Saying Something

Once again, I'm contemplating the purpose of writing fiction. I think fiction should primarily entertain. I don't remember which book it was (Stein On Writing by Sol Stein or one of John Gardner's books?) that made the observation that reading a piece of fiction should provide an experience more interesting than not reading it. Or something like that. And I agree. I think there's nothing wrong with simply entertaining. In fact, if a book isn't entertaining, then no matter how much it plays with form or touches on important subjects, it fails. For me, one of the great examples of this problem is Toni Morrison. Of course she's a best-selling writer and a Nobel laureate, and Beloved was voted by a group of publishing professionals to be the greatest American novel of the end of the twentieth century/beginning of the twenty-first. I have read two or three Morrison novels, and although I can analyze them for a literature course or admire the innovative way she tells a story, I simply don't enjoy reading her work. It's an entirely intellectual exercise for me with no emotional connection; the work doesn't resonate and excite me the way reading Hemingway or Roth or Salinger or Carver or so many others does. Of course, this is where the largely subjective nature of the whole thing comes in, and I recognize that regarding Morrison, my opinion is in the minority.

Anyway. The first objective is to engage, to entertain, to provide a dream that is superior to sitting around not reading. But that isn't necessarily enough, unless one is writing genre fiction. Simply being entertaining is fine for a mystery or an adventure story, and even in those cases, I think the best works have some additional resonance, some thematic elements that raise them above merely being a diverting way to spend several hours in another world. For example, The Shining is about the effects of alcoholism and abuse on a family; The Silence of the Lambs is largely about feminist ideals. But if one is writing something that is realistic, that isn't driven by high conflict or enormous events, if one is dealing with the small, the mundane, then I think by necessity the work must offer more than the experience of reading; it must have a lasting impact, leave the reader contemplating ideas. Right?

Here's part of my thinking. I wrote a story years ago about a lonely man who encounters a girl in a coffee shop and the experience affects his life; I brought it in to a grad school workshop, and my professor was able to succinctly express why it wasn't a great story: "Salinger did it first and did it better." Within the past year or so I received a rejection from a literary journal for a story about a young man contemplating having an affair; the rejection itself was a personal note rather than a form rejection slip. The editors informed me that although they wouldn't be publishing the story, they liked my writing and would happily consider more work from me. The problem with the piece I submitted is that it didn't "contribute anything new to a familiar situation." And, like my professor, these editors were exactly right. My story was well written, but it's nothing unique.

I'm not especially interested in experimenting with form and doing anything wildly different. So how do I make my work significant? How do I add something worth paying attention to? If offered a choice between my story and Salinger's, I would recommend that a reader pass over mine in favor of the master's. I'm also not interested in writing plot-driven genre fiction. So, if my work isn't gripping because of the high tension and it isn't reinventing what a story does, why should a reader bother with it? I think the answer might lie in having something worth writing about, some observations about the world that make a reader feel like perhaps they've experienced what it's like to be somebody else or to reconsider experience from another perspective. I think I have to have some sort of intellectual angle or theme that elevates my fiction.

And that is the challenge.

I've recently been working on a short story that I began last summer. When I started it, I had no idea what it was "about." I just had an image of a character in my head and then something happened, and then something else happened; another character came into the scene, and eventually I had a rough draft. I've reconsidered and reevaluated and reconfigured the plot and characters, and I'm at the point now of rewriting the story so that it will likely have little resemblance to the initial version I wrote a few months ago. But the issue I'm struggling with is this: what the hell is the thing is about? I think I've got some interesting plot details and some reasonably engaging characters, but I'm still not sure that the story has anything to say. I have some rough themes that the story touches on--death, loneliness, attempting to make connections with others, the unceasing progress of life--but I'm not sure that I'm actually saying anything about anything. Touching on a theme is not the same as actually having a position. Is it? I remember Stephen King commenting in his On Writing that theme is overrated and tends to come on its own without the writer having to stress over it too much. I suspect he's right, but he also had the advantage of writing plot-driven high tension pieces where theme can elevate the piece but isn't necessarily required to give it its purpose.

So what I wonder, what I've been wondering about more and more for the past year or two, is whether I have anything worth saying to the world. Maybe the best I can hope for is that I'll write stories that others before me have written better. Maybe I'll have one decent story that's basically a Salinger ripoff and another that is a pale version of a Carver story. Is that enough? Can one ever truly hope to add anything new? Is that a completely unrealistic goal that is best abandoned sooner rather than later? I used to shake my head at fellow students who talked about being original because I long felt it was an unattainable objective. I also felt, and still do, that having the goal of making a difference, of changing the world or changing people's minds through one's art is ludicrous to the point of nearly being delusional. Yet somehow, despite knowing that for a long time, I'm still struck by the difficulty of facing that reality. If I truly accept that I can't contribute anything new, then what am I actually trying to do? Is it enough to do something old and do it well? I hope so, but I don't know.