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I keep losing this. It's how I understand stories. I thought I might modify it, but all I did was correct the formatting.
Kemnitzer,Trollman
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Date: 1998/01/06
On 5 Jan 1998 18:02:40 GMT, chris mclaughlin
<c...@macbeth.computerbits.com> wrote:
I was thinking about the books I've read, how with joy and desperation I waded into them hoping to learn something about how to live a life.
Well. A novel is first of all a story, a big enough story that it needs more than an hour to tell. People use the stories to learn from, but the stories aren't usually born from a desire to be
didactic.
I think of it as having something to do with gossip and exaggeration, which are basic impulses of language-bearing animals (just watch my dog sometime. Gossips constantly. All that sniffing and pissing and ear-shifting. Then, see her exaggerate her hunger, her delight, her frustration, her dejected loneliness when the people go out)
Anyway. What I'm trying to say is that it isn't that those novels _taught_ you something but that they provided a context for _you_ to learn something.
And that that was maybe third on the agenda of things the novel was to do, if that, though probably not lower than sixth.
Remember when we used to talk about ideas? About life as tragedy and comedy, and not just absurdity? When reading about finding a place in the world meant learning who we were and what right ways there were to conduct our lives, and what wrong ones, and how very difficult it >is to tell the difference sometimes?
No. I don't remember this. I mean, I don't remember doing this instead of whatever it is I do now. I think I might even do it more now than whatever then was.
One of my favorite novels is called "What is to be done?" -- not because of the lengthy bits where the utopians from the future explain right and wrong and how the world should be run to the nineteenth-century Russian visionary, but because of the wonderful details. Like aluminum furniture, imagined in an era when aluminum was rare and expensive. Like marvelously specific Russian nuances.
I do think about "what is to be done?" -- but I think my job is to pose the question in some specific, interesting way, and to allow my characters to play it out. The reader supplies the actual ideas and answers.
Is there still wisdom in books, in stories?
The best wisdom in stories is where it always has been, in the telling, specific, hair-raising details. Complications and bursts of brilliant simplicity. The story itself. Wild clarity about murky things.
Not lectures. Good lecturers make good lectures. But lectures in stories, though sometimes they may be necessary, and sometimes they may work, are always a drag on the story. So if they have to be there, they're another challange for the writer to get over.
Or just information, exciting or selling images in the form of words? And what do we think they will contain when we are writing them?
You know, I do believe the first stories ever told by the human tongue went something like this:
"And it was the BIGGEST you ever saw! I didn't stop running for THREE DAYS!"
"She took one look at him and laughed for THREE DAYS!"
"He just picked up the biggest tree branch you ever saw, and the other guy picked up a bigger one, and they didn't stop pounding on each other for THREE DAYS!"
"There he was, under the biggest tree branch you ever saw, and she didn't stop crying for THREE DAYS!"
"We thought she was going to die. She kept pushing and pushing and pushing for THREE DAYS!"
"And finally, he found her, and she found him, and they didn't stop making love for THREE DAYS!"
And that's really what a story still is. But the wisdom you want is in there. That is, if you look, and don't stop looking for three days.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Kemnitzer,Trollman
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Date: 1998/01/06
On 5 Jan 1998 18:02:40 GMT, chris mclaughlin
<c...@macbeth.computerbits.com> wrote:
I was thinking about the books I've read, how with joy and desperation I waded into them hoping to learn something about how to live a life.
Well. A novel is first of all a story, a big enough story that it needs more than an hour to tell. People use the stories to learn from, but the stories aren't usually born from a desire to be
didactic.
I think of it as having something to do with gossip and exaggeration, which are basic impulses of language-bearing animals (just watch my dog sometime. Gossips constantly. All that sniffing and pissing and ear-shifting. Then, see her exaggerate her hunger, her delight, her frustration, her dejected loneliness when the people go out)
Anyway. What I'm trying to say is that it isn't that those novels _taught_ you something but that they provided a context for _you_ to learn something.
And that that was maybe third on the agenda of things the novel was to do, if that, though probably not lower than sixth.
Remember when we used to talk about ideas? About life as tragedy and comedy, and not just absurdity? When reading about finding a place in the world meant learning who we were and what right ways there were to conduct our lives, and what wrong ones, and how very difficult it >is to tell the difference sometimes?
No. I don't remember this. I mean, I don't remember doing this instead of whatever it is I do now. I think I might even do it more now than whatever then was.
One of my favorite novels is called "What is to be done?" -- not because of the lengthy bits where the utopians from the future explain right and wrong and how the world should be run to the nineteenth-century Russian visionary, but because of the wonderful details. Like aluminum furniture, imagined in an era when aluminum was rare and expensive. Like marvelously specific Russian nuances.
I do think about "what is to be done?" -- but I think my job is to pose the question in some specific, interesting way, and to allow my characters to play it out. The reader supplies the actual ideas and answers.
Is there still wisdom in books, in stories?
The best wisdom in stories is where it always has been, in the telling, specific, hair-raising details. Complications and bursts of brilliant simplicity. The story itself. Wild clarity about murky things.
Not lectures. Good lecturers make good lectures. But lectures in stories, though sometimes they may be necessary, and sometimes they may work, are always a drag on the story. So if they have to be there, they're another challange for the writer to get over.
Or just information, exciting or selling images in the form of words? And what do we think they will contain when we are writing them?
You know, I do believe the first stories ever told by the human tongue went something like this:
"And it was the BIGGEST you ever saw! I didn't stop running for THREE DAYS!"
"She took one look at him and laughed for THREE DAYS!"
"He just picked up the biggest tree branch you ever saw, and the other guy picked up a bigger one, and they didn't stop pounding on each other for THREE DAYS!"
"There he was, under the biggest tree branch you ever saw, and she didn't stop crying for THREE DAYS!"
"We thought she was going to die. She kept pushing and pushing and pushing for THREE DAYS!"
"And finally, he found her, and she found him, and they didn't stop making love for THREE DAYS!"
And that's really what a story still is. But the wisdom you want is in there. That is, if you look, and don't stop looking for three days.
Lucy Kemnitzer
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