fiction files redux discussion

this very short article got me to thinking:

http://bigtweet.com/c/b/twitter/FSG_B...

. . . i must confess that this kind of florid prose style (see example in article) bugs me . . . it feels overwrought to me, and serves to call attention to the writer, and away from the story . . . anyway, though i'd open this up for discussion . . .

let me short circuit this semantically - the minute it gets in its own way it is in fact not good writing

Matt wrote: "let me short circuit this semantically - the minute it gets in its own way it is in fact not good writing"

Depends. Sometimes the writing can stand front and center, and still the underlying story, concepts, characters, yada, can be excellent; just the the writing itself is more than excellent. Just off the top of my head I am thinking of Poe in this. There is no way in hell his writing doesn't "get in the way". His actual writing - his word choice, his phrasing - is conspicuously, purposely on display.

Most of my favorite writers have the balls to do this. They know their story is good enough to support the chances they are taking with the *writing*. Cormac McCarthy is mentioned in the thread. And I think he is a good example.

F. Scott and D.H. Lawrence are another couple of authors I can think of off the top of my head who are confident enough in their material that they don't shy away from being adventurous with their prose. Maybe the author being reviewed here doesn't quite have a story as good as The Rainbow or Gatsby to work with, and thus her elevated writing can comes across as reaching.

"Obvious" is one thing - Bach is nothing if not obvious - but making up for a lack of substance with extra surface effort is another altogether.

mm

Actually, I really like that prose. If an author could write it very clear and well enough for the reader to experience most of the sensations, then she done did it. Plus the fact the writer is one heck of a cute girl couldn't hurt neither.

I think if writing too well is writing like that author then I can just attach this along the line of you never can be too rich and too thin. Now it's you never can be too rich, too thin, and write too well.

However, I wondered what would C.E. Morgan's character, Aloma, would make of PFL? My money is on the hunch she would simply adore it.

Michael wrote: "Matt wrote: "let me short circuit this semantically - the minute it gets in its own way it is in fact not good writing"

Depends. Sometimes the writing can stand front and center, and still the ..."

the way I concieve of it the formulation is basically tautological - if the prose pulls you up midstride it's a fail

ps- Blood Meridian had me rolling my eyes 3 paragraphs in and quitting within 10 pages so McCarthy is a good example of where you and I part ways on this one

I don't think one can write too well. And the example in the article is not really that florid, just redundant. The first sentence is great, but it should have been the only one of the three allowed to see the light of day. As it is, I keep thinking the paragraph continues with something like "In her world, discord meant harmony. Because the was so fucking quirky and cool. Because she was not like the others."

"She said she was so aware of the painterly quality of Ms. Morgan's imagery, that it interfered with her ability to immerse herself in the world of the novel.

So I ask again: Can someone write too well?"

it all depends on who is reading it. remember when we read revolutionary road? for me, the prose totally disappeared, leaving me immersed in the world of the novel. and that was one miserable world to be immersed in. it's not a sensation i like. so in that case, i could just rewrite this reader's complaint and say that the prose was too perfect because it did not interfere with my ability to immerse myself in the world of the novel.

i like good sentences as much as i like good stories. but for people whose primary criteria is the ability of the prose to disappear so that they can immerse themselves in another world, i guess that a really delightful sentence would be annoying.

This thread brings to mind Faulkner, for me. I had my doubts about him, because the first book of his I ever attempted was As I Lay Dying.

Fortunately, I was convinced by a friend to pick up Light in August and away I went.

There is a long list of things he does so artfully with language that, in addition to being blown away by the story itself, I would put the book down at the end of each chapter, stared straight ahead, and thought, whoa. Particularly in the Joe Christmas chapters.

First, there is how he paints scenery and picture - how he develops our sense of place - time, light, smell. The smell of the old man's house. The feeling of running for your life. The way it feels to be in the south, in the summer.

Then there is who people are, what they do, the perceptions of others.

Then, there is how he uses perspective to develop story, bringing new characters into the novel in the very last chapter but somehow perfectly interweaving them - they are necessary, their perspective is necessary to round out the novel.

It was all those layers that kept me completely immersed in the book, and led me to fold down almost every page, underline every other paragraph - I guess I read it at different levels at the same time? and none of the language got in the way at all.

Patty wrote:
""So I ask again: Can someone write too well?"

it all depends on who is reading it. "

It definitely depends on the audience and on what's being written. I love prose that draws a picture but it should leave enough unsaid for me to add my own colors or accents. I suppose that's one reason I'm not always apt to enjoy a movie adaptation of novel...although I recently finished reading Auntie Mame and enjoyed both movie and novel in their own way.

At my day job I am frequently accused of 'writing too well'...a claim that holds no credence in this group...but, I recently included the words 'leviathan' and 'pinnacle' in a Gov't performance eval. To me they were great words that drew a more complete picture of the individual beyond the typical, over-used 'power-player' and 'superb'. When my boss asked me how to pronounce both words, I knew the picture I was drawing was too colorful for an audience trained to see only primary colors.

It also depends on how the language is used. Tone isn't quite the right term to describe what I'm talking about. I'm thinking about Dickens here (just finished "Bleak House" so I'm on a Dickens kick). For him, sometimes, writing is clearly a game played between the author and the reader. You could argue this is true of any kind of writing, especially story-telling, but I'm talking about an author doing this openly. There is a kind of delight a reader can take away from a kind of writing that seems to wink at you and say, "I'm going to say all sorts of outrageous things which you will find amusing and, perhaps later on reflection, you will also come to see as true."

That said, there are also many examples of prose that, as Matt says, is so obvious that it pulls you out of the story without inviting you back in. Language that is too self-conscious or self-important, too show-offy ("look, Ma, no hands!"), or that is inconsistently applied within a novel, can all be bad.

That said, there are also many examples of prose that, as Matt says, is so obvious that it pulls you out of the story without inviting you back in. Language that is too self-conscious or self-important, too show-offy ("look, Ma, no hands!"), or that is inconsistently applied within a novel, can all be bad.

You know who I think is guilty of this one? Michael Ondaatje.

Sorry to anyone who loves his stuff.

. . . great point, swanny, i'm glad you brought up this kind of gamesmanship . . . the thing with dickens is that it seems more like a storytelling sensibility than a linguistic one-- it calls attention to the "storyteller" in the oral tradition, but not the "writer", if that makes sense . . .

Ondaatje is, I think, primarily a poet. As such, I think his focus is on language as opposed to story. I remember reading "The English Patient" and loving individual lines but finding the story somewhat lost.

with the first two sentences of the blog post, the post's author (quite accidentally, i think) hit upon an important distinction that she should have addressed before she continued. she asked, "can someone write too well? can a prose style be too gorgeous?"

we ought to keep in mind that "writing" and "prose style" are very different subjects. consider philip dick: guy has no prose style whatsoever, but he's a dynamite writer because his themes are so wonderfully wide-ranging and evocative, yet his narratives move right along. your world is made larger for having read his books, even if he can't write a clean sentence to save his life.

at the same time, there are quite a few noveslists out there (and there are more, and more, and more of them every day, it seems) who are good prose stylists but can't write very well.

has anyone else grown weary of this? opening up a book, flipping to the first page -- and encountering another gorgeous description of a cloud or a breeze coming over a mountain. it's as if they can't figure out what to write, how to engage the grand universal themes, so instead they get all hot and bothered over what's in front of them. i've gotten to the point that i just can't read these books anymore.

and here's my point: just as good writers seem to widen our universe, don't prose stylists always seem to be narrowing it down?

a great "writer" like shakespeare gets you thinking about revenge, lust, envy, greed. when you read his works, you sense that you are gaining an understanding of humanity. but prose stylists -- especially when they are "too good" (sarcastic quotes mine) -- get you thinking about clouds, or blades of grass, or lamps.

(and it's the novels and short stories that feature the best of both that really set the fox in the henhouse: see Nabokov, "lolita," for example A.)

I have to say that I struggled with "Lolita" precisely because the language was so beautiful and because I had a hard time reconciling the story material with the prose style. I'm no prude, but I resisted Nabokov's game. My loss, probably.

As a graduate of some creative writing programs, I think that a premium is placed on crafting language as opposed to shaping story. That's true in my experience, at any rate. And I've found it true of my own writing--"great description, Chris, but what's the story?"

I think a strong prose style is very difficult to achieve. But I think less attention is being paid to story in contemporary fiction. There are, of course, several examples of great stories in contemporary fiction--I'm just suggesting that people who go through the academy get taught a lot about how to write well as opposed to how to tell stories well.

Chris wrote: "I think less attention is being paid to story in contemporary fiction. There are, of course, several examples of great stories in contemporary fiction--I'm just suggesting that people who go through the academy get taught a lot about how to write well as opposed to how to tell stories well."

and it's easy to understand why: writing instructors may find it much easier to teach someone the mechanics of sentence-to-sentence craft ("here's how you use imagery," "here's how you create a mood," etc., etc.) than to teach someone how to write a story.

personally, i'd find it much easier to teach someone to use imagery, dissonance, and other prose pyrotechnics than to teach them, say, how to achieve the aesthetic impact of a story like "the dead."

I'm with you, Keith. I also think that for years, "plot" was a four-letter word in creative writing circles. Poorly-written books constantly get on the bestseller list. Why? Because they focus primarily on plot--conflict, tension, climax and resolution. And readers like plot. I like plot. But I find that writing a nice passage is easier than constructing a good, solid story. My wife--my best and most honest editor--says it's because I'm organizationally challenge. But beyond organization, I struggle with plot.

My favorite books tend to be well-written novels with memorable characters engaged in a compelling plot. I don't care if it's a spy thriller or a crime novel or a who-will-she-marry story or a hobbit story. A good story married to a good prose style is what I like and what I want to write.

The thing is that some of the best plots in the world had great writers. How easy was to Dante to do like he did. Then Borges and his revision of Don Quixote and Quevedism. In art, in great literature, Style is substance.
I think of Voltaire clear, fast, precise and clockwork prose. Could he write something like Guimarães Rosa? He could do like Robert Louis Stevenson, but would Stevenson do like Milton?

Voltaire also makes war looks like a Three Stooges festival except when someone gets blasted by a cannon, the result is blown bloody body parts, not the hilarity of a blacken face and smoke streaming from the victim's hair. Even if his prose was a bit flowery.

At least that's what I thought when I read one of his works.

Jcamilo wrote: "In art, in great literature, Style is substance."

Now you are going all Aristotlean on me. Interesting perspective, but I don't know if I'd go this far.

Keith wrote: "has anyone else grown weary of this? opening up a book, flipping to the first page -- and encountering another gorgeous description of a cloud or a breeze coming over a mountain. it's as if they can't figure out what to write, how to engage the grand universal themes, so instead they get all hot and bothered over what's in front of them. i've gotten to the point that i just can't read these books anymore.
"

sometimes i love you keith. this is one of those times. the last time i experienced this, the clouds on the saskatchewan plains on the first page were the *only* things i liked about the book. once the author finished his authorly, hemingway-esque, "weather as emotional backdrop" first page i was bored to tears with the actual story. once the author veered away from the things he could be taught he was hopelessly lost because he was not a good writer.

i would agree with your distinction of writing, and style, but then there's also the authorial voice which for me, is the thing that makes or breaks a writer. jonathan's comment that he doesn't like this particular authors "florid style" gave me pause because i know he loves dickens, and to my mind, dickens can be a very florid writer. in this case, i thought maybe not so much the style but the voice. and of course, for me that is always the make or break.

p.s. other times i have loved you? when you say nice things about james cain, and when you get excited about heirloom tomatoes. :P

Michael wrote: "Jcamilo wrote: "In art, in great literature, Style is substance."

Now you are going all Aristotlean on me. Interesting perspective, but I don't know if I'd go this far.

"

You need not to go to far, just read here.

Anyways, of course Voltaire is all flowery. But he never communicate his ideals better than while writing Candide. C'mom, Michael, showing, not telling, show everyone!

. . . mo, for me, dickens language rarely operates in a vacuum . . . it nearly always serves the story, not the author . . . i rarely get the impression that sir chuck is trying to wow me with his elaborate language . . . it seems to me that the majority of his most complex sentences, are convoluted intentionally for comic effect--to defer the readers expectation as long as possible before delivering the punch line . . . waugh and wodehouse both seemed to model their comic language after dickens . . . also, there's the context to consider dickens language probably wouldn't agree with me if it were written in 2008 . . .

F. Scott.

RA, you mean F. Scott is overwrought?

Yeah, I guess I can see that. When we read Gatsby over on MySpace I can recall thinking at times, this guy is really working hard on this whole green light thing.

So much so that at times the characters seemed archetypal.

I'm a big fan of F. Scott's style.

There seems to be poetry in prose; yet, the prose does its work.

Aside from Gatsy . . . the humor, too.

It was awhile back this year that I read his Pat Hobby stories. I laughed my a#8 off. I guffawed. I actually GUFFAWED!

Yet, they're not written "as jokes." Rather, the humor (if you--pending "the reader") comes, like all the great comedies, from character.

And as usual with Fitzgerald, the prose is tight.

I think it depends on what you define as "well". If it is possible for someone to write "too well" that means that you dislike the writing when it passes that point. Which in turn means the writing wasn't "well" enough, or else it would have worked for you. Is that a tautology? Hahaha.

I don't mind overly well-written things UNLESS it doesn't have heart (which in itself is a hard thing to define). I think sometimes really good writing can be a veil that covers up an emptiness at the core. For me, that would be unaccceptable.

I will flip my earlier statement on its head - it is not possible to write too well

as long as it's understood that well wrought prose first and foremost serves the story it tells

that said 'beautifully wrought' prose that somehow subverts or otherwise fails to serve the piece it appears in is not 'well wrought' prose at all