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Windows on the World / One event, three perspectives!
So, I think about fanfiction a lot, y'all may have noticed. And serial fiction. And the whole act of making fiction "real". What is it in a narrative that makes us think -- after the door is shut, after the windows are pushed down, after the covers are closed -- that the story goes on, before the first page, and after the last?
If you think of a single-author book as a window, or a doorway, you realize that even through you can only see a small portion of the world (i.e. what's framed by the aperture), there must be so much more just out of frame. If there isn't this sense, then the story is flat, two dimensional -- it doesn't encourage wandering. But in a good story, you don't think that the small, squared off picture is all that's real. Because if the thing is three-dimensional, it has solidity. You can pick it up and turn it around. It still exists when you look at it from another side.
Think about mythforms. Superheros. They all exist and the more people use them, carve another perspective onto them, the more solid they actually get.
From Henry James's preface to Portrait of a Lady (a little wordy; James never used one word where fifty would do) :
Now, apply this not just to fiction in general, but to a single story. Isn't this the act of fanfic? To make things real?
D. and I argue about this all the time. He thinks that contradictory/differing versions make things less real. I think they make them more so -- just like multiple eye witness accounts differ, if they're true. When they're identical -- that's when you begin to think people are lying.
What d'you think?
I wonder about this a lot.
On a not entirely unrelated note, remember the Paul Cornell thing? Here is my version, the lovely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
magnetgirl's version, the dulcet tones of rm's recap...and Paul Cornell's account of same.
Kind of funny, no? We loom so large in our own minds. For everyone else, we're all just sidekicks and extras. Sometimes we're the cool best friend, or the romantic interest. But protagonists? We're all our own. As it should be.
I almost called my thesis "Windows on the World" but then decided the WTC/9-11 allusion was not quite... what I was going for. Fucking terrorists.
If you think of a single-author book as a window, or a doorway, you realize that even through you can only see a small portion of the world (i.e. what's framed by the aperture), there must be so much more just out of frame. If there isn't this sense, then the story is flat, two dimensional -- it doesn't encourage wandering. But in a good story, you don't think that the small, squared off picture is all that's real. Because if the thing is three-dimensional, it has solidity. You can pick it up and turn it around. It still exists when you look at it from another side.
Think about mythforms. Superheros. They all exist and the more people use them, carve another perspective onto them, the more solid they actually get.
From Henry James's preface to Portrait of a Lady (a little wordy; James never used one word where fifty would do) :
The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million-- a number of possible windows not to be reckoned, rather; every one of which has been pierced, or is still pierceable, in its vast front, by the need of the individual vision and by the pressure of the individual will. These apertures, of dissimilar shape and size, hang so, all together, over the human scene that we might have expected of them a greater sameness of report than we find. They are but windows at the best, mere holes in a dead wall, disconnected, perched aloft; they are not hinged doors opening straight upon life. But they have this mark of their own that at each of them stands a figure with a pair of eyes, or at least with a field-glass, which forms, again and again, for observation, a unique instrument, insuring to the person making use of it an impression distinct from every other. He and his neighbours are watching the same show, but one seeing more where the other sees less, one seeing black where the other sees white, one seeing big where the other sees small, one seeing coarse where the other sees fine. And so on, and so on; there is fortunately no saying on what, for the particular pair of eyes, the window may NOT open; "fortunately" by reason, precisely, of this incalculability of range. The spreading field, the human scene, is the "choice of subject"; the pierced aperture, either broad or balconied or slit-like and low-browed, is the "literary form"; but they are, singly or together, as nothing without the posted presence of the watcher--without, in other words, the consciousness of the artist.
Now, apply this not just to fiction in general, but to a single story. Isn't this the act of fanfic? To make things real?
D. and I argue about this all the time. He thinks that contradictory/differing versions make things less real. I think they make them more so -- just like multiple eye witness accounts differ, if they're true. When they're identical -- that's when you begin to think people are lying.
What d'you think?
I wonder about this a lot.
On a not entirely unrelated note, remember the Paul Cornell thing? Here is my version, the lovely
magnetgirl's version, the dulcet tones of rm's recap...and Paul Cornell's account of same.Kind of funny, no? We loom so large in our own minds. For everyone else, we're all just sidekicks and extras. Sometimes we're the cool best friend, or the romantic interest. But protagonists? We're all our own. As it should be.
I almost called my thesis "Windows on the World" but then decided the WTC/9-11 allusion was not quite... what I was going for. Fucking terrorists.
no subject
I think that myth-forms, or archetypes, or simply certain sorts of storytelling, tend to hang around for reasons that don't always have much to do with their content (let alone some deep rootedness in human psychology, or whatevah). They persist in part because they do, in fact, offer an opening for re-telling, and making sense of something within the teller's or reader's own frame of reference. And at any given moment, such narratives have multiple possible re-tellings that can suspend disbelief or draw attention to their own artifice.
One such strategy is the Rashomon-like interpretation of a single text/event from several different viewpoints (a synchronic retelling, if you will); another is sequential or serial (diachronic). A lot of fictions, including fanfic, use both -- although seldom simultaneously, which to me is interesting to think about. I think that both approaches are equally capable of creating effective "windows." Whether the illusion sustains a reader's belief, I think, depends as much on frame of reference as the fictional framing. (Witness D. and the lawyer above.)
And now I've committed the Jamesian crime of using too many words without any of his elegance. Oh well.
I very much enjoyed, btw, getting the "Rashomon" version of the Cornell meetup. :D
no subject
They persist in part because they do, in fact, offer an opening for re-telling, and making sense of something within the teller's or reader's own frame of reference. And at any given moment, such narratives have multiple possible re-tellings that can suspend disbelief or draw attention to their own artifice.
Interesting. What do you think provides this opening for re-telling? Is it a formal property?
I think the contrast you draw between the multiple viewpoints vs. the sequential installment is fascinating. My own feeling is that it is fractures in a narrative -- gaps and/or errors which invite participation from the reader/auditor. Both strategies you suggest provide these in their different ways. Think of driving a pick into ice and watching cracks form around the fissure (multiple viewpoints) vs. the gaps between, say rungs on a ladder.
Seemed pretty elegant to me!
Glad you enjoyed the multiple Cornell experience. :-D
no subject
The opening for re-telling can be a formal one, and serial fiction is a good example simply because its form allows outcomes to remain suspended, at least for a time. The more complex its installments, also, the more chance that "continuity" issues will arise -- the gaps and errors you allude to. But even very simple narrative devices like point of view or the use of an apparently omniscient narrator allow such openings; it's generally possible to imagine a story being retold simply by shifting the narrating voice.
But when I think of elements independent of specific content that seem to enable re-telling -- especially re-tellings over time that re-imagine the story in a more contemporary setting -- I think of even more basic things: the degree to which choice or conflict drives a story, and the extent to which motivations or conditions remain opaque in any given version. (Different versions of Greek myths, the King Arthur stories, most of Shakespeare...) Given a character or a premise of sufficient heft, even with some limiting conditions, the possibilities are still infinite.
I'm reminded, in this connection, of Rach's recent and excellent post about parallels between acting and fanwriting: in both cases, one takes on the task of giving voice and embodiment to character and story that already exists in some form. Writing's always reading, always interpretation.
I like your analogies of the ice and the ladder -- although I'd add that one element of the latter (sic) is that the rungs often break after you've stepped on them, and there may be nowhere to go but up!