Review: William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying · 9:52pm Mar 10th, 2014
As I Lay Dying is one of the most-famous novels in American literature. I came in with pretty high expectations. I wasn't exactly disappointed: It does what famous 20th-century literary novels do, which is combine insight into characters with stylistic innovations. But it sure has a lot of flaws.
There are "spoilers" in here, but this isn't the kind of story that relies on plot twists to keep you reading. I'd have appreciated it better if I'd known what was going to happen (and, often, what was happening).
Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy invites obvious comparison with Faulkner's work: Both are written by country folk about country folk, are full of details of rural life, and focus at least as much on their characters' psychology as on action sequences. Both have a unique style that combines startling poetic passages with disregard for whether the reader can tell what's going on.
STYLE
Let me start with the style, as that's the most divisive thing about both men's writing, but in different ways. Both of them have a flashy big-S Style, and a precious little-s style.
By little-s style I mean the way they construct sentences, supposing someone told them what each sentence had to say and gave them a bag of words they could use. Both make unusual choices about apostrophes, speech tags, and clause-joining. In Faulkner's case he seems to have decided to lexicalize certain contractions but not others, to avoid deliberately-ordered sentence structures such as this one, and to avoid all speech tags but "said". In McCarthy's case it's just part of a rebellion against grammar, whose transparent purpose is to keep his books from being shelved together with Louis L'Amour.
The problem with Faulkner's little-s style isn't that it's bad in Faulkner's work; the problem is that it leads to Cormac McCarthy. So many critics have praised Faulkner's style, but it's hard to tell when they're praising the good things about his style, and when they're praising him merely for being weird. McCarthy learned all the wrong lessons from Faulkner, throwing out quotation marks, apostrophes, and commas as a declaration of literary intent rather than because his characters talk that way. Faulkner avoids semi-colons because his characters never plan their sentences, and a semi-colon occurs only where a speaker has thought about the structure of the sentence before speaking it and broken it down into clauses and sub-clauses. McCarthy just converts semi-colons into commas, to look like Faulkner. Faulkner uses "says" everywhere to be simple. McCarthy omits quotation marks and speech tags everywhere to be simpler, with the result that he has long dialogues with no speech tags that are literally impossible, as he lost track somewhere in the middle of who was speaking, and comes out the other end having swapped speakers.
By big-S style I mean the way Faulkner's characters come out with sudden poetic metaphors, or the way McCarthy lingers over the landscape and then explodes into a long run-on burst of poetry. Faulkner is dazzling but distracting. He takes care to have characters say things the way country folk would say them, then ruins it by sprinkling bits in their internal monologue like "her leg coming long from beneath her tightening dress: that lever which moves the world; one of that caliper which measures the length and breadth of life," that no farmer would ever say outside of a church, let alone about his sister. He tosses four-syllable Oxford English Dictionary vocabulary and avant-garde analogies into their internal thoughts at random, just because he thought of it at that point. These are uneducated farmers who speak in words of one and two syllables, and I had to use a dictionary to figure out what they were thinking sometimes. McCarthy uses his poetry and metaphors strategically, focusing the reader on important elements and important transitions. Faulkner jizzes metaphors all over inappropriate characters at inappropriate times, which sometimes make no sense. McCarthy is in control; Faulkner seems to be writing drunk.
Both Faulkner and McCarthy have problems with ambiguity. In McCarthy's case, it's mere carelessness. If you find a "he" or a "him" in one of his sentences, there's no guarantee that you can look to the left and to the right and figure out who it is. Important dialogue might be unattributable to a specific character, or in Spanish.
In Faulkner's case, it's deliberate. He loves to introduce a character into a scene without telling us who it is, or whether they are male or female, or how old they are, until later; or even to slip the character in in a way designed to mislead us into thinking it's someone else (as is done at a critical point in Addie's chapter, portraying her infidelity in a way designed to mislead us into thinking there was no infidelity).
Ambiguity has been fetishized by literary critics. A fetish is something that has been involved in sexual pleasure frequently enough that the pleasure is associated with that thing, and it seems as pleasing to the fetishist as the original stimuli. Valid literary ambiguity is when the characters have ambiguous thoughts, feelings, or ways of describing what happened. That's like at the climax of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, when John Singer doesn't know what he is feeling.
Faulkner specializes in phony ambiguity created by deliberately concealing critical parts of a character's thought. This is a valid literary technique when an unreliable narrator is deliberately concealing things from the reader. But it's just a gimmick when Faulkner use it to create ambiguity. Dewey Dell obsesses over Peabody and thinks how he could "make everything right for her," misleading us into thinking she has romantic feelings for him, until we find out much later that she wants him to give her an abortion. But Dewey Dell knows perfectly well what she wants from him, and isn't aware of being a narrator, so this "ambiguity" only detracts from the story being told by fooling us into constructing some other story. When Addie narrates her infidelity in a way to conceal the fact that the man she was screwing was not her husband, this wasn't a valid literary technique to show that Addie is deceiving herself; it was Faulkner leaving the necessary words out. Addie knew perfectly well whom she was screwing, and the words of her narrative showed that she thought of it as infidelity, which is why it was (deliberately) confusing. When Vardaman spills his stream-of-consciousness internal monologue on us in early chapters, we have no idea what he's talking about until nearly the end of the book, at which point we learn he was thinking about a train he saw in a store window. But Vardaman knew exactly what he was talking about! This ambiguity isn't a reflection of life's and language's complexity; it's a distracting guessing game that conceals the story unnaturally.
CONTENT
When I began the novel, I thought Faulkner had the win in this regard. McCarthy tells westerns. They may dwell on the thoughts and feelings of the characters more than Louis L'Amour does, and they may be disguised by strange grammar and punctuation, but the stories themselves are westerns about strong, virtuous men thrown into bad circumstances and fighting their way out. Faulkner seemed to be writing about normal people with normal problems. But as usually happens with Faulkner, I gradually realized he had leaned a little toward a Southern Gothic freak show. If the Bundren family were here today, they would get their own reality TV show. Instead of normal people dealing with normal problems, we have a dysfunctional, disconnected family creating their own problems of flood, fire, and insanity. It's a bunch of improbable sadfics mushed together. Cash is a good man with bad luck who doesn't stand up to the morons around him. Jewel is his own worst enemy. Dewey Dell has lost her virtue. Addie didn't love her husband. Etc. The characters act on each other mechanically, as weights and pulleys, rather than having emotional ties. The wordcount-eating subplot with Darl going insane, committing arson, and being taken away was one big WTF that ate up the last third of the novel and didn't connect with anything else. I guess Faulkner just wanted to get a fire in there after his flood, for the sake of completeness.
The strength of the novel should then be in portraying each of the characters realistically. But character portrayal is always two steps forward, two steps back. The Southern Gothic problem runs through much of Faulkner's work, making it implausible and not very relevant for people who aren't insane or from dysfunctional families. Another aspect is the stylistic problem I already mentioned, throwing jarring academic language into the thoughts of "simple Southern folk". And Faulkner sometimes throws one such startling metaphor into one character's thoughts, and then throws the same metaphor in the same words into another character's thoughts later, not only disrupting both characters but homogenizing them.
Then we have the most-irritating problem with Faulkner: Stream of consciousness. It's what he's famous for. As I mentioned before, he uses it to throw phony ambiguity everywhere.
Paragraphs, sentences, or words in internal monologues are italicized at random. In the worst cases, the italics indicate an intrusion into this character's thoughts by some other unidentified character or characters. This is Faulkner being cute by not telling us things. If you want to do a stream of consciousness, fine; but give us the whole stream. If a character, during one conversation, mentally recollects an earlier conversation, he also recollects who he was talking to, and when and where it was. Faulkner just jams in the dialogue with no indication of who is/was speaking, deliberately disorienting us in a way that is not true to life.
But usually it's just a section of their ongoing monologue that is continuous with what's around it, but set off by italics in random places, as if Faulkner had a sticky "italics" key on his keyboard. I found it enormously distracting and time-consuming to stare at it until I concluded it was meaningless.
Another problem with his stream of consciousness is that he likes to use children and mental defectives as narrators, but has no idea how such people think. It seems like he just grabbed a fifth of whatever alcohol was nearest when he needed to write such a character, then vomited drunken meaninglessness across the page. Here's a section that is supposed to represent the thoughts of a child:
The train is behind the glass, red on the track. When it runs the track shines on and off. Pa said flour and sugar and coffee costs so much. Because I am a country boy because boys in town. Bicycles. Why do flour and sugar and coffee cost so much when he is a country boy. "Wouldn' t you ruther have some bananas instead?" Bananas are gone, eaten. Gone. When it runs on the track shines again. "Why aint I a town boy, pa?" I said. God made me. I did not said to God to made me in the country. If He can make the train, why cant He make them all in the town because flour and sugar and coffee.
This isn't how little kids think. They don't even talk quite this disjointedly, but imagining that they think like this, well, that would take someone who doesn't interact with children and has forgotten what it was like to be one.
Here's the way he writes the thoughts of a man beginning to go crazy:
In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I dont know what I am. I dont know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not.
Or maybe it's just a man starting to fall asleep. Ordinarily I'd say it isn't, since the narrator never said anything like "And then I lay down and tried to sleep," but Faulkner wouldn't give us plain statements of fact like that, because that would spoil the fun of puzzling out what the hell was going on.
ADDED: The narrative voice in this novel is different from other first-person novels. It feels like they're thinking, or talking to themselves, not like they're talking to you. But it's hard to put my finger on why. Maybe this is the good part about his stream-of-consciousness style. If so, that isn't the part that people usually imitate when they do stream-of-consciousness. I associate it with broken grammar, sentence fragments, and thoughts that crash into each other in a heap. But maybe it also means this simple, direct, un-self-conscious first-person narration. I can't say how he does it, but it is different.
The more that I think about it, the more I think that what makes it work is exactly what I've been complaining about—the lack of context or explanation. In a normal first-person story, every time the narrator gives you background or context, it shows she's aware of you, the reader. Faulkner's characters never give you the background or context you need to interpret them. That's what makes them so confusing, but that's also what makes the narrative seem like a window into their minds, which abolishes any fear of deliberate manipulation or misleading of the reader.
A person doesn't usually think to themselves, "My ma is 45 years old," or, "I have always hated lemons," so you see how that makes it difficult to introduce context. Still, I think Faulkner takes it too far. There are ways to go back, recognize that certain information must be introduced, and have the characters say something that implies it. And Faulkner habitually leaves out critical information that the characters would have been thinking to themselves, which seems deliberate.
Continuing...
Faulkner's "simple folk wisdom" sometimes makes his characters phony. Darl thinks too much, so he goes crazy. I reckon that's what happens when you get too much book-learnin', Floyd. We have genetic determinism in the horses and in the character of Jewel. (When a horse is mean, it's because he comes from bad stock, not because you beat him every day.) And we have the "Christians are all fanatics and hypocrites" meme in Cora and the minister, and the way Anse uses the word "Christian" to manipulate people.
I had maybe more problems than I should have with simple plausibility issues.
- There's one point where Darl says Jewel is following them 300 yards behind, and then gives a detailed description of what the folks 300 yards behind are doing and look like.
- There's a crucial scene fording a river, which is described as being nearly 100 yards wide normally and the water so high now you can't even tell where the river is. Aside from the insanity of trying to drive a wagon underwater through a ford after a long thunderstorm, we then have people diving into the river to retrieve all of the tools that they dropped when their wagon was swept away. Now, a river under such circumstances is wild beyond endurance, and as much mud as water; and those tools would be spread out over an area 100 feet wide, 10-20 feet deep, and half a mile long, and the description of them diving into it and retrieving the tools made me want to set the book down and laugh.
- The story is supposed to be realistic, but there's one paragraph where a character speaks a remarkably specific prophecy that comes true later, not accomplishing anything thematically or story-wise, yet turning the whole novel into a fantasy.
Maybe my biggest problem was the lack of basic cues that would help us figure out who these people were and what their relationships to each other were. Things like what century it is, whether the town they're in is big or small, or how old they are. The text makes it sound like Addie's about 80 when she dies, but the ages of her children (which you don't find out until later) imply she's about 45. That makes a big difference to how we expect folk to feel when someone dies. We're told lots about Anse's reluctance to do hard physical work, but not whether he's young or old, which would help us interpret this. Jewel bullies the brothers about and seems to be the oldest son; near the end of the book we find out he's 10 years younger than Darl. (When someone has an entire novel about a set of brothers and we can't tell which one is the oldest, they've failed.) I think Dewey Dell is a little girl, maybe thirteen, then find out near the end that she's 17 and beautiful, and this is crucial information that would have helped me understand what she was doing all through the book.
CONCLUSION
I believe this could have been a better book if Faulkner had resisted the temptation of giving everybody their own sad story. The good stuff was diluted by too many chapters devoted to too many underdeveloped and under-integrated characters, especially Dewey Dell, who should've been eliminated from the book, and Vardaman, who got too much screen time, especially since his thoughts usually didn't make sense. I also think that a book about a family should have some points where the family members understand each other and reach out to each other. The lack of that makes the novel something of a grotesque. If you want Southern Gothic, go for it.
The novel has many great things about it, mostly the way folks talk, the characters that are clearly-portrayed and interesting (Anse, Cash, and Vernon Tull), and the insights into why people do what they do. I should list a few of these:
- Anse, the father, is determined to bury his wife far away at Jefferson, when he hardly ever gets determined about anything, and it seems like he gets some sort of gratification out of the difficulty of it, as if it were a proof that he had hard luck.
- Vernon notes that Anse isn't lazy about doing things, he's lazy about changing what he's doing, so that he hates to start a job, and then hates to stop it when he should.
- Vardaman, the little boy, beats the doctor's horses because he blames the doctor for killing his ma. And he's right. The doctor came; she saw him and decided it was time to die. The curious thing was that the father hated to call a doctor because of the expense, and yet at the last moment, when nothing could be done, the adults all believed that they had to call a doctor because that's what one does, while only the little boy looked at the situation and saw it clearly.
- Darl is institutionalized, but Anse, Jewel, and maybe Cash are all crazier than he is.
I didn't emphasize them because I'm so ticked off about it being admired and imitated for all the wrong reasons. It's recognized as a classic for its use of stream of consciousness, and for its realistic portrayal of realistic people. I got more out of it than I did out of All the Pretty Horses, but I think its stream of consciousness was a gimmick, poorly done, that was part of a larger infuriating game Faulkner was playing called "confuse the reader". The characters were not very representative of reality, and their portrayals were a mix, stylistically and in content, oscillating wildly between realistic and insightful, and fake and shallow. Most importantly, the family members didn't seem to have a history with each other and their stories didn't connect with each other. You could say that was a meditation on the loneliness possible in a large family, but I, having experience with large families, would call it sloppy writing. I find myself wondering whether someone in search of honest portrayals of country folk wouldn't be better off reading a James Herriot book.
James Herriot was every bit as much fiction, so I'd say go for it
If Herriot suffers, it's by being too on-the-nose with things: if you believe that it's a nonfiction memoir, you'll buy that he picked out the most wonderful experiences with great good fortune, but as a fictionalized story he goes for very low-hanging fruit.
That's a legitimate choice, but know what you're liking. I've said before that pandering is going for this low-hanging fruit (of whatever nature) without attempting to sneak in any other conclusions or observations. In that light, at least Faulkner is trying all kinds of overambitious stuff, perhaps foolish stuff, but his own and not strictly to pander to the reader's directest impulses.
I remember reading this book in school, No, I remember that I read this book in high school, but I don't recall very much about the book itself. I do remember that my visceral opinion was "What the fuck is this shit? Why should I care what happens to these people?"
This might be what happened. What little I could tell you about As I Lay Dying...is what the teacher outright told the class. The book itself was not very good at helping me understand the book.
I think this sums up why I could never get too interested in the great American writers of the 20th Century: little of what they write seems relevant to me. I understand that it can be an exceptional artistic accomplishment, but I think even the most sophisticated literary connoisseur would have trouble appreciating art merely for its own sake.
Well, another story crossed off my 'to read' list.
1915007 But is it any less pandering to pick only sad things?
1915102
Well spotted. Of course it's not—if the audience is clearly seeking that. It's more about whether the author's intentions can be seen as distinct from the audience, or as responsive to the audience.
Eeeeyessss...but that in turn derives from the more general sense of:
1) An object regarded as having magical power, from which:
2) Any object, idea, etc., eliciting unquestioning reverence, respect or devotion.
The definition you use is the psychological one but really, I think you mean 2) above.
(Why yes, I am great fun at parties, how did you know?...)
EDIT: "Dewey Dell?"
If there are porn star names in the ponyverse, that's got to be one of them.
I like your comparisons here, how each author tries the same things, but neither succeeds at all of them.
Question, since this runs up against something I'm planning in an upcoming fic: does point of view play into this at all? i.e., is it more valid from a first person perspective, where they know they're telling the story, than third person, even limited?
I hesitate to give a simple answer, but... I think the answer is yes.
Insert obligatory (affectionate) snark about Bad Horse and sadfics here.
I think I have to agree. In third person limited, you can certainly conceal, but to be authentic, I would say what was revealed or concealed would have to depend on the character's subconscious. How limited the narrator is can be varied in the same story--you can use it like the zoom of a camera lens, to frame a scene tightly or loosely. There are points, for instance, where I swing the focus so tightly on a character that the narrator takes on that voice, despite remaining in the third person. At that point, what is included and what is omitted depends on the character--what they would notice, what they would think, and what they would shy away from thinking.
1915392
Granted, I don't know what POVs Faulkner was using.
I have much to think about. :B
1915082
Then maybe the 19th century? You've probably read at least one his works already, but I'm always apt to recommend Jack London, despite his near-fetish of the "lone alpha wolf" ideal (no pun intended) and an inclination toward exposition. He has a way with capturing nature that never ceases to appeal, and though his exposition is lengthy, it's satisfyingly thorough.
I have to agree with what Bad Horse said above. I read this story (or was rather forced to read) sophomore year of high school and hadn't a clue what was going on. The only parts I could understand was the fording scene and the arson... and that Vardaman's mother was a fish.
1915633 Faulkner used first-person, a different narrator each chapter. Some in present tense, some in past. The effect is strange. It doesn't feel like ordinary first-person narration, where the speaker is aware of speaking, but I don't know why.
Maybe this is the good part about his stream-of-consciousness style. It feels like they're thinking, not like they're talking to you. But it's hard to put my finger on why.
1915592 Yeah, very c2lose third person is more like first person in some ways. I'm writing a short Rarity story like that now.
That was my biggest problem with it. Vardaman's sections were painful to slog through and Darl's later sections were nearly incomprehensible. I did enjoy it much more on a second read, though, when I actually understood what was happening. Had one hell of a 'Gotcha!' ending, too.
I would try to defend McCarthy's use of Spanish dialogue, but meh. I also very seriously doubt anyone would find his dialogue any less confusing if he included quotation marks. The general lack of dialogue tags is weird, but I've never understood why people find that to be such a stumbling block. I'm not a very close reader and I've never had much trouble figuring out who was speaking. There are other things about McCarthy's writing much more worthy of criticism.
Huh. And here I was looking forward to reading The Sound and the Fury some day in the far future. I'd be interested to see your take on A Remembrance of things past.
1915820
I really strongly enjoy writing like that. The voice makes it hard, but the voice makes it so much fun, too. Really hitting the character voices in the 'tight focus shots' (I spend so much of my writing time thinking in movie-making metaphors, for some reason) helps augment my narrator voice, which I tend to feel is kind of weak.
Bad Horse Writes Book Reports. I like this! You should continue the series.
God, I hated that book. If there was any book I remember reading and absolutely hating, it was that one. Maybe I should re-read part of it now and see if it makes any more sense.
And yeah, that point pretty much did exactly that for me.
1915082
Nothing to add really to this discussion of yours Bad Horse, or a emptying response to yours Cold in Cardez, but I wish to suggest reading any of Aimee Bender's stories. She's not only resonantly beautiful with her prose but also got something to say. That you'll find the hour hand skipping when reading her books would not be excess, I claim.
If Aimee isn't interesting enough, as in you've read something by her, I turn and point at The Crying of Lot 49, the prose, for me, wasn't all too satisfying but the narrative sure is, also Weight, by Jeanette Winterson, uses imagery, lithe parables and slick prose to reintroduce mythological characters to the reader. A specific scene with august Hera and crude Hercules really did set the tone of their relationship.
1915901 Don't let me dissuade you from The Sound & the Fury. My memory of it is dim, but I know that A) it's got a similar setup, with much of the story narrated from the mind of a mentally-handicapped person (Benjy) in a way that's very hard to make sense of, but B) you see things explained from multiple viewpoints, so it's easier to figure out what happened.
I'm pretty sure I felt much differently about that book.
I read this book back in... I think it was high school. It was actually something we read in class.
If you look at the book, it is perfectly designed for this. The book is written to deliberately confuse and mislead the reader, but he also gives everything away in the end so all the questions have answers, really. And this is key.
The point of the book, to some extent, is to make the reader feel smart for figuring everything out by the end of it, of making sense of it despite the fractured view and narrative and the fact that important things have to be inferred and all sorts of stuff like that. It is a way of making the reader feel smart for having read it, and feel like they have Accomplished Something (yes, with capital letters) and read Literature.
And I think this is very much a real thing, and it really can (and does) appeal to people. The problem with it is that you can become very self-indulgent and screw it up. Your goal, after all, is not to actually be indecipherable, but to make people feel like reading it was an accomplishment without actually making it super hard to read.
I think back to Portal and Portal 2; they're puzzle games, but they're not terribly DIFFICULT puzzle games. People feel smart for having beaten it, and clever for having solved all the puzzles, even though they're designed to be solved, and the areas molded to point the player towards the solution. This is a major consideration when making a game like this, and I think likewise when writing a story like this; you want to make it SEEM hard, but actually be easy.
I don't think Faulkner necessarily succeeded with it all the way through, but on the other hand, there's a reason this book is considered to be a classic, and I think part of it is that the book does give itself away in the end, and thus readers feel smart rather than confused, as by the end, they understood it all and are all "I see what you did there."
But I'm not sure if cheating in this manner is actually that bad. Fight Club and Memento are two movies which brazenly cheat; Fight Club puts a character on screen who doesn't exist, and Memento is deliberately told from each end towards the middle, with the climax taking place chronologically in the dead middle of the story, but isn't told until the very end when it all comes back together.
Telling a story out of order or including hallucinations or having an unreliable narrator are accepted as a valid literary techniques, but it is only really seen as valid because people say it is valid. Likewise, having characters deliberately obsfucate things that they wouldn't actually obsfucate in order to trick the reader is definitely "cheating", but I'm not sure if it is invalid as a literary technique. It can be clumsily handled, though.
I can definitely see that there is some fairly real demographic which doesn't like things like this, but on the other hand, there's a fairly large demographic which does. Giving kids something like The Giver or As I Lay Dying is much more of a learning experience than having them read more straightforward books. Of course, this may also be part of why some kids don't end up liking to read eventually; they read a bunch of books in school which are selected because they are good for class discussion, even though other books may well be better written or more enjoyable to them. If you think that Real Books are As I Lay Dying or To Kill A Mockingbird or 1984, how likely are you to realize that most books written for adults are not, in fact, even remotely like that?
I'm not saying it is a perfect book, but I'm not sure that labeling the deliberate ambiguity and cheating it does as a weakness is really correct, as it is probably the only reason why we ever read that book.
Incidentally, regarding the whole "realistic characters" thing: you don't want to write about realistic characters at all. You want to write about characters who have a feeling of realness to them. Actual real people are, by and large, terrifically boring. It is true that the family is ridiculously messed up (possibly over the top with it, really) but I'm not sure that is really necessarily a bad thing; the characters being messed up is what makes them interesting. Unfortunately, it is very easy to go over the top and try and make every character incredibly messed up, which is what happened in the 1990s and continues today in comic books, where they think "a lot of deep characters have issues, therefore having issues is what makes characters deep" and then you end up with messed up characters no one actually cares about (which is a problem with some characters in As I Lay Dying).
By the way, Anne Rice called. She says to stop bullying William Faulkner.
Look, I'm just passing that along, OK?...
This was very interesting and informative. I think that giving reviews of individual classic books like this might work better for me than posts about general topics like dialogue or stream of consciousness, because I tend to learn better by example. I'd love it if you did more of these.
1915082
Just out of curiosity, are there any such works that you have enjoyed? The ones that jump to mind that I'm glad I read are Catch-22, Gravity's Rainbow, and Infinite Jest, though I hesitate to recommend the latter two because they feel like they'd only appeal to a very narrow group of people that I happen to be in.
That's a good point. I thought about that some while writing, but in all the examples I could think of that deliberately misled the reader and hid things, either it was not a narrator doing it (typical mystery story), the narrator had a reason for doing it (a mystery where the narrator was the killer), or else the narrator / POV character was self-deluded or unaware (e.g., Memento, Fight Club). As I Lay Dying gives us a look into the minds of narrators who were aware of and would have thought about the key pieces of information we wanted. Faulkner, as author, stepped in and yanked those pieces out of their thoughts. That still seems like cheating to me. It makes us aware that the author is manipulating the narrator, and that we're reading a made-up story.
Ah, a close friend read As I Lay Dying once, way back in highschool. He hated it. I decided then I'd probably never touch the thing, and this blog has done little but reaffirm that choice. Though perhaps someday, for the supposed virtue of it...
1916708
I see what you're saying here, but personally I'd argue that no one in real life is boring. Not when you have an understanding of their internal being, their heart or mind. The deeper I've gotten to know the people in my life the more profound, interesting and complex they've become to me. I think where the perception of boredom comes from is our everyday actions. Follow me around for a few days, recording every little thing I do, and you may not visually see anything of interest. Maybe I'm just passing away the week doing little every day things and a lot of entertaining myself (games, movies, internet). Nothing that makes a story.
But what if, in watching me, you realized that all the ways I wallow away time are actually the result of an unfortunate standstill I've reached in life, unable to move forward and do anything productive because of an emotional crises, or perhaps a spiritual one, which I'm very aware of but unable to solve? Say I'm also unemployed, but never spend any effort to find a job because of this internal contention, which plays against all my major weaknesses as a person, and the knowledge of this (which I actively try to hide from others), is driving me mad inside. Then, IMO, my previously boring (but very real) self is now revealed as more complex and interesting, giving all those inane details meaning. Now, I'm not just playing video games all day for the fun of it, but because I'm trying to escape myself, if only for a little while. I like solving the puzzles on the screen because I can't solve the one in my heart.
Most people have innumerable layers to them, whether we can perceive them or not, and even if you want to claim that some people are no more than what you see in them, then I still say there's a reason for that--they had a progression to that point, which is itself of great interest and speaks a truth of our human existence--our ability to become shallow beings, perhaps.
Anyway, this is why I think that some "invention" is often necessary when it comes to creating characters. Or at least, what seems to many like invention. Most people only grasp in others what they see visually, and what they see is a lot of boring stuff. But the writer knows there's something far more profound beneath the covers people are wrapped up in, but to get to that, they have to be creative. Really, since they're scratching at the core of humanity, they are being true to life, it's just that most people's conception of true to life is a bunch of boring details. The writer concocts a plot in order to illustrate some deeper meaning, and people see the plot or the characters and say "it's not true to life"; but perhaps the story still has an impact on them, so the reader concludes some unrealistic toying must be employed in good story telling. While this may be technically true, it's only true for surface elements, in order to better get at the very real truth you as the writer are trying to portray.
So I don't think the issue is that creating realistic characters makes them boring, it's that most people's idea of a realistic character is one that's boring, because they think real people are boring (at least the average ones--to which I say there are no real average people). They think that realistic=boring, and that slightly unrealistic=interesting. It's why many defend their boring stories by claiming they mimic real life, shunning "artificiality". But I argue it's the opposite: realistic characters, like real people, are incredibly complex and interesting. Realistic=interesting. We just don't typically see the interesting complexity in most everyday people--but it's there. You just gotta learn to see it.
That's my two cents, anyway.
1915364
This wouldn't by any chance happen to be a certain story written for a particular writeoff, would it??
1917602
No, actually, though I wonder which you're thinking of. :O
1917602
A couple things here.
First off, when I said boring, what I really mean is "boring to write about". Real people have much, much more subtle personalities, on average, than fictional characters do; their personalities are more extreme and exaggerated. The reason for this is because we don't have a few years to get to know the characters; we have only a fairly short period of time with which we need to engage with the characters and identify them as distinct personalities. As such, normal, "realistic" people are a bad idea to include in a book, generally speaking, because they lack a distinctive personality.
Look at Cadance and Shining Armor; they have the most normal personalities of any character on the show, and as a result, seem to have hardly any personality at all.
Secondly, you're just plain old wrong. The reason you perceive the people you care about as being interesting is because you care about them, not because they are actually interesting. You perceive things that you care about as being more interesting than they actually are; this is a fairly basic part of human nature, as your mind highlights things which matter to you, personally. I'm... not actually sure what the term for this is, but I'm pretty sure there is a term for it in psychology.
There's a reason why reality TV not only works to specially recruit people, but has writers (who they don't call writers) and use manipulative editing and set people up - because, as it turns out, real people aren't terribly interesting to watch.
1918145
Ah. Classic mix-up.
You make some great points. Perhaps I somewhat misrepresented myself here, and this probably stems as well from misunderstanding your own claim. Anyway, remember I did say that some invention was necessary to create fictional characters. Because you're right, we don't have very long to get to know them in a piece of fiction. To use an odd metaphor, real life people are like fruit, particularly the kind you have to peel, with all the good juicy stuff below the skin. But for most people, the skin is all you see; it takes time to peel it away to see what's underneath. That's the bit that writers are after, the things that dwell beneath the skin, right? Like self deception, pride, lust, prejudice, etc. And, as you pointed out, since in fiction we don't have years to slowly peel it away as we can in real life, we have to get creative, find ways to bring it out. Employing tactics like exaggeration, emphasizing distinction, dramatic clashes between characters (not unlike the faked or enforced drama in reality tv) are just a few of them, as of course you know. So yeah, I don't think we disagree on this.
Ah, very good point here. But remember, I said interesting and complex. My vision in this regard isn't simply distorted by love goggles. I can legitimately argue for their inner complexity, rather objectively, I might add. Sure, my particular interest in them is subjective, but that has nothing to do with how complex they are. And, as we know, complexity is key to writing good characters the reader will get deeply invested in.
Yes, but only when you don't understand anything about them that's deeper than the surface. Which just so happens to be the case when watching most people, especially if you don't know them at all (such as when a new reality show starts up). Translating people who you don't know onto the page is a mistake. You need to choose those whose inner complexity you understand. But even then, presenting them on the page as they were presented to you in real life--a process that likely took years--would be nearly impossible, as we've already agreed. Neither writer nor reader has that much time. So, again, some "invention" is necessary: some exaggeration, some plotting, some drama, and so forth.
1918063
Whoops. Sorry. I meant last writeoff.
Your entry was titled "I Am" right? I was under the impression you were going to edit and post it.
Hm. There are a lot of valid creative discussions regarding the masterworks of American writers, even saw something of the sort on television recently. It is quite fascinating. Committed to exploring the richness and diversity of American writing and welcoming all forms, not limited to any specific critical methodology or dogma, is a noble and enriching experience in of itself. I intend to do the same.
I'm just curious about one thing:
If the farmer's in the Dell, does that make Applejack a film star?
1919386
Ohhh. Well, that's a completely different kind of issue, actually.
And I will. One day. Likely far in the future. Don't hold your breath. :B
1919710
Haha no worries that's essentially my sentiment regarding all my writeoff entries as well.