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Displacement activity, check.
So the cem of The Mirador has arrived, and I am having an anxiety attack. And watching myself having an anxiety attack and thinking that there's something quintessentially life-of-the-writer about it. Also, you know, utterly counterproductive.
Yes, in my brain, the commentary track feature is always on.
I dreamed last night that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heresluck and I were discussing Tolkien (and along the way proselytizing someone we'd met in a library who thought she wanted to read Tolkien but wasn't sure about it)--and in the dream I was trying to explain something that I think is actually kind of interesting.
Maybe.
(Look, I'm having an anxiety attack, Giant Spotted Snorklewhackers and all, just smile and nod, okay?)
See, the thing is that secondary world fantasy, as a genre, has gotten the idea that it must have Epic Sweep and Casts of Thousands and go on for reams and reams, and we all know we think that because of Tolkien, because this is what happens when you redact a genius into a rubric. But Tolkien himself is doing exactly the opposite. He's doing that thing that they tell you to do when you're trying to learn to write short stories, which is that you figure out what the climax is, and then you work backwards to the minimum amount of information you can give to have that climax make sense.
And, really, The Lord of the Rings is a remarkably well-focused narrative, all things considered.
Christopher Tolkien has displayed to the world both the monumental quantities of material his father had to work with, and the fact that J. R. R. Tolkien was totally making shit up as he went along in writing The Lord of the Rings. So when I say, two paragraphs up, that "Tolkien" is doing something, I'm not talking about John Ronald Reuel, Oxford don. I'm in fact doing something incredibly sloppy: conflating the author as narrative construct with the author as historically-extant person.
This is what gets beginning literature students in trouble, time and time again. They talk about what Shakespeare wants us to learn from, for instance, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and are bewildered when told that they can't possibly know that. And I know why they're confused; it's because their professors are using the exact same language, talking about what "Shakespeare" "does" in this speech or that scene. And when you're using exactly the same signifier, how do you explain that you're talking about two diametrically opposed things?
This is the same problem I have with biographical criticism: this conflation between the historically-extant person and the narrative construct, the assumption that the latter can be used to deduce the former, and the assumption that that's a good or useful thing to do.
But wait! you cry, clutching your head. Dr. Monette, you're an author! Are you saying you don't exist? Or that you have no authorial intent?
And, of course, I'm saying no such thing. But I'm saying that deducing my authorial intent from my narrative products is an iffy proposition at best.
Let's do a smallish diagram.
AUTHOR ==> NARRATIVE ==> AUTHOR1/AUDIENCE1 <== AUDIENCE
The AUTHOR--the historically-extant person, like William Shakespeare or J. R. R. Tolkien or me--generates a NARRATIVE Which in turn gets read by a broad spectrum of other historically-extant persons (AUDIENCE). Now, it's easy to see that the narrative generates an audience (AUDIENCE1) which may or may not have anything to do with the individual historically-extant persons (AUDIENCE) who pick the book up and read it (I've posted about this in connection with James Bond, because I am not the audience Fleming's narrative generates.) But the thing is that the narrative, in the act of being read, also generates an AUTHOR1, that is the organizing intelligence one feels operating behind a work of fiction.
But AUTHOR =/= AUTHOR1
This is where students get in trouble--and professors, too, if they get careless or obsessive--in assuming that the AUTHOR1 which the NARRATIVE generates is identical to the AUTHOR who generates the NARRATIVE.
We don't know what Shakespeare meant. Or what he wanted us to learn. Or if any of the Cool Shit that modern scholars find in his work is in there because the historically-extant Shakespeare deliberately put it in. But that doesn't mean the Cool Shit isn't there (the other mistake students commonly make). Because the thing is, the AUTHOR is not inextricably yoked, wedded, or otherwise affixed to the NARRATIVE, any more than the AUDIENCE is. (AUDIENCES change.) But the AUTHOR1 and the AUDIENCE1 are, because they are part of the NARRATIVE.
When we talk about what Shakespeare does, in this speech or that scene, when we talk about what Tolkien is doing in The Lord of the Rings, we aren't talking about the AUTHOR. We're talking about the AUTHOR1--which could be described in a bunch of other ways, including the fact that, as a species, Homo sapiens has some seriously kickass pattern-recognition software. AUTHOR1 is shorthand, which gets shorthanded in turn down into "Shakespeare" or "Tolkien." Or, I suppose, "Monette."
It's the same thing I do when I talk about genres "wanting" things or "believing" things or "asserting" things. I'll talk about narratives in the same way, if you watch me real close. The genre is just as much a construct generated by a group of narratives as the author is a construct generated by a single narrative. It's just easier to talk about them if you give them intentionality. And it points to the uneasy gray cloudy no man's land between the constructor and the thing constructed. Because the current does flow both ways. And you don't do yourself any favors if you forget about that, if you try to divorce them entirely, any more than you do yourself a favor by conflating AUTHOR and AUTHOR1.
And now, having digressed ourselves RIGHT OFF THE MAP, we return you to the discussion of Tolkien in progress:
As per usual, the trick is to imitate the deep structure of The Lord of the Rings, instead of the surface structure. Because they are radically different. Surface-structure TLotR gets you D&D and bloated fantasy "epics" and ObQuests and all the other trappings of whatpapersky calls Extruded Fantasy Product and the essential intellectual and emotional bankruptcy that gets secondary world fantasy so often tarred with the brushes of "escapism" and "hackwork" and all the rest of it.
It's the deep structure you've got to look for, the machinery that's doing the work. Because that's the stuff that lets the narrative reach out. It's not that there are elves and dwarves and dragons. It's what the elves and dwarves and dragons mean, what Tolkien makes them mean. And not in an allegorical sense, but in the sense of intellectual and emotional investment. That's why Tolkien is a genius rather than a rubric. And that's what we've got to learn.
Yes, in my brain, the commentary track feature is always on.
I dreamed last night that
heresluck and I were discussing Tolkien (and along the way proselytizing someone we'd met in a library who thought she wanted to read Tolkien but wasn't sure about it)--and in the dream I was trying to explain something that I think is actually kind of interesting.Maybe.
(Look, I'm having an anxiety attack, Giant Spotted Snorklewhackers and all, just smile and nod, okay?)
See, the thing is that secondary world fantasy, as a genre, has gotten the idea that it must have Epic Sweep and Casts of Thousands and go on for reams and reams, and we all know we think that because of Tolkien, because this is what happens when you redact a genius into a rubric. But Tolkien himself is doing exactly the opposite. He's doing that thing that they tell you to do when you're trying to learn to write short stories, which is that you figure out what the climax is, and then you work backwards to the minimum amount of information you can give to have that climax make sense.
And, really, The Lord of the Rings is a remarkably well-focused narrative, all things considered.
Christopher Tolkien has displayed to the world both the monumental quantities of material his father had to work with, and the fact that J. R. R. Tolkien was totally making shit up as he went along in writing The Lord of the Rings. So when I say, two paragraphs up, that "Tolkien" is doing something, I'm not talking about John Ronald Reuel, Oxford don. I'm in fact doing something incredibly sloppy: conflating the author as narrative construct with the author as historically-extant person.
This is what gets beginning literature students in trouble, time and time again. They talk about what Shakespeare wants us to learn from, for instance, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and are bewildered when told that they can't possibly know that. And I know why they're confused; it's because their professors are using the exact same language, talking about what "Shakespeare" "does" in this speech or that scene. And when you're using exactly the same signifier, how do you explain that you're talking about two diametrically opposed things?
This is the same problem I have with biographical criticism: this conflation between the historically-extant person and the narrative construct, the assumption that the latter can be used to deduce the former, and the assumption that that's a good or useful thing to do.
But wait! you cry, clutching your head. Dr. Monette, you're an author! Are you saying you don't exist? Or that you have no authorial intent?
And, of course, I'm saying no such thing. But I'm saying that deducing my authorial intent from my narrative products is an iffy proposition at best.
Let's do a smallish diagram.
AUTHOR ==> NARRATIVE ==> AUTHOR1/AUDIENCE1 <== AUDIENCE
The AUTHOR--the historically-extant person, like William Shakespeare or J. R. R. Tolkien or me--generates a NARRATIVE Which in turn gets read by a broad spectrum of other historically-extant persons (AUDIENCE). Now, it's easy to see that the narrative generates an audience (AUDIENCE1) which may or may not have anything to do with the individual historically-extant persons (AUDIENCE) who pick the book up and read it (I've posted about this in connection with James Bond, because I am not the audience Fleming's narrative generates.) But the thing is that the narrative, in the act of being read, also generates an AUTHOR1, that is the organizing intelligence one feels operating behind a work of fiction.
But AUTHOR =/= AUTHOR1
This is where students get in trouble--and professors, too, if they get careless or obsessive--in assuming that the AUTHOR1 which the NARRATIVE generates is identical to the AUTHOR who generates the NARRATIVE.
We don't know what Shakespeare meant. Or what he wanted us to learn. Or if any of the Cool Shit that modern scholars find in his work is in there because the historically-extant Shakespeare deliberately put it in. But that doesn't mean the Cool Shit isn't there (the other mistake students commonly make). Because the thing is, the AUTHOR is not inextricably yoked, wedded, or otherwise affixed to the NARRATIVE, any more than the AUDIENCE is. (AUDIENCES change.) But the AUTHOR1 and the AUDIENCE1 are, because they are part of the NARRATIVE.
When we talk about what Shakespeare does, in this speech or that scene, when we talk about what Tolkien is doing in The Lord of the Rings, we aren't talking about the AUTHOR. We're talking about the AUTHOR1--which could be described in a bunch of other ways, including the fact that, as a species, Homo sapiens has some seriously kickass pattern-recognition software. AUTHOR1 is shorthand, which gets shorthanded in turn down into "Shakespeare" or "Tolkien." Or, I suppose, "Monette."
It's the same thing I do when I talk about genres "wanting" things or "believing" things or "asserting" things. I'll talk about narratives in the same way, if you watch me real close. The genre is just as much a construct generated by a group of narratives as the author is a construct generated by a single narrative. It's just easier to talk about them if you give them intentionality. And it points to the uneasy gray cloudy no man's land between the constructor and the thing constructed. Because the current does flow both ways. And you don't do yourself any favors if you forget about that, if you try to divorce them entirely, any more than you do yourself a favor by conflating AUTHOR and AUTHOR1.
And now, having digressed ourselves RIGHT OFF THE MAP, we return you to the discussion of Tolkien in progress:
As per usual, the trick is to imitate the deep structure of The Lord of the Rings, instead of the surface structure. Because they are radically different. Surface-structure TLotR gets you D&D and bloated fantasy "epics" and ObQuests and all the other trappings of what
papersky calls Extruded Fantasy Product and the essential intellectual and emotional bankruptcy that gets secondary world fantasy so often tarred with the brushes of "escapism" and "hackwork" and all the rest of it.It's the deep structure you've got to look for, the machinery that's doing the work. Because that's the stuff that lets the narrative reach out. It's not that there are elves and dwarves and dragons. It's what the elves and dwarves and dragons mean, what Tolkien makes them mean. And not in an allegorical sense, but in the sense of intellectual and emotional investment. That's why Tolkien is a genius rather than a rubric. And that's what we've got to learn.