Geeky Star
Trek reference. I’ll explain as we
go along...
But first,
a story...
Back when I
was a young man in college and our country had just won its liberty from the
British Empire, I took a class on early American literature. There were only two books to study, both from
earlier that month. It was considered an
“easy A” course.
Okay, that
joke died pretty quick.
Anyway, I
was in my early American literature class and we were discussing Wieland
by Charles Brockdon Brown, first published in 1798. It’s considered an early American classic,
the first noteworthy American novel, and its author died penniless and drunk in
a snowbank. Story is, his own mother
wouldn’t even buy his books. He was
pretty much unknown during his lifetime outside of a small circle, which shrank
rapidly after his death. It wasn’t until
the 1920s that he became kind of known and retroactively entered into the
canon of great literature.
I asked my
professor about this. Why was
this book now being considered great literature? It had failed then, and barely anyone knew
about it now, how does it qualify?
Surely is it was great, people would read it on their own. Why should we consider it relevant now
when the author’s own mother didn’t even consider it relevant then?
Rather then
telling me to shut up or tossing me out of his class, said professor
congratulated me for bringing up a good point.
What’s considered “great literature” changes all the time. Every time someone publishes a new paper on Longfellow,
Irving, Melville, or Dickinson... the
canon changes. A lot of what we consider
“classics” were either ignored or thought of as populist crap in their time. A
fraction of it was literature. Almost none
of it was art.
Back in
1989 (just around the time I was questioning my professor about Brown’s book), Robin
Williams gave an interview where he talked about a production of Waiting for
Godot that he’d been in with Steve Martin the year before. “I dread the word ‘art,’” Williams told the
AP. “That's what we used to do every
night before we'd go on with Waiting for Godot. We'd go, ‘No art. Art dies tonight.’ We'd try to give it a life, instead of making Godot
so serious.”
Believe it
or not, the play sold out every performance.
People loved it. They lined up
every night hoping for no-shows and cancelled reservations.
Williams
knew something a lot of folks just can’t wrap their heads around. I can’t make art. No matter how much I try or how long I work
or how many guides I follow, art isn’t up to me. It’s up to everyone else. And how they define art changes all the
time. With every new paper or critique
or review, what’s art now becomes shallow and tired. And the hack stuff that stands the test of
time? Well, suddenly that’s art. Or maybe not.
Nobody knows.
Y’see,
Timmy, art doesn’t suck, but trying to make art really does. And usually (not always, but usually, in my
experience), the results of trying to make art suck. It feels forced and pretentious. There’s so much message there’s no actual story. It’s so busy trying to be art that it doesn’t
feel alive.
Before I
worry about art, I need to worry about my plot and my story. Do I have believable characters? Will my readers identify
with them and want to see what happens to them?
Do they have arcs? Do they have
good dialogue? Are there interesting
challenges for my characters to overcome?
Is the outcome ever in doubt? Does
tension build?
If I don’t
have a good story, art is irrelevant because no one’s going to read it. I can have the most magnificent sentence
structure and vocabulary ever committed to paper, but if my characters are
boring it doesn’t matter because the reader’s going to put the manuscript down
in six or seven pages. Because boring
characters are... well, boring. That
sounds painfully obvious, I know, but you’d be surprised how many people ignore
that simple fact in the name of art.
Somebody
once said “don’t try to be a great man—just be a man. Let history make its own judgments.” And the same goes for my story. It just has to be a story.
Someone
else will decide if it’s art or not.
I shouldn’t
be worrying about that.
By the way, before I forget, there’s still about a dozen galley copies left in that pre-order promo deal I mentioned a few weeks back.
By the way, before I forget, there’s still about a dozen galley copies left in that pre-order promo deal I mentioned a few weeks back.
Next time,
I’d like to talk a little bit about talking a little bit.
Until then,
go write.
This is exactly what I needed this week.
ReplyDeleteThank you, kind sir.
Also, can't wait for my galley copy!
Have a great weekend!
This is exactly what I needed this week.
ReplyDeleteThank you, kind sir.
Also, can't wait for my galley copy!
Have a great weekend!
Soooo many props for the First Contact title reference.
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