my fiction block and what it's made of

[truepenny]

One of the things graduate school did to me was annihilate my ability to read. For quite a while, that meant all I did was reread Dorothy Sayers, Georgette Heyer, Emma Lathen, and M. R. James (and there's a bridge foursome you weren't expecting--fivesome, really, but we'll assume that Emma Lathen would play tag-team bridge). Then I started to be able to read nonfiction again (deeply ironic in and of itself, since previously I'd never been very interested in nonfiction, and now I'm addicted). But the ability to read new fiction has been elusive. It comes back occasionally, in fits and spurts, but it never seems to last. Sometimes I can overcome it to do critiques for friends, but frequently, as several of you know to your exasperation and despair, I just can't. It's not that I don't want to read fiction; stories have been my abiding love since I was but a wee precocious sproglet. But it's felt like asking myself to deliberately whack my thumb with a hammer.*

But I think I've figured out at least part of the reason why.

Right now, I'm trying to read Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox. It was sent to me in hopes of a blurb, and I want to give it one, because the writing is just jaw-droppingly beautiful, and I love the central conceit. But I've stalled out halfway through.


My problem is the major blocking figure (he's also a thoroughgoing villain, but that's not exactly his function in the story). We've reached a scene wherein it is possible that he will die. And I want him to die, very very badly, because I hate him as a character and I find him deeply frustrating as a narrative function. But because of the kind of character he is, and the narrative function he serves, I don't think he's going to. And I can't keep reading.


I want to emphasize that this problem is not a flaw in the book. Because it isn't. The book isn't doing anything wrong here; it may even be doing something deeply right. But I am failing miserably to force myself to keep reading in order to find out.

The problem is that I seem to have gotten stuck on a mezzanine. On one level the story is a story, and you read about things happening to people. On another level, the story is a set of narrative functions and apparatuses, and you read the operations. And I seem to be stuck reading on one level and investing on the other. That is, I invest in the story as if the characters are people, but I'm reading the operations manual, where they are narrative functions. And it becomes too frustrating and too . . . threatening? discomfiting? I don't quite know the word I want--too uncomfortable to keep reading when the narrative functions indicate that something is going to happen to the characters that I don't want to see.

This is unbelievably schizoid. And I'm not sure there's anything to be done about it. But at least I have at least part of a handle on what's going on.

---
*Yes, that infinitive is split for a reason. Putting "deliberately" anywhere else in the sentence throws the emphasis off.

Comments

[jandersoncoats.livejournal.com]

One of the things graduate school did to me was annihilate my ability to read.

Wow, I thought I was the only one with this problem.

Nothing like reading 500 pages a week to deaden one's love of the printed word.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I believe it's actually fairly common.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

From the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed:

5.106: Although from about 1850 to 1925 many grammarians stated otherwise, it is not widely acknowledged that adverbs sometimes justifiably separates the to from the principal verb.

5.160: ..."sometimes it is perfectly appropriate to split an infinitive verb with an adverb to add emphasis or to produce a natural sound."

This is a lost fight, and I wish people would lay that battle down (ie, those for whom you wrote your footnote). There are other, more noble battles! Like if used when whether is meant!

[kate_nepveu]

Does it help that the book's already out and so any blurbage would have to wait for the mmpb?

(It's waiting for me at the library, so I avert my eyes from your cut text.)

Luck on unblocking. That must really suck.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Oh! Thank you for articulating this. I have the exact same problem--I call it my "reader's block." Mine was also brought on by grad school--I only spent 3 years in, and it took about 5 years before I could read anything but magazines, and I love non-fiction now, but hardly ever read it before.

The trick that works for me, when I'm having trouble engaging on the right level with a book, is to read with music playing, or to read with the TV on, but muted, or to read in the bathroom, or standing in line or cooking or something. Basically doing whatever it takes NOT to give the book my undivided attention, and not to read for too long at a stretch. Once I'm engaged with the characters and "what-happens-next" feeling instead of stuck in analysis mode, I can sit down and read like a normal person. Usually for me that's about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way into a novel.

I also have this problem with writing, so I write while I'm watching TV...horrible!

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Oh, I also shamelessly look at the ending, if I'm having trouble with the direction a book seems to be going. Knowing how it comes out allows me to stop trying to write it in my head as I'm reading it.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

While it is technically impossible to split an infinitive in Latin and Greek, when cometh our concept of what grammar is, surely reasonable people can learn to agree that English has enough structural differences from the model-languages that not only at times may an infinitive be split, on occasion it ought to be, especially when concepts like "Which way does this sentence make better sense?" and "Do these words fall out of my mouth in arrhythmic chunks that land like a big ol' bag of scrap metal?" are considered. Too-rigid application of certain grammatical concepts is rather like putting your six-year-old in a corset so she'll have a nice hourglass figure. /cranky rant

I understand your pain. I'm reading cookbooks these days.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yeah. You don't split the infinitive in Latin and Greek because you can't. Except, I suppose, on the model of "abso-fucking-lutely."

::tries to imagine Cicero doing this::

[romp.livejournal.com]

I like to think that this lessens with time. I've found I can enjoy purely escapist reading again. I can live without Literature. And I don't suffer from your knowledge of narrative structure!

This is the curse of the expert, yeah? My wife can't look at a commercial for food or even a restaurant scene in the film without noting how well the sugar was caramelized or the quality of the meat fabrication. I'm sure people who work in theatre and film miss the days when they didn't note the lighting, etc.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes. My problem is only compounded by the fact that my degree(s) are in English Literature.

[kate_nepveu]

Fortunately all I have to do is avoid _Law and Order_ . . .

[roisindubh211.livejournal.com]

I have that problem with swordfights in movies (my whole fencing team has it)- I can't watch star wars without cheering for Vader to cut Luke down (Seriously, that footwork is TERRIBLE).

Also, I get like that with commercials and everything else on tv, I pick it apart. Usually this entertains me more, but I suspect it aggravates anyone sitting next to me and hearing 'oooh that's a terrible shot, WHY would you put the camera THERE?!'.

[melusinehr.livejournal.com]

As a theatrical sound designer, I can confirm that you're absolutely right.

[pameladean]

Oh, I'm so sorry about your fiction block. My graduate school education was years ago, and the definition of what might be legitimately taught in a graduate English program was being expanded and tattered and fought over, but my school was very conservative. So when I was out of there, I didn't much want to read anything in the canon, but I could absolutely wallow in any genre fiction whatsoever, because it was Not Recognized in grad school. The severe drawback to this was that I found it almost impossible to apply anything I had learned about the structure and function of fiction to those Not Recognized works, including mine. Learning to do that was very difficult, and I'm only maybe a third there even now.

P.

[the_rck]

As a reader, I tend to hit narrative reading blocks. They're usually either points where I know that the flow of the story demands that Something Bad (or embarrassing) happen or that a character I like do Something Stupid*. I can be stopped dead by characters, too, but I can only remember one definite case of it happening-- I stopped dead in the middle of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and stuck there for a couple of years because I couldn't deal with Umbridge. Mostly, though, my difficulty has to do with having a sense of narrative rhythm. I reach a point where I simply can't face the next structural beat-- even though I don't know exactly what it will be-- and just stop reading.

*My response to characters about to do Something Stupid isn't, unfortunately, helped by what they do being logical based on what they know or by it being in keeping with their personalities or by it turning out to be the right thing to do after all (I tend not to get far enough in the story to find that last bit out).

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I think that's a really good way to put it--not being able to face the next structural beat.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I really do hope you can get on and read the rest of the novel. Trust me, it's worth it.

[jemck.livejournal.com]

You seem to have an extreme case of a syndrome I'm entirely familiar with. I cannot read high fantasy these days when I'm working on a book of my own. I can really only read it for enjoyment these days if I'm physically somewhere else on vacation.

Unless I'm reading it for review in which case I can just about manage to juggle the emotional and intellectual responses. So what with that, and being in Boston for Boskone, I have managed to read Dragon in Chains, with a view to an article I'm writing in the next coupla weeks.

I do still manage to read crime and mystery fiction while I'm working on high fantasy, and a certain amount of urban fantasy and hardish SF - all on the principle these are genres I never anticipate writing.

[jliann.livejournal.com]

No, not schizoid. Just discerning when it comes to plotlines.

I identify with this problem, I think. There are times when I see a plot moving in a direction where the structure will demand something, and the thing that it demands doesn't even have to be a bad thing to make me uncomfortable.

Usually I chalk it up to the fact that the author chose the wrong plot points to focus on, which leads to readers expecting something which the author could simply have downplayed or skimmed over entirely in the first place. (This is why I'm forgiving of 'errors in realism' in fiction whenever they're done to avoid this weakness.)

I'm only doing a Literature Undergrad and I've already run into the same problem with reading a few times, so it's probably not just a grad school thing.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

"Stuck on the mezzanine" is a great way of putting this.

I don't have this problem, mainly because I didn't take more than a couple English classes in college and none at a graduate level, and only actually learned how to read in my twenties, so every time I'm able to perceive things at the narrative function level, it's a delight to me - but it almost always happens on the second reading, or in reflection after I'm done reading. My first reading is at least 95% investment in the stories and the characters.

In fact, you saw this happen in action when I read your Horatio story, and then left you a series of comments: first there was love for the story, and then increased love as more and more ways of thinking about it and levels on which - or at least angles from which - to enjoy it unfolded for me. And I only stopped writing comments because I was getting embarrassed, not because it was done unfolding for me. I always wish I had even more skill at seeing and integrating the different levels, and still feel like a very unsophisticated reader (or listener, or viewer) in general, but reading your post makes me realize the price I wouldn't want to pay for that increase of skill.

Do you do the same thing with movies or television? If so, does it make a difference if you're with someone who is unabashedly enjoying it at the story/character level? Reading is so solitary, it's hard to let someone else's enthusiasm carry you.

I do find that I'm enough of a critical reader that I can no longer enjoy things I used to love. In fact, there are some things I strongly suspect I wouldn't be able to tolerate now, and I am deliberately not going back and rereading them because I'd rather just leave the happy memory as it is. But for the most part, I'm okay with losing the things I've lost because the reason I've lost them is because, in a lot of ways, they suck, and what I've gotten in exchange is the ability to appreciate the good stuff much more than I used to. It doesn't sound like that's the situation for you.

How awkward and unpleasant.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I analyze movies and TV to death, but that's part of the enjoyment I get (these days) out of watching them at all (witness the Due South (http://truepenny.livejournal.com/tag/due+south) posts--which correspond, come to think of it, to the Sayers (http://truepenny.livejournal.com/tag/dls) posts. That's how I used to read, although even when I wrote those posts, I was already stuck in the endless recursive rereading phase). And that's where I was with books at the end of my undergraduate career: being able to analyze what was going on made me appreciate the story more--although, as you say, there are certain books that had to be left strictly alone if I was to retain any fondness for them. (For instance, that's approximately the point at which I stopped reading Heinlein.) I got tremendous amounts of enjoyment out of reading at that point. (And thank goodness that's when I found Samuel R. Delany, because I wouldn't have understood him before and it makes me very sad to think I wouldn't be able to get through him now. Although he's so meta that maybe his signal would come through anyway. I don't know.) This is some kind of malignant hypertrophy of the analytical organ (to appropriate a quasi-medical metaphor from phrenology a quasi-medical science).

[girlpunksamurai.livejournal.com]

*winces* Considering the fact that I read just fine right now...

But I'm also just in my first semester of college and am minoring in Liberal Arts...should I worry about this? O.O

No more reading 15+ books a week? Noooooo! >.

[(Anonymous)]

Oooooh, thank you. I've just figured out why I now have repeating library fines and am sending things (science fiction, which I used to go through like cookies) back unread, which distresses me greatly. I can now blame too much school. Brilliant!

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, forgot to sign my post from 20 seconds ago.
- Chief

[grass-angel.livejournal.com]

This is why I am not choosing a literature degree. I could cope with not bearing to look at movies/art/commericals but not being able to read for pleasure, ABSOLUTELY NOT.

I still get a type of reader's block though, usually when I'm absolutely sick of the characters, the plot or narrative causality. I can sometimes read through it, like some people do with art blocks, but that usually results in appallingly low reading comprehension on my end and I have to reread the last couple of chapters.
marydell's general idea of distracting yourself until you can read it works. I usually set the book aside for a week or until I've forgotten the tiny details that made me want to throw the book down in disgust.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

While your choices are utterly your own, I do want to emphasize that the state I'm in is not the result of getting a degree in literature. My undergraduate education was richly rewarding in terms of reading and did not prevent my reading for pleasure. Learning to read critically (which is what any literature degree should teach) is neither the problem nor the cause of the problem.

The current problem I am having is, yes, partly the result of getting an advanced degre, although, as the testimonies upthread will show, it's far from being exclusive to English majors, and also, I think that's about stress and overwork, not about reading per se--and partly, I think, the result of being a fiction writer. And in neither case is it the inevitable result.

Like I said, I don't want to tell anyone what to do. But I don't want to be understood as saying "Studying literature is bad for you!" either. Because that's really, profoundly, not my point.

[girlpunksamurai.livejournal.com]

*nearly falls out of chair in sudden relief*

Whew..

Don't scare me like that; I'm a confirmed bibliophile. Do you think I could possibly go a day without reading at least two books? Let me assure you, I cannot and the very thought makes my eye twitch, lol.

Right now I'm somewhere in the first 3rd of Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier.It's sort of a 'looking back' at when computers were coming out and the underground that sprang from them. Katie Hafner and John Markoff tell the story of three hackers from back then. It's surprisingly involved, considering that you'd never think so much information would be drawn willingly from that sort O.o