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One often finds literary editors, critics, and some fiction writers talking about novels as if they were mechanical things, machines with fine or less fine tools, designed to provide a multi-layered chain of events in which certain human beings, their works, actions, reactions, and sometimes their very lives are in balance, giving rise to projects and problems that are labored over until the problems they pose are solved – one way or another. Somehow. To a large extent these technical explanations of fiction are valid, namely that, yes, a novel is the creation of ideas that work together, attempting to tell a story through plot, characterization, physical description, dialogue, and motive – all culminating in a resolution or a series of resolutions that, for lack of a better explanation, makes sense to the reader.
When trying to understand or create the nuances of a fictional work, it is useful to try to understand the underlying structures of that work. who is the main character? when were they born? Where do they live? What are his tendencies? What do they want? What’s in their way? Who is going to help or hinder this hero? When were these helpers born? And so on, and so on, ad infinitum…
If the structurally-minded critic finds any fault with any of these basic principles he or she does little probing on the negative side of the work’s interpretation. This exposition may hurt the credibility of the story; This can disable the entire structure (the novel-machine) in the minds of potential readers. Or, at least, that’s what this particular brand of critic might wish. This is because when reviewing anything as mechanical a device, any flaw encountered is a serious error.
But the novel is not a machine. Or, more accurately, it is not a device that has a single function. In a way the novel can be seen to have a specific purpose, which is the story it tells. After all, the novel can be seen as a combination of words designed to tell a story to one human being, or multiple humans, at a time. For example, Jon reads a novel and thinks that the main character, Dorn, is an idiot who should have been thrown in jail at the end of the story. Jon’s friend Nyssa feels that Dorne is misunderstood and even though she agrees that he is at least a fool, she believes that his friends and the system of the world he lives in have betrayed him. Peter, Nyssa’s stepfather, could not get past page 37 of the book. He can’t make out any clues as to what’s going on in the story.
Was this what its author intended? dorn That there should be so many, so many different interpretations of his story? Did the author know that someone, in the future, would start a religion called Dorne based on her ideas, but expressed in words never written in that book?
Every reader reads, and in some ways makes He has a different book in his mind. Each person has a unique glimpse of the characters in their mind’s eye. The reasons given in fiction are examined and understood in as many ways as there are readers, perhaps even more so, given that even an individual reader may understand the world one way today and then, some time later, have a completely different world view.
Let’s not forget the original definition of this word, the word novel; It means you are about to encounter something original, different, unique.
Words, ideas, characters and resolutions mean different things to different people. Consider this statement true, but not really true – a novel is not, and cannot be, a machine. The only serious error would be to judge a work of fiction as a limited, single-purpose structure.
OkYou tell, You are telling me that a novel may have some mechanical properties, but it cannot be seen as a machine. Good. then what is a novel?
I believe that a novel, first and foremost, is a CelebrationA party you’ve received an invitation to, but when you get there, you realize you don’t know the host or many of the celebrants. You might be in love at that party and then you might end up sleeping on the couch. If this party were a novel, the author of that book would probably want you to see how useless the party throwers were and how essential and deep the main character is.
The author believes that the person who seduces the main character is just some show-off, who is hardly worth a second look. But readers may also see something else. He, the reader, thinks that the woman the hero meets represents just what he needs to break free from the shackles of middle-class, suburban life. Another reader might find that the story strikes a different chord, an arpeggio that includes a crystal note involving a supposedly attractive woman who is telling the truth even while lying. This writer’s nagging, repetitive ideas about women in the Weltanschauung have left her with no other option.
All readers of dorn There are explanations that come from their history, their particular intelligence, and desires and wants that they may not be aware of. This is the beauty of imagination; It is a constantly changing organism in the minds of readers. This colorless, almost invisibly changing blob of reactions is the party. This is not a machine. It’s not good or bad, bad or boring – it’s a cry in the darkness, a hope looking for a refuge, something that pretends to make sense but, in reality, is much deeper than that.
And let’s not forget the original definition of this word, the word novel; It means you are about to encounter something original, different, unique. And so, when your newspaper, the critic in your class, when in your mind, or the editor of your book, tells you that your novel would make a bad coffee percolator (or potboiler), you tell them, Thank youBecause the novel you create (and which is re-created by each of your readers) is a constantly changing document that has the power to evolve in the minds of many people. From Conan the Barbarian to Othello, the written word has the ability to change in ways no one can predict.
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Ghalen: A Romance in Black Available through Amistad by Walter Mosley.