[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by gmw

Prestidigitweeze, I suspect we agree on a lot, but I don't mind a discussion rather than an argument. . . . One of the misunderstandings that I've seen happen here (on MR) a few times is different distinctions that people place on the word "story". A guess a lot of people will interpret it as equivalent to plot, but I tend to use it in a wider (and admittedly more nebulous) sense - something like: what the book is about. That seems to be the only way to be inclusive of the huge variety of fiction. . . . The words that form the story should all be part of the story, whatever the story is. The writer's task, if they have a desire to exercise their erudition, or to pass on some message or moral, is to create a story that allows them to say these things as part of the story, rather than as an essay within a story. It should feel like a cohesive whole (... even if that cohesive whole is a demonstration that the world is not a cohesive whole - as per what I was saying about not liking simplistic rules ).

First, I've never understood why people are so often compelled to respond with hostility to views which differ from their own. I often want to say to them, even if you don't share someone's views or care for their writing style, you can still have an amicable discussion. How strong is any idea which can't bear friendly scrutiny?

I'm glad you're interested in exploring the definition of story, and that you've taken the time to think about the various levels of potential unity in your own way and not simply regurgitated the Poetics or, for that matter, its horrible workshop alternatives, such as the anointed assembly line spew of Christopher Vogler. You state your ideas clearly, thoughtfully and reasonably -- a regrettably rare form of expression on forums in which people obsess about writing.

Just as some people use the word story when they mean plot, others use it where I would prefer narrative (even though the latter can be used as a synonym). For many people, story implies a set of fixed and instantly recognizable forms -- sequences of significant events which people like to reduce to equations and which we're calling the plot -- whereas narrative includes many of the other elements you're talking about.

I have no issues with the way you choose to use the word story. I'm only saying that, through no fault of yours, it has acquired a certain vagueness through overuse.

Ultimate unity is an ideal which I sometimes pursue, but the organizing principle might have nothing to do with story in the conventional sense. In music, Webern's miniatures are the purest examples I know. Every single note not only reinforces the structure but is a primary element of it -- two notes can serve as an entire development section. Talk about compression! You can't even say that about Bach.

However, part of the unity which Webern achieved was mnemonic -- it had to do with an abstract structure which wasn't necessarily dramatic or even musical.

I once wrote a short story which was organized around an original Sator Square. I wrote it as a tribute to Webern, who claimed to have based his entire musical philosophy on the economy, unity and integration of the most famous Sator Square:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

As you can see, there are only three patterns of letters used, and the square itself comprises a palindrome whether it's read backwards, forwards, horizontally or vertically. In the mirrored gardens of Webern's music, that structure finds its perfect correlate.

Classical painting is representational and music is a kind of abstract rhetoric, or syntax; Goethe called architecture frozen music; when I think of frozen music, I picture Nude Descending a Staircase.

Writing, however, is simultaneously representational and syntactically/rhythmically abstract, which might be why Virginia Woolf said that "style is rhythm."

Style is the concordance of concrete narrative and abstract rhythmic momentum. When used as the central principle in fiction, it can become the nonrepresentational approach to structure -- the interdisciplinary pun -- that has resulted in projects like the Oulipo Society. N + 7 is not necessarily part of the story (though the story plays with the idea of Perec's self-imposed limitation); George Perec's (La Disparition; in English, A Void) uses an organizing principle that has nothing to do with story at all: the avoidance of a common letter of the alphabet. One can argue that the story works as a story despite, not because of, that discipline, but Perec's view is that the choices the writer has to make because of that limitation become part of the story. Still, few people who read La Disparition do so because of the story itself.

Also: If everything must be part of the narrative, or story, then why can the use of narrative disjunction be so effective? John Hawkes famously dropped characters and storylines on purpose; was the resulting effect of frisson or sloppiness? And what about John Dos Passos's collages -- do they add to the effect of the novel or not? I'd say that they create a sense of texture which conjures the world of the novel in a way that might have everything or nothing to do with the actual plot. Those who love reading late Joyce are often drawn into the texture of language and allusion in ways that make the structure seem simultaneously imposed and mnemonic. I'd be hard pressed to say that those aspects of Joyce are part of the story.

I can agree with this in the mystical sense:

A guess a lot of people will interpret [story] as equivalent to plot, but I tend to use it in a wider (and admittedly more nebulous) sense - something like: what the book is about. That seems to be the only way to be inclusive of the huge variety of fiction. . . . The words that form the story should all be part of the story, whatever the story is.

But I don't feel that these two ideas are always true:

The writer's task, if they have a desire to exercise their erudition, or to pass on some message or moral, is to create a story that allows them to say these things as part of the story, rather than as an essay within a story. It should feel like a cohesive whole. . . .

First, exercising his erudition is exactly what Joyce did. It worked for him because he was incredibly talented, and because he could do so in terms of the craft, even if it meant creating his own kind of craft. "Passing on a message or moral" is an entirely different process and carries its own set of problems -- specifically the degree to which it becomes reflexive (and therefore unexamined) and/or manipulative (and therefore ineffective -- making the reader feel they're being manipulated is the fiction writer's parallel fifth).

Second, like music, a novel exists in time and may do so satisfyingly whether it is cohesive or not. Some of the most effective fiction writers are more interested in contrast than cohesion, but they tend to plummet or career toward those points of contrast. The problem in a lot of television writing is that it droops toward its points of disjunction: The longer the series, the more likely the climax -- a snowball of circumstances and boardroom compromises -- will disappoint.

To sum, I reiterate:

The approach you advocate is well stated. I expect it works well for you and it has certainly worked for a number of other writers whether they stated it as you do or not. I can also see that your approach accounts for a lot of good writing which mercenary workshop teachers frequently cannot.

However, it still leaves out a lot of fiction which doesn't emphasize or follow the idea of story as you understand it -- not because you've been intolerant or anything less than open, but simply because it can't be described technically or artistically in those terms.

Such anomalous and occasionally unclassifiable books are worth recognizing. It could be that, like Harry Mathews, Raymond Roussel and Thomas Bernhard, I respond to mnemonic or imposed ideas of structure partly because I have a background in classical music (and when I say respond, I don't simply mean intellectually; I mean viscerally). Most readers/writers don't have that specific orientation.

The other distinction we should make is one between commercial and non-commercial fiction. Dr. Johnson couldn't fathom why anyone would write if not for money, and that's a worthy consideration -- but not for me. I personally can't fathom why anyone who feels compelled to write would care about money at all except to buy more time to write.

One last development: I quoted the OP on my Facebook page the other day and was asked by a professor friend if I minded whether he read that post to his students. Talk about poetic irony!

By the way, I love this:

Originally Posted by forsooth

(e.g. run screaming when man sized giant beetles appear)