On prose

Don't think of an elephant.

This sentence fails, of course, because it does not -- it cannot -- achieve what it set out to accomplish. Its construction and structure can bring its readers to only a single conclusion, and evoke in their minds only a single image -- that of an elephant.

This is similar to the problems inherent in literal prose, and is a good metaphor for the reaction we have towards such literality. If my objective as a writer is to get you, the reader, to think about a certain theme that I have in mind, then I can only hope to do so by being oblique about it. If I want to raise (for example), in my writing, the question of whether or not there is a God, then I cannot come right out ask. I cannot even appear to ask.

This is also why the vast majority of literature is considered 'inaccessible' (I use the term here with caution, because inaccessibility is a subjective thing). Themes are buried; characters possess a depth and mystery that approaches real life; plot lines are non-existent. The combination succeeds in intimidating all but the most diligent, and even some of the latter clan are disillusioned by the disorientation they experience at its hands. If this, they say, is art, then I will have none of it.

The problem here is also one of purpose. As Iris Murdoch puts it, "Art deals with the only truth that ultimately matters." If the artist only aims for the perfect truth, then he is already at a disadvantage, because the act of putting things down on paper is itself untruthful. After all, the truth cannot be imparted an artificial structure; it cannot be subjected to the aesthetics of form and substance or the rules of readability.

Good authors know this. Some of them even try to break free of the linguistically and socially imposed shackles of good writing, with interesting results. Finnegans Wake, for example, universally loved and reviled as one of the most opaque pieces of prose ever written, has these as its first few sentences --

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend

of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to

Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-

core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy

isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor

had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse

to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper

all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to

tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a

kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in

vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a

peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory

end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The sentences themselves are not very difficult to understand, especially if you realize that most of the long words are simply amalgams of smaller ones; 'wielderfight', for example, is a sandhi of 'wield' and 'fight'. 'Penisolate' is made of 'peninsula' and 'isolate', but also has phallic undertones. And so on. Finnegans wake succeeds as a work of art simply because it is unaware that it is one; the self-expression is unmediated and sincere, and any metric it imposes upon itself is internal, without reference to the reader. The author, in this case, is unconscious of the act of creation, enabling him to create with abandon.

There are, of course, other forms of self-expression that become art. Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled is another case in point. As with all Ishiguro novels, the writing is simple and direct, but with a catch; everything moves in slow motion. Consider the following lines, taken from a conversation between the protagonist Ryder and the porter Gustav. Gustav and Ryder are in an elevator headed for the fourth floor.

'But you were telling me,' I said, 'why you consider it a mistake to place luggage on the floor.'

'Ah yes,' the porter said. 'Now that's an interesting point. You see, sir, as you can imagine, in a town of this sort, there are many hotels. This means that many people in this town have at some point or other tried their hand at portering. Many people here seem to think they can simply put on a uniform and then that will be it, they'll be able to do the job. It's a delusion that's been particularly nurtured in this town. Call it a local myth, if you will. And I'll readily confess, there was a time when I unthinkingly subscribed to it myself. Then once-oh, it was many years ago now-my wife and I took a short holiday We went to Switzerland, to Lucerne. My wife has passed away now, sir, but whenever I think of her I remember our short holiday. It's very beautiful there by the lake. No doubt you know it. We took some lovely boat rides after breakfast. Well, to return to my point, during that holiday I observed that people in that town didn't make the same sorts of assumptions about their porters as people here do. How can I put it, sir? There was much greater respect paid to porters there. The best ones were figures of some renown and had the leading hotels fighting for their services. I must say it opened my eyes. But in this town, well, there's been this idea for many many years. In fact there are days when I wonder if it can ever be eradicated. Now I'm not saying people here are in any way rude to us. Far from it, I've always been treated with politeness and consideration here. But, you see, sir, there's always this idea that anyone could do this job if they took it into their heads, if the fancy just took them. I suppose it's because everyone in this town at some point has had the experience of carrying luggage from place to place. Because they've done that, they assume being a hotel porter is just an extension of it. I've had people over the years, sir, in this very elevator, who've said to me: "I might give up what I'm doing one of these days and take up portering." Oh yes. Well, sir, one day-it wasn't long after our short holiday in Lucerne-I had one of our leading city councillors say more or less those exact words to me. "I'd like to do that one of these days," he said to me, indicating the bags. "That's the life for me. Not a care in the world." I suppose he was trying to be kind, sir. Implying I was to be envied. That was when I was younger, sir, I didn't then hold the bags, I had them on the floor, here in this very elevator, and I suppose in those days I might have looked a bit that way. You know, carefree, as the gentleman implied. Well, I tell you, sir, that was the last straw. I don't mean the gentleman's words made me so angry in themselves. But when he said that to me, well, things sort of fell into place. Things I'd been thinking about for some time. And as I explained to you, sir, I was fresh from our short holiday in Lucerne where I'd got some perspective. And I thought to myself, well, it's high time porters in this town set about changing the attitude prevalent here. You see, sir, I'd seen something different in Lucerne, and I felt, well, it really wasn't good enough, what went on here. So I thought hard about it and decided on a number of measures I would personally take. Of course, even then, I probably knew how difficult it would be. I think I may have realised all those years ago that it was perhaps already too late for my own generation. That things had gone too far. But I thought, well, even if I could do my part and change things just a little, it would at least make it easier for those who came after me. So I adopted my measures, sir, and I've stuck to them, ever since that day the city councillor said what he did. And I'm proud to say a number of other porters in this town followed my lead. That's not to say they adopted precisely the same measures I did. But let's say their measures were, well, compatible.'

The conversation proceeds on similar lines for many more pages, begging the obvious question -- how? How could it be that one person can talk for so long? More importantly, how can an elevator ride of four floors take that long?

A few pages later, our suspicions about the nature of the 'story' are confirmed.

And then, as he continued with his explanations, waving a hand towards various parts of the room, it occurred to me that for all his professionalism, for all his genuine desire to see me comfortable, a certain matter that had been preoccupying him throughout the day had pushed its way to the front of his mind. He was, in other words, still worrying about his daughter and her little boy.

What makes these lines eerie? Of course there is the subject matter itself; it appears as though our protagonist is some kind of mind-reader. But that cannot be all, because mind-readers by themselves are a prosaic and fairly gimmicky plot device. Imagine, for example, if the above lines were written in this way --

And then, as he continued with his explanations, waving a hand towards various parts of the room, it occurred to me that he was thinking about his daughter and grandson. I could read his mind! A shiver of awe passed through me; as surely as night was night and day was day, Gustav was worried about his family. And it was not that I could read it through the lines on his face, or perhaps a suggestive crease on his cheek. No, I knew what he was thinking.

Not quite the same, I think you will agree. The difference, more than anything else, is one of deadpannness. Ishiguro's prose succeeds in being evocative because the characters do not know that they are in a book. They exist in a reality all their own, and are defined by the events that occur in this reality. In other words, the creator succeeds because his creations are unaware that they are such; instead, they go about their lives with an insouciance that to us seems incongruous because we expect from them a reaction to the surrounding circumstances, a reaction that they cannot provide. Our suspicions as to the contrivedness of the story disappear, and by degrees we accept the world of the novel as being real; as being true.

There is also, of course, an ugly side to the business of non-literality. Metaphors, for example, if used unwisely can result in the complete dissolution of sincerity. In some novels this is not a problem.

(From Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson)

"You lie like a mattress," he says appreciatively.

In Stephenson's books, you will find characters routinely saying things that draw attention to themselves; Stephenson likes to make his prose as flashy as possible, and tries at every occassion to adorn it with such meaningless inanity. His characterizations suffer as a result, but he doesn't care, because he knows his stories are not about their characters so much as they are about themselves.

Salman Rushdie, on the other hand, commits the most unforgivable transgressions with his overt metaphorical detours. To Rushdie, everything is a metaphor. He takes the most ordinary situations and intervenes to show the reader how the situation most readily likens itself to something radically different.

(From Shalimar the Clown)

She wanted to see below the surface, the meniscus of the blinding brightness, to push through the hymen of brightness, into the bloody hidden truth. What was not hidden, what was not overt, was true.

For Rushdie, things are very simple. His characters are given metaphorical names and assigned metaphorical creeds and find themselves in plots that can be interpreted as an extended metaphor for their own lives. Reading his prose is unrewarding because you already know that his characters exist simply (as Roger Ebert would say) as a clothes-line for his metaphorical bombast. (Replace "metaphorical bombast" with "plot twists" and you have the formula for every thriller movie written.) Whatever else Rushdie might be, he is not an artist.

Art is, in the end, an elusive thing. Anything that sets out to be art rarely succeeds; if it does it risks incomprehensibility or (worse) obscurity. There is nothing more repugnant to the nascent author than the equivocality that accompanies relegation, the skeptical certainty that he has perhaps written a work of art so great that its status cannot be acknowledged by such dilettantes as abound in his social framework. On the other hand is of course the prosaic tug of the workaday, qualifying all that the artist purveys with an abiding melancholy. Unfortunately for the author, it is precisely this melancholy that yearns for self-expression by attempting to insinuate itself in the author's work. The success of the author as an artist to an extent depends on the identification of such propensities and their eventual eradication.