lunes, 22 de enero de 2007
Mini Rant
On Friday when we were talking about the difference between la mala literatura y el malo lector, Jon said that it was niave for a reader to expect to be able to relate to characters, becuase they are personajes, ni personas. I would like to take this moment to completely disagree (which I wasn't able to do on Friday becuase I knew I couldn't express myself well enough in Spanish to capture my irritation and that that inability to say what I meant would make me more frustrated), because characters are supposed to represent people. I do not think that it is niave for a reader to expect to be able to care about a character in a book. People in general are social creatures, who want to interact and sympathize with other people and make connections. Who likes to do things for no reason? Not me anyway. I avoid activities I know I don't enjoy, I don't make friends with people I can't relate to in any way, nor do I want to read books that I can't identify with. It doesn't make any sense to me at all. It seems like a big waste of time. I think it is completely justifiable to demand from an author a protagonist with whom one can identify or care about, and I do not think that this makes me niave. In the first half of Eva Luna, I felt like I didn't even care about any of the characters, which made the book a chore to read. Once Allende began to develop Eva and the other characters more, it became more interesting; she became more relatable, and I became more engaged. I think that's all I had to say, I will add more if I think of it.
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4 comentarios:
Heh, mini (or even major) rants welcome.
There's a lot here. Let me take just one thing: you say that "characters are supposed to represent people." Who, then, does Eva Luna represent? Or Rolf? Or Huberto?
Should we judge a book by how closely it approximates to some "real" world? The real world in which real people live, work, play, and die? (On the real world, see First Life.)
Many people do read books this way. Today, for instance, we often found ourselves comparing Eva Luna with what we know about Latin American society politics; even, as Niall suggested, to go as far as to suggest that she's representing Venezuela in this novel.
But should be limit literature to this practice of representation? And so judging it by how close it approximates real life--how much its characters are like people?
That seems a rather limiting way of thinking about things.
Might it not be better to see literature as an act of production and creation. In which, among other things, we see characters who distinguish themselves precisely by their difference from people?
Now, you might want to identify with a character as if it were a person. But isn't that a category mistake?
Or finally, to put it another way, and even accepting that character may represent people: still, isn't a representation very different from the thing itself? Remember also Magritte's Ceci n'est pas un pipe. Why not think likewise: "This is not a person"?
Hi Jon,
I don't think that the characters need to represent specific people, but I do think that in order to be interesting to read about they need to have something relatable about them, something that can connect them to us while we're reading so that we can care about them. Or even if it's not that we can relate ourselves to them, but that they evoke some sort of feeling in us so that we can then be interested in what happens in the story (I'm trying here to think of maybe characters that would provoke disgust, or anger, or sadness, and not only ones that ressemble myself). I'm trying to get away from that idea in order to understand what you are saying, but it's pretty hard because I only kind of get what you're saying.
Is it fair to say that the characters need not be relatable but do need to be able to provoke a response in the reader? Is that more all-encompassing and less niave?
I don't think that a book should approximate to the real world, although I do see some believable and realistic elements in the political situation in Eva Luna, whether or not I'm supposed to be thinking of realism, but I still do think every story needs a character that evokes emotion in the reader.
Here are some things that I don't understand from your response, but I want to so I'd appreciate it if you could clarify:
1. "we see characters who distinguish themselves precisely by their difference from people?" I THINK I agree here, becuase you want to read a story about a character that is exceptional in some way...is that what you're saying? Diff from the norm? I still think that I'm having trouble with this people/character distinction.
2. What's a "category mistake"?
3. The idea that "This is not a person"...then what is it? Ok a character, but what the heck is that then? I think I understand (I THINK!) how a representation is different from the real thing, but are there actually books out there that have no identifiable human emotions within them? Are there books without characters? If so, can you maybe please give me some example of excerpts or something?
These concepts are too arbitrary for me the way you've explained it so far.
I await your response.
Gillian, thanks for your response. A couple of things, quickly...
1. No, I didn't mean that the characters in books (such as Eva Luna) are exceptional. (Some are, some aren't.) Again, just that they are no people; they're characters.
2. By "category mistake," I mean a mistake about the different nature of two things. (For another explanation, see here or here.) In this instance, it might mean ascribing to literary characters characteristics (such as consciousness, say) proper only to real people.
3. There are certainly books that thematize the difference between characters and people. Many metafictional novels do this, for instance. Or look at Six Characters in Search of an Author or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
But to return to what seems more important... I think it's worth exploring the argument that a good book should invoke emotion (whether that be through identification or interest in the characters or by other means). Though surely our responses to some books are more cerebral and less emotional than others; does that make them bad? And some books that many people consider "bad" literatured (the horror genre, for instance, or sentimental, romantic fiction) work precisely by generating emotion (fear and tears). Should be then decide that they are in fact "good"?
Hmmm, that last point is interesting re: books evoking emotions...I definitely see your point about the horror and romance genres playing on this, and as they are considered bad lit, this idea neeeds more thoguht. That said, I would never read a book that didn't evoke any emotion, a purely cerebral book as you say, unless I had to for a class. Never...I can pretty much guarantee that. So now I'm wondering...what the heck did we decide were the reasons Eva Luna was bad? Becuase I know I didn't like it, but there are many books I don't like that are apparently good, and many books I do that are bad, so I just don't even know what to think! If this course is to make us think, then I'm on the right track, but if we are meant to draw any conclusions, I'm not sure I'm succeeding there.
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