Circular Cruises/Reality Doesnt Count
From Eccentric Flower
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Reality Doesn't Count 10 May 1998 I have many reasons to dislike autobiography. I didn't discover one of them until today. I have always known that I disliked autobiography because of the sheer hubris of it: Who am I to think that people will want to read about my life? And, in the case of the few autobiographies I have enjoyed reading (most notably Isaac Asimov's, which is enormous), even the quality and entertainment value of the prose did not stop that sensation of ego from seeping through - at least to my eyes. Another good reason to dislike autobiography is escapism. I prefer to not read about real people and real events unless they were extraordinary events, unusual ones. Even a person who has done amazing things throughout her life cannot possibly have those events make up more than a tiny fraction of her life's story. We spend most of our lives doing mundane things which are of interest only to us, and perhaps to our immediate friends and family. I've been disputed many times on these two contentions, so let me add hastily that your mileage may vary. If I regaled you with the details of my average day, using decent prose and good words, I happen to think you wouldn't find it especially fascinating. But I did that once, as an exercise, and was told by at least one person that I was wrong. The third contention, the one I discovered today, is even more personal and even more subject to dispute: As a writer, I dislike autobiography (and the prose of reality in general) because I think it's too easy. - - - I turn out about six thousand words a week. Some of it is extremely hard to write. I'm going through a period of intense frustration at the moment because I don't want to work on any of my pending writing projects, because I feel that creativity has deserted me. The web columns don't count; I'm speaking of fiction, and therein lies the rub. You see, if it were just a matter of putting meaningful words on paper, I could do this endlessly, were I permitting myself to prattle about my own life or the lives of those around me. Writing about real events - advertising and grocery shopping and subway rides - is easy. It is in my nature to not respect that which I can do easily. Writing fiction about real, believable events is easy. Writing fiction about the unreal is hard. I recognize that some people will say that I have that backwards, but I am speaking strictly from personal experience here. So it is understandable when I read an article in the newspaper about how biography is getting more and more popular, adding that many literary critics lament that popularity, because they see memoirs capturing a readership that once valued the novel, a pure expression of the fiction writer's imagination I get a little unhappy. Normally I dismiss anything attributed to "literary critics" - but here I happen to agree with the assertion. - - - I admit to pettiness. I'm insecure about my writing, wanting desperately to make a career of it and facing the knowledge that the things I most want to write - outright fantasy, tales of the bizarre - are marginalized by the publishing industry and the taste-makers, whereas when I read the things they recommend to the world, I can see the joy of the prose, but the events often fail to hold my attention. I want to write about how people react to events which are outside our collective experience - things no one has ever had happen to them before. I don't want to write about events which we have all experienced before and will experience again, like death and birth and love and remorse. We know about those things already, and if not, there is already plenty of material out there to tell us what it's like. I suppose my resentment and remorse is that I will forever want to write material that is likely to be dismissed as pure fluff, whereas I feel exactly the opposite. I don't want to whine. I just want people to understand. In particular, I'm tired of hearing the equivalent of "You don't have anything to gripe about. When you need a new story, you can always make something up." It's true. But then I have to make it internally consistent, and make it hold the reader's attention. I have to spell out everything. When my protagonist encounters an alien who's absolutely repugnant, I have to get across an image of just how unbearably unpleasant this alien is to look upon, and I have to do it using a language which was never designed for that concept. When a realist needs a new story, she can just go write about a bitter breakup or a funeral, and half her subtext is written for her. You don't have to explain people's reactions at a funeral. The people who are legitimately grief-stricken, the people who are secretly somewhat pleased but also shocked with themselves for feeling that way, the people who are too stunned to be upset yet, the people who just feel an empty spot devoid of emotion, and are preoccupied with how to paint their expressions for everyone else's benefit ... we know all those reactions, all those faces, already. They don't need to be shown. - - - It's odd that I'm continually looking for ways to retell the same fairy tales over and over, never tiring of them, yet I don't want to read about the ups and downs of another romance ever again - not unless it's a pair of doomed lovers laboring to break an ancient curse, or a beauty and beast seeking to discover each other's true nature. I need the layer of escapism. Couching the mundane in fantasy conceals the fact that we all ride that ride sooner or later. A magical princess' heartbreak is a good story. A normal person's heartbreak is much too close for comfort. As a reader or a writer. Roger Zelazny once explained my point of view on writing perfectly. I have had it on my wall ever since. "While I go along with the notion that a writer should hold a mirror up to reality, I don't necessarily feel that it should be the kind you look into when you shave or tweeze your eyebrows, or both as the case may be. "If I'm going to carry a mirror around, holding it up to reality whenever I notice any, I might as well enjoy the burden as much as I can. My means of doing this is to carry around one of those mirrors you used to see in fun houses, back when they still had fun houses. "Of course, not everything you reflect looks either as attractive or as grimly visaged as it may stand before the naked eyeball. Sometimes it looks more attractive, or more grimly visaged. You just don't really know, until you've tried the warping glass. "And it's awfully hard to hold the slippery thing steady. Blink, and - who knows? - you're two feet tall. Sneeze, and May the Good Lord Smile Upon You. I live in deathly fear of dropping the thing. I don't know what I'd do without it." Copyright © May 1998. All rights reserved. |
