Category Archives: writing philosophy

“The Great American Novel” –Harumph.

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I’ve just read an article written by Ursula K. Le Guin, entitled, “Who Cares About the Great American Novel,” in which she argues against it as “a uselessly competitive, hopelessly gendered concept,” a concept useful only to and promoted only by public relations people to sell books.

Though I think her connecting it to gender is a bit narrow, I do agree with her statement:  “‘Great’ and ‘Novel’ are fine enough.  But ‘the’ is needlessly exclusionary, and ‘American’ is unfortunately parochial.”  It is the parochial frame of thought in the label that most disturbs me (as well, of course, as the suggestion that there can only be one great American novel).

I have always thought that the “great American novel” was meant to apply not simply to the author being American–though that would be part of it–but as applying to a novel that captures what it is to be American.  However, there is no one quintessential American, only many different Americans.  Thus, Henry James and Edith Wharton capture one kind, Mark Twain and Don Marquis another, John Steinbeck yet another, Jonathan Cheever another, William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor yet others, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison and Lorraine Hansberry and Zora Neale Hurston and Walter Moseley yet others, and so on and so on.  It’s like the blind men and the elephant, each writer portraying a portion of what is America.  In which case, there can be as many great American novels as there are kinds of Americans.

For myself, although I like to read these many different novels, writing a “novel of America” does not appeal.  Rather, I would like to write a broader novel, a novel of humanity, placed in any nation or environment I choose, and reflective of the humanity we all have in common.  Maybe that is what Sci Fi/Fantasy writers are trying to do when they place their stories in other worlds–address the commonalities and conflicts of our humanity in a broader way by removing them from the particulars of the nations or tribes to which we on this earth belong .

[To read the Ursula k. Le Guin article, see Lit Hub Daily.]

 

THE KIRKUS “STAR”

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Kirkus gave the novel, American Heart, by Laura Moriarty, a starred review.  Then, because of criticism, Kirkus revoked it.  I have not read the novel, and am not arguing whether it should have been given a star–or even a good review–based on its merits.  Perhaps it is a badly written effort and should not have been given a star at all.  I leave that to others.  (Moriarty may or may not have done a decent or bad job of presenting Muslim characters, and I’d be fine with someone who read the book attacking it on the basis of how Muslims were presented.)

What concerns me is the reasons Kirkus has stated for revoking the star.  Apparently, when asked if the book’s star was revoked explicitly and exclusively because it features a Muslim character seen from the perspective of a white teenager, Kirkus’s editor-in-chief Claiborne Smith stated, “Yes.”  (See Kirkus Editor-in-Chief Explains Why They Altered That American Heart Review)  This, after commenters’ attacks that the novel was promoting a “white savior” narrative.

Noting that she’s being attacked for having a “white savior” protagonist, Moriarty states that if she’d written it from the Muslim woman’s point of view, she would have been attacked as “appropriating another’s culture,” and that what’s really being said is don’t even dare to write about anyone’s culture but your own.

This narrowing of fiction and who is “allowed” to write what has been going on for a long time, and frankly, for a large part, I have felt that American writers in particular bow to this restriction, and so we end up with mediocre “write what you know” literature rather than, “know what you write” literature.

As a writer, that leaves me in despair.  If this is where we are in the writing of fiction–certainly in what is favored in the publishing of fiction–perhaps writing science fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction with no connection to any ethnic group existing on earth may now be the only way to go for a writer’s freedom.  It’s that, or just stop writing.  

A Quote for the Day

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Worth bearing in mind:

“Nothing shows so clearly that they [writers] have been tamed as their concentration on ‘interpersonal relationships’ and the absence from their works of any reference to politics or economics –i.e., to man in his social context… Of course, one has no right to hand the author a list of issues and say, ‘Base your next play or novel on one of these.’ But one does have the right to demand complexity, texture, depth, and a sense of the layeredness and many-sideness of life. This, the prestige writers are, for the most part, unable to convey.”
From Margaret Halsey’s The Pseudo Ethic.

 

Gore Vidal on “write what you know”

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From time to time, I have had mixed feelings about Gore Vidal.  The man was, on occasion brilliant (Julian; his essays), but also had a streak of cynical elitism that sometimes put me off.  That said, I want to shout “HIP HOORAY for his statement at the end of his essay, “Thomas Love Peacock:  The Novel of Ideas,” published in the New York Review of Books, December 4, 1980.  Vidal wrote:

…write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all.  Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect:  that is the only way out of the dead end of the Serious Novel which so many ambitious people want to write and no one on earth–or even on campus–wants to read.

Vidal began this essay finding fault with the American idea of the “Serious Novel,” stating, “…for Americans, sincerity if not authenticity is all-important; and requires a minimum of invention,” and “During the last fifty years [fifty years before 1980, when he wrote this–but also largely true today, I think], the main line of the Serious American Novel has been almost exclusively concerned with the doings and feelings, often erotic, of white middle-class Americans, often schoolteachers, as they confront what they take to be life.  It should be noted that these problems seldom have much or anything to do with politics, with theories of education, with the nature of the good. … Irony and wit are unknown while the preferred view of the human estate is standard American…For some reason, dialogue tends to be minimal and flat.”

Vidal suggests that to salvage the novel form, a tactic that might work is to infiltrate the genre forms.  “To fill them up, stealthily, with ideas, wit, subversive notions… .”  To some degree, in the years since Vidal wrote those words, so-called genre novels have done so. (eg. Walter Moseley’s work; much of Stephen King’s work–the metaphor of IT, for example; and most certainly, the short stories of Connie Willis which I have recently been reading).

For Vidal’s term, “Serious American Novel,” I might substitute the term “Literary Novel.”  I’m not sure when that latter term was coined, but I suspect it was after 1980.  In any event, there is a difference between a literary novel and true literature.  I believe it is that difference to which Vidal was speaking.

 

IMPRESSIONS: GERTRUDE STEIN

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After reading an essay written by Jeanette Winterson in which she defends Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (in Winterson’s book, Art Objects, Essays in Ecstasy and Effrontery), I got curious about the book, and have been reading it myself.  Winterson wrote that those criticizing Stein as being self-aggrandizing and not factual had missed the point of what she was doing.  Winterson’s view is that Stein was no more intending to write a factual book than Matisse or Picasso were trying to paint photographic portraits, that the book was meant to be a work of fiction, was experimenting with an entirely new form, and should be judged on its experimentation–producing a new way of seeing and thinking–rather than on its substance.  That may be.  Nevertheless, I think a work should provide some substance as well.

The main thing I admire about The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, is Gertrude Stein’s chutzpah.  Alice’s “autobiography” is actually a biography of Gertrude; thus, actually an autobiography by Gertrude.  A literary trompe d’oeil in which Stein can have Toklas dub Stein one of only “three first class geniuses” she has known, and in which “Alice” writes next to nothing of her own life.  A clever little con-artist, our Gertie.

My problem with the book, beyond the self-aggrandizement, is that it appears to be a rather constant recitation of the famous artists and writers, composers, or philosophers with whom Stein mixed in Paris, along with a stream of blanket statements about who got along with whom and who didn’t.  But one never is given any details that would make the content more than name-dropping or very general, minimal gossip.

For example, Stein-alias-Alice tells us that Stein liked William James and that he thought highly of her and recommended she go to medical school and become a psychologist.  But she does not tell us anything of what they may have discussed about philosophy or psychology–or even what her own views were.  She tells us only that, when she got to medical school, at a certain point she didn’t do the work because she was “bored,” yet many professors passed her anyway because of her presumed “brilliance.”

Stein-aka-Alice writes that Stein talked with the geniuses or near-geniuses, but that she–Alice–only talked with the wives of the geniuses or near geniuses.  Not only does she give us no details or insight into the “geniuses,” she tells us nothing about the wives except that they were congenial or not, fashionable or not, etc.  Perhaps this is because the real author, Gertrude, never talked to the wives.  But, then, neither as Alice nor as herself does she provide any depth–real or fictional–to her view of any of the people beyond the fact that they kept coming and going, and she saw them often or saw them rarely, or met them once, or saw them often but fell out with them (she never gives us the reasons).

Of Picasso (or Matisse or Hemingway, or others), she may tell us that they discussed or argued at length–with Picasso, long into the night–but never tells us what they discussed or what either thought.  Instead of giving us a real (or even fictional) sense of Stein’s life or her thinking, the book leaves one with the impression that this person was a pseudo-intellectual who lived a shallow, if idiosyncratic, life–and an easy one (whenever there was a question of money, it seemed that all Stein had to do was call a relative in America and money–or on one occasion, even a Ford automobile–would be sent).

Stein’s experiments with literary form may have value.  Her other works (poetry, novellas, novels, plays, etc.) may have something to them, but one cannot get any real insight into them or her from this book.  Stein’s notions as expressed in this book remind me of no-one so much as Christopher Isherwood’s peripatetic Sally Bowles.  And Stein’s very definite declarations of literary and artistic “truths,” to the degree that they’re expressed here, make me think of Muriel Spark’s Miss Jean Brodie, who fancies herself artistic,  radical,  and a sophisticated shaper of the thoughts of the little girls she teaches, but is actually just an admirer and adherent of fascism.  Although The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas has nothing in it that addresses Stein’s political philosophy, there is something about it that leaves me unsurprised to find that she was an adherent of Vichy France and its leaders.

I am inclined, as relates to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, to quote Hemingway:  “A rose is a rose is an onion.”

 

WRITING GENDER–HUMANITY SUPERSEDES

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Not long ago, I was listening to  Krista Tippet’s National Public Radio show, On Being.  Tippet was interviewing Joy Ladin, a transgender individual, about her journey between genders.  Ms. Ladin discussed her acute observations of the outward ways in which gender is expressed–of her need, before coming to terms with her inner self, to model the observed masculine and avoid what she thought was feminine and then, when she made the change from male to female, the need consciously to observe and model the outward ways  in which women move and express themselves. (As an example, she noted her observation that women tend to use their hands when speaking and men tend not to.)

I know very little about transgender issues (other than the threat to transgender people by those who hate).  I would never be so presumptuous as to write about the matters they must deal with emotionally, psychologically, physically, or societally, and I have not raised the Joy Ladin interview here in order to do so.  (I do recommend that people listen to the interview, linked above, to gain some insight.)  But, while it makes perfect sense that, in Ms. Ladin’s circumstances, she looked to outward cues to determine how to pass or function as one gender or the other in society, it troubles me that society creates such narrow strictures of what constitutes masculinity and femininity.  And, as I listened to Ms. Ladin speak, it reminded me of how these strictures tend to affect even the ways in which writers deal with characters in fiction.

Some writers express insecurity about writing from the point of view of the opposite sex.  I am reminded of one male author’s delighted amazement at my ability to embody male as well as female characters in my novel, Tinker’s Damn.

I am also reminded of a prospective agent’s reaction to another novel of mine in which the female protagonist was an IRA bombmaker trying to get a former cohort to observe a truce with the British.  That agent asked:  Does she ever wear a dress?  Does she ever think about marriage or wish she had children? –As if, in the middle of an encounter that will affect world events, the character should stop and ruminate on wearing dresses and having kids?  Indeed, one of the reasons I wrote the novel was to create a female counterpart to the male anti-heroes of the genre–someone of tough mind and integrity, and an ability to handle hairy situations.  Why, in an international thriller, should such a female protagonist, any more than her male counterparts, spend time considering  her personal domestic issues?

When, in irritation, I mentioned the agent’s questions to a writer-friend who happens to be a Lesbian, she replied, “well, you could just go all the way and make her a Lesbian.”  I’m sure this was an off-hand reply, meant either with a bit of humor or without giving great thought to it.  But, I have wondered since whether my friend realized that her statement was feeding into a stereotype of what it is to be gay or straight, as well as male or female.

There are all these exasperating myths out there of what it is to be manly or womanly:  men like to fight, women like to talk; women are the nurturers, men are the aggressors; men want to solve problems, women want someone to just listen; men are logical, women are intuitive.

I believe that our common humanity comes FIRST.  The rest are just trappings and societal constructions.  Fiction can reflect and reinforce these trappings and constructions, or it can be a tool to change them.  And not only by writing stories about characters fighting the strictures society places upon them, but by creating characters that, by their mere existence, defy those societal definitions.  (To paraphrase the film Field of Dreams, if you write them, they will come?)

I believe that human motivations are universal.  You can create any kind of man and any kind of woman and still have them be believable so long as you capture the essential humanity that will govern their response to their given circumstances.

Humanity comes before gender.

PLAY

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For those writers who may, at the moment, feel bogged down by their work or by the heavy intrusions of life and the wide world, I highly recommend a book entitled Steal Like an Artist, 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, by Austin Kleon.  Along with good advice, Kleon’s book has about it a cheerful creative abandon.  His feeling of freedom is contagious–the ultimate in the sense of play necessary for creative work.

Amongst Kleon’s words of wisdom, culled from others, is that nothing is completely original.  Creative work always builds on what came before.  (I’d add that that is true whether the creator realizes it or not.)  He notes that we learn by copying (not to be confused with plagiarism–read the book! ) You begin by copying those writers/artists you like, and end up unable to do so adequately, but in the process, find something else original to you.  (Who wants to be a mere imitator anyway?)

The Kleon book has much advice that we writers may already be aware of, but forget when we feel weighed under–advice like:  “The way to get over creative block is to simply place some constraints on yourself,” or “write what you like” (rather than what you “know.” –something that I strongly advocated in the very first  post of this blog).  However, my favorite advice from Steal Like an Artist is:  “If you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.”  –meaning, of course, that if you are the most talented person in the room, you’re not being intellectually challenged in a way that will make you grow and expand.

I’m not generally one for motivational books of any kind, but this one replenishes my spirit every time I read it!

(For a full dose of Austin Kleon’s playfulness, see his website at www.austinkleon.com.)