New School 5

Rajeet Guha New School Homework 5 In Burroway’s book, there has been given salient points for penning down good fiction. The author says that the motive of the fiction writer is to reveal and not explicitly say. The reader should not be spoon-fed. The reader should be considered to be enlightened, observant, perceptive, intuitive, creative and rational in outlook. The reader should be thought of as able to interpret details and emotions in all its complexity. The writer should keep in mind that the reader has a nuanced understanding of issues and can discern subtlety. The detailed description of the environment or surroundings is the lifeblood of fictional writing. Description should be realistic and precise. When a work has the right mix or suitable proportion of naturalism and realism, the writer has succeeded in creating verisimilitude or the semblance or appearance of the objective truth. The writer has to muddy his hands, acutely observe and perceive nature and accurately and cogently lay out the landscape, flora and fauna, vegetation, dwellings, roads, rivers, bridges, forests, mountains, malls, people, factories, schools, churches, libraries, parks, museums, highways, oceans, ships, highways, airports, airplanes, buildings, monuments and the list could go on and on till the cows came home. A superior method of telling a story would be to evoke images, symbols, motifs and themes that resonate with the readers. Allegory, simile, metaphor and the whole gamut of terms that typify figures of speech should be abundantly employed. When delineating detail, it must be remembered that necessary details should never be left out of the lucid and vivid description. A lacuna in crucial description of details enervates and even emasculates the work. On the other hand, superfluous details should be excised wherever possible as a bloated novel or story is as aesthetically removed from the ideal form as Alaska is from Hawaii. The expunging of needless details from the narrative makes the piece of fiction taut and terse. The Nobel Laureate Ernest Hemingway, one of the transformative writers of prose fiction, was a tireless proponent of such an approach that culled superfluity. Hemingway’s approach was labeled the ‘Iceberg Effect’. Imagery mesmerizes the reader of fiction and makes reading the book akin to watching a movie or experiencing a dream. Everything in the book feels realistic and even elements of fantasy and the supernatural when juxtaposed with reality creates what the great poet Coleridge called the “suspension of disbelief”. The “suspension of disbelief” is what enchants the reader and transports him to another world where he starts living in his dream or illusory world transiently. The reader gets involved in the story as an active participant who identifies with the characters in the story and is passionately and emotionally attached to the characters in the story. Fiction tries to reproduce the emotional impact of experience. Words must be thoroughly transmuted to images. While writing fiction it is also incumbent upon the writer to remove filters while writing. The writer should never permit his observing consciousness to find its way in his writing. The writer should refrain from letting his preconceived notions, mindsets, biases, subjective opinions, thoughts, beliefs and judgments from entering his writing. The writer should be as objective as possible in his fiction just like modern journalists do and not allow his writing to be colored by his subjective judgment. The writer should try to elicit feelings and emotion in his audience but desist from evoking a surfeit of or excessive emotion. No work of fiction should be excessively sentimental or maudlin. Melodrama is generally neither appreciated nor held in high esteem by literary critics, who are the appraisers of quality fiction. The writer should endeavor to refrain from branding emotions as they are seldom exclusive; in fact the intermingling and intertwining of emotions is an intrinsic aspect of human nature. The writer should arouse the senses of the reader. He should sharpen the thoughts and feelings of the reader. The author should use sensory detail and create a clear, bright, sharp, graphic, lively and distinct image in the reader’s mind such that the reader can see in his mind’s eye, can hear in his mind’s ear, can smell in his mind’s nose, can taste in his mind’s tongue and can feel and touch in his mind’s skin as if the reader was participating in the story as events unfold. The writer should not leave any stone unturned in his quest to engender verisimilitude and produce perception in the reader’s mind. It is vital for a writer to portray the precise physical sensations experienced by fictional characters in order to foster a sensory memory in the reader that he can connect to. Fiction must contain ideas that imbue incredible importance to characters and events. While writing, writers must invariably think of and gestate about the past as they discuss emotions. This is considered good practice as the fogginess of emotional meaning gets cleared with the efflux of time and ultimately the cloudiness of emotions get illumined with the bright rays of reason and the sensibility of pellucid perception. It is advisable for writers not to ruminate about the present as emotions are rarely revealed in its completeness in the present. It is only in the future that the cobwebs of chaos and confusion in the present will be removed with the passage of edifying experience and the wisdom of time. Authors of fiction also have a duty to ensure that the readers are not indifferent to judging or evaluating fiction. Reading fiction must provoke readers to deliver judgment on the characters, themes, plot, symbols, essence and morals if any on the story. In fact, it would be best if readers have more than one judgment or interpretation of the story. A multiplicity of interpretations and analyses will lead to an interactive and engaging debate. Nonetheless, readers’ judgments or interpretations should correspond to acute and incisive perception by their sensory organs. The writer should leave certain things unsaid and should resist the temptation of passing judgments. It is also vital for the creator of fiction to write not only in a concrete but significant manner. The details in the story or novel must not only be explicit or overt in their description but must also covertly or implicitly insinuate meaning and value. The values, activities, lifestyles, ideas, attitudes and personalities of characters should be brought out covertly and with subtlety. Fiction is a medium for conveying ideas and consequently opening a Pandora’s box when inviting judgments or interpretations. It is ethical for a writer to transmit multiple ideas and suggest antithetical judgments to the critical readers and start an intellectual brouhaha. As the writer edits and sharpens his story, the import and weight of the story is underscored by the coruscating conspicuousness of realistic detail. While pursuing the creative task of producing fiction, it is absolutely essential to avoid a few pitfalls in fiction writing. Writers must never succumb to what John Ruskin terms as the ‘pathetic fallacy’. It is easy to elucidate pathetic fallacy; it is the ascribing of human emotions, thoughts, attitudes, opinions, feelings and mannerisms to nonhumans. Writers must consciously try to evade falling into the trap of the pathetic fallacy. It is also imperative to know that the writer has to curtail or curb his enthusiasm for intellectualizing or generalizing or making abstruse abstractions. Philosophical commentary should be as less as possible. There are also other guidelines for forging fictional pieces that stand the test of time. The active voice should be used overwhelmingly. The passive voice is to be used to only seldom to reveal the utter helplessness and the existential and emotional abyss of the characters. Active verbs should supplant linking verbs in writing fiction. Similarly general verbs should be substituted by specific verbs. Dialogues must not be embryonic but be fully matured and ripened. Dialogues should act as the arteries circulating blood in the body of fiction. The palpability of this conversational style should be as apparent in any work of fiction as the sun and moon are to the eyes of the living. In order to give a dream-like quality to fiction, it goes without saying that the mechanics of writing must be mastered to perfection. Punctuation, grammar, spelling and paragraphing must be known like the back of one’s hand. Finally, it must be mentioned that the rhythm in prose is paramount in enchanting the reader. Cadence, tone, tempo and meaning all play their desired parts in crafting a piece of fiction. The variety in sentence lengths and rhythms helps to glue the attention of the readers. Similar lists of items create rhythmic thread. Variations and pauses in lists underpin emotional about-turns and moments of crises. A dramatic change in prose rhythm signals an epiphany, discovery or a cataclysmic change in mood. Such shifts also bolster polar opposites in characters, actions and attitudes. Simple clauses promote a fast-paced narrative; complex clauses promote a comatose and soporific narrative. Cadence should be synchronous with meaning of the work. All these will reinforce John Gardner’s clear, vivid, fluid dreamlike trance and Coleridge’s suspension of disbelief. The short story ‘Big Me’, by the award-winning writer Dan Chaon is told in the first person. The narrator is an unreliable narrator. The writer is also the protagonist of the story. The protagonist is not necessarily a hero though. He is an eccentric person with his share of idiosyncrasies. It would be in line to say that the protagonist is displaying abnormal or deviant tendencies in the story. There is frequent flashback and also flash-forward. Time-travel is also incorporated into the story. The abnormal behavior, perverted proclivities and the psychopathic activities apparently displayed by the protagonist do not in anyway personify the author Dan Chaon. Dan Chaon, on the other hand, is a well-functioning and productive member in society. Chaon has produced a magisterial metafictional work of art where it is almost impossible to sift out fact from fiction, reality from fantasy and finally the plausible from the implausible. Again, the story is set in a rural area with very low density of population. It talks about a lower-middle class family and its struggle to eke out a living in the rugged country. The economy is wallowing in muddy waters and finally the family’s business fails and it takes its toll on the family. The family unravels under economic duress and hard times follow the family members. The story talks about the protagonist’s strange experiences and feelings in childhood, boyhood and adulthood. The story explores themes of time-travel, life in rural areas, sibling rivalry, love, extrasensory perceptions, economic distress, family bonds and others. This short story, keeping in line with the short story genre, explores the unexplainable and also submerged or subsumed groups, the minnows, that Frank O’ Connor has articulated so well in his piece on literary criticism. Two other short stories were there in the readings. One was a short story called ‘The things they carried’ by the celebrated writer Tim O’ Brien. This short story is one of the stories in a collection of stories by Tim O’ Brien. The name of the book is also titled ‘The things they carried’. This collection of short stories graphically portrays the Vietnam War. The short story is told in the first person where the narrator is the protagonist. He is an unreliable narrator though. The brutality, madness, senselessness, amorality and the profligacy of carnage is poignantly captured in the story. O’ Brien’s story is a satire on war. It is an excoriating and savage indictment of the inhumanity and irrationality of war. It is a story told in metafictional form where the line between reality and fantasy is blurred. It is nearly impossible to make out which of the war stories are true and which are untrue. It deals with issues that are germane to war such as fear, guilt, confusion, loneliness, pain and love. The things they carried is used both literally and figuratively. It literally refers to the heavy arms and supplies the soldiers carried on their rucksacks. It figuratively refers to the long lasting, often perpetual emotional burdens or emotional baggage they carried with them during the war and forever after the conclusion of the war. The things they carried is used as a figure of speech to signify the emotional baggage comprising pain, guilt, fear, bewilderment, loneliness, despair and frustration. The other short story was a dark and disturbing one by Joyce Carol Oates. Oates’ story was titled ‘Where are you going, Where have you been’. An article in Life magazine about a serial killer committing gruesome murders inspired her to write this short story. This short story by Oates is in genre of gothic fiction and the subgenre of American Gothic. It is set in the southern part of the United States in the 1960s. The genesis of the title of the story can be traced to a melancholic song of the same name by the musical genius, poet and Nobel Literature Laureate Bob Dylan. This story is also grounded in metafiction where at times fact and fiction fuse together such that it is impossible to distinguish the two. The story is told in the third person but the narrator is unreliable. This story explores the themes of adolescent sexuality, female sexuality fettered by social mores, patriarchal society in which the freedom of females is drastically curtailed, sibling rivalry, undercurrent between a mother and daughter, a wide chasm between romantic notions and hard reality, superficiality of wealth and material culture, feminist and idealistic notions that are contrary to the avarice of materialism, vulnerability of people especially females in rural and suburban areas that are sparsely populated, fragility of friendship and the presence of predatory people in isolated areas, and finally the terrifying jump from immaturity to maturity.