Too Much Writing

The Association of Writing Programs (AWP) puts out a review/journal called The Writer's Chronicle (sadly, not available online), similar in many ways to Poets and Writers. As does Poets and Writers, Writer's Chronicle always steers pretty close to the mainstream, dispensing "advice" and "analysis" that seldom strays from the conventional and currently accepted.

Rarely, however, has WC printed an essay as vapid and uninformed as "Translating Ideas: What Scientists Can Teach Fiction Writers About Metaphor," written by Debra Fitzgerald and featured in the new issue of the journal (March/April 2004). The essence of her argument in favor of "scientific" uses of metaphor can perhaps be gleaned from this analysis rather late in the essay. First she quotes a passage from Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn:

The cat walked in from the main room and stood on my outstretched thighs and began kneading them with its front paws, half-retracted claws engaging the material to make a pocka-pocka-pocka sound. . .The cat was black and white with a Hitler moustache, and when it finally noticed I had a face it squeezed its eyes at me. . .The big Nazi cat went on raking up thread-loops from my trousers, seemingly intent on single-handedly reinventing Velcro. . .its uneven cackling purr. [Ellipses inserted by Fitzgerald.]

Fitzgerald's critique:

There is a clearly defined object here--the cat--but there are three different images attached to it. The big Nazi cat with the Hitler moustache and cackling purr intent on reinventing Velcro conjures up simultaneous images of an ethnic cleanser, a witch, and, I don't know, an inventor. While these images are fun and evocative, they are a dead-end. They do not heighten our understanding of the idea of this cat. It's a passage full of nonfunctional, decorative metaphors, a good example of writing that is all style, no substance.

This reading of the passage is so ham-handed that I can't entirely be sure I know what it's getting at, but the point seems to be that Lethem (it would be more accurate to say Lionel Essrog, the narrator), is not sufficiently concerned with giving us a clearly "functional" description of the cat, one that gives us an "idea" of the cat. (Why that would be necessary is not explained.) It's apparently not enough that Lethem would use the cat as an opportunity to create a word-portrait, a verbal construction, one that might go beyond the merely "functional" to help us see the "clearly defined object" in a less clearly defined, but perhaps more insightful way. Or, more importantly, that he would use this scene and Essrog's perception of the cat to help us more fully understand Essrog's own, I don't know, peculiar relationship to the world (keeping in mind his own Tourette's-induced verbal habits.)

I once taught a course in contemporary American fiction in which during our discussion of John Updike's Rabbit Run a student bitterly complained about Updike's generous (my word) prose style. In another class I had recently heard a similar complaint about Madame Bovary. (All that description.) I was led to say to the Updike-fatigued student--perhaps more harshly than I should have--that I found it strange to be accusing a writer of engaging in "too much writing." (The rest of the class did find it amusing.)

I have to say that I think this is what Debra Fitzgerald's argument boils down too. Too many writers doing too much damn writing. Too much style, and not enough substance. This is not the occasion for going into a lengthy disquisition about the interaction of style and substance, about the way in which style creates its own substance, etc., etc. Suffice it to say that Fitzgerald wants writers to follow scientists in providing strictly functional metaphors that help to explain and instruct, and that I think this couldn't be a more unfortunate and almost willfully obtuse understanding of what serious fiction--literature--ought to be about. Certainly there are plenty of writers who take the merely "decorative" as the index of good writing, but Lethem isn't one of them, and neither is Updike.

(And frankly I often find the use of these "functional" metaphors by scientists and science writers to be annoying and implicitly condescending, a way of dumbing down science for the rest of us yokels.)

What finally disturbs me the most about "Translating Ideas" is precisely that it is published by Writer's Chronicle and at least implicitly has its imprimatur. I can't be certain about the editors' intentions in publishing the essay, but I have to assume they at least in part found it compelling and worth passing along to its readers. And since a very large part of its readership consists of student and aspiring writers, that this is the advice they get from an influential "professional" organization to me borders on scandalous. If the powers that be in Creative Writing programs hope to turn out writers who follow this advice, Heaven help us. Literature has already been shown the door in departments of literary study; is writing to be expelled from Creative Writing?

Comments

[Sam]

I guess you're saying it's like Salieri on Mozart: too many notes.

Asking a scientist for advice on metaphor is like going to a poet for instruction in statistics. Still, that doesn't in any way alter the defectiveness of the Lethem passage.

I agree entirely with "While these images are fun and evocative, they are a dead-end. They do not heighten our understanding of the idea of this cat. It's a passage full of nonfunctional, decorative metaphors . . " I can't agree with "all style no substance," since style is an impression created through conscious effort, and there's little evidence of that here.

Lethem got a little lazy; so what? I like his stuff generally. I just think you set yourself a challenge trying to defend this particular passage.

[Daniel Green]

First of all, the passage has been deliberately foreshortened by the critic to emphasize what she thinks are its deficiencies. Whether's it's evidence of Lethem's "style" can only be judged in context.

Second, that the passage contains several different kinds of metaphors is itself no criticism of the writing. Mixed metaphors often work just fine.

[sjtennent]

The cat itself is a descriptive element. It's scene-dressing. The cat pressing its claws into Lionel's pants does nothing in itself to move the story forward--not should it.

If one dislikes the descriptive element of some writers, preferring instead stark minimalism, where the sentences serve only one purpost--to move the story to its conclusion--than the fact that Lionel is describing a cat at all should be cause for annoyance.

If, however, one appreciates the detail of setting in addition to the action of plot, then the cat belongs, and so too does the description of the cat. Therefore, it's silly to say the images are a dead end, that "they do not heighten our understanding of the idea of this cat." They most certainly do! The cat is white and black--specifcally a white head with a black spot on its mouth (hence the "hitler" metaphor is not a dead-end; it's arrived precisely at its destination). Likewise the "cackling purr," in its odd juxtoposition of adjectives ("cackle" and "purr" are seeming opposites, aren't they?) gives the cat an awkard voice--I can picture it even moreso (destination reached!). Pulling up the thread on the trousers, intent on reinventing velcro--ah! we've established the texture of the situation (destination number three!).

So we have arrived at a detailed description of a descriptive element. It seems Lethem has succeeded at exactly what he set out to do. "It's a passage full of nonfunctional, decorative metaphors." Yes, it is! The train has entered the station! You may not like where you've gotten to, but it's not a dead end.

[Sam]

Agreed that it's not possible to judge his style based on a couple of sentences. And Fitzgerald's ellipses aren't going to win her any awards for fairness in journalism. But the metaphors *are* "non-functional" (i.e., don't work) for me, in the sense of conveying an interesting image or idea. And the word choice just seems careless -- outstretched thighs (I know how you stretch a leg, but how do you stretch a thigh?), kneading with front paws (even seen a cat knead with her back paws?), etc. Whatever Lethem's strengths, these particular sentences? Not gems.

[Daniel Green]

On the other hand, this style is first of all not Lethem's but Lionel Essrog's. He may indeed feel his thighs to be "outstretched." And he can probably be forgiven for inserting the "front" before the paws. Ultimately it's Essrog's voice--his written voice--that carries the day in this novel, and the passage in question helps to manifest that voice.

[Sam]

The fact that it's Essrog's voice does makes a difference, and probably makes Fitzgerald's choice even stranger.

First-person narrative doesn't get you off the hook for holding interest, though. My experience of Lethem is that, regardless of how carefully you excerpt him, a few sentences won't show what he's got. He's not a writer who struggles for the mot juste, but he's very good with tone and you enjoy the cumulative effect more than the sentence-by-sentence.

[Trent Walters]

I'm with Sam. These aren't striking descriptions. But again, it might help to read them in context.

I imagine the article's author highlighted the passages that had the cat described--assuming she was trying to be faithful. I guess my complaint for such a use would be "But maybe the cat isn't crucial...?" But then if the cat isn't crucial to unveiling character, plot or theme, does the cat belong? In a novel, a handful of lines would hardly matter, but was she pointing to a symptom illustrated by the cat?

I love style, but I do get tired of authors so in love with their writing that they forget about character, plot and theme. Hemingway had a few choice words for writers of this type. Style is best conveyed through the artifices of fiction lest it become a watered-down prose poem.

[Daniel Green]

But then Hemingway was himself as focused on style as any writer ever has been. He was in fact preoccupied with it.

[Trent Walters]

Exactly! He was able to convey his stories through style.

No disagreement here.

[Daniel Green]

By the way, Trent, I agree with you that the Lethem passage quoted is not especially striking. But this made Fitgerald's critique of it seem all the more over-the-top to me.