An Interesting Take on the idea of the Writer In Fictional Works

[Elventine]

This is an "article" (sort of) with an interesting take on the idea of the writers self getting between the reader and the work itself.

Thought that maybe it could start an interesting discussion -


To Reveal Art and Conceal the Artist is Art’s Aim

 

[zmunkz]

I’ve heard about this concept as “window pane prose” where you can either write “invisibly” so the reader just sees through to the story, or you can write “stained-glass” so the reader can see the story but also revel in the colors provided by the writing itself.

I can see both styles working for different people, depending what they are going for, so I disagree with the author of that piece who basically says the stained-glass approach isn’t as “artful” (defining art, as they do, as self-hiding).

That said, I personally prefer to read and write invisible prose.

 

[HareBrain]

@zmunkz, I'm not sure that's the same concept. Who's to say that someone who writes "stained glass" prose isn't trying their best to express something others can truly connect with? Van Gogh has a highly individual style, and no one would claim that his brushwork was "invisible". But many people still connect emotionally with his work.

I'm not sure what the article is talking about, in practical terms. What would a piece of writing look like in which a writer has interposed themself too much? One in which the plot or characters are guided by the author's opinions or wishes to the detriment of credibility, I guess, but that's quite extreme. If we discount prose style (unless it's genuinely being used as a way of showing off) what else would show it?

 

[Elventine]

@zmunkz I haven't ever heard of the "stained glass" term before but I have seen what the writer was talking about in many books but mostly poetry.

One example that I can share is in one of the middle novels in the Body Farm series by Jefferson Bass where a student asks a question from the standpoint of his religion and the character goes into a long rant basically destroying the young man in front of the class. How it is written and the tone of the whole section (also if you know a little about him) you can see that the points of view and feeling in the authors, not the characters and the author is just using the moment to express their agenda in a blatant way which was honestly very uncomfortable to read. It was like I was being given a lecture by a stranger in the street.

It really was just... felt odd and jarring and well... off.

@HareBrain

I'm not sure what the article is talking about, in practical terms. What would a piece of writing look like in which a writer has interposed themself too much? One in which the plot or characters are guided by the author's opinions or wishes to the detriment of credibility, I guess, but that's quite extreme. If we discount prose style (unless it's genuinely being used as a way of showing off) what else would show it?

As I said I have seen it before - The Body Farm novel was just one - but where I really see it is in poetry. If you read some of the stuff that is posted on a site like Prose or the one writing site I was on a lot of it is just the writers telling us about something that happened to them in lyrical form and it is hard to connet to because... well I don't know them. Why do I care about the time the dog licked you bits and you had a moment? Anyway, the whole thing is just... ew! to start with but reading about it in poetry just adds a level of weird that I am not ok with.

But that is an extreme example but not one that is alone - I have often seen the very personal come into works and I just feel very invaded by the author at times like that. It also feels very, whats the word I am looking for, like a forced invasion of privacy. Like the writer is forcing their privet moments and feeling onto me, the reader, without thinking if I want that sort of intimacy with them.

 

[sknox]

I'm currently reading Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner where I see both methods in the same work. The book is told first person by a retired history professor writing in 1970. He's going through his grandmother's papers, which tell in detail of her life from a century before, a cultivated Eastern girl who marries an engineer who works in the mining industry out West. The professor tells his grandmother's story in the third person and his views very much color his descriptions, both of his grandmother's life and of his own condition (he's confined to a wheelchair).

Where is Stegner, the author, in this book? It would be too easy to say the professor is the author, especially as this was far from being Stegner's first book. The coloration is deliberate, a commentary on both the 1960s (he was a prof at Berkeley) and the 1870s. The narrator is perceptive but not all that sympathetic.

It's a brilliant technique. It has the effect of throwing open multiple windows at once, a technique that would be unsustainable without good writing. And that's my take on the article. Anything can be done--hide the artist, reveal the artist, have the artist tromping across the stage in sewer boots declaiming the while--if it is done well, where the variable "well" is defined by the observer and does not have a constant value.

 

[HareBrain]

I have often seen the very personal come into works and I just feel very invaded by the author at times like that. It also feels very, whats the word I am looking for, like a forced invasion of privacy.

So I guess where a writer's personal experience fails to transcend the writer and connect with something bigger, you get the writer's self acting as a barrier. I'm not sure to what extent that would depend on whether the reader connected with the experience itself, in something like transgressive sexuality. I don't think it does, always. I recently read Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask, in which the author described his erotic attraction to images of young men suffering violent death (such as Saint Sebastian). That's extremely personal, and, er ... niche, but somehow it still seemed to connect with something universal, even though he made no obvious attempt to do so. I didn't find the author an intrusion there, and I would definitely say the book was art, but others might disagree.

 

[Elventine]

@sknox I think though that it depends (in your example) if one counts a narrator as part of the fiction or the author telling you the story. Personally, I count the narrator as fiction unless told otherwise so I would see the author coming into it as a slip-up, like an actor falling out of a roll for a moment on stage.

@HareBrain Yeah... very niche... .

 

[The Big Peat]

Problem with the argument - well, one of them - is that whatever the author sets out to do, readers will always see things differently. Both from the author and each other. To take an example - the author of said article has a Pratchett quote. Now - and this is a somewhat presumptuous statement, but only somewhat - it seems fair to suggest the article author is a Pratchett fan, and given his statements on art, he believes Pratchett is good at getting out of the way.

But I know at least one guy who liked Pratchett but can't read too much at a time due to what he sees as heavy handed moralising. Me, I don't get that, but I do think Pratchett's books are so filled with his character that it's oozing out of the sides. Pratchett doesn't get out of the way of the art, he's there with the reader pointing out all the fun parts.

Therefore, if this is something so out of the artist's control, is it really such a big part of art?

And there's the other problem. I love Pratchett in no small part due to what I've just described. A lot of my other favourite authors have a very strong sense of authorial voice. I don't want my artists to step out of the way. I want them to say "This is my truth, tell me yours". Obviously, subjectively, I don't think them hiding is what art is about. Obviously I'd say that. But trying to be objective, if there are a bunch of people who are the same as me and want the same as me... then should all art be about the artist hiding?

I think Skip has it best when he says anything can be done.

Hmm. Now I'm trying to think of a piece of art I really love where I think the author is hiding.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I can't say I agree - or perhaps understand the point, either; it appears to suggest that the artist's pursuit should be altruistic, or some kind of gift to others. Bearing in mind our art comes from our own lens and is highly subjective, I fail to see how any art can exist independant of the artist, because everything will have been informed by their experiences and opinions. Whether they be pro-this or anti-that, it still comes form the writer's perception and - to get existential for a moment - cannot exist outside of the writer's mind.

On the other hand, if we're talking about polemics, then I wholeheartedly agree; no one wants to be blasted from the author's soapbox.

If I'm honest, it does read like a lot of armchair philosophy claptrap.

pH

 

[sknox]

>no one wants to be blasted from the author's soapbox.
And yet, what is 1984 or Animal Farm but almost pure soapbox? Write well, and your soapbox becomes a classic and gets put in a museum.

 

[The Big Peat]

>no one wants to be blasted from the author's soapbox.
And yet, what is 1984 or Animal Farm but almost pure soapbox? Write well, and your soapbox becomes a classic and gets put in a museum.

Very valid point. See also The Handmaid's Tale, the feel righteous TV hit of the year. There's a thread running on SFFWorld atm pointing out that Le Guin has been very open about her beliefs but is still about as successful as it gets. I'm sure others can add others.

And yet what pB said is a very common statement among readers. Still not sure how best to marry this one up.

 

[Toby Frost]

To be honest I'm not sure I really understand what's being argued. It's certainly something I've not really thought about. It seems pretty clear to me that the artist decides what to write about - presumably something that they find interesting or important - and then tries to make it rounded and credible: ie not an authorial lecture. In terms of polemic, I tend to make a distinction between books that are against something, and books that argue for something. The former always seem less preachy than the latter. I've seen 1984 quoted by all kind of people over the last year, which probably shows that its appeal is wider than just "people who think like the author".

If it comes down to "The author's outlook shapes his work" then sure, that's inevitable. One of the standard defences of Starship Troopers (and other works) is that the author is just "making suggestions" or "putting it out there". I disagree with that: nobody writes 200 pages of prose, especially didactic prose, just for the sake of it. The more you put your own views forward, I reckon, the greater the chance of lecturing the reader.

 

[sknox]

And yet what pB said is a very common statement among readers. Still not sure how best to marry this one up.

To me it is simple but difficult: write well. There's no such thing as bad ideas, only ideas done badly. With specific regard to polemics in fiction, I would only walk that road if it were a subject about which I was absolutely, sleeplessly passionate. It would have to be something that drove me, haunted me, chewed at my gut. Otherwise I am content to let my view of the world inform my writing in less didactic ways.

 

[Brian G Turner]

IMO polemics only become a problem when they're not related to the story. When Frodo and Sam were struggling across Mordor, they didn't suddenly stop to discuss the merits of Hegelian Dialects. That would be a problem - and from what others here have said, is what some writers do.