Tuesday, November 14, 2006
The Fiction Imposter
This post actually started out as something that was going to be a comment on Ashraya Gupta’s (Udbhav’s sister) blog. Incidentally, her writing is a whole lot better than the crap we’re putting on here, so go read it (http://thebluenotebooks.com/Ashraya/). I’ll wait.
I’ll start with the quotations from her most recent post that elicited my over-long reaction:
"today I tried to sing a love song for an hour and failed. the notes were there, the intonation---but I was somehow soulless in my innocence...
"I've never been in love and I don't hate the world, so perhaps I lack the emotion...
"it's funny how easy it is to write about what I do not know, or at least what I believe I do not know. middle-aged dissatisfaction, unwise marriages, the trials of boyhood. I've experienced none of it---but my fiction somehow leads me to it, giving me confidence I never knew I had."
People escape from prisons for literary love; they start wars, put themselves in great peril; open themselves up for all manner of humiliation and ridicule. Actual love doesn’t offer any of these possibilities.
If you actually love someone and you return to them after any significant length apart, it doesn’t matter how much threat you risked, it’s pretty well guaranteed that they moved on. It doesn’t matter how boldly or publicly you profess your love for someone you’ve worshipped from afar. It won’t work. They’re too good for you. Otherwise, you’d worship them right up close.
In fiction, however, these activities are rewarded. And rightfully so.
Life experiences just fuck everything up.
I choose, and will continue to choose to embrace a world where enchantment is possible. And if that means believing in the fraud perpetrated by authors sitting at a desk not too different from the one I’m sitting at now, then so be it.
The stories of those who have “experienced life” haven’t countered with anything even remotely as attractive yet.
I’ll start with the quotations from her most recent post that elicited my over-long reaction:
"today I tried to sing a love song for an hour and failed. the notes were there, the intonation---but I was somehow soulless in my innocence...
"I've never been in love and I don't hate the world, so perhaps I lack the emotion...
"it's funny how easy it is to write about what I do not know, or at least what I believe I do not know. middle-aged dissatisfaction, unwise marriages, the trials of boyhood. I've experienced none of it---but my fiction somehow leads me to it, giving me confidence I never knew I had."
Good writers will always do a better job of furthering our romanticized notions of love better than anyone who's ever actually fallen in love. Having been in actual love doesn’t qualify you for anything because actual love isn’t nearly as real as literary love.
People escape from prisons for literary love; they start wars, put themselves in great peril; open themselves up for all manner of humiliation and ridicule. Actual love doesn’t offer any of these possibilities.
If you actually love someone and you return to them after any significant length apart, it doesn’t matter how much threat you risked, it’s pretty well guaranteed that they moved on. It doesn’t matter how boldly or publicly you profess your love for someone you’ve worshipped from afar. It won’t work. They’re too good for you. Otherwise, you’d worship them right up close.
In fiction, however, these activities are rewarded. And rightfully so.
The universe where fiction exists is enchanted with endless possibilities of the improbable occurring often and with a strong sense of justice. All events, be they beneficial, harmful or neutral occur judiciously with the God of the realm at least giving you some reasoning for the decisions made.
Life experiences just fuck everything up.
I choose, and will continue to choose to embrace a world where enchantment is possible. And if that means believing in the fraud perpetrated by authors sitting at a desk not too different from the one I’m sitting at now, then so be it.
The stories of those who have “experienced life” haven’t countered with anything even remotely as attractive yet.
# posted by Matt Record @ 7:47 PM 
Comments:
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and yet, the best fiction concerns itself with dreams unfulfilled, love unrequited.
doesn't it?
it may be a grander love, it may necessitate prison-breaks and launch a thousand ships, etc.---but I think it's in illuminating the impossibility of such love that literature has the most success.
unless we're talking jane austen---and her books are arguably not about love at all. we just like to imagine they are.
doesn't it?
it may be a grander love, it may necessitate prison-breaks and launch a thousand ships, etc.---but I think it's in illuminating the impossibility of such love that literature has the most success.
unless we're talking jane austen---and her books are arguably not about love at all. we just like to imagine they are.
I choose, and will continue to choose to embrace a world where enchantment is possible. And if that means believing in the fraud perpetrated by authors sitting at a desk not too different from the one I’m sitting at now, then so be it.
that's you!
and i must say that i agree you there. both yours and ashraya's posts were very interesting. they hit that point of difference between love that we find in reality, and the kind of love we imagine on paper.
so far, i've known the kind on paper, and that stuff's good.
like origami good.
in fact, let's just say that love on paper is origami. and you & i are masters of origami. one day, i'd love to meet a real duck. it probably won't be like my paper-friend, but it'll be worth it to know what i waste my time imagining so much.
keep on rockin' like there's no tomorrow mr. matt. but there is a tomorrow, and i'll be seeing you then!
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that's you!
and i must say that i agree you there. both yours and ashraya's posts were very interesting. they hit that point of difference between love that we find in reality, and the kind of love we imagine on paper.
so far, i've known the kind on paper, and that stuff's good.
like origami good.
in fact, let's just say that love on paper is origami. and you & i are masters of origami. one day, i'd love to meet a real duck. it probably won't be like my paper-friend, but it'll be worth it to know what i waste my time imagining so much.
keep on rockin' like there's no tomorrow mr. matt. but there is a tomorrow, and i'll be seeing you then!
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