Monthly Archives: August 2006

In the comments to yesterday’s post, Danielle asked a great question (as she so often does) about plot-driven vs. character-driven novels. I realize, now that I think about those terms, that the distinction is quite fuzzy. When I say “plot-driven,” I tend to think of action stories, and the book that comes immediately to mind is The Da Vinci Code. And when I say “character-driven,” I’m talking about books that go into a character’s mind or multiple characters’ minds in depth and focus on portraying a person or people in a complex way. I think, for example, of Proust. But this shows my biases, of course, because my example of a plot-driven novel is generally not considered great literature (okay, that’s an understatement), and Proust is. Danielle also names Dumas as an example of a writer focused on plot, someone who’s made the canon of western literature, sort of, but he also has a reputation as a super-fast writer who’s fun but not so serious.

I think Danielle is right to question the distinction between these two types of novels because although the distinction may wind up being useful, it has a lot of problems. Plot and character always go together, of course, or you don’t have a novel. Even if we’re talking about Clarissa, which much be the ultimate character-driven novel, it has plot, even if it consists of only three events. In 1,500 pages. In Search of Lost Time (or Remembrance of Things Past, if you prefer) has plot, even if it doesn’t follow any traditional story line (or does it? I don’t know yet). Still, I’m reading along right now in Swann’s Way and I want to know what happens to Swann and Odette. And plot-driven novels have characters, or there would be no plot to begin with, and if they are good novels, they’ll have interesting characters.

But there are lots of novels that don’t immediately strike me as one or the other. I just finished The Island of Dr. Moreau, which on first thought seems to me to be plot-driven, but then I start to think that the narrator in that novel is awfully interesting, and maybe it’s his responses to the plot that are at the heart of the novel? I suppose many, many novels work well because of the way they connect plot and character — the way that the plot comes out of the characters themselves, and then the characters remain interesting because of the ways they react to the plot. They don’t necessarily emphasize one over the other; rather, they integrate the two. And many, many novels emphasize one or the other to a degree, but not so much that a reader could clearly say this one is plot-driven and that one character-driven. Ultimately, I see the terms as useful for making very rough and quick distinctions, sort of like the way we use genre designations that work to a certain extent but when you look at them closely they begin to break down. This novel is “chick-lit,” that one is “speculative fiction,” this one is a “historical novel,” that one a “romance,” this is “plot-driven,” that is “character-driven.” The terms are a good starting place but not a good ending one.

The thing that interests me most is the question of bias I started out with. Am I showing my bias toward character-driven fiction when I name examples of plot-driven novels that people tend not to take seriously, such as The Da Vinci Code? What are some great plot-driven novels? Or would you rather not use the label at all? Do the terms have any usefulness?

I realized that I wrote something not quite true in yesterday’s post: I wrote that losing myself in a plot is what I need in stressful times when I’m not reading well. But the truth is, I don’t do particularly well with plot-driven novels. What I should have said is something more like “I need to lose myself in interesting characters or a well-drawn atmosphere or in careful emotional analysis.” Because those are the things I enjoy most; I tend to get impatient with intricately plotted novels. Most often what draws me to a book are people and relationships. I am stereotypically female in this sense, aren’t I? No fast-paced action — give me a relationship story! I feel the same way about movies; I’ll watch action movies, but I can get bored in the middle of them and sometimes fall asleep. But give me an interesting character, and even if that nothing happens to that character, I’ll be happy. There are exceptions — I loved the Phillip Pullman trilogy, His Dark Materials, which has a lot of plot, but it also has a lot of ideas, which is another thing that draws me to a novel. I liked Neal Stephenson’s novel Quicksilver, which has lots of plot and ideas, but I wasn’t so enchanted that I felt the need to pick up the next book in the trilogy. I got a little frustrated trying to keep the details straight in that book. Perhaps it’s my bad memory; I do better analyzing relationships and character than keeping plot details straight in my head.

I liked your suggestions for comfort reading from yesterday’s post very much; I would have picked up Anne of Green Gables immediately if I’d had a copy at home. I made the silly mistake of leaving them with my parents years ago, thinking they were children’s books that I’d outgrown. Oh, no. And I very nearly picked up a mystery novel. We have a ton of Dorothy Sayers books around. I’ve read a couple and liked them. And Jane Austen is the perfect comfort read for me; familiar but never dull. I was tempted to look around to see if we have any Louisa May Alcott, which would have worked very well. But I was scanning the shelves yesterday and came across an Elizabeth Taylor novel I haven’t read, The Sleeping Beauty, and it struck me as just the thing. I’ve read Taylor recently, In a Summer Season, and so I knew what to expect, and that I’d like it. And it’s perfect — set on the seashore and evoking a mysterious atmosphere, with complex characters whose lives seem quiet and serene but as the novel goes along the deeper levels of unhappiness reveal themselves. I like the slow movement of Taylor’s novels, the careful attention to tone and mood and gesture. This sort of thing is much more absorbing to me than something fast-paced. Looking around online I see that Taylor has at least a dozen novels. I’ll have to collect some more to have on hand for the next time I’ll need something comforting.

Kate S. has written about signpost books, an idea I’m liking very much; the idea is that certain books, not necessarily the best books you have ever encountered, although maybe so, meet you at just the right time and speak to you in such a way that changes your subsequent reading. Here is Kate’s definition, in which she distinguishes between formative books and signpost books:

What’s the difference between a formative book and a signpost book? A single book could certainly be both, but if I’m interpreting the definition properly, an aesthetic focus is central to the latter. Girish writes of films that are breakthroughs in that they help the viewer to better understand film as an art form and that provide lessons to take into future viewing experiences, not lessons to take into life generally. A book may be formative because of its emotional or psychological impact. But it would be a signpost book if it helps the reader to better understand what language can do, how a story or a novel or a poem works, thereby enhancing that reader’s appreciation for literature as an art form, and sending him or her off into the next reading experience equipped with a more discerning eye.

Isn’t that an interesting way of thinking about a particular kind of reading experience? For all my talk about how literature can or can’t change people, it’s nice to get specific about it for a bit.

For me, a recent signpost book has been Virginia Woolf’s diary. It has changed the way I read, and it has done so by aesthetic means. It’s strange, however, to think of a diary as changing how I read because of its aesthetics, since diaries are so to-the-moment and generally aren’t revised or worked over with care. And yet there are passages in the diary that are beautiful, and if they aren’t crafted as a story is, they contain their own structure and attention to detail and innovative use of language. And a diary itself has an important structure to it: the structure of daily or nearly daily writing, with its implication that everyday details matter and deserve to be recorded.

I read this book in small sections, mostly a little bit each night before I went to bed, and I found that this is an excellent way of living with someone’s diary for a while. It’s not reading through their life at the pace they lived it, since I might read several entries each night, but it is reading the life slowly, getting a sense of daily rhythms over time. Some nights what I read wasn’t memorable in the least; other nights I read passages that still stick with me. And this is how life is, with many days that disappear and some that remain in the mind.

I’ve continued reading other diaries, including Frances Burney’s Journals and Letters, and I’m reading it in much the same way as I read Woolf’s: a little at a time before I go to bed. I’m also appreciating the aesthetic value of the book; Burney takes great time and care to reproduce scenes from her life complete with long stretches of dialogue, and I can see how her journals and letters are practice for her novels. So, I think Woolf has taught me the value of reading diaries, a little of what they are capable of doing, and a good way to read them — slowly, to get the feeling I’m living alongside an author for a while.

There have been a number of posts on litblogs lately that are largely about the relationship of literature and life: here’s a post from Dan Green’s The Reading Experience on reading with a kind of aesthetic distance versus reading in order to learn how to live. And here’s a response from Scott Esposito from Conversational Reading. And here’s a post from Stefanie’s So Many Books on the revolutionary potential of literature. The larger question in all these posts seems to be about what a writer can do and what effect a book can have. Do we read for aesthetic pleasure? Do we read to learn something about life? To change our thoughts or actions? Can literature affect anything outside the world of the text?

I don’t know what I think about the revolutionary power of literature, although Stefanie offers a powerful example of revolutionary possibilities in her post. I suspect that the changes that occur from reading and writing are small but powerful, but that figuring out what causes what is too complicated to sort through. It’s not often that a book like Uncle Tom’s Cabin comes along and appears to make a significant change in people’s ways of thinking and in politics. And even the effects of that book are debatable. But who’s to say how the little changes that reading and writing cause work together and what they add up to?

Dan Green argues against the idea that authors can teach anyone how to live or how to act, and says that artists can tell us about art but cannot necessarily impart wisdom more readily than anyone else might: “I’ve never really understood why we would want to turn to poets or novelists for insights on ‘how to live.’ What has given them some special dispensation to pronounce on such a topic?” To a certain extent, I think that’s true: it strikes me as a mistake to see artists as having an advantage in the pursuit of truth and wisdom. This sets us up for perpetual disappointment at an artist’s flaws and weaknesses. But I tend to be someone who hopes for wisdom from artists anyway; I don’t think they have a “special dispensation” to pronounce on how we should live, but they do have something to tell us about life — the question is figuring out what that is.

Dan talks about some things he thinks we can learn from literature: the contingency and mutability of existence, and a manner in which to question the status quo. I think, also, that art can teach us to pay attention to the world. It’s not so much what an author says about life that I find valuable, but rather the awareness an author brings to existence. I might or I might not emulate a moral ideal I find expressed in a book, but I do hope to emerge from a book seeing things that I hadn’t seen before, paying closer attention to an aspect of life I’d overlooked. I think that learning to see is ultimately a moral lesson, since granting someone or something our attention is a step along the way toward acting responsibly toward that person or thing. An author might not be able to teach me how to live, but if she can teach me how to see, I’ve learned something valuable.

I’d question the distinction between aesthetic appreciation and passionate, engaged reading. Why do these two things have to be opposed? Aesthetic appreciation doesn’t have to imply distanced observation and detachment. As I’ve learned from Elaine Scarry, formal beauty can inspire a powerful emotional response that can lead to thoughts about equality and justice. It’s possible that the more I understand an author’s craft, the more capable I am of passionate response to the work and that response can possibly teach me something about life. Those things won’t necessarily take place in the same moment, but I often read a poem and respond viscerally, and then re-read it and begin to understand the crafted nature of the poem, its artistry, but I’m still responding emotionally and my aesthetic insight can add to my emotional response. I don’t see why aesthetic understanding has to imply gaining a critical distance that is never bridged to bring one back to an emotional closeness to the work.

I’ve found since I’ve begun blogging that book reviews from traditional media sources matter to me less and less. I’ve kept a list of books I’d like to read for quite a while now, many of the books coming from book reviews and some coming from recommendations from friends or my reading in various non-review places. But the list was never very long, and I wouldn’t add to it frequently. Since I’ve begun blogging, however, the list has grown at a frightening pace. I now have 150 books on my to-be-read list, which I recognize isn’t all that many compared to the lists many of you probably have, but is probably five times as long as my list from my life pre-blog. And it’s continuing to grow at that fast rate, so that by the end of the year, my list might have doubled. Hmmm … should I find a way to get that list under control? Maybe not. Maybe it should just be a list of possibilities, not things I’m absolutely going to read so as not to pressure myself, but things I might read, if the time comes when the books feel right.

I think it’s the different sort of writing I come across on book blogs that inspires me to add books to my TBR list when traditional book reviews don’t as often. I’m very interested in what reading a book feels like. I want to know what the experience of being immersed in a particular book will do to a reader. I’m interested in knowing about the story, the setting, the characters, the ideas, the writing, and all that I can get from traditional book reviews, but I also want to know about the book on a more subjective level. What did it do to you? How did you feel when you read it? And answers to these questions I’m much more likely to find on book blogs, where people don’t have to follow conventions of formality and don’t have the same pressure to keep themselves — their personal experiences and stories — out of the writing. Not all traditional book reviews are that cut and dry, I realize, but I’m much more likely to find personal, impassioned writing elsewhere, and that, I think, is what I really want.

Litlove, in her recent post on the blog genre, gets to the heart of what I want when she says that “blogging always offers a pattern of the mind that thinks, reflects, sifts information, analyses, distinguishes, recommends, enthuses. No matter what format the blogging takes, the blog reader receives a very intimate and immediate contact with a vibrant subjectivity, that is engaging with the world in the way that seems most natural and most enlivening to him or to her.” Reading this sort of writing — about whatever it is a writer finds most enlivening — enlivens a reader too. I read book blogs, and I feel like I’m encountering a mind impassioned by reading and generously sharing that enthusiasm, and I’m inspired to respond, sometimes by writing comments, and sometimes by adding books to my TBR list. I’ve always been excited about reading, but now having been a book blog reader for a while, I find myself even more excited about all the great books out there. I’m having that experience in the bookstore less and less where I’ll wander around and feel like nothing is speaking to me, no book is calling out to me to read it. Now I am much more likely to be overwhelmed with the choices.

This is not to say that I don’t read traditional book reviews anymore, because I do, but I’m much more likely to skim and skip articles, and turn instead to the blog world to see what’s out there.