I'm suspicious of both contemplation and enchantment. Enchantment is a form of capture. If you are going to allow yourself to be captured, you must have complete trust in the magician. And they are a magician, after all. Why would you give complete trust to someone who has chosen to pursue that craft?
Contemplation is a form of waiting. Do not hunt the wren, but keep very still in the hope that if you are still enough a wren might land on your finger. And so it might. Or a pigeon might land on your head and do its business. Waiting is not a selective activity.
Perhaps I am just not trusting enough or patient enough, but I prefer accompaniment and surprise. I can't sit still and I won't submit to your enchantment, but I will go on a journey with you, as a friend, to unexpected and unexplored places. And I will keep my eyes open, accepting the scene before me as sufficient recompense for the labor of the journey, and yet willing to be surprised. For surprise is the great pleasure of a journey. It is surprise, not weary concentration, that changes how you see the world, not merely in that moment, but forever.
I am suspicious too of “truth, goodness, and beauty.” We live on Thulcandra, the silent planet, a world of lies, wickedness, and ugliness, with just enough of truth, goodness, and beauty showing through to make us melancholy or to drive us mad. That which seems all truth, goodness, and beauty may seek only to make us captive of a silver chair. The one thing this form of enchantment does not seem capable of is surprise. All that is false seems hung with a weary familiarity. But truth and beauty, goodness and joy, come always as a surprise.
When I get disaffected or exhausted with works of fiction, other than for the reason you cite, which I concur with, it is because I can see the author trying too hard to weave an enchantment with familiar and worn-out magic, or because they are trying too hard to force me into a state of contemplation by weary elaboration that sees every claw and feather but misses the Wren. Get on with it, I want to cry. Tell me a story. Surprise me if you can. But if you can't, that's okay, if you will at least stop fussing and tell me a story.
What I want from a book, then, is neither enchantment nor contemplation. I want to depart on a journey with an honest and amiable companion who does not try to dazzle me and does not make me wait, who is capable of enjoying with me the passing scene, and who is capable of leading me to places where, perhaps, though not necessarily, surprises may await.
"Haunted" -- a favorite for me as well-- jumped right to my mind when I read your interview comments. Katy, you seem to be able to hold so much more in your head in "one piece" than I can, and I can only scramble at little bits here and there. But what you said about enchantment as "a desirable readerly state; contemplation, a desirable writerly one" struck a chord with me. While any writer must first receive (being, language, ability, desire) in order to give (to plan, imagine, write), I wonder if the act of reception as a reader has a greater priority -- per CS Lewis in Exp in Criticism, which you likely know -- "The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)" The act of getting-out-of-the-way of a work that is worthy of such self-removal, this allows for the enchantment, which at this space, seems to be also a space of healing, of holding, of allowing the work to hold me as a reader in a space. On the other hand, I know if I feel enchanted or "held" by my own work (ha!) I am likely suffering from immense writerly blind spots, not creating a work that is enchanting; contemplating my work and its relationship with reality and the world, and how to sculpt it so that it conforms more closely to that seems more active, humble, productive, healthy. A random response, not encompassing your whole thought or all the articles you linked to (which look so good, ah, will return to them! And I also recognize too that all the words I'm using are so philosophically loaded and I've wielded them quite casually. (While taking a break from being on hold with doctors, etc!)
“I know if I feel enchanted or "held" by my own work (ha!) I am likely suffering from immense writerly blind spots, not creating a work that is enchanting; contemplating my work and its relationship with reality and the world, and how to sculpt it so that it conforms more closely to that seems more active, humble, productive, healthy.” --precisely this, and so well put, Carla.
I'm suspicious of both contemplation and enchantment. Enchantment is a form of capture. If you are going to allow yourself to be captured, you must have complete trust in the magician. And they are a magician, after all. Why would you give complete trust to someone who has chosen to pursue that craft?
Contemplation is a form of waiting. Do not hunt the wren, but keep very still in the hope that if you are still enough a wren might land on your finger. And so it might. Or a pigeon might land on your head and do its business. Waiting is not a selective activity.
Perhaps I am just not trusting enough or patient enough, but I prefer accompaniment and surprise. I can't sit still and I won't submit to your enchantment, but I will go on a journey with you, as a friend, to unexpected and unexplored places. And I will keep my eyes open, accepting the scene before me as sufficient recompense for the labor of the journey, and yet willing to be surprised. For surprise is the great pleasure of a journey. It is surprise, not weary concentration, that changes how you see the world, not merely in that moment, but forever.
I am suspicious too of “truth, goodness, and beauty.” We live on Thulcandra, the silent planet, a world of lies, wickedness, and ugliness, with just enough of truth, goodness, and beauty showing through to make us melancholy or to drive us mad. That which seems all truth, goodness, and beauty may seek only to make us captive of a silver chair. The one thing this form of enchantment does not seem capable of is surprise. All that is false seems hung with a weary familiarity. But truth and beauty, goodness and joy, come always as a surprise.
When I get disaffected or exhausted with works of fiction, other than for the reason you cite, which I concur with, it is because I can see the author trying too hard to weave an enchantment with familiar and worn-out magic, or because they are trying too hard to force me into a state of contemplation by weary elaboration that sees every claw and feather but misses the Wren. Get on with it, I want to cry. Tell me a story. Surprise me if you can. But if you can't, that's okay, if you will at least stop fussing and tell me a story.
What I want from a book, then, is neither enchantment nor contemplation. I want to depart on a journey with an honest and amiable companion who does not try to dazzle me and does not make me wait, who is capable of enjoying with me the passing scene, and who is capable of leading me to places where, perhaps, though not necessarily, surprises may await.
All good--I’m glad you’re engaging so deeply with this idea even if it turns out not to describe your own approach.
"Haunted" -- a favorite for me as well-- jumped right to my mind when I read your interview comments. Katy, you seem to be able to hold so much more in your head in "one piece" than I can, and I can only scramble at little bits here and there. But what you said about enchantment as "a desirable readerly state; contemplation, a desirable writerly one" struck a chord with me. While any writer must first receive (being, language, ability, desire) in order to give (to plan, imagine, write), I wonder if the act of reception as a reader has a greater priority -- per CS Lewis in Exp in Criticism, which you likely know -- "The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)" The act of getting-out-of-the-way of a work that is worthy of such self-removal, this allows for the enchantment, which at this space, seems to be also a space of healing, of holding, of allowing the work to hold me as a reader in a space. On the other hand, I know if I feel enchanted or "held" by my own work (ha!) I am likely suffering from immense writerly blind spots, not creating a work that is enchanting; contemplating my work and its relationship with reality and the world, and how to sculpt it so that it conforms more closely to that seems more active, humble, productive, healthy. A random response, not encompassing your whole thought or all the articles you linked to (which look so good, ah, will return to them! And I also recognize too that all the words I'm using are so philosophically loaded and I've wielded them quite casually. (While taking a break from being on hold with doctors, etc!)
“I know if I feel enchanted or "held" by my own work (ha!) I am likely suffering from immense writerly blind spots, not creating a work that is enchanting; contemplating my work and its relationship with reality and the world, and how to sculpt it so that it conforms more closely to that seems more active, humble, productive, healthy.” --precisely this, and so well put, Carla.
Franzen’s Freedom was “vampiric” for me.
Same. Parts of Purity too. But I admired so much about The Corrections & Crossroads.