Wednesday, 26 August 2009
'Realism, or what we see as realism'
Anne Fine - a very good writer for adults as well as children - is worried about the effects a diet of downbeat literature might be having on child readers. Although it's very hard to judge the effects of books - or any other art form - on anybody, I think she's probably on to something (perhaps even one of the reasons why so many children give up on books altogether? Or why nihilistic adult fiction seems so popular?). Hope, aspiration and sheer escapism can all be legitimately fed by children's (or indeed adult) fiction, and the fact that so many of the most popular and enduring stories have a happy ending suggests that the structure answers a pretty deep-seated desire. The basic misconception that has led to a profusion of bleak children's fiction is that it is somehow more 'real'. It represents, as Anne Fine says, 'realism, or what we see as realism' - a good distinction; there is nothing more innately real in a relentlessly bleak narrative than in one that ends happily. Almost everybody's life contains (often intermixed) bleak narratives and happy narratives, even happy endings (necessarily provisional) - are the former narratives any more 'real' than the latter? Surely not, and the will to regard them as more real seems to me to be related to the bleak scientistic reductionism that insists on telling us what is 'really' going on when, say, we fall in love or enjoy a work of art. Really? Why should an event in life be more real at the level of neuroscience or evolutionary psychology than it is in our actual human experience? This seems as much a flight from reality as an embrace of it - as does the self-conscious 'realist' bleakness of much children's (and adult) fiction.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is all very well but the big news today is that Bob Dylan is in talks to be the voice of a new Satnav system! What are your thoughts?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/bob-dylan/6082578/Bob-Dylan-to-become-the-voice-of-your-satnav.html
I'm speechless Joe - but on reflection I suspect this might be one of His Bobness's little pranks. He's such a rascal these days - seldom out of the news...
ReplyDeletepersonally I think it doesnt matter if something written is happy or bleak, as long as it is unforced and not turgid. A well written book of both genres can leave you feeling happy with the expertly conjoured gloomy atmospherics, or sad with melancholy laughter
ReplyDeletegood happy - Tom sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
bad happy - Anything by Ben Elton
good bleak - Great Expectations
bad bleak - The End of the Affair by Grahame Greene
etcetc
His Bobness's impenetrable croak would certainly liven up car journeys. "TuurGrrrnngh". "What was that? Did he say right or left?"
ReplyDeleteIf we wanted realism in our stories they should all end inconclusively, anti-climactically and without any lessons being learnt. Mind you that sometimes can work very well, but only in adult books and only because the norm is for a proper resolution.
One of my favourite bleak endings is A Handful of Dust, which ends bizarrely and incongruously with the main character held captive and forced to spend the rest of his life reading Dickens aloud to a nutty native. According to Wikipedia that had to be changed to a happy ending for the US publication.
by the way - I thought kids were supposed to be too mollycoddled and high in self-esteem these days? Surely they should all be reading really miserable books or else our entire nation will grow up thinking they're amazing and bound to win the final of X-Factor
ReplyDeleteI've always thought fairytales were blacker than your average JG Ballard.
ReplyDelete"...the will to regard them as more real seems to me to be related to the bleak scientistic reductionism that insists on telling us what is 'really' going on when, say, we fall in love or enjoy a work of art. Really? Why should an event in life be more real at the level of neuroscience or evolutionary psychology than it is in our actual human experience?"
ReplyDeleteBecause our own experiences are not objective. Our feelings tell us only what we want to hear. If we rely on them as the prime mover in our lives, then that's all we'll ever hear. Demonstrable facts are always preferable to the vague fantasies our brains tend to thrust on us.
Science is not meant to edify. If we're disillousioned by it, that's our problem. Truth does not care about us, which is why it can seem "bleak" from our perspective. That's why so many people run from it to cower under the venner of "emotional truth" (a.k.a. wishful thinking).
We all have to make a choice. Do we wish to find out how things really are or are we in service to our own happiness? Wool can rip if stretched too far over the eyes.
This reminds me of something from "The Screwtape Letters", by C.S. Lewis. Screwtape tells his nephew that one of the greatest triumphs of the devils is just this: teaching humans to view their 'positive' emotional responses as fundamentally subjective, and therefore meaningless, and their 'negative' emotional responses as fundamentally objective, and therefore meaningful.
ReplyDeleteLewis put it much more artfully, of course, but the idea has stuck with me for years.
Hi. I got here through the link on Andrew Sullivan's site. Nice post. I was particularly intrigued because I recently wrote about the same thing, more or less, on my own humble blog.
ReplyDelete"Even happy endings (necessarily provisional)." That was more or less my angle on it, but you put it more pithily. Anyway, nice to see someone else taking this point of view.
The Greeks knew something that we seem to forget: human life is always tragedy. Everyone dies in the end. The balance of most people's lives is more suffering than bliss. That we can live in the face of this is the core of human greatness. Any narrative which neglects this basic truth is a lie.
ReplyDeleteThere's a reason Romance novels are one of the biggest moneymakers in publishing. They sell the most, make a ton of money, and the books and authors get almost no mainstream respect because of course anything that ends happily must be crap. Some people like to read depressing books because it makes them feel better about their own lives or something. Me? I want to read about how people find success - whether that's in love or work, or just whatever, I want my stories to work out for the best.
ReplyDeleteAnd those stories that keep going on with their lack of lessons learned, and never having a conclusion? That's what you call a soap opera.