metaphors for writing

[truepenny]

So matociquala linked to John Kessel's thoughtful and provocative essay on Ender's Game, "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality," and got a lively discussion going, in the course of which aireon described being on a panel with Orson Scott Card during which he asserted that all writers are rapists.

Bear and I were talking about this (as we are wont to talk about most anything that crosses what passes for a mind for either of us), and I said that that metaphor gave me the wig.* And we batted it back and forth for a while, and the following conversation ensued.

BEAR: I still think it's seduction. You have to get them interested, keep them interested, give them what they want and get them to come back for more.

And if you can make them think it's their idea, so much the better.

TRUEPENNY: Well, it's definitely a con. I'll go that far. *g*

BEAR: but that would indicate you're not giving value for money, wouldn't it?

TRUEPENNY: The 'and is quicker than the h'eye.

Smoke and mirrors. Prestidigitation. It's a con in the sense that the mark has to believe you before you can get the thing off the ground.

BEAR: Well, yeah, that's true. But you rope him in with honesty.... or maybe I'm on crack.

TRUEPENNY: No, see, that's the con. You're honest where he's expecting lies.

And that feels like the closest I've come in a while to nailing down what it is that's so utterly brilliant about fiction. Therefore, I blog it.

---
* I didn't express myself well in the conversation with Bear, so I'm shamelessly exercising this opportunity to articulate l'esprit de l'escalier. Card's metaphor gives me the wig because (a.) this is my life's work and passion here, hello? Could you NOT pick a metaphor to make me feel unclean and guilty? because frankly writers, especially genre writers, take enough shit without picking up the shovels themselves; (b.) he's trivializing rape; (c.) he's asserting that writers hurt people; (d.) he's transforming writing from a creative to a destructive act; (e.) the equation of pen and phallus is so, like, OVER, dude. Gilbert and Gubar dismantled that piece of male privilege doublethink in The Madwoman in the Attic in 1979. And, anyway, it's a cliché.

Comments

[elisem.livejournal.com]

I (heart) you, and your spirit of the eclair is most excellent.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

It gave me the wig, that's for sure.

I can't remember if, at the time, I was quick witted enough to use a pregnancy metaphor. All writers are pregnant women. Through our fertile creativity we nurture and grow an entity that, once it is pushed out into the world, has a life apart from us which others will interact with apart from our original intent. Blah blah blah.

Now, had he stated, "When I think of myself as a writer, I think of myself as a rapist," that wouldn't have bothered me.

So where do I get the eclairs?

[aimeempayne.livejournal.com]

I think the trivialization of rape is what made me most uncomfortable. And anyway, the metaphor doesn't work because the reader has purchased, taken home, turned pages, and engaged the eyeballs. That's a whole lot of consent for a rape metaphor.

It seems, to me anyway, that Card was trying to be clever and provocative, but he didn't think it all the way through.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

They're over here behind the bear. *burp*

[redbird]

If Card thinks of writing that way, maybe he should stop, and leave the field to people who understand consent.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I just ... I just don't get Card's metaphor at all. Either he's triviliazing rape in a way that shocks me, or he's ... conceptualizing reading in a way that shocks me. Writing is rape? Reading is being raped? Is this all communication? Talking is violation?

[kate_nepveu]

I think it might have something to do with emotional manipulation, or rather forcing emotion on people (cf. his statements about fictional children-in-peril), but that's as far as I can take it before my brain wanders off into a corner.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Now, had he stated, "When I think of myself as a writer, I think of myself as a rapist," that wouldn't have bothered me.

It would have BOTHERED me, but more in a "Please don't get your brain anywhere near my brain, and oh by the way, keep your hands to yourself, sunshine." Self-describing as a rapist, even metaphorically ... no, thank you.

But I do see what you mean about the high-handedness of imposing this really disturbing and dysfunctional paradigm on all writers. Card seems to me to be a very prescriptive thinker, which is one reason that even as a teenager I didn't particularly like his book on writing f&sf. He laid it out all very neatly with rules and mnemonics, like thinking in a series of very small boxes.

Didn't work for me at all--although it did at least teach me the invaluable lesson that you don't have to agree with the teacher in order to write.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's what Card meant at all, not raping or seducing the reader.

I think he meant that you rape the characters, by laying them bare to everyone, and you do the bad stuff that happens to them, and possibly he might mean that you rape real incidents in real people's real lives for the story because the story is more important, a la Martin's "Portraits of his Children".

In that sense, he does have something of a point. I have thought, while pouring out sympathy, "I can use this." That's a cold thing. Rape might be a bit strong, but I think it's within tolerances.

If that's what he meant. But it's what I immediately thought he must have meant when I saw it.

I found Kessel's article most interesting. He's right about direction of sympathy, but I think "innocent Hitler" (for want of a better way of putting it,) is a perfectly reasonable thing to want to write, and quite impressive to get away with.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, this is what aireon said about what Card said:

At one point he said (AND I QUOTE), "All writers are rapists." And went on to expand on what he meant by that (put their ideas into the minds of others, where they grow, etc).

I agree that writers are utterly amoral scavengers of real life, and that they visit atrocities upon the helpless figments of their imagination. But neither of those seem to have been Card's point.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

And that choice of metaphor says so much about him. If he'd said all writers are gardeners or farmers, planting the seed of their ideas in someone's mind, it would be completely different. It would be a positive way to look at writing and writers, not the creepy male dominance way he stated it.

That really gives me the creeps.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree with you about how nasty it is to self identify as a rapist. But at least then I would know something important about him.

You used exactly the right adjective (you outta be a writer!):
Card is a prescriptive writer.

And evidently perfectly happy to tell the rest of us what we are or ought to be, as well. Not my cup of tea.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't have bothered me if he had said "all writers are cannibals." There's a perfectly good anthropological explanation for that.

While I think your interpretation is valid, it certainly isn't the interpretation I put on it at the time. Now, time blurs all remembrances, so who knows? But I was genuinely shocked and offended, especially at the use of that inclusive "all". And, in truth, I thought the use of rape as the metaphor was unfortunately revealing, and really squicky.

I was on a couple of panels with him at that convention, and now that I think of it, he made other "all" pronouncements (on other subjects). He seemed very fond of the 'all'. This was not likely to endear me to his way of looking at the world, I admit.