Why do writers write?
What compels a writer of fiction to tell a story? There are probably as many personal answers to this question as there are writers; but fundamentally they fall into two general categories: those who write versions of their own life, a very public confessional and therapy session, and those who create a narrative, imagine a world made up by bits and pieces of whole clothes of the mind. There is, of necessity, overlap in the two approaches, and yet they are clearly delineated, each beloved by their readers for the very path they had chosen to follow.
The heedless bravery of the confessional author had always astonished me. Ruthlessness is the primary need here, allied to the sheer ability to string sentences together in a pleasing fashion, but equally important. The disregard of pain caused to the very people who make up one’s life has to be total. There are those who feel that this ruthlessness – honesty, if you will – is the primary requisite of any great piece of literature, so that if you don’t have your life blood spilled onto the printed page, the result is somehow of less importance. I disagree. Perhaps those who have the ability to create a world outside of their immediate surroundings, to imagine historical pasts and unknown futures, to travel to faraway places and tell tales about them while keeping their own pain to themselves are talents of at least the same magnitude. Grateful for both approaches, the reader is the winner.
Reading John Updike from his earliest short stories to the last novels had been an experience that informed my own life. The pain and self-explication radiating from these works were cathartic, for it felt as if he were writing one’s innermost thoughts somehow gleaned by him, clarified by him and translated into glorious language. There are short stories of his I still re-read regularly, just to evoke the emotions of the moment I had first encountered them, stunned that someone else had put on the page what I would have if only I had his talent and dared to inflict pain on everyone in my vicinity. The “Rabbit” books punctuated and described the period between the ‘60s and the 90’s with more emotional truth than most dispassionate learned essays could possibly have done. – Philip Roth had spent an entire literary career by describing versions of his life, the facets changing but the essence ever remaining the same: himself. “Portnoy’s Complaint”, the “Zuckerman” books are superb writing, but it is hard to envision the havoc they must have caused in Roth’s real-life vicinity. At the same time, I remember reading one of his latter novels, “American Pastoral”, overwhelmed with gratitude, for I felt that he spoke for me and saved me the trouble of trying to speak for myself.
And yet. There is not a single reference to self in Patrick O’Brian’s epic, twenty-volume series of sea-stories taking place during the Napoleonic wars. The sheer glory of the description of an entire historic period, the invention of an enormous group of people representing a whole range of classes, the interaction among them that go on for decades, the drama of their friendships and loves as well as the drama of the sea battles introduces one to a whole world beyond the one that is all too familiar. The pleasure is of a different sort: not of “recognition” but a widening of horizons. – Paul Scott’s “Raj Quartet” will take you into colonial India and immerse you, dazzle you by taking you out of yourself and painting a picture of such detail, such empathy for such a large, varied group that coming to the end of it you feel enriched by having added a whole aspect to yourself.
While Arundathy Roy’s heartrending “The God of Small Things”, also taking place in India though at a later period, is a purely personal tale that, truly or not, feels entirely autobiographical. Marcel Proust gives you a whole world but, when all is said and done, it is the world of the narrator, his emotions, his relationship to those he encounters, his comments on the terrain he travels through. Thomas Mann’s “Joseph” books, on the other hand, create an entire biblical universe that is a tale told in a magnificent sweep; heartrending, exciting, hypnotic – and it is not about himself.
We must be simply grateful that great writers exist, and keep reading.
The heedless bravery of the confessional author had always astonished me. Ruthlessness is the primary need here, allied to the sheer ability to string sentences together in a pleasing fashion, but equally important. The disregard of pain caused to the very people who make up one’s life has to be total. There are those who feel that this ruthlessness – honesty, if you will – is the primary requisite of any great piece of literature, so that if you don’t have your life blood spilled onto the printed page, the result is somehow of less importance. I disagree. Perhaps those who have the ability to create a world outside of their immediate surroundings, to imagine historical pasts and unknown futures, to travel to faraway places and tell tales about them while keeping their own pain to themselves are talents of at least the same magnitude. Grateful for both approaches, the reader is the winner.
Reading John Updike from his earliest short stories to the last novels had been an experience that informed my own life. The pain and self-explication radiating from these works were cathartic, for it felt as if he were writing one’s innermost thoughts somehow gleaned by him, clarified by him and translated into glorious language. There are short stories of his I still re-read regularly, just to evoke the emotions of the moment I had first encountered them, stunned that someone else had put on the page what I would have if only I had his talent and dared to inflict pain on everyone in my vicinity. The “Rabbit” books punctuated and described the period between the ‘60s and the 90’s with more emotional truth than most dispassionate learned essays could possibly have done. – Philip Roth had spent an entire literary career by describing versions of his life, the facets changing but the essence ever remaining the same: himself. “Portnoy’s Complaint”, the “Zuckerman” books are superb writing, but it is hard to envision the havoc they must have caused in Roth’s real-life vicinity. At the same time, I remember reading one of his latter novels, “American Pastoral”, overwhelmed with gratitude, for I felt that he spoke for me and saved me the trouble of trying to speak for myself.
And yet. There is not a single reference to self in Patrick O’Brian’s epic, twenty-volume series of sea-stories taking place during the Napoleonic wars. The sheer glory of the description of an entire historic period, the invention of an enormous group of people representing a whole range of classes, the interaction among them that go on for decades, the drama of their friendships and loves as well as the drama of the sea battles introduces one to a whole world beyond the one that is all too familiar. The pleasure is of a different sort: not of “recognition” but a widening of horizons. – Paul Scott’s “Raj Quartet” will take you into colonial India and immerse you, dazzle you by taking you out of yourself and painting a picture of such detail, such empathy for such a large, varied group that coming to the end of it you feel enriched by having added a whole aspect to yourself.
While Arundathy Roy’s heartrending “The God of Small Things”, also taking place in India though at a later period, is a purely personal tale that, truly or not, feels entirely autobiographical. Marcel Proust gives you a whole world but, when all is said and done, it is the world of the narrator, his emotions, his relationship to those he encounters, his comments on the terrain he travels through. Thomas Mann’s “Joseph” books, on the other hand, create an entire biblical universe that is a tale told in a magnificent sweep; heartrending, exciting, hypnotic – and it is not about himself.
We must be simply grateful that great writers exist, and keep reading.
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