No such thing as a writer ..

“The Response #1 “

Reading Flannery O'Connor, Tim O'Brien, Rust Hills, Guy Maupassant, John Gardner, Jamaica Kincaid,

By Stephanie Hodge

 January 2018. New York City. Coldest holidays ever. A 51 year old global consultant on a famine part of her work cycle, with some down time, decides to take a not-for-credit course on fiction at the New School. She had been writing a book of fantasy fiction that was causing much stress. 

Two days after the first class. Husband and wife having a chat about it.

Why so depressed?

The new course.

“The writing fiction one?”

Yes. Well, we are reading about the mechanics of fiction, the art and the crafts of it. Darned first class has near disrupted everything I thought I knew about writing.” Yesterday, I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed. It was like being hit over the head with a sledge hammer!

 Sledge hammer? Really? Details?

 Well, the class is ok, there are about thirty under 30s.  I am the oldest, even older than the teacher, but that is not the problem. I love learning with the kids. They are all smart and getting a good start with their good liberal arts degree. The problem is that I guess I picked the right class. Perhaps I have been hubris in thinking I could be writing something worthwhile (fiction novel) based on my experiences.  Sure I have read 1000s of books and all sorts of fiction and the like, but I had no idea about the so many crafts that can be used in good writing. “I guess I kind a knew about the art part but this stuff about craft, technique and standards they call it, is disrupting everything I have been doing. I feel stupid!

 In what way? 

So we started by reading theory by this writer /writing teacher guy John Gardner... He is all stuffy and calls us newbies ignoramuses. 

His takes away can be summed up. He says, fiction is art and the art of good fiction - the medium, can do a couple of key things. For instance, it makes good use of interesting believable characters to tell a story, a narrative. Like the kid in Spielberg's ET, or his great characters in Jaws, and his modern take on Moby Dick, all to get at some level of truth- knowledge - the point of the story ... He says that character is at the heart of good fiction and that we cannot really use abstractions to tell a good story or make a good point. We should question whether to plot or go by intuition?

“He says new fiction writers can be judged by peer standards and says that only the artist can answer what the art peer standard might be... but at the heart of good art - using fiction as a medium are 1.humanism and 2.force. The beginning of human knowledge is imparted best through the senses. That the fiction writer can use show to begin a narrative, where human perception begins. “

 “For god’s sake, he also says there is no such thing as a writer. He is tough on that point and on what constitutes good writing is in fact, an instinct for art - in order to evoke human feelings. To use intuition and tastes in crafting a solid narrative, and that no rules then, apply. Like Shakespeare and Mozart, he says, some writers can get straight to the heart of the matter - no fuss for plot logic or psychological consistency. He says that invention is Arts main business - and all great writing is an imitation of great writing...He also said that to judge a good novel one must be able to say after reading it , now that is a great novel!” That should be the outcome - the human response- a feeling! He talks about theme and says it must have a theme and that is what makes it significant. That the modern novelist can build upon the theme with cumulative use of symbols. He says symbols are important and that they are carried within the fiction. He throws out an example of Chekov's gun in the seagull and asks what it achieves in the tale...

 “The second one Flannery O’Connor, agrees with that... She makes a bunch of points about fiction as literature. She is a literature snob like Gardner. She agrees there is no such thing as a writer. That new to the craft, a writer should ask themselves first why they want to write and second, what do they want to talk about. She says there must be a point to the writing. That is a constant no matter how long or short the piece is. That in essence the writer is an artist and the basis of all art is truth. I am not sure about that as I think perhaps she is questioning the nature of art as a beauty issue and so I don’t entirely agree with her .”

She says the habit of artist is built like the habit of science and that writing is an important moral profession as artist. That art is about quality and virtue of the mind. That a writer with only financial gain in sight is not really in it for the right motivations. I guess you can say that writer as an artist morally should be somewhat a senator of the humanities.

She is clear about story writing or fiction is about having a meaning full narrative. She says the is a common denominator for all good fiction is that it is concrete. Meaning that the story should be believable... You would probably call this Realist as an Architect, correct?

 So Realism is what seems to define Flannery O’Conner’s work. She likes to use simple day to day stories. Her short story GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE is a short moral tale about simple country people but with a higher message about the nature of all people...Kind of good vs evil story.

  I think her notion of concretizing is profound. She says writing well is the beginning of human knowledge and that through the senses is the best way to tell a story to which people can relate. That people cannot comprehend abstractions and they will give no response to that.

 So realism and concrete stories of everyday life seem to define all of Flannery O’Conner’s work. She was also a religious catholic person and this was defining for her high moral Art! I read the good country people story. It was about a small town family and their domestic help. The help was a poor women with three or four children that lived with a family in a farm house. One of the children was a grown women with a disability - a stump for a leg but miraculously in the times (193Os, deep South) she had managed to get a PhD in philosophy. Due to her disability she had been forced to live out her life dependent on her less educated and not so sympathetic mother and employer who could not see beyond the girls stump.. This was a sad reality but true as many people in the world, even now, still look at peoples physical imperfections based on their disabilities not on their abilities. The story is a moral story and talks about the problem of ignorance and the educated and shows clearly how the young’s women advanced learning and mental capacities added to her difficulties living within the mundane daily reality on the farm - stuck with other real country people including this Bible seller fellow who outwitted her to thinking he was a good country boy but was really the devil in sheep’s cloths, with evil intentions. This story was clearly a good over evil, a theme that also defines her work. This is called the Manichean thought, a kind of pagan - Christian good vs evil early religion. I get this and see this means dualism which is something - a mega theme to which I subscribe and use in my own book /writing and as such this gave me some hope. If Flannery O ’Connor can do it then so can I in my future Orwellian tale that is killing me.

 She is very strong about her point to make concrete the details of daily lived experiences as to make actual the mystery of our position on earth.

Writing concrete is her writing artist theme - She give the excellent example of Flaubert’s Madame Bouvier. He was so crafty to use a scene to give a feeling of what is important in a village from a stroke of Emma’s piano playing... 

That art is selective and its truthfulness is the truthfulness of the essential that creates movement in a good story. Symbols are a technique she deals with and that all good writer might use. She seems to be saying that in good fiction, certain details will accumulate meaning from the story itself and, when this happens they become symbolic. Such stories can be judged by their ability to generate higher learning and knowledge through how much they can evoke a good ole human emotional response.i.e crying, fear, sympathy, guilt etc...

 So this tears me apart because now I have spent years writing this fancy dandy tale based on my innate art bag and creativity, leaving lots of room for my intuition and FINALLY have crafted a mani,a mega fiction story - with a theme - tyranny and control set in the dark tech future authoritarian state infected future. But perhaps it's not yet so concrete or real. I guess it is getting there but playing out in a fantasy world.

  But don’t you see, you can still apply the peer guidance. You can enrich your book with more conscious intent and concrete daily experiences -lived experiences. To go back to your own work with greater purpose to illuminate the theme, the point and highlight the symbols where they have already appear i.e. puffin feathers. Your book is intentional and full of great elements...  You might use the daily lived experiences to make your future Orwellian story more believable and to consider the human response element. What can evoke a better human response to make your point!

 Yes you are correct, we also studies this one story by Tim O’Brien called How to tell a Good War Story. That sad but highly technical story, uses look of repetition and the like and shows that if you are going to tell a war story then you need to tell one and in all the gory denials. The example that best describe this, was the scene where the nose of the poor baby animal had been all chopped off and left bubbling by a young broken solider on the front line who had lost all sence of his humanity. Everybody will react and remember that poor bubbling nose ! Response !

Rust Hills is a proponent for quality fiction vs slick fiction... He says that new or inexperience fiction writers tend to fall into a trap of slick fiction - abstract works based on some great notion or idea they have - a sort of daydreaming. He says this is excusable in a younger writer but for these of use with experience and craft to draw on a story as things really are - there is no excuse. Slick writers are trying to invent and be modern but sometime pass over the form of a good writing piece - mainstay elements i.e. Story value, plot, suspense, characterization in depth and so forth.

They all seem to say that the art of crafting a good narrative - form, story-telling, intent, truth, symbols, realism, the lived experience, and more craft, are all elements that can be present in order to impart knowledge and generate a positive change in our human readers...SH