We all remember getting our 'report' from the PSAT or PLAN or whichever it was. There was that section that had a wheel labelled 'People, Things, Ideas' and your test scores somehow put you somewhere on that map. Based on what you were good at, those presumptuous test writers decided they could categorize you. Well, who knows how good they are at that, but maybe there's something to it. Maybe there are people who like working with people rather than something, um, less...human; or perhaps some people like abstract ideas more than physical objects, and maybe every person in the world fits into one of those categories. Nicholson Baker would be really easy to place. Things. No question. Maybe that's why I found his novel lacking...well, purpose.
As I try to figure out where I want to go with my pastiche, I think I've realized that the problem is in the question. I keep asking where I'm going with this, but maybe it simply doesn't matter. It's all just a tangent. Not a rant, maybe, but a tangent. Maybe since I seem to have trouble with plot, it'll be good for me to just ignore huge plot development for a while. Maybe I'm just bored with 'Things'.
The Mezzanine may have some interesting things to say about everyday objects, but personally, I just didn't find anything revolutionary in its pages. Maybe I just think such similar thoughts that nothing really surprised me. Maybe 'Things' aren't my thing. I'm pretty sure those standardized tests put me as far from 'Things' as one could possibly be. Maybe they got something right, there.
I can understand where The Mezzanine has character development, but the fact that everything has already happened from the narrator's point of view makes it feel less obvious to me. There is no change in the tone of the novel. There isn't much rising action unless you find escalator handrails gripping (pardon the slight pun, couldn't help it), there is no conflict at all. I couldn't find any revelations in Howie's thinking. Perhaps that's why I find this book somehow less than a novel. It's focus of items has a human background, but it somehow lacks complicated emotions. It doesn't have the deep self-revelations that I find so compelling in Mrs. Dalloway. Maybe if more of his comments on objects had deep personal meaning for him, like the ties on the doorknobs, I could appreciate them more. I find the sentimentality of objects more relatable than appreciation of the object itself. Yes, staplers are fantastic, but once I figured out how they worked sometime in elementary school, probably, I lost interest.
Friday, August 30, 2013
The Brink of Humanity
Virginia Woolf's essays on character and what she does with character in Mrs. Dalloway I think are really interesting interpretations of not just how to write a character-driven novel, but also how to be human in this world. This whole thought really clicked for me when Mr. Mitchell mentioned that people who read fiction tend to be more empathetic. I personally love writing character-driven fiction because I think writing is one of the ways in which people explore the deepest philosophical questions. It's the Great Unanswerable "Why?" (I actually feel like coining the phrase, now...).
So, with all that thrown into your face like Sally Seton into Clarissa Parry's, where do we go from here? To Mrs. Dalloway. How does one describe her? She is 52, living in 1923 London married to Richard Dalloway. Yes, thank you Mr. Bennett, all that is true, but who is Clarissa (minus the Dalloway)? Would I like her if I met her? Virginia Woolf really delves into the mind of Clarissa, showing us more than an outward description ever could. She doesn't tell us who she is socially or what she does primarily. Not outright. Woolf shows us everything and leaves it to the reader to decipher humanity out of the flashes of meaning bouncing around in Clarissa's mind.
There is something, I believe, called Human Understanding - that every person who has ever lived knows about. It's indescribable and self-contradictory, but it is an author's passion to capture snapshots of it like shadowy 'bigfoots' in grainy images.
In this sense, we know Mrs. Dalloway better than our best friends and better than we may know ourselves. It's Woolf's approach to character that I really love. She knows her characters better than she knows herself, and not just from an analytical point of view. She can both become the character and write what they think and feel, while still seeing things about them that they will never know. This kind of intense understanding of another human - which characters are, really - is character-based fiction. This is what it's all about. Fiction stands just on the brink of humanity, and yet there is something so very human in the existence of fiction.
On a related note that I may or may not find worthy of a separate blog later, I read as a writer now. Basically I like paining attention to how writers make thing fit together into one solid work. Right now, I'm struggling with plot since my novel is so character-based, so I find it fascinating that Woolf can tell so much of a story through her character's self-revelations, which we all have every day - usually small things.
So, with all that thrown into your face like Sally Seton into Clarissa Parry's, where do we go from here? To Mrs. Dalloway. How does one describe her? She is 52, living in 1923 London married to Richard Dalloway. Yes, thank you Mr. Bennett, all that is true, but who is Clarissa (minus the Dalloway)? Would I like her if I met her? Virginia Woolf really delves into the mind of Clarissa, showing us more than an outward description ever could. She doesn't tell us who she is socially or what she does primarily. Not outright. Woolf shows us everything and leaves it to the reader to decipher humanity out of the flashes of meaning bouncing around in Clarissa's mind.
There is something, I believe, called Human Understanding - that every person who has ever lived knows about. It's indescribable and self-contradictory, but it is an author's passion to capture snapshots of it like shadowy 'bigfoots' in grainy images.
In this sense, we know Mrs. Dalloway better than our best friends and better than we may know ourselves. It's Woolf's approach to character that I really love. She knows her characters better than she knows herself, and not just from an analytical point of view. She can both become the character and write what they think and feel, while still seeing things about them that they will never know. This kind of intense understanding of another human - which characters are, really - is character-based fiction. This is what it's all about. Fiction stands just on the brink of humanity, and yet there is something so very human in the existence of fiction.
On a related note that I may or may not find worthy of a separate blog later, I read as a writer now. Basically I like paining attention to how writers make thing fit together into one solid work. Right now, I'm struggling with plot since my novel is so character-based, so I find it fascinating that Woolf can tell so much of a story through her character's self-revelations, which we all have every day - usually small things.
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