of course that says something about me, what i think is brilliant, what i like to read, and what, ultimately, i like to write.
here's a sort of manifesto i constructed to 'justify' one of my more recently finished, er, works (i'm reluctant to call them 'stories'), but somehow extends to all my recent writing:
i wanted to write a story that makes use of the complete and utter disingenuousness of fiction, taking the concept of the unreliable narrator to extremes. i never believed that a narrator should be expected to either be capable of or even willing to tell their whole story; so you have to take all fiction with a grain of salt, not necessarily because a narrator may not be telling you the truth, but because the narrator is only presenting you with an interpretation of it; a story told from the first person perspective is among the most unreliable of all stories, because we see the story through the distortion of a triple, maybe even quadruple lens: how we see the narrator's words, the narrator's deliberate (or accidental) choice of words, and the narrator's perspective of, say, how something 'really' happened. something you can just as easily skirt with an omniscient voice.
that said, it should not be assumed that everything in a work of fiction should be taken as 'all metaphors', either; they read as metaphors to us because the story (to us) is just words; a set of interrelated symbols we are presented with from which we must divine what meaning we are built to read into the presentation. i write with the idea that while the elements of a story may be metaphors to us (i.e., the readers), they aren't necessarily so to the characters, even when it seems as though their obsessions might take them beyond the reasonable limits of their own ( i.e., the story's) reality.
this, i feel, combined with an unreliable narrator, opens a story up to any number of possible interpretations, using combinations of different levels of metaphorical and literal deconstruction. in other words: to understand the story, you can either read everything as metaphorical, or you can read it all as literal, and everything in between. it all depends on your predisposition, on your personal perspective.
in this manner, i'm allowing the reader a certain sense of propriety over the material; while struggling to retain as much of it as possible as my own.
make of all that what you will. it's all crap, but it's where i'm at.
so -- i've decided -- i need a break; give myself time to deconstruct my writing, hopefully recompose myself into a better writer.
someday i'll write a story you can actually appreciate.
3 comments:
Good manifesto there.
On the other hand, just write the story and let the reader decide if he wants to appreciate it or not. Chances are, he will. ;-)
ach, here i go again: i really honestly wish i could say i feel sympathetic toward this, but...
(and yeh, i know we've wasted office hours and resources talking about this, and we'll probably talk about this some more, so...)
but before i proceed, a cute little disclaimer: i haven't smoked in more than two weeks, so brace yourself (heh).
re the unreliable narrator: whether or not it is employed at all is irrelevant. and, all right, supposing the reader is in a charitable mood to indulge the writer on this: is the story better because the author used--or the author insists he used--the unreliable-narrator gambit? does taking this bit of information into consideration make the experience of reading a particular piece less unpleasant, or less non-boring, or more enriching, or more memorable?
re metaphors: i'm not too sure i understand the logic of the whole paragraph, but let me just say this: the traditional--all right--formalist/new critical view in reading poetry (which with some liberty you could extend to reading fiction) depends on the whole business of organic unity. the assumption is that before something could work on a symbolic/metaphorical level, it has to work on a literal level first. which, evidently, does not always apply. but that's not really my point.
so whichever way you read a particular piece, and however a writer would like you to read it, the question remains: does the story deserve that kind (literal, symbolic, whatever) of reading? if a story is just dead on the page, would reading it differently make it come alive?
sometimes writers give themselves and what they do a little more credit than they deserve. occasionally they suspect that there could be something that amounts to ego-inflation in what they do, so when the next opportunity to talk about what they do presents itself, they try to anticipate potential criticism by being the first to admit that what they say is 'pretentious,' 'crap,' and suchlike.
the thing is, they still end up expressing the ideas they think are 'crap.' there are a few possibilities why they still end up doing it, and i could think of two: one, a secret hope that ultimately what they say would be proved to be not 'crap'; or two, in the event that someone does call it 'crap,' they could at least claim, 'well didn't i just say that?' or 'come on, i know that; tell me something i don't know.'
this defensiveness (sometimes i'm tempted to call it desperation) comes to the party tricked out as a belief--in fact advertisement--that whatever anybody says, the authors already know it. that whatever happens, they have the license to keep on saying, 'i already know that.' that somehow they remain on top of it.
my point, i suppose, is this: sometimes a story is just terrible, and no amount of authorial appeals, coded or otherwise, for understanding, a second look, reading between the lines, u.s.w., will change it.
last point: in the last sentence, i think you used 'propriety' incorrectly.
paul: and here we go...
your first question: absolutely! well, it does for me, which i suppose means the answer depends on the reader. otherwise, confine yourself to reading superficial, insubstantial, ultimately *static* fiction that tells you everything you need to know with no flexibility whatsoever. which isn't bad, but not what i'm after.
on your 2nd point: some people read only symbols into a piece without seeing the literal logic; others see only the literal without seeing any metaphorical significance. the dysjunct (if i may use the term) is if you have elements where the connection between the particular 'symbol' and the 'literality' of it is not evident, is not stated. the symbol may float as an element incidental to the story; it may be disguised as being disconnected from the other elements of the fiction. how then can you judge it as 'working on a literal level' if you do not see that kind of connection? it is there that the reader must exert some effort to see what isn't necessarily visible.
of course the story has to be alive. of course your points re: that particular issue are valid. however, i don't see how that is exclusive of the ideas here: just because one has to work at making a story live doesn't mean he can't work on ways to make authorial intent -- however useless you personally find that as a reader -- a little more interesting, have a little more beneath the surface for the reader to pick at.
your arguments seem largely concerned with making the surface of the story appealing: this is valid, even necessary. but i don't see why they make the ideas i've put here irrelevant.
however, i will concede, this is why i called it crap: because i had these pretentions for my writing, but i am nowhere near ready to be capable of communicating them.
it isn't defensiveness, dude; in fact, it was a bit of a challenge: i dare you to talk me down on this. that said, i'm pointing out where i'm at, and yes, i'm not entirely happy with it: because i'm not ready to communicate what i think is worth communicating; hence my desire to reassess what i'm doing.
as for the last sentence, i mean what i said.
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