tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post525783980900851538..comments2024-02-05T10:41:31.777-05:00Comments on I Saw Lightning Fall: The Proposition Is the Father to the TaleLoren Eatonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-63255878228799187962011-07-28T08:58:39.950-04:002011-07-28T08:58:39.950-04:00Mona,
For not the first time, I wish my literary ...Mona,<br /><br />For not the first time, I wish my literary education had included more American writers. I've read precious little of James or Woolf, and I think I'm impoverished for it.Loren Eatonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-26302439667809892122011-07-28T08:57:29.765-04:002011-07-28T08:57:29.765-04:00CR,
Often, rather than stating conclusions, stori...CR,<br /><br /><i>Often, rather than stating conclusions, stories leave questions open--they are places to make propositions, perhaps, rather than mere vehicles for those propositions.</i><br /><br /><b>Yes</b>. C.S. Lewis said something similar in (I think) <i>An Experiment in Criticism</i>, claiming that readers of fantasy couldn't discard such stories once they'd grasped their underlying assertions. And he was right. Stories are seamless garments; you can't dispose of plot, character and setting once you've apprehended propositional themes.<br /><br />But that <i>doesn't</i> mean the propositions aren't there. And that doesn't mean readers can analyze them.<br /><br />Perhaps "conviction" was a poor word choice. However, even stories that are more exploratory than didactic or polemic <i>still</i> have propositions woven into their fabric. By exploring a theme, the author asserts, "This idea is worth exploring even if I don't have a particular conclusion on it." <br /><br />I don't really like preachy stories, truth be told. But I also don't like it when people claim that stories don't approve or disapprove certain things. One quote (I can't remember from where) went, "Asking a story to give a message is like asking a panda to juggle." But that's wrong on so many levels. As <a href="http://isawlightningfall.blogspot.com/2010/06/you-cant-help-but-sling-themes.html" rel="nofollow">Brooks Landon said</a>, we can help but create propositions even as we write sentences.Loren Eatonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-25469884872206718472011-07-27T16:25:18.692-04:002011-07-27T16:25:18.692-04:00This reminds me of Henry James theory of the impre...This reminds me of Henry James theory of the impressionistic novel, where more than one points of view are presented!<br /><br />Also of what Virginia Woolf once said:<br /><br />" Life is not a series of gig lamps, symmetrically arranged. Life is a halo, a semi-transparent envelop that surrounds us from the beginning of our consciousness to the end"Monahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08615034229525061880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-62200431252824423612011-07-27T15:51:17.273-04:002011-07-27T15:51:17.273-04:00"Life is too complicated to hold in your head..."Life is too complicated to hold in your head and relationships are too immense and multi-faceted to easily comprehend. So we write and tell stories to make sense of our relationships and existence."<br /><br />I think I'll push back again. Some things can be best told in propositions (I don't want Joss Whedon directing the instructions for how to tile my bathroom. Well, actually I do, but I know it wouldn't make me the best tiler. And then I'd trip and die pointlessly at the climactic moment of triumph.) Some things can't. <br /><br />The phrase "war is Hell," for instance. Sure it's a proposition, and it is true as far as it goes. But it doesn't carry as much truth as, say, Saving Private Ryan, which although fictional communicates in a way propositions don't.<br /><br />(This is why Chesterton once said that there is nothing so false as a truism--especially when the truism is true.) <br /><br />Or another example. One could make the proposition: "sometimes following moral dictates can make you feel immoral and condemned." That one's confusing, and doesn't seem to say a lot (as propositions go.) But who has read the "All right then, I'll go to Hell!" passage of Huck Finn without leaving a changed and more thoughtful person? <br /><br />This is why writers ranging from T.S. Eliot to Flannery O'Connor have stated that a good story is the most efficient way of stating/doing whatever it is the story states/does. O'Connor said something along the lines of "a good story cannot be summarized, it can only be expanded." <br /><br />Conviction may be the father to many tales (though I think some good tales are also born of curiosity, trauma, or confusion), but the tale also has a mother, childhood friends, schools, and a variety of other formative influences. Often, rather than stating conclusions, stories leave questions open--they are places to make propositions, perhaps, rather than mere vehicles for those propositions.Chestertonian Ramblerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01550643992523840950noreply@blogger.com