NC Literary Festival: the uses of fiction

Question: why sit inside a lecture hall during a perfectly lovely day off and listen to people read from and talk about their writing instead of going outside and playing softball?

Photo: a perfectly lovely day in Greece.

Answer: when you've got a chance for a wonderful reunion with some old and dear writing friends (hi Bob, Lyn, and Frankie!).

Bob provided  companionship, commentary and feedback as we listened to writers hold forth on their craft and celebrate their successes. A highlight was Ron Rash and Lee Smith, who are engaging and extremely talented. Rash's Serena is a firecracker, and Smith's new set of short stories sounded like a winner.

But Pulitzer Prize-winning Elizabeth Strout provided me the most food for thought in her keynote address last night. She is the latest thing, a favorite of Oprah, and had an adoring crowd eating out of her hand as she read from Olive Kittredge, a set of linked short stories that had heretofore flown under my radar.

Strout came out on stage looking like an aging starlet who'd spent the last month at the beach. Darkly tan, she'd twisted her blonde hair, shining like new straw, into something resembling a do. She had on a ruffled white blouse and oversized black slacks, and everything about her was fashionably rough, wrinkled, and disheveled. Her only concession to writerly appearance was her thick-framed black glasses, which were absolutely the height of chic. Kate Hepburn comes to Chapel Hill after a stay on Bald Head Island.

Like many writers who are basking in the glow, she seemed happy and perfectly at ease in front of the packed house, and fielded questions such as whether her characters took on a life of their own and told her things. "I'm pretty sure I'm making my characters say things," Strout said, eyebrow raised.

The main event for me was Strout's take on the importance of fiction-- that is, well-written stories on a page, electronic or not. You'd think that this would be obvious, but it isn't anymore, what with everyone crazy for reality shows, video games, and anything other than a book.

She began by pointing out how whenever people come out of the subway or their plane has landed, they immediately call someone on their cell phones. "I'm here, I exist," is what people want to tell someone. Everyone is craving connection, a sense that they matter, that they are not alone.

Fiction, Strout says, helps people to locate themselves in the world. Whenever a reader identifies with a character in a story, it creates a connection, community, and a sense that the reader matters, regardless of who and where they are.

I have been attempting throughout my career on writing about mythology to point this out, especially in my online course on Greek mythology. Good stories make people connect and cohere.

Now, I have focused mainly on the tribal aspects of good stories. I define mythology as a set of good stories that are good for a particular culture. Each culture tells its own stories as a way of setting itself apart from others, of creating and maintaining its character, its ethos. A culture's myths do not necessarily translate to other parts of the world. In other words, I do not subscribe to the idea of the archetype-- the notion that characters and stories are basically the same the world over.

"So are there no universal stories?" Bob asked me as we walked back to the parking lot in the late summer sun.

"Maybe, but that wouldn't be myth," I said. "That would be..."

I paused. What would it be?

"That would be fiction," I finally decided.

And I realized that like Elizabeth Strout, I did feel that the role of the author, the novelist, the short story writer, was very important to the world.

Anytime an author attempts to connect us as human beings, rather than as members of a tribe, that, to me, is an act of love. It is so easy for us to sort ourselves into groups, into us versus them. I think it's perfectly natural.

What's difficult is to reach out to other groups and acknowledge what makes us the same.

Fiction has other benefits, too, that Strout did not mention. Maybe the most important is depth and thoughtfulness. In myth, you are looking to have people say yes to your world view as quickly as possible and over and over again. With fiction, an author is trying to say that things are complicated, messy, and take time to resolve-- if they can be resolved.

This messy aspect of fiction is probably a significant reason why, in our nanosecond culture, no one wants to read books anymore.

Maybe all of this is just a snobby and underhanded way of saying that High Literature ("fiction") is better than Popular and Pulp Junk ("myth").

If it is, that's okay with me. I do like both myth and fiction, as I've defined them here (or myth and author, as I suggest elsewhere). But I salute those who are writing that definition of fiction. It's a losing battle for us to try to find our humanity rather than our tribalness. Still, it's worth it.

Comments

[Lyn Fairchild Hawks]

Hi, Dave,

Now I wish I'd gone to see Elizabeth! But you brought her to life for me.

I'm curious as to what you think about children's mythmaking at a very young age. My friend just told me about her two year-old making up stories about "monsters." My friend has never told monster stories, and living in a small apartment in a big city, the child rarely sees a lot of other children and doesn't watch much TV. My friend said, "Where did she get these monster characters from?"

I blame it on good ol' archetypes imprinted in our brains. You?

Thanks for a great post!

Lyn

[Bob Mustin]

I'm with you on "depth" and "thoughtfulness" as regards fiction, David. We probably still differ on the myth issue, but that's a conversation for another day.

[DF]

Lyn, I think that inside us there is a pretty primal fear mechanism that is prone to create monster stories, but I also think her two-year old must have heard the word monster and understood from someone else what a monster is. So the answer is both-- I think fear is innate (or close to it) but I think children must learn how to put a name on that fear.

Bob, Been talking about this to a couple of other folks and I think I may be blogging about it again soon. Stay turned.