You didn't have to be there
It isn't so much the political side of this article by Zoe Williams that interests me (though it's actually quite a balanced argument, acknowledging the usefulness of "checking one's privilege" every so often, but warning against being rendered completely mute by it). But what drew me was this paragraph, because of its relevance to fiction/poetry and people's reactions to same:
I'm not entirely sure if this is specifically an argument of the right. But it does strike me as quite similar to the kind of criticism of fiction, and especially of poetry, which focuses on "did it really happen?" and seems to think (a) that the factual truth of the words employed is more important than the skill displayed in the use of them and (b) that writers who have not been there, done that, have no locus to write about experiences they have not actually been through -or, as Williams might put it, dismissing imagination, empathy, research and verbal skill and attempting to replace them with the power of personal testimony. There is sometimes a political dimension to this, in that writing about characters from a different culture or even, sometimes, gender, can be dismissed as "appropriation". This worries me in itself, because, though such writing demands proper research and sensitivity, if it isn't allowed at all, I don't see how fiction can ever be universal rather than somewhat boringly compartmentalised: is not part of the point of writing to be able to step outside oneself and into others? But it isn't purely political; it's also commercial in that readers seem to want to think the writer at least could have been there, done that. Thus male Mills & Boon writers use female pseudonyms, while women writing m/m erotica use male ones, and both happen more often than the innocent reader might think.
The specific problem for poets seems to be the I voice allied to the lyric form. Nobody reading a novel in the I voice assumes that the narrator is the writer; alarming numbers of readers assume when reading a poem that not only is the narrator the writer, but also a totally reliable narrator who never embroiders experience. Quite recently, a poet I know via social media had to correct online information about herself which stated confidently that she had conceived her child via IVF. She'd done no such thing and never even had IVF, but she'd written a poem about it, so naturally they assumed It Must All Be True! Or, possibly, that it should be, for I've heard people maintain that though novelists are allowed to make things up, lyric poets should "write from the heart". I've mentioned before that when someone at a reading assumes it's All True and you say "no, actually I made it up", there is sometimes a look of disappointment. Someone once speculated, about a book of elegies for a poet's wife, whether people's reactions to it would be altered if they found out it wasn't true, that the lady was alive and well (she wasn't; the critic was just being interestingly hypothetical). But I was mildly horrified by the number of readers who said it would ruin the book for them - hang on, the words would be exactly the same? But it would be insincere, says a lady who presumably doesn't feel incapable of being moved by emotions expressed in a novel merely on the ground that the person expressing them never existed?
Personally I never assume that the I in a poem is (a) the writer or (b) telling the truth (it isn't the case in my work, so why should anyone else's be different?). In fact of course it sometimes is; there are poets whose I voice is sometimes, often or even perhaps always them, and who write so much from their own experience that you might mistake the result for autobiography. But they aren't the most memorable poets, not unless they manage along the way to transcend the experience, to universalise the personal and go beyond facts to a deeper "truth" that comes from imagination, perception and the transforming power of language.
What makes me doubt this idea is its striking similarity to a technique of the right, the hyper-individualisation of every argument. Unless you are penniless right now, this second, you can't complain about inequality. Even more exclusively, unless you were born poor you can't take the side of the poor. I dislike the argument because it's anti-intellectual, dismissing reason and systems – all the tools of discursive progress – and attempting to replace them with the power of personal testimony.
I'm not entirely sure if this is specifically an argument of the right. But it does strike me as quite similar to the kind of criticism of fiction, and especially of poetry, which focuses on "did it really happen?" and seems to think (a) that the factual truth of the words employed is more important than the skill displayed in the use of them and (b) that writers who have not been there, done that, have no locus to write about experiences they have not actually been through -or, as Williams might put it, dismissing imagination, empathy, research and verbal skill and attempting to replace them with the power of personal testimony. There is sometimes a political dimension to this, in that writing about characters from a different culture or even, sometimes, gender, can be dismissed as "appropriation". This worries me in itself, because, though such writing demands proper research and sensitivity, if it isn't allowed at all, I don't see how fiction can ever be universal rather than somewhat boringly compartmentalised: is not part of the point of writing to be able to step outside oneself and into others? But it isn't purely political; it's also commercial in that readers seem to want to think the writer at least could have been there, done that. Thus male Mills & Boon writers use female pseudonyms, while women writing m/m erotica use male ones, and both happen more often than the innocent reader might think.
The specific problem for poets seems to be the I voice allied to the lyric form. Nobody reading a novel in the I voice assumes that the narrator is the writer; alarming numbers of readers assume when reading a poem that not only is the narrator the writer, but also a totally reliable narrator who never embroiders experience. Quite recently, a poet I know via social media had to correct online information about herself which stated confidently that she had conceived her child via IVF. She'd done no such thing and never even had IVF, but she'd written a poem about it, so naturally they assumed It Must All Be True! Or, possibly, that it should be, for I've heard people maintain that though novelists are allowed to make things up, lyric poets should "write from the heart". I've mentioned before that when someone at a reading assumes it's All True and you say "no, actually I made it up", there is sometimes a look of disappointment. Someone once speculated, about a book of elegies for a poet's wife, whether people's reactions to it would be altered if they found out it wasn't true, that the lady was alive and well (she wasn't; the critic was just being interestingly hypothetical). But I was mildly horrified by the number of readers who said it would ruin the book for them - hang on, the words would be exactly the same? But it would be insincere, says a lady who presumably doesn't feel incapable of being moved by emotions expressed in a novel merely on the ground that the person expressing them never existed?
Personally I never assume that the I in a poem is (a) the writer or (b) telling the truth (it isn't the case in my work, so why should anyone else's be different?). In fact of course it sometimes is; there are poets whose I voice is sometimes, often or even perhaps always them, and who write so much from their own experience that you might mistake the result for autobiography. But they aren't the most memorable poets, not unless they manage along the way to transcend the experience, to universalise the personal and go beyond facts to a deeper "truth" that comes from imagination, perception and the transforming power of language.
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