On Style
And in defense of the flower.
Today’s epic comes courtesy of a recent little conversation I had with a friend, where I was accused of favoring matters of style over those of story (and, I suppose, clarity) whenever judging literary efforts. I hope he won’t mind his case being used as a bit of a — thin — foil, but I do believe that this is a very important argument (within art, anyway), and that my side of it is the only faultless one. To put it simply, this isn’t an issue of form versus substance, because in art form is substance. Explanations below.
Strike One
The argument for clarity only really holds up if one actually believes that the point of writing as art is to tell an intrinsically interesting story — you know, that old fallacy that a writer is just a storymaker. Thankfully, a look at the literary canon quickly proves just how wrong that notion is. Two of this century’s greatest novels, The Great Gatsby and Ulysses, are notoriously weak plot-wise: the former uses a commonplace (though certainly intriguing) premise and packs barely enough action for a 25-page Stephen King novella (into its 150 pages, that is); the latter, well, gives us 18 hours of impressively ordinary (in)action in more than 600 pages. In other words, neither is particularly inventive at coming up with anything but a banal scenario.
So why are these novels so fantastic? I’m sure you guessed the answer. The key here is to understand that literature — as indeed any form of art — isn’t so much about what is said, but rather how it’s said. Both Joyce and Fitzgerald were in their own (vastly different) ways gifted with a highly poetic, at times lyrical style (amongst many, many other qualities)… and that’s what truly matters.
Style and Story
In his lectures, Vladimir Nabokov argues that “there are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter” — and plays favorites — “but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.” The first two traits are easily identifiable, the storyteller being associated with plot (i.e. what’s mentioned above), and the teacher with ideas — anything from philosophy to physics. The key here, and the reason why the third is so much more important, is to understand that non-artists can be very successful in either of these first two aspects: journalists in storytelling and scholars in ideas, for example. Thus, what Nabokov describes as ‘the enchanter’ is in fact nothing more than the writer’s only truly artistic feature. And yes, that feature is very much distinct from the story.
The rationale here has to do with what the purpose of writing — and indeed art in general — is: to express and elicit emotion (if in any doubt over this fundamental point, I suggest the reader refer to this earlier post). With that in mind, we begin to understand that a writer obsessed with narrative clarity over anything else is quite frankly very wrong, and most likely very bad… it is simply a misunderstanding of what writing is and what it sets out to do: The artist doesn’t create solely to capture a scene, but rather does so to capture a mood! That the former may be used to effect the latter is true, but nonetheless irrelevant, because the point to art isn’t to render life or to entertain. To put it even more simply: the story is far from the only way a writer can conjure up feeling; in fact it is the least effective way.
The process by which a story produces emotions depends heavily on the reader, and appeals to hisorher’s real-life experiences. The problem here is that a story’s emotional effect isn’t dependent on the method — i.e. theoretically the same story would elicit the same emotion whether read in a book, seen in a movie, or told by a friend. A story itself therefore cannot be considered art; one has to realize that the actual differences in feeling from either of these are the result of the form (the style!) with which each medium will convey the narrative… not the narrative itself. This more instinctive, more powerful method of expression may be broadly defined as aesthetics, and can in writing be found at its purest within poetry (or the prose poets: Joyce, Nabokov, Lowry, etc…); it is the very manner in which a story or an idea is conveyed (including structure!) and transformed into emotion. Since the story itself has a comparatively smaller influence, only the few most inventive storymakers — the J. R. R. Tolkien’s and Philip K. Dick’s of the world — ever manage to approach their counterparts’ emotional depths, and even then…
Hemingway and the Mistake of Simplicity
At this point in the conversation the opposite side will always mention Ernest Hemingway as the perfect example of a simplistic — or non-existent — style that favors both story and emotion. That’s actually a good thing, because he proves my point. But before we get to him, a final note on clarity:
Literature, by virtue of its being art, is not required to entertain. In one of her greater essays, Zadie Smith points out (though she herself is quite a clear writer) that “a novel is a two-way street, in which the labour required on either side is, in the end, equal. Reading, done properly, is every bit as tough as writing — I really believe that. As for those people who align reading with the essentially passive experience of watching television, they only wish to debase reading and readers.” Her analogy is that of a musician playing from sheet music, and the assertion is pretty obvious: an artist has absolutely no obligation to make things easy for the reader — as long as the work is ultimately intelligible (and any good), then the effort a reader has to make to understand it is worthwhile. This is obviously the case for a great many writers, from Joyce and Henry James all the way down to the ancient Shakespeare, Percy Shelley and Milton. Something worth remembering.
With regards to Hemingway, the mistake here is to think that his writing is somehow devoid of style. I venture that the truth is in fact entirely to the contrary, and that his work is heavily stylized, often pointlessly so. Take a look at a Parisian description from The Sun Also Rises (his first and best novel):
“The dancing-club was a bal musette in the Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève. Five nights a week the working people of the Panthéon quarter danced there. One night a week it was the dancing-club. On Monday nights it was closed. When we arrived it was quite empty, except for a policeman sitting near the door, the wife of the proprietor back of the zinc bar, and the proprietor himself. The daughter of the house came downstairs as we went in. There were long benches, and tables ran across the room, and at the far end a dancing-floor.”
Do not think for one second that this is styleless! The simple sentences (he never uses colons, semi-colons, or em dashes) or the repetitions aren’t exactly the product of a person writing as naturally as possible — they are to a very great extent willed (though a quick glance at his letters proves he wasn’t particularly good at writing any other way either). The reason why it works here is that the emotional color — shall we say — is entirely monotone; this fits the idea of the “Lost Generation”, the disabused and morally corrupted veterans wandering aimlessly across Europe. This style isn’t oppressive, as some critics have called it, but rather fully repressed: the author never really shows us how his characters feel. The result, and we know because Hemingway actually admitted it, is that the true emotional expression is found between the lines, beneath the action — the reader has to more or less guess at it.
For the sake of comparison, here is a passage from a highly expressive — though similar in both place and feeling — writer:
“Stepping off the train I knew immediately that I had made a fatal mistake. The Lycée was a little distance from the station; I walked down the main street in the early dusk of winter, feeling my way towards my destination. A light snow was falling, the trees sparkled with frost. Passed a couple of huge, empty cafés that looked like dismal waiting rooms. Silent, empty gloom — that’s how it impressed me. A hopeless, jerk-water town where mustard is turned out in carload lots, in vats and tuns and barrels and pots and cute-looking little jars.”
This is Henry Miller’s Dijon description from Tropic of Cancer, and his tone (gloomy, pointless, bored), though flowerized, is eerily similar to The Sun Also Rises’. And yet, whereas Hemingway made sure he never expressed what his character was going through, Miller does the exact opposite: He uses a wide range of imagery both to convey how the place looks and how the character — in this case, him — reacts to it. This dear old Ernest almost never does, telling us — when he has to — what a character is feeling as plainly as possible, never (ever!) actually expressing it:
“I was very angry. Somehow they always made me angry. I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure. Instead, I walked down the street and had a beer at the bar at the next Bal. The beer was good and I had a worse cognac to take the taste out of my mouth.”
In Defense of the Flower
On writing style, the correct analogy may once again be found with music, and in particular technique. It is obvious that a piece of music requiring little technical ability may be composed, or played, in a very beautiful manner — yet technique is what allows the artist the greatest flexibility in creating melodies, harmonies (or any sound, really)… and thus the greatest depth of expression. While of course technique is far from all that matters — the taste and talent to choose the right method, the right style of expression is still supreme — it gives the artist the ability to fully portray a greater range of emotions. Without it, his work runs the risk of being hollow; not very good, in other words. And this is exactly what happened with Hemingway, as his stylization progressively deteriorated into further and further monotone; or as a certain master of Romantic expression, Scott Fitzgerald, described For Whom the Bell Tolls: “a thoroughly superficial book with all the profundity of Rebecca”. In order to convey emotions effectively (and not simply the lack of emotion), one necessarily needs to add some musicality, flower into it… that’s what the entire medium is for!
I suppose my objection with simplicity, stylized or not, is quite the same as the one I have against minimalism: It just too easily becomes the refuge of the untalented, the unimaginative; those who think the entire art should be uncomplicated because the method proved its worth in a few narrow circumstances. And sure, the Hemingway extreme works wonders in action scenes, or dealing with bitterness and emotional repression, yet full expression necessarily requires a greater show of technique… it’s unavoidable.
Anyway, I’ll rest my case with descriptions penned by two of my favorite authors: The first is Zadie Smith’s London, from NW, the second is Lawrence Durrell’s Lake Mareotis, from Balthazar —
“The window logs Kilburn’s skyline. Ungentrified, ungentrifiable. Boom and bust never come here. Here bust is permanent. Empty State Empire, empty Odeon, graffiti-streaked sidings rising and falling like a rickety rollercoaster. Higgledy piggledy rooftops and chimneys, some high, some low, packed tightly, shaken fags in a box. Behind the opposite window, retreating Willesden. Number 37. In the 1880’s or thereabouts the whole thing went up at once — houses, churches, schools, cemeteries — an optimistic vision of Metroland. Little terraces, faux-Tudor piles. All the mod cons! Indoor toilet, hot water. Well-appointed country living for those tired of the city. Fast forward. Disappointed city living for those tired of their countries.”
“Landscape-tones: brown to bronze, steep skyline, low cloud, pearl ground with shadowed oyster and violet reflections. The lion-dust of desert: prophets’ tombs turned to zinc and copper at sunset on the ancient lake. Its huge sand-faults like watermarks from the air; green and citron giving to gunmetal, to a single plum-dark sail, moist, palpitant: sticky-winged nymph. Taposiris is dead among its tumbling columns and seamarks, vanished the Harpoon Men… Mareotis under a sky of hot lilac.”
Two vastly dissimilar versions of the flowery: The first (oft-quoted, and for very good reason) showcases Zadie Smith’s impressive wit, the depth of her ironic tone; the second, Durrell’s poetic impressionism, his uniquely vivid world. Both their rhythm (to prove rhythm is but a small component of style) and subject matters are alike (a landscape corrupted by time, etc) and yet, the emotional expression is at almost opposite ends. Why? Style.
