A couple of interesting points came up in Comments …
I think I am coming around to agree with the YA author, Louise Hawes, who stated that she can not read the same type of work she is currently working on, she feels it gets too muddled.
• Anne
Yes, and that muddling of the lines is particularly true if that author writes with a strong voice. Back when I was a fledgling college poet, I had to stop reading T.S. Eliot, because when I did, my poems took on echos of his unique style. Likewise, for prose, Hemingway’s early voice (which, by the way, he took largely from Gertrude Stein) is infectious, as is Kurt Vonnegut’s.
The comparison with what you’re reading–which is a finished piece of work–with your “shitty first draft,” as Anne LaMott calls it, can also be deflating. You have to keep your head on straight and not lose heart. This is more typical of new writers, who don’t yet have the confidence they someday will.
But listen to Phillip Roth,in the London Globe and Daily Mail, last month, on reading Milan Kundera while writing his latest novel. “…The problem is, the book of fiction you’re reading is finished and polished and expert, and what you’re writing is so crappy that you get doubly depressed. Best to avoid it.”
And this from a 74 year old literary lion, nearing the end of a spectacular career!
I’m not quite sure how to separate my current writing ambitions from genuine appreciation of good writing… I have a second-hand textbook with stories from the classic authors I never had time to read as an English major, and I go to the university library at night to read from literary magazines. I started this as “research” – I wanted to figure out what makes for a good short story and learn which magazines are publishing the kinds of stories I write. It’s strange, alternating Hawthorne and Faulkner with more modern fiction – I’m not sure yet what I’m learning.
• Ryan
Classic stories do contain lessons you want to learn. But don’t make the mistake of emulating the characteristic diction or style or their era…
Good fiction today is a modern wonder of intricate craftsmanship, and with it comes the implicit demand for increased craft skills. Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope get away with a lot of clunky devices that would be laughed off the page today (even in the most heedlessly bad blockbuster fiction). Remember who you are, how you think and talk, and how we use language collectively in the 21st century.
I mentally pull apart the construct of the story itself. It gives me little epiphanies when I discover something the writer did in a rather subtle manner. For instance: “oh, I get it! The lawyer had to die because he could possibly have shed light on the whole mystery! His death kept the cast in the dark longer. How clever!”
• Amy
And it’s fascinating when you actually start seeing (as opposed to being TOLD) things like, “the hero had to die because he was too morally flawed.” Macbeth? There was no way he could live on. He had too much blood on his hands. Oedipus Rex? That’s more complex–he was at least partially a victim of blind destiny. But he slept with his mother!
An interesting case is the action movie 16 Blocks, a thriller starring Bruce Willis. He’s a washed up, burnt out cop, so flawed he has literally done everything the bad guys did. Why? Because he was one of them. For some unaccountable reason (you could say his dormant heroism, buried deep inside for all these years), he elects to do the right thing and pulls it off against impossible odds (heroic), but then is killed (tragic).
Why does Bruce have to die in the end? Because, like Macbeth, his hands are too bloody.
But here it gets really interesting, because the filmmakers–clearly uncomfortable with killing off “Bruce Willis”–shot an alternate ending in which he lives happily ever after. Sadly, it’s the one shown in most theaters–and it stinks. I guess we’re supposed to leave the theater smiling, but I certainly didn’t. I left growling about a cheap perversion of a decent story’s inevitable end. Watch both endings on the DVD and judge for yourself.
Also: For an intelligent Hollywood pass at this subject, see the recent movie Stranger than Fiction.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
