All entries for August 2007

Why writing has the potential to find success and satisfaction in honesty

I don't know about you, but I find that I am far more comfortable talking honestly to an audience of one person, than an audience of two or more. Even if I don't know the one person very well, and the two people were good friends, I would still feel that I could be more open with the one person.

Why?

It's to do with instinctive empathy. To feel 'empathy' is to identify and understand another's feelings. Why do we experience empathy? To fit into our society. We need empathy so that we help one another survive to further progress our species. But empathy can also instil fear and alienation.

How?

Example 1: there is one person - Bob - listening to Gertrude explain how she likes to walk rather than ride her bicycle. Bob nods his head in an understanding way, and even agrees with her on certain points of her argument, even if he had, before now, disagreed with her. His objective is to fit in with Gertrude because she, like him, is human and he wishes to fit in with human society.

Example 2: there are two people - Bob and Ashok - listening to Gertrude explain how she likes to walk rather than ride her bicycle. Bob and Ashok will listen, but will have another more pressing objective in mind: they wish to empathise with each other's reactions to Gertrude. They are united by both being on the receiving ends of Gertrude's voice. They might (both afraid that the other thinks Gertrude foolish for opinions) look at each other dubiously, and put some effort into predicting the other's responce, and then act upon it. This way, Bob and Ashok will be united, and Gertrude will be left alien to the duo.

Of course, this example is on a small scale. Gertude's opinion could be that homosexuality should be legal in every country, that God does not exist, that God does exist ... whatever. The thing that makes Bob react to her in a certain way, is often due to the fear of what someone else in the room may think of her ideas.

Naturally I have simplified the influences upon Bob. They are more complex than that which I have explained, but the general rule holds. If you get someone on their own, away from the presence of the rest of society's influences, then they are far more likely to consider your argument with a level head. And of course age will affect Bob, too. If Bob were 15, he would be more impressionable than if he were 73.

Now, to get to the point: written language is a silent conversation between only two people - the writer and the reader. The reader will be in their most weakened state of empathy while reading, because they are the only one (as far as they are concerned) on the listening end of the narrative. Sometimes people read for that very reason: they want to empathise with a character and they want to find a voice that will be honest with them, because perhaps they really will understand what the writer is saying as long as they shut their mind to the rest of society.

Films can work in a similar way. But it's the silence of reading to oneself, and the extensively detailed nature of a book's expression, that makes writing the ideal container for the honest thoughts of those of us who do not wish to risk revealing them to two or more people at once.

: 27 Aug 2007 10:36 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Summer Reading

One of my chosen modules for the coming academic year is the English Nineteenth-Century Novel.

I will be honest with you. I chose the module, not because I am striving to challenge myself and further my mental capacities into unknown territory, but because I had read several books on the list and seen versions of many of the others on TV. And they were of the type I enjoyed reading, and watching.

When choosing modules, I was very close to picking the European Novel instead, but, knowing full well I am a slow reader incapable of skimming, I forced myself to set aside any thoughts in that direction. I can read those classics (along with The Illiad, The Odyssey and Paradise Lost which I missed in the Epic module last year) whenever I wish, individual of a University course, without the pressure of my reading being scrutinised. I do not pretend to be smarter than I am, and will not lie about it. My academic writing needs to be fine tuned, and my objective is to receive good results on my degree, not to challenge myself to a level higher than I am capable of excelling in.

The books I had already read were as follows: The Picture of Dorian Grey (Wilde), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Hardy), and The Mill on the Floss (Eliot). I have seen television versions of Bleak House (Dickens), North and South (Gaskell), and two each of Persuasion (Austen) and Tess. Many of the author's works I am already familiar with (Austen, Dickens, Hardy, Eliot, C. Brontë, and Wilde).

So far this summer, I have read Persuasion, Shelley's Frankenstein, and Gissing's New Grub Street.

I had never heard of George Gissing before, and was put off by finding images of him on Google with the precise sort of moustache I hate; however, moustaches aside, I found his writing to be brilliant. He speaks with such accuracy of character objectives, that you understand each and every one of them, and see yourself reflected from the page in sentences which mirror (many times shameful) truths at you ... 'Satisfied that he did not value her, to begin with, for her own sake, she was very willing to accept money as her ally in the winning of his love' ... 'But the thing [one most desires] is impossible, and, what's more, we know what ridiculous fallibility people display when they imagine they have found the best substitute for that indiscoverable' ... ‘all this is contemptible, of course; but we live in a contemptible society, and can’t help ourselves.’

I especially found myself identifying with Marian. ‘She could not breathe a word which might be interpreted as fear lest the change of her circumstances should make a change in his feeling. Yet that was in her mind. The existence of such a fear meant, of course, that she did not entirely trust him, and viewed his character as something less than noble ... Passion is comipatible with a great many of these imperfections of intellectual esteem. To see more clearly into Jasper’s personality was, for Marian, to suffer the intolerable dread lest she should lose him.’

I couldn’t resist, halfway through the book, to flip to the last page (as any thirteen year old might do), to read the last couple of sentences. I couldn’t believe what was there. No happy ending, that’s for sure. Gissing’s insightful style, having inspired you with the hope that he – who clearly wanted his characters to have a happy ending – will fulfil all that they desire, defies its own empathetic tendencies. At least, you might think, he could have given all of his characters an equilibrium of misery. However, he allows the characters who live with a conscious desire to retain money and social standing their happy world of dreamy bliss, and allows the characters who have ideals not to do with the gaining of money of social rank to die in lonely squalor. The sorrow of the book’s ending, though it may leave you with the flavour of intense disgust in you mouth, is entirely faithful to the realities of life in the human hive.

So I attempted to face a creative exercise, though it was less of an attempt at creativity, and more of an attempt to verbalise my own experiences of the previous year in the truthful, pitiless style of Gissing. Halfway through it, however, I finished New Grub Street and began Bleak House, and the effect of what your reading has upon what your writing has never struck me so full in the face. What to admire about Dickens is his use of comic irony, lively listful descriptions, and the grotesque; noting this my writing moved away from Gissing’s in a way I did not approve of. So I stopped reading Dickens to finish my own exercise in order to stay truthful to the style I, for that moment, more admired.

: 22 Aug 2007 11:11 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem