The whiff of bathos
So, I’ve been thinking again about narratives. What makes a story worthwhile, its telling enthralling, and trying to strip away my pre and misconceptions.
Of course everyone has their own idea of what constitutes a perfect narrative (I’d love to hear them – are love and adversity still going strong? Sparse or loaded phrases? And why have I never heard an author being asked: What exactly are you trying to accomplish?). So I should admit that I find myself drawn more and more to the small realities that make up the whole, the power of a steady gaze, prosaic into prose, the ability to extract the juice from the mundane.
We become so easily daunted by the extreme drama that sustains so much popular fiction, and so dismiss the potential wallop of our own plodding experience. (Though I’ll argue that even in the most grandiose, shit blowing up or fantastical tales, we’re never drawn in if there isn’t a character/individual struggle to latch onto.)
I suppose the argument could be made that weblogs have imbued certain dull lives with too great a sense of importance, but I’d put those in realm of intimate chatter, and not of careful narratives.
I’m much more interested in crafted storytelling, and the process of embracing the (unfortunately made tired) dictum, “write what you know” – of overcoming the qualm that the absence of murder and mayhem from our sphere of reference makes it not worth talking about, and so the temptation to jazz up our reality.
More and more I admire Annie Dillard’s gift for minutiae (that riff about the facets of her mother’s hands is one inch away from Divine), and think often of her line to the effect: We are here to notice everything, so that every little thing gets noticed.
More and more I’m convinced that the most worthwhile thing we can contribute is our own experience well bared. While that may smack of megalomania, any danger of ego-inflation is quickly tempered by a commitment to ruthless honesty (which is more than likely to overthrow your original and long-cherished assessment of all events, and may even prove rather embarrassing… and there’s your story).
Hey, I just realised that this is exactly what irks me so much about writers like oh, I don’t know, Dave Eggers perhaps, who claim to paint reality but in fact work double overtime at making themselves look good.
(Tomorrow: Striptease.)
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Comment
- No arguments from me on the beauties of Ms Dillard’s prose: at times it feels as if each one of her syllables has been precisely placed, and yet there’s nothing cold or austere about it: she makes her passions plain.
Narratives I’m still much mystified by. It is, simply, the “wanting to know what happens next”-ness of a piece. You hear about “conflict” being central to a good story, and “character development” – growth in response to adversity or opportunity.
All true. But a good writer can write about the mundane—meandering, musing, rarely if every advancing “plot”. And they’ll still, somehow, make you want more…
— michael Feb 23, 10:30pm # - The previous comment suggests an important distinction: between ‘wanting to know what happens next’ and ‘wanting more.’ A reader can want more of a text, of a style, of a way with words without wanting to know the outcome, or what comes next. Maybe that explains the paradoxical feeling of wanting to turn the pages of a book while also wanting the book to never end—it’s symptomatic of ‘wanting more’ without wanting to know ‘how it turns out’ because that means ‘the end.’
— MAS Feb 24, 2:20am # - I tend to believe in the “golden arc” of narrative as explored by exceptional scholars such as Graves, Campbell and Frye. (All old fuddy-duddies, unfortunately – and their work has been shamelessly absorbed, homogenized, packaged and sold by the Hollywood machine).
I’m disposed to the narrative’s inevitability: its paradoxical evocation of both relentless forward movement and unlimited scope and nuance: its relentless linearity and its insistent deviations.
Even the most everyday actions and events, devoid of defining conflicts and resolutions, tend toward a narrative journey : experience, sensation, memory – all these incite our narrative impulse. We create the “hero’s journey” towards integration and wholeness out of necessity, it seems, rather than simple habit – both as creators and witnesses. This journey may appear entropic, subverted or dispersed, but it’s always there, hiding behind the mask of its own unravelling.
Creating a story out of the seeming randomness of existence—this is what, as humans, we do best. Arguably. Whether we like it or not. We’re so unforgetfull of our beginning and our end – our birth, our death; we strive unceasingly to create our middle – the ‘what’ of ‘what the hell just happened?’.
Even buddhists like stories…
— MOJ Mar 2, 1:39am # - I feel the same way about Dave Eggers. It’s like he’s kissing his own ass.
— Amelia Mar 3, 2:18am # - The fonts and paper stock of McSweeney’s give the writing a feeling of importance the words usually don’t support. I don’t read much new work because I can’t get past the first paragraphs, everything so obviously written and shaped, no stunning opening lines, a fear of grabbing too hard and looking too eager. Few writers really get on the diving board and think about making a splash.
That’s a digression. What I meant to say is that the most interesting parts of our lives now are buried to keep them from exposure. The movement out of the closet, for human rights and dignity that can’t be mocked, risks meeting the government’s impulse for total transparency. As WC Williams wrote approximately, The poem is the place where we put our punishable secrets. It’s understood that the poem hides the secrets in plain language, and the feeling comes through, the event comes through. Jellinek. Do we like her? Houllebeckq? I do. He’s one of the few writers who looks at modern careers and the people who have them, and the kinds of stories they imply. He does the right thing, and indicts himself through the characters and the obsessions they have that he shares and hates.
The most brilliant book I can remember from the last two years of reading is Mildred Pierce. I’m reading Anna Karenina now, and Tolstoy’s Levin and Kitty sap the book, the ideal couple in the middle of a world of ordinary humans. Somewhere in Tolstoy’s famous compassion is a snob. He doesn’t really care for Anna K or Vronsky. they are designed to illuminate specific types, and they never violate that type.
Cain gets inside Mildred Pierce, and describes a society moving, strainging towards escape from the depression, and nothing is predictable. In the end, the most awful thrive, the good enough abide, and life continues, they say to themselves, because what else can they say?
The Rabbit novels are fairly well genius, aren’t they? Daily life for unexceptional people, but they take themselves seriously, and their problems are severe, and also ordinary. There’s part of the formula.
And then there are stories that ingest a flavor of the world and braid sense with plot, and exaggerate to boost the sense, the flavor. Horror, for example.
It’s late, half a clonopen melts in my tummy. Goodnight.
— MT Mar 3, 8:42am #
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