Book-induced chattiness.

[smw]

I’ve just finished a book that I enjoyed, which always makes me mope. In an attempt to continue the experience a little longer I thought I would start a conversation here on one of the author’s topics.

Namely, in her Art Objects, a driving force of Jeanette Winterson's essays is the belief that prose needs to be intense, precise, poetic. In “A Work of My Own”, she has this to say:

A writer’s style is all she has and the price of the making of it is everything she has. To fit language to her hand she must command at her hand resources of body and mind, totality of self and the self of her that acts as a skein to carry the world in. She must be well read, she must be clever. She must be curious, she must be sharp. Whatever she can muster to her fingertips, let her, and her hands will begin to control the instrument she desires.

The ecstatic and emphatic nature of her persona makes a great place to begin talking, doesn’t it?

I’m curious: what do you derive from this? What does it make you think and feel? What concepts do you agree or disagree with? Obviously a paragraph pulled from a collection of essays only says so much, but this one is saying quite a bit despite that.

I’d like particularly to talk about whether style is as central as that. Can I presume that everyone here believes that prose should be beautiful, whether that beauty is got at through verbose or spare use of words? Do you believe that establishing a clear and genial relationship with the reader is foremost, or creating words and imagery that you as the author can love? & etc., of course. It puts hearts in my eyes when I say something and another person has an unexpected reply.

Comments

[intothewood]

Oh interesting!

Do you believe that establishing a clear and genial relationship with the reader is foremost, or creating words and imagery that you as the author can love?

Well, I think of something like Finnegans Wake, which seems to be a total self indulgence for James Joyce, who not only couldn't give a shit whether readers got it, but most likely was secretly filled with glee at his great private joke. Okay, maybe or maybe not, but it brings me to the point of saying that authors and audiences must be willing to meet at a point somewhere in between - whether that leans toward comprehension or confusion.

I like challenging fiction because it causes me to think, and to me, that's the most important function of any art.

You know, I often think of something Sister Wendy said in an interview - that it's a great comfort to think you're right. And giving a swift glance at something and making a judgement is that superior rush of being right, whether the judgment is good or bad. To be unsure, perhaps uncomfortably unsure, is where the true relationship between the art and the audience comes in. I guess what I want is that type of relationship, whether in my own writing, or in what I read.

[smw]

... authors and audiences must be willing to meet at a point somewhere in between - whether that leans toward comprehension or confusion.

Is it a compromise, then?

I agree in general, and as a writer would say that communicating with my readers is a deliberate consideration within my style. There might be space for one Finnegans Wake in the world, but I'm doubtful there needs to be a second.

[intothewood]

There is compromise, although it's up for debate on who should do the compromising and under what circumstances. If you know you're going to be reading Finnegans Wake, you must expect to be in for a mindfuck - but I don't believe in confusing the audience for the sake of confusion.

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro is a proper mindfuck as well, but it serves a real purpose, the reader is supposed to be thrown off guard and confused. I wouldn't want him to compromise one sentence for the sake of clarity because it would completely ruin his intention.

But there is an art to the thing. I think writing in an unconventional manner requires a great deal of skill in leading the reader where you want them to go without throwing them completely off track.

[holyschist]

I this beautiful prose is definitely something to strive for--but where I think I differ from a lot of literary fiction readers and a certain subset of SFF fans is that I don't believe prose should be beautiful at the expense of clarity. The meaning is primary for me, and I think prose should elucidate rather than obscure it (that doesn't mean fiction can't be challenging, or that I think authors should avoid big words--but if I have to spend 5 minutes untangling the grammar of a pretty but muddled sentence, that's not the kind of challenge I seek in fiction--I want challenging IDEAS, not dense thickets of purple prose that could have used an editor).

Rosemary Sutcliff is my gold standard for prose that is heartbreakingly beautiful and emotionally complex, yet utterly clear. Even when she writes a paragraph-long sentence, I never get lost or puzzled by her grammar, or feel like she's using specific words solely to be Deep, as I sometimes feel with more purple writers.

(I'm also...a little hesitant about "beautiful". Is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried "beautiful" prose? Can one have beautiful prose about something as ugly as his topics? And yet--it's a masterful, effective book, whose style works perfectly for the emotional subject matter.)

[smw]

I agree entirely; a sentence that has to be read several times because it's communicating badly isn't "complex", it's poor craft. I'd think that it's the book itself that one should feel the impulse to reread and better understand.

As to the word "beautiful", yes, it could be inappropriate, though in this context I think that a prose which mirrors the ugly things that it describes can be beautiful in an artistic sense.

[holyschist]

I think my tolerance for certain types of writing is pretty low, though--I'm not sure how to articulate it, exactly. Most of the time when I see people praising an author's style for making them "work" as a reader (rather than the author's content), chances are I am going to find that book annoying.

IDK, 'beautiful' and 'ugly' are very loaded words to start with, and redefining deliberate ugliness as artistic beauty seems like it might be...adding an unnecessary level of complexity? I'm not sure.

[smw]

Hm, quite true re: redefining loaded terms. Perhaps we should be talking about the "impact" of prose? I will have to think about this.

[analect]

Hmmm, this is a very good topic! I think, quite possibly, 'impact' is the kind of neutral lingua franca to go for here, though I definitely agree loaded terms like 'beautiful' and 'ugly' carry exactly the kind of weight that readers know about - and it's that gut-deep knowing in response to words that we're dealing with, isn't it?

Personally, I happily turn a blind eye to a prose style that isn't to my taste if I'm interested enough in the plot or form. Equally, I enjoy many different styles of prose.

In that excerpt, fundamentally I agree with the Winterson persona. Style matters absolutely. However, the author's style shouldn't necessarily be unchanging. To my mind, the author has to believe enough in what s/he is saying to express it with integrity... but the ultimate duty is to the story - to getting that story told, and embraced by the reader. Whether that's achieved through geniality or rigorous intellectual exercise, however... both are just as valid.

A book this makes me think of is Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, which a lot of people intensely dislike. I love it, despite its graunching bits and self-indulgent flaws. T.S. Eliot, in his introduction, said that "only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." and I think that's oddly true of much prose.

Whether it's sparseness and balanced clarity or rich, full descriptiveness, as readers we want the author's style to sing to us... I suspect there may be some kind of aural primal impulse thingy here.

[intothewood]

Personally I'm very comfortable with "beautiful" as a descriptive term for the ability to capture and convey a reaction to ugly things. To quote a too often quoted saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder?

I keep coming back to other art forms to make comparisons because I think it's valid that not everyone will respond to a certain form of prose, but does that decrease (or increase) the value of what's being said? Perhaps because language is ubiquitously used as everyday expression we hold it to a different standard? Though symbols - artistic renderings - are as well. We don't want cubist formations of little guys and gals telling us where the toilets are, but we can easily differentiate between interpretation and symbol. Can we as easily and generously differentiate between prose and text?

Huh, I thought I had something there. Maybe it's still there, I dunno. I think there's another glass of wine calling my name.

[analect]

We don't want cubist formations of little guys and gals telling us where the toilets are

Awww... don't we? Could be rather nifty. *grin* I agree, though - we elide symbols and art easily, and the same happens with prose and text. Of course, we're bringing the whole intertextuality thing into it here, which definitely does mean it's time for another glass of something.

[intothewood]

Not nifty if you really need to pee! It'd be like trying to get the childproof cap off of the aspirin bottle when you have a splitting headache - "don't challenge me right now!"

Blah I really shouldn't type when I'm tipsy, I get obnoxious with the diatribes and often string out weird poetics, too. :P