Thinking

D.G. Myers is pretty sure that plot in fiction displays "how the greatest novelists think." I surely can't agree either that plot is always relevant to how the "greatest novelists" think, nor that it necesssarily has anything to do with how novelists "think," although I would concede that it does sometimes indicate a kind of "thinking" in some fiction, including in much bad fiction. I can't say I follow his reasoning, either:

"Although an ingenious plot is not a logical structure, it serves the same purpose in fiction that argument serves in philosophy—and may even rival philosophical argument in brilliance."

If plot is not a logical structure, how can it serve the same purpose as argument? An argument depends on its logical structure. If plot has no logical structure, how can it be an argument at all, much less a brilliant one?

". . .when it is airtight, the plot succeeds in establishing, I would hold, the validity of the novel’s central theme."

Why is it assumed that every novel has a "central theme"? Don't some novelists work without the assumption of a "theme"? And even if readers deduce such a theme from the plot, how could the latter being validating the former if the writer had no notion there was a theme to validate? Further, don't some novels have more than one theme? How do we decide which one the plot is validating? What if the theme is carried explicitly through dialogue or associated with some other element, such as settting, and the plot merely allows the theme to be developed?

"[The Age of Innocence] is written, as I have argued before now, to verify a “tragic view of marital duty.” The verification is accomplished by the plot, which I now proceed to reduce to a sequence of necessary steps."

How do we know that the novel was written to "verify" this theme? Did Wharton ever herself say such a thing? Nowhere in this or the previous post on Wharton does Myers provide any evidence that she did, or that, absent such warrant, we couldn't find any number of other reasons why the novel "was written," at least according to our own particular reading.

"In The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton does not build an intellectual case for the tragedy of marriage. She lays it out—by plots and errors moved."

The Age of Innocence may or may not be about the tragedy of marriage. I could just as easily say it's about the vanity of human wishes or the tyranny of social customs. To the extent it is about the tragedy of marriage, it becomes so because Wharton has adapted the tragic plot, made Newland Archer the tragic hero, etc. I can't see how such a move constitutes "thinking," however. If anything, Wharton is following a centuries-old formula, substituting different circumstances and modern characters. That she might see marriage as potentially tragic strikes me as essentially a platitude.

Which is not to deny that The Age of Innocence is a provocative and worthwhile novel. Wharton adapts the conventions of tragedy in much of her fiction, and does it very effectively. The House of Mirth is among other things a compelling variation on the tragic plot, inserting a woman as the tragic hero. I guess one could construe Wharton's strategy as a form of "thinking," but it's more like simply an experiment with the possibilities of tragedy in the modern age, not really an "argument" of the sort Myers finds in The Age of Innocence.

It seems to me that the thinking-through-plot Myers describes is just another way of identifying plots that are more allegorical than others. Sometimes a novel's plot does obviously enough carrry great thematic weight, but just as often it's an excuse for a bad novel to take on the pretense of "saying something." If Myers were to claim that "In some novels the author carefully constructs a plot so as to reveal some unstated truth," it would be hard to argue with him, but to generalize that plot is always the great writer's way of "thinking" seems an overreach, to say the least.

Comments

[Kevin]

I read Myers post, too. His claim is this: Plot is to prose what argument is to philosophy. That's the form their respective insight takes. Without a good argument, Kant's transcendental decution, for instance, is quite impossible. Same with Wharton as she establishes a view (not necessarily hers, however) on marital duty, except that plot - and not argument - bears the burden of this effort. I think there's something to be said for Myers' view, although I already have a strong prejudice in favor of plots, because without them causal relations can't be established and no good story can then hang together. Best, Kevin

[D G Myers]

Reply is here.

[D G Myers]

Stupid Typepad system. Here is the link:

http://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2010/03/plot-and-pattern.html

[Andy]

Myers's argument is interesting but incomplete - plot is a base, but only that. And to me, a plot that's "airtight," his preferred sort, makes a fiction airless - little more than an argument, as you suggest, and, worse, an argument of the sort in an advice column, or a politician's speech. A great fiction needs to have an interesting plot, yes - this drives the narrative forward - but also it has to capture and convey the experience of a character or group of characters. And in doing so, it needs especially to convey the tension between those of their thoughts and actions that move the plot, and those that would take it in some other direction. Also key, I think, is capturing, and making poignant, comic, or both, the tension between their thoughts and actions, and their non-thoughts and non-actions - between lives lived and un-lived.

These tensions, after all, are the source of so much of the poignancy, comedy, and richness of experience. To capture them in narrative, and inspire the reader to reflect deeply on them, is, for a fictionist, the ultimate achievement.

More on my blog at http://www.litnow.com/wp/?p=825

[Dan Green]

Andy: I agree with much of what you say, but I just can't agree that "A great fiction needs to have an interesting plot." This establishes preexisting requirement that "great fiction" needs to meet. For the most part, I don't believe in such preexising requirements. The novel has stayed around as a literary form for as long as it has because so many "great" writers also rejected these requirements.

[Andy]

Dan, I agree with you that not every great fiction needs to have an interesting plot, or even an overt plot at all - I should have been more specific, and thus more clear. I'd argue that a longer fiction should have an interesting plot, or at least be structured in such a way as to suggest the existence of an interesting plot - that is, a narrative force, that gives the narrative direction, and is both shaped by, and shapes, the characters' thoughts, actions, and relationships to one another. I'm thinking in the latter case of "The Savage Detectives," which, to my mind, is a long, wonderful pastiche, but doesn't really have a plot, per se. The plot, to the extent there is one, exists in the reader's mind - at least, in my mind - and has to do with the characters being compelled to move, and move, and move more, from place to place and set of friends to set of friends, etc., by either something inherent within themselves, the pursuit of a goal they can't identify, or something inherent in being human. Without this implicit plot, "SD" would not, to my mind, be a great fiction.

[marc w.]

off-topic: Hey Dan, have you ever posted anything about plot vs. character?

[Dan Green]

There are certainly novels that are more about character than they are about plot, although I would be just as impatient with an argument that fiction is "all about" character, or that novelists "think" through characterization, as I am with similar arguments vis-a-vis plot.

[Schopenhauer's Bloody Knuckles]

While I can appreciate the argument of Myers, it is logically simple and ducks many of the challenges to "plot" that postmodern and experimental writing raised during the 20th and 21st century. I prescribe more time with heady french theory!