Subject: RE: Seymour and Teddy
Matthew_Stevenson@BAYLOR.EDU
Date: Mon Apr 07 1997 - 06:39:53 GMT
On Fri, 04 Apr 1997 16:48:28 -0800 bananafish@cassatt.Mass-USR.COM wrote:
>>just a quick thought. i've often thought about how jds stories seem to be
>>much more character driven than plot driven. many times the plot is
>>negligible. not having read it, i'm not sure, but i suspect this may be
>what >created all the negative reviews for hapworth. sai is a good example
>of a >basically plotless story that works really well in developing the
>character.
>
>All great literature is character driven and not plot driven.
>sorry malcolm, any statement that begins "All great literature"stops me
>from reading further--post less, say more! will
i agree, it's hard to accept such absolutes, especially when it comes to
literature. but i think malcolm makes a good point that whatever we get out of
literature comes from the characters themselves, and not some artificial
framework called a plot that the writer thrust upon them.
Because at
>the end of the day, it's the Holdens and the Blooms and the Kareninas and
>the Quiltys and the Bathsheba Everdenes
i know all the others, but who are the quiltys and blooms?
that we recall so fondly and
>measure what our own personal reactions would be to the predicaments and
>thoughts they find themselves in. I didn't fully realize how evident this
>was until I started my first novel and noticed that my characters very
>quickly took on lives of their own and I eventually just sat back taking
>their dictation for them. At that point the writer doesn't really have any
>jurisdiction over what the characters do, the characters tell the author
>what to do, and sometimes it can take quite a while before even the author
>figures out what they're doing. That's half the battle though. Create a
>unique character and you'll learn about yourself as you write just as your
>audience will. Otherwise it's like killing the beast before you've even let
>it out of it's cage. And if it's no fun for the writer, if that level of
>self-discovery through one's characters is absent, than it will not be any
>fun for the reader.
>
>Malcolm
>
>-
>To remove yourself from the bananafish list, send the command:
>unsubscribe bananafish
>in the body of a message to "Majordomo@mass-usr.com".
>
>sorry malcolm, any statement that begins "All great literature"stops me
>from reading further--post less, say more! will
>
>
-
To remove yourself from the bananafish list, send the command:
unsubscribe bananafish
in the body of a message to "Majordomo@mass-usr.com".
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Oct 09 2000 - 15:00:37 GMT