The Democracy of Difficult Fiction
September 7, 2015 3:04 PM Subscribe
The value of fiction was clear to Virginia Woolf, who argued that nonfiction consists of half-truths and approximations that result in a "very inferior form of fiction." In Woolf's terms, reading ambitious fiction isn't comfortable or easy. Far from it: "To go from one great novelist to another—from Jane Austen to Hardy, from Peacock to Trollope, from Scott to Meredith—is to be wrenched and uprooted; to be thrown this way and then that." The illuminations that fiction offers are gained only with considerable effort. "To read a novel is a difficult and complex art," Woolf wrote. "You must be capable not only of great fineness of perception, but of great boldness of imagination if you are going to make use of all that the novelist—the great artist—gives you."– The Virtues of Difficult Fiction by Joanna Scott. She was interviewed by Larry Mantle on public radio show AirTalk about her essay. In the passage above Scott's quoting Woolf's How Should One Read a Book?
How Should One Read a Book?
Not inside a dog, that's for sure.
Considering the world has seen about a billion authors cross its face, I grow more and more suspicious each year of the constant trotting-out of names like Austen and Hardy and Scott and Trollope ("I always travel with a Trollope or two."). Literature did not reach some kind of artistic nexus in the 18th or 19th centuries, it simply became more available.
Definitions of "challenging" are so far-reaching as to be rendered meaningless. What challenges me might not challenge another, and, hopefully, vice-versa, as I consider myself reasonably well- and widely-read.
However, I find it hard to argue with this line:
Great writers extend our capacity for “serious noticing,” Wood says.
And indeed they do. But my great writers are not yours, and yours are not mine. Mine speak directly to the wiring of my brain, and yours, I shut out completely after dipping in. Warlock has as much power as the much-lauded Madame Bovary, and it is basically a Western by a prolific/profligate author. Scalzi's almost-throwaway notion of "unpacking" in Old Man's War was revelatory to me at the time, not in what it described, but the way it illustrated it. Voltaire's "best of all possible worlds" cannot be ignored once you find it.
Complaints against literary prescriptivism are old and tired, as is the prescriptivism itself. Let us be challenged in our own ways, not in your ways. Of course, building up the necessary fortitude (I would not have read Gormenghast, for example, if I had not already read Dragonlance Chronicles or Feist or whatever) is a skill that requires training and discipline and no small amount of agony.
I don't know that we should force people to suffer, but we should certainly teach them to do so. But their suffering has to have some grain of appeal to it.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:18 PM on September 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
Not inside a dog, that's for sure.
Considering the world has seen about a billion authors cross its face, I grow more and more suspicious each year of the constant trotting-out of names like Austen and Hardy and Scott and Trollope ("I always travel with a Trollope or two."). Literature did not reach some kind of artistic nexus in the 18th or 19th centuries, it simply became more available.
Definitions of "challenging" are so far-reaching as to be rendered meaningless. What challenges me might not challenge another, and, hopefully, vice-versa, as I consider myself reasonably well- and widely-read.
However, I find it hard to argue with this line:
Great writers extend our capacity for “serious noticing,” Wood says.
And indeed they do. But my great writers are not yours, and yours are not mine. Mine speak directly to the wiring of my brain, and yours, I shut out completely after dipping in. Warlock has as much power as the much-lauded Madame Bovary, and it is basically a Western by a prolific/profligate author. Scalzi's almost-throwaway notion of "unpacking" in Old Man's War was revelatory to me at the time, not in what it described, but the way it illustrated it. Voltaire's "best of all possible worlds" cannot be ignored once you find it.
Complaints against literary prescriptivism are old and tired, as is the prescriptivism itself. Let us be challenged in our own ways, not in your ways. Of course, building up the necessary fortitude (I would not have read Gormenghast, for example, if I had not already read Dragonlance Chronicles or Feist or whatever) is a skill that requires training and discipline and no small amount of agony.
I don't know that we should force people to suffer, but we should certainly teach them to do so. But their suffering has to have some grain of appeal to it.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:18 PM on September 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
"To read a novel is a difficult and complex art," Woolf wrote. "You must be capable not only of great fineness of perception, but of great boldness of imagination if you are going to make use of all that the novelist—the great artist—gives you."
When I read that I feel just a bit special. While I may not have many redeeming qualities, I know that I read well. So there is that.
posted by Splunge at 3:28 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
When I read that I feel just a bit special. While I may not have many redeeming qualities, I know that I read well. So there is that.
posted by Splunge at 3:28 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Nobody likes to be on the wrong side of judgement, so many declare judgement irrelevant.
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:36 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:36 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
“When book and reader's furrowed brow meet, it isn't always the book that's stupid.”posted by Fizz at 3:45 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
― William H. Gass
A few months ago I attempted to read To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. I got about 70% of the way through before I gave up.
And I didn't give up because of the "difficulty" of the work. My English major sister had warned me that it wasn't a straightforward narrative, but I can't say I found the writing style at all difficult. Unlike, say Cormac McCarthy in No Country for Old Men where I could see exactly why he was writing in that particular style but found that it grated on me so much I couldn't get past three or four pages, I found the unusual style of To the Lighthouse intriguing and delightful.
In fact, I don't think I'd have made it past the first thirty pages if Woolf had written it in a more conventional style. A not especially linear stream of consciousness focusing on the feelings and thoughts of the characters, in no particular order and changing without warning, did not make the book too difficult for me. I found that, and Woolf's occasional achingly beautiful sparse turn of phrase (to avoid spoilers, I was particularly taken with how she presented the death of one of her characters), made the book interesting enough to keep reading.
What stopped me was not the lack of a conventional plot, I don't demand that characters in fiction save the world, or even really do much of anything, but how utterly, mind numbingly, **BORING** the characters were. They didn't even have characteristics I could dislike enough to keep interest.
Woolf gave us a lovingly done, unconventionally and interestingly written, psychological portrait of characters who had all the interest and personality of wet cardboard. I stopped reading because I found that I simply didn't care if Meek Girl ever found the courage to paint, or Grown Up Boy made peace with his father. None of the characters seemed worth investing even a few paragraphs of exposition about, much less a whole novel.
I was told that my puny non-English major brain might not be able to stand Woolf's style, but I found that no difficulty to speak of. If I'd been told that I might not be able to handle a book with no characters worth even a first glance, much less a second glance, I might not have bothered trying to read it.
If that's what was meant by "difficult" fiction, than I don't think I can approve of the idea.
If the meaning was an unconventional prose style, or a new way of trying things, than I say yes let us please have more "difficult" fiction.
If it means more completely empty characters, I think I'll pass.
posted by sotonohito at 3:53 PM on September 7, 2015 [7 favorites]
And I didn't give up because of the "difficulty" of the work. My English major sister had warned me that it wasn't a straightforward narrative, but I can't say I found the writing style at all difficult. Unlike, say Cormac McCarthy in No Country for Old Men where I could see exactly why he was writing in that particular style but found that it grated on me so much I couldn't get past three or four pages, I found the unusual style of To the Lighthouse intriguing and delightful.
In fact, I don't think I'd have made it past the first thirty pages if Woolf had written it in a more conventional style. A not especially linear stream of consciousness focusing on the feelings and thoughts of the characters, in no particular order and changing without warning, did not make the book too difficult for me. I found that, and Woolf's occasional achingly beautiful sparse turn of phrase (to avoid spoilers, I was particularly taken with how she presented the death of one of her characters), made the book interesting enough to keep reading.
What stopped me was not the lack of a conventional plot, I don't demand that characters in fiction save the world, or even really do much of anything, but how utterly, mind numbingly, **BORING** the characters were. They didn't even have characteristics I could dislike enough to keep interest.
Woolf gave us a lovingly done, unconventionally and interestingly written, psychological portrait of characters who had all the interest and personality of wet cardboard. I stopped reading because I found that I simply didn't care if Meek Girl ever found the courage to paint, or Grown Up Boy made peace with his father. None of the characters seemed worth investing even a few paragraphs of exposition about, much less a whole novel.
I was told that my puny non-English major brain might not be able to stand Woolf's style, but I found that no difficulty to speak of. If I'd been told that I might not be able to handle a book with no characters worth even a first glance, much less a second glance, I might not have bothered trying to read it.
If that's what was meant by "difficult" fiction, than I don't think I can approve of the idea.
If the meaning was an unconventional prose style, or a new way of trying things, than I say yes let us please have more "difficult" fiction.
If it means more completely empty characters, I think I'll pass.
posted by sotonohito at 3:53 PM on September 7, 2015 [7 favorites]
Thinking more about it, I believe a valid comparison can be made between Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and To The Lighthouse.
In both cases we have works that have no characters, no plot, and these facts obfuscated by special effects (if you'll allow that Woolf's interesting style in To The Lighthouse is equivalent to special effects).
As a result, something seems to be there, but there really isn't.
My objection to Sky Captain is essentially the same as my objection to Lighthouse: none of the characters are interesting. They couldn't be more opposite in most other ways, but in the utter lack of interesting characters they are identical.
I think much the same applies to Sucker Punch.
Contrast this with Straight Man by Richard Russo. It's a much less interestingly written book, it has none of the nifty stream of consciousness, action told only in the thoughts characters have about it rather than directly, quasi non-linear, writing that made Lighthouse interesting from a technical standpoint. And the plot is about equally thin. But Straight Man is a delightful book that I read and re-read because the characters are interesting, even (perhaps especially) the dislikable characters.
posted by sotonohito at 4:32 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
In both cases we have works that have no characters, no plot, and these facts obfuscated by special effects (if you'll allow that Woolf's interesting style in To The Lighthouse is equivalent to special effects).
As a result, something seems to be there, but there really isn't.
My objection to Sky Captain is essentially the same as my objection to Lighthouse: none of the characters are interesting. They couldn't be more opposite in most other ways, but in the utter lack of interesting characters they are identical.
I think much the same applies to Sucker Punch.
Contrast this with Straight Man by Richard Russo. It's a much less interestingly written book, it has none of the nifty stream of consciousness, action told only in the thoughts characters have about it rather than directly, quasi non-linear, writing that made Lighthouse interesting from a technical standpoint. And the plot is about equally thin. But Straight Man is a delightful book that I read and re-read because the characters are interesting, even (perhaps especially) the dislikable characters.
posted by sotonohito at 4:32 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Richard Russo and Ann Tyler are two novelists who have a masterful command of character description and development, but they are too "easy" to attract the attention of the media-appointed arbiters of literary taste.
posted by Agave at 4:43 PM on September 7, 2015
posted by Agave at 4:43 PM on September 7, 2015
Richard Russo and Ann Tyler are two novelists who have a masterful command of character description and development, but they are too "easy" to attract the attention of the media-appointed arbiters of literary taste.
They both have Pulitzers (among other awards) and films made out of their works.
posted by betweenthebars at 4:54 PM on September 7, 2015 [5 favorites]
They both have Pulitzers (among other awards) and films made out of their works.
posted by betweenthebars at 4:54 PM on September 7, 2015 [5 favorites]
Let's ratchet it up a notch. Here's Prof. Nagel's discussion of Virginia Woolf on reading Greek.
posted by BWA at 5:04 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by BWA at 5:04 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
I just read Sterne's a Sentimental Journey with Woolf's forward. The book was just as bawdy and sexual as Tristram Shandy and Woolf seemed to miss ALL of the humor- she even cited a passage about 'aging knights with broken lances' and didn't reference the obvious.
I am as skeptical of her as ever.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 5:43 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
I am as skeptical of her as ever.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 5:43 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
There's no shortage of ribald or even downright vulgar difficult writing. Joyce, Beckett, Burroughs, Acker to name just a few of my own darlings. And with a bit more coffee in me I could make a good argument for putting late era Ballard in that list too.
posted by idiopath at 6:07 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by idiopath at 6:07 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Is it the dichotomy of either turning off the brain and going for the ride versus finding yourself lost in an amazing but possibly risky place where you have to figure out what's going on and where you need to go? It seems pretty obvious that the latter case offers more chance for learning and feeling good about learning. It takes more effort but the rewards are far greater than just sitting back and going "Wheeeeeeee!!!"
posted by njohnson23 at 6:14 PM on September 7, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 6:14 PM on September 7, 2015 [3 favorites]
The fragment of text "vocabular;" - I can't decide whether I'd prefer this to be a typographical error, or a strange new idiom I don't remember seeing elsewhere.
posted by idiopath at 6:54 PM on September 7, 2015
posted by idiopath at 6:54 PM on September 7, 2015
I've read some Richard Russo in my day and I just didn't find his prose all that interesting. That is not important to some people. Shruggo.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:29 PM on September 7, 2015
posted by shakespeherian at 8:29 PM on September 7, 2015
Woolf seemed to miss ALL of the humor
Even more hilarious considering the bunch she ran with was randy as fuck and notoriously "sexually liberated", but Woolf always struck me as a bluestocking, in the original non-pejorative sense. Very much focused on the intellectual, rather than the sensual life.
One problem reading Woolf is that so much of her modernist, flat affect writing has been imitated and absorbed by lesser writers in the eighty plus years since, in middle aged English professors finding teenage lovers fiction, that it can be hard to recognise her own quality as so much of it is familiar and off putting.
Ironically, I've found her non-fiction so far to be more engaging, more thought provoking.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:13 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Even more hilarious considering the bunch she ran with was randy as fuck and notoriously "sexually liberated", but Woolf always struck me as a bluestocking, in the original non-pejorative sense. Very much focused on the intellectual, rather than the sensual life.
One problem reading Woolf is that so much of her modernist, flat affect writing has been imitated and absorbed by lesser writers in the eighty plus years since, in middle aged English professors finding teenage lovers fiction, that it can be hard to recognise her own quality as so much of it is familiar and off putting.
Ironically, I've found her non-fiction so far to be more engaging, more thought provoking.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:13 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
« Older Higher Education and Real Estate: Two Bubbles Come... | "When I hear this music I automatically start slo... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Kattullus at 3:05 PM on September 7, 2015