is, without question, my favorite literary experience.  To be able to so clearly feel the time and effort and care that went into creating the piece makes reading it feel as perfect, as exciting, as a first kiss.