Still a "nice" theory...

Jon Tveite (jontv@ksu.edu)
Wed, 25 Nov 1998 11:17:34 -0600 

Scottie B.:

>     The idea that a serious writer who has done his best to clarify
>     his thoughts & then sweated out the cleanest & most economical
>     way of expressing them should wish to have them muddied &
>     encrusted by the random associations of some well-meaning hick
>     - that strikes me as ludicrous.

I must respectfully disagree.  If we're talking fiction, and I assumed
we were, I don't think the writer's task is always to "clarify his
thoughts" and then express them in the "cleanest and most economical
way."  That sounds more like rhetorical writing to me.  It's certainly
not what James Joyce was up to, with his deep ambiguities and made-up
words that seem intended to detonate long chains of associations.  Joyce
is just an extreme example of how so many writers work.

Whether it's desirable or not, readers will always "muddy and encrust"
your thoughts with their own "random associations."  It's unavoidable. 
If they don't, then your writing can't make much of a connection with
them.  Reading is not a passive mental activity.

And anyway, I think this process of "encrustation" *is* desirable. 
Why?  Because there may be any number of good symbolic resonances that
I, as the author, hadn't thought of.  Because the picture that forms in
the readers' heads needs to be more vivid than I can draw on the page
without destroying my narrative pace.  Because no matter how clever or
thorough a writer I am, I will never be able to anticipate and answer
every question readers may have about my fictional world.  The trick is
enticing them to fill in the blanks in a way that satisfies them without
detracting from my vision.  It's often said that much of the power in
literary expression comes from what is not stated explicitly.  You have
to read between the lines.  But it's hard to write between the lines. 
You can only push the readers in a particular direction and hope that
they get somewhere close to where you want them to go.  

When J.D. Salinger wrote THE CATCHER IN THE RYE 50 years ago, he didn't
know that I would ever exist -- much less the details of my personal
experiences that allow me to identify so fully with Holden Caulfield as
a character.  He just set out to write something vivid and true.  But
it's precisely that process of association and identification which
allows the book to be so important to me.  And I seriously doubt that
Salinger would be surprised or dismayed by that assertion.

>     Equally ludicrous seems to me the idea of writing as some kind
>     of co-operative effort between two sensitively thoughtful participants.
>     Most of the really powerful writers I've known or read about had
>     the attitude: 'Take it or leave it....I'm giving you all a damned sight
>     more than you deserve...'

I'm not saying that the roles are equal, or that writer and reader are
equally responsible for the results.  It's the writer's party.  Of
course, if nobody shows up, it won't be much of a party.

All I meant was this: what makes literature a worthwhile human endeavor
is the transfer of ideas, values, and emotions from text to reader, and
that can't happen without the reader's participation.  In order to
recreate the author's fictional world in their own consciousnesses,
readers must bring their own ideas, values, emotions, and experiences to
the work site.  Whether the author likes it or not, that's what is
happening any time somebody connects with a work of fiction.

Jon