NOTA BENE: HOW FICTION WORKS

"So the novelist is always working with at least three languages.  There is the author's own language, style, perceptual equipment, and so on; there is the character's presumed language, style, perceptual equipment, and so on; and there is what we would call the language of the world - the language that fiction inherits before it gets to turn it into a novelistic style, the language of daily speech, of newspapers, of offices, of advertising, of the blogosphere, and text messaging.  In this sense, the novelist is a triple writer, and the contemporary novelist now feels especially the pressure of this tripleness, thanks to the omnivorous presence of the third horse of this troika, the language of the world, which has invaded our subjectivity, our intimacy, the intimacy that James thought should be the proper quarry of the novel, and which he called (in a troika of his own) 'the palpable present-intimate.' "

- James Wood, How Fiction Works (About which you can expect to hear a good deal more about around here.)

Comments

[Lee]

I've had this one on order for ages. Thanks for the tantalising excerpt.

[Mark Thwaite]

I'm really looking forward to this too. Not least because I think, over the course of a whole book, the weaknesses and contradictions of the way Wood looks at and discusses fiction will become much clearer -- and I say this as an admirer of Wood (in as much as I'm always happy to clear the desk and read what he has to say which is always intelligent and, often, persuasive) but simultaneously as one who often considers him quite, quite wrong-headed!

[Stephen Crowe]

What kind of contradictions do you mean, Mark? I think this quote really demonstrates Wood's great analytical depth. I don't agree with everything he says, but he clearly sees the novel as a complex system, and it's amazing to see the detail with which he describes its functioning parts.

I've written an article related to this on my blog if anyone's interested...

[Steven Augustine]

This excerpt embodies a good deal of what I take exception to in Wood's approach; the compulsive (borderline comical) need to collate/quantify/taxonomize. It's a funny impulse (a manifestation of Hard Science Envy?) and fails on all levels to illuminate anything other than Mr. Wood's somewhat, erm, "fundament(al)-ish" inclinations. Wood is our Merlin, dazzling us with flim-flam.

If we bother at all to draw a division between an author's "language" and the "language" of his character(s), mustn't we, then, if we're in a truly scientific mood, draw a distinction between the "language" the author uses in the morning and the one she/he uses at night; in one mood or another; when he/she is writing as opposed to speaking; speaking to her/his parents as opposed to the lover or the parole officer, and so forth? The "language" of exposition vs the "language" of tone-setting, ad inf?

There's a case to be made that it's all just *one* language per writerly brain (unless the writer is bi-, or poly-, lingual), given apparent variety by unquantifiable differences of inflection and idiom and whatever tools of the trade. It's a trick, in other words. Even when Mark Twain uses Ebonics.

How one would functionally isolate the "language" of the world from the language of the author (and his/her creations) swimming in it is beyond me; are there isoglossic boundaries at work? Was James any less saturated with the language-ether of his time than Tama Janowitz? Or is the Internet (notice the blogging reference), a co-culprit in our degraded experience of the Novel?

While the practise of Hard Science rewards the following of just such a ramifying trail of declining magnitudes, and sub-categories, to an nth declension, in Art it would be silly to try (Structuralists notwithstanding); i.e., why indulge in this pseudo-science at all? It explains nothing about anything in the Art of reading or writing.

Of course, I can't help thinking this is Wood's roundabout way of taking a pop at DeLillo for having (most of) his characters speak and think like DeLillo... (larf)...

... but I think Wood needs to come up with a new "language", himself, for talking about books. He's an entertaining stylist and a well-read feller with a nice big brain, but he's shedding more heat than light on his subject (which may, after all, but none other than JW himself).

[Shya]

Your point, Steven, seems to be that one will never illuminate the essence of the art of fiction by breaking it into pieces. I would not argue with that. But if an approach to understanding art is of limited use, it does not therefor become entirely useless. You are mistaken, I think, to be so absolutist in your reckoning. As for the particular quote by Woods, I think he's stating a rather simple truism with which all writers struggle. If anything, I'd fault the excerpt for revealing too little about the complications of narrative vs. authorial voice. Fortunately, I expect this is not the end of the passage.

[Steven A]

"Your point, Steven, seems to be that one will never illuminate the essence of the art of fiction by breaking it into pieces."

Not at all. I just think the quasi-scientific approach is a smokescreen for fuzzy pronouncements with a very hit-and-miss success rate (and the above-cited excerpt is hardly the beginning and end of the source I base my judgment on: I pronounce this after reading Wood's highly entertaining pronouncements for years).

I also happen to believe that one is better off reading Wood's attempt at a novel, rather than any of his many manifestoes, in order to gauge the merits of his argument. Empirically speaking.

Re: me, being absolutist about an Absolutist? Never! (larf)

[Stephen Crowe]

Steven A:

"Not at all. I just think the quasi-scientific approach is a smokescreen for fuzzy pronouncements with a very hit-and-miss success rate."

So you're not saying that an analytical approach "will never illuminate the essence of the art of fiction," but that it doesn't even exist: that's it's just "a smokescreen." But a novel is not just a string of words: those words represent a system of interdependent parts, the consistent reality of the fictional characters (including their language, their thoughts, their shoe-size) being perhaps the most important. Even though they are all invented by the novelist, these parts exist in the mind both of the author and the reader. A triangle has no real existence either, but you believe in triangles, right?

It's unfair to imply that this is a pseudo-scientific approach, when it's simply a systematic approach. The analysis of poetry follows systematic rules as well: metre, rhyme, metaphor, &c. These things don't exist in a material sense, but they are still parts that make up a poem. Why should a novel not respond to a similar approach?

[Guy From Berlin]

(posting under a different ID because the spam filter is blocking me)

"It's unfair to imply that this is a pseudo-scientific approach, when it's simply a systematic approach."

I'm not dismissing systematic approaches in general ("quasi-scientific" doesn't equal "systematic", in my book), I'm dismissing *Wood's* "system", and to claim otherwise implies a willful misreading of my comment.

The example I picked on was this random "tripleness" riff. If the author's "language" is one language, how can the "world's language" represent a discrete second (being a composite of x-many other "languages", encompassing the author's as well, in this arbitrary "system" of Wood's), with the character(s)' voice(s) representing a qualifiable third? Delineate the isoglosses, please.

(And since when are cellphone text messages, and emails, a separate "language" rather than a shorthand, in even their extreme form?)

It's twaddle. But you accept it, obviously. Which is fine.

S.A.

[Stephen Crowe]

In linguistics, each individual is considered to possess an "ideolect", which is their own unique voice. The consensus of all the ideolects in a community combines to form what is understood to be that community's dialect or language.

Thus the author has another ideolect (or language), she invents another ideolect
(or language) for the character, and these are both part of and affected by the culture's prevailing dialect (or language). Q.E.D.

[SA]

Now, when you can demonstrate where the "community's" ideolect ends, and the "world's" begins, say, (or how you'll ever nail down the "prevailing ideolect" of the "world") I'll consider the argument to be better than fuzzy (i.e., conveniently flexible, or value-free).

[Matt Pearce]

While I appreciate the sophistication of Mr. Wood's analysis in the excerpt, I am going to play the fool here and say that I'm not entirely sure why he couldn't have used his eminent talents to write the argument in a simpler, more elegant manner; it goes a long way to prevent accusations of "fuzziness."

Abstraction seems to be endemic in aesthetic theory.

[Stephen Crowe]

Steven Augustine posted this follow-up comment on my blog because he's having some kind of technical problems:

"And before I'm the victim of a micro-pedantic tasering: "community dialect" in place of "community ideolect"; however: dialect-schmialect; it's 1 in the morning over here, I'm drowsy and it's time for bed.

Linguistic arguments, in any case, are as useful, re: the purpose and production of the novel, as a biochemistry textbook is to the creation of a five-course meal.

Not that you should take any of this as being delivered with a scowl, on my part. Imagine, please, a "smiley face" appended at the end... a smiley and a warm "good night!"

To which I would add: believe it or not, Mr. Wood's pronouncements are "opinions". Under all the razzle-dazzle are simple ideas that will live or die (or live a kind of half-life, supported by the unexamined good will of the intimidated reader) according to the apparent rightness of their claims."

---------

But this response is me, Stephen Crowe, not him, Steven Augustine:

"Linguistic arguments, in any case, are as useful, re: the purpose and production of the novel, as a biochemistry textbook is to the creation of a five-course meal."

You asked on what basis Wood could distinguish the three kinds of language in the passage, and I explained it to you using linguistics, which seems very pertinent to a question about language. In general, though, I would agree with you, and the simile is very good.

"Now, when you can demonstrate where the "community's" ideolect ends, and the "world's" begins, say, (or how you'll ever nail down the "prevailing ideolect" of the "world") I'll consider the argument to be better than fuzzy (i.e., conveniently flexible, or value-free)."

I think your distaste for Wood is causing you to be a little pedantic here. Obviously an ideolect cannot be precisely distinguished from the common language, but you said yourself that criticism is not a science. Nevertheless, observations can still be made and conclusions drawn. You gave a good example yourself: when Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn, it wrote it not in his own voice, but in the invented ideolect of his character.

Here's another good example: when the narrator of Portrait of the Artist refers to a conker as the "conqueror of forty," we can infer that the narrator's voice has been infected (using the free-indirect style) by Stephen Dedalus' schoolboy dialect, which has in turn borrowed from the grandiose language of epic poetry.

[Stephen Crowe]

Also, Wood's judgement of a particular book is an opinion, but the quoted passage about three languages is a hypothesis: it will live or die not depending on people's whim, but on the extent to which it is falsified.

[That Feller From Across The Atlantic]

Stephen:

"...it will live or die not depending on people's whim, but on the extent to which it is falsified."

But it *can't* be falsified, you see, because it's *not* science. Which is the beauty of it (from his standpoint). And my being nit-picky in trying to hold a pseudo-scientific "hypothesis" to scientific standards is not pedantic.

[That Feller From Across The Atlantic]

Also, Stephen, honestly, I have no "distaste" for Wood whatsoever. As stated above, I find his pieces entertaining, but let's not forget that literary criticism is not a body of knowledge (no matter how much knowledge goes into its higher practise, or how much Wood lulls or browbeats us into believing otherwise): it's a secondary form of literature: a minor Art. It's Wood's straining towards a literary Unified Field theory that I invariably tut-tut, especially when I catch him reverse-engineering his principles, and his "evidence", from a list of the authors (and oeuvres) he's itching to smite.

I'm more likely to give creedence to a book titled "How Fiction Works" when it's an anthology of essays from writers who, on evidence of their successful production of masterpieces, know whereof they speak: I tend to privilege knowledge gotten via the trial-and-error of practise, when it comes to Art. Still, even then, nothing like a *factual* collection of principles could be distilled from such a book. It's all in the beautifully subjective language not of empirical certainty but of interpretation.

In any case, I'm always astonished that few have the common sense to read Wood's pronouncements on fiction's requirements and possibilities by the light of his own mediocre experiment in novel-writing, which had all the charm of a term paper.

Critics can be wonderful boosters for worthy books or writers; they can also steer us away from books that don't, perhaps, deserve our ducats. The further from this useful territory the ambitious critic strays, the shakier (or more decadent) his/her position... unless, of course, they've got the gift of the razzle dazzle. Which Mr. Wood most assuredly has.

[Stephen Crowe]

Steven, when I took your statement, "I just think the quasi-scientific approach is a smokescreen," as a rejection of systematic approaches to literature, you accused me of "wilfully misreading" you. But here you've said it again!

"Let's not forget that literary criticism is not a body of knowledge (no matter how much knowledge goes into its higher practise, or how much Wood lulls or browbeats us into believing otherwise): it's a secondary form of literature: a minor Art."

How else is such a statement to be understood? The assumption of a systematic, analytical approach to literature is that you can build up a body of knowledge. I'm a little bored of going round in circles, so you can consider this my last word on the matter:

As I said, iambic pentameter has an objective (though not material) reality in, for example, a sonnet. It stands to reason that novels would follow similar structuring patterns, if for no other reason than that humans naturally love to see and create patterns. The nature of these structures are therefore, like the iamb, subject to study as objective realities.

Obviously, this does not mean that any judgement of a work's quality would be objective, only the analysis of its structure. Furthermore, although the analysis of a book could never have the objectivity of a hard science, hypotheses and falsifications are not only the preserve of science, but also of analytical philosophy. What I am describing, therefore, is a "philosophy of criticism", and I think Wood must follow the same sort of assumptions.

Even if you disagree that such a thing is possible or sensible, it is well below the belt to suggest that he has just made it up to sound convincing (as when you called it a "smokescreen", to cite just one occasion), because he obviously takes it very seriously.

I would also note that Aristotle never even wrote a play, as far as we know, but his Poetics is a classic of analytical literary criticism.