I'd like to share a theory. Part of the problem might come from writers thinking of "show, don’t tell" not as a technique to be employed (or not) but as a superior form of writing.
It's relatively easy to mistake interiority in characters for telling instead of showing. The result, of course, would be the death of characters exploration and writing that feels like a string of emotionless facts that "show" the plot.
This is really good. I read a literary novel recently of the “married woman seeks liberation through romance” type and the protagonist had no discernible thoughts about her situation. No internal monologue, no talk with her girlfriend or sister over coffee, not even dialogue with her affair partner about how she felt about it. The closest it came were scenes where the woman tries to hide evidence of the affair. It honestly felt dehumanized.
i am glad you put a word to it.."vignettes." Your appraisal of Updike, a writer who is very much on my mind lately is spot on...the idea that a visual generation has difficulty expressing interiority is, belive me a real problem. When we veer toward the interior self, our emotional landscapes often sound inauthentic and melodramatic unless in the hands of a master like JHU. The empty phrases that describe surface, sound like truth to us because they mirror our interior space. You've really hit upon a problem of stylistics versus authenticity. The answer, for me anyway, may be somewhere in the land of "voice."
This was so so good and also, as a writer currently struggling with writing emotionality in her novel, it was the verbal whipping I needed! I'm often afraid of holding the readers hand too tightly, which is a different kind of sin. Though I think you've hit on something important which is that writing emotions/interiority has to not just be done but be done WELL which is HARD. Someone else in the comments mentioned writers mistaking "show don't tell" as a superior form of writing. I totally agree with that and would also add this idea of spare prose as superior (and there's a lot of spare, stripped down prose I like, like Claire Keegan!) But I've thought about how this kind of tight, curt writing is difficult to nail and takes restraint, yes, but maximalist, lush prose is more of a risk. To linger on an emotion, a bodily response, opens it up to greater scrutiny. It's in some ways easier to gloss past the big event than to sit in it bc how many times can someone's throat tighten, their heart hammer etc hard emotions, layered thoughts are hard to convey. So why not reach for bare bones sentences if you're still going to get the award and the respect? If you tip too far into emotion, then you might get called sentimental, spend too much time on description, your language deemed flowery. The more words you use, the more opportunities there are for those words to fall short, for the sentences to clunk up. It's like taking a big swing that doesn't land. So I do think part of it is fear of 'doing too much' and also, being attached to our phones probably has affected our ability to access our emotions/thoughts, there's always a buffer to reach for. Anyway, I love your voice in this piece and I'm glad I found in it when I did !
thank you!! I loved this comment so much. I'm definitely also struggling with it in my own work (which is why I came out swinging so strong lol, the call is coming from inside the house!) totally get the fear of flowery language, but the more I read big-boned classics, the more excited I get to get into the weeds of interiority. I'm currently reading "lies and sorcery" by Elsa Morante and it's become one of my favorite books of all time already BECAUSE she really guides (AKA hand-holds!) the reader through each character's backstory, emotions, and responses to events in the plot.
woah, really loved this sharp and funny piece of criticism and craft—made me feel at first deeply defensive in the way hearing a hard truth almost always does! thanks for sharing that taylor piece, too. lots to think about!
A great read! And I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve been trying to understand what it is that’s been bothering me about some lit fic books I’ve been reading recently and you’ve put it into words perfectly. I hate books that are purely made up of these vignettes
inspired and pointed wrath is what this felt like. pat yourself on the back, i feel like i just got taken to school in a good way. interiority is crucial to an engaging story.
I take your point about vignettes, but not sure you’re correct in blaming lack of interiority on a video culture and short attention spans. You can read the greatest Norse sagas without coming across a single thought or feeling but you know exactly who these characters are.
Lots to choose from. The most well known are probably Njals Saga, Egils Saga, Gisla Saga and Grettis Saga (with slightly different names in English). I read them years ago as an undergrad, and remember being struck with how well you got to know the main characters through what they did and, in particular, through their relationships with other characters. Of course the sagas were written in the 13th century (or thereabouts; I'm probably off by a hundred years one way or the other), long before our current understanding of the individual - an understanding I associate in part with the rise of romanticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I'm sure someone has already explored the link between the idea of the individual and the emergence of interiority as a literary device. I'm only suggesting there are other ways to get close to fictional characters.
Really love your personality and (at times sharp) critical honesty. I wonder whether there are any contemporary fiction you do enjoy and find does not fall into these structural issues? But I guess the issues of the new style become really apparent when you read a lot of classics. I really like how shamelessly Victorian the style of “Pachinko” is, f.ex., because the style seems to serve that type of story and not simply because of any nostalgic notion of The Great Stories.
But if I had to give a guess on a factor in this change, the lower emphasis of big survey courses and understanding of the deep roots of the art forms in general and its great variety of traditions, where many institutions primarily focus on fiction of the past, what, maybe 80 years? My degree in Comparative Literature offered insights in writers from Enheduanna to Dante to Nabokov, and I cherish that experience considering it seems to become more and more rare
thank you!! tbh, i can't really think of a recent book that's really floored me in the past ten years like a classic has (the most recent one I can think of is "parable of the sower" from 1993.) not to say i haven't enjoyed recent ones (i did like the two i critiqued in this piece, which is why i was so frustrated because i wanted them to be stronger!!) your point about the big survey courses is interesting, hadn't thought about it like that
Enjoyed this immensely. Was nodding my head in enthusiastic agreement the whole way through. Id planned to continue to trudge through 𝘜𝘯𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘕𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭 𝘟 today but think I'll take a break and revisit 𝘙𝘢𝘣𝘣𝘪𝘵 𝘙𝘶𝘯. Have you read any of the sequels? I just learned there are sequels.
I'd like to share a theory. Part of the problem might come from writers thinking of "show, don’t tell" not as a technique to be employed (or not) but as a superior form of writing.
It's relatively easy to mistake interiority in characters for telling instead of showing. The result, of course, would be the death of characters exploration and writing that feels like a string of emotionless facts that "show" the plot.
so true!!
Came here to write this…
this by 10000000%%.
This is really good. I read a literary novel recently of the “married woman seeks liberation through romance” type and the protagonist had no discernible thoughts about her situation. No internal monologue, no talk with her girlfriend or sister over coffee, not even dialogue with her affair partner about how she felt about it. The closest it came were scenes where the woman tries to hide evidence of the affair. It honestly felt dehumanized.
dehumanizing is the perfect description (and thank you!)
i am glad you put a word to it.."vignettes." Your appraisal of Updike, a writer who is very much on my mind lately is spot on...the idea that a visual generation has difficulty expressing interiority is, belive me a real problem. When we veer toward the interior self, our emotional landscapes often sound inauthentic and melodramatic unless in the hands of a master like JHU. The empty phrases that describe surface, sound like truth to us because they mirror our interior space. You've really hit upon a problem of stylistics versus authenticity. The answer, for me anyway, may be somewhere in the land of "voice."
emphasis on voice is a great way to put it!
I am thinking it through now.
Excellent!!!! Thank you. I want to read novels, not screenplays.
Well said! I wonder if that’s the issue with this kind of writing - people are trying to write a movie, not a book.
This was so so good and also, as a writer currently struggling with writing emotionality in her novel, it was the verbal whipping I needed! I'm often afraid of holding the readers hand too tightly, which is a different kind of sin. Though I think you've hit on something important which is that writing emotions/interiority has to not just be done but be done WELL which is HARD. Someone else in the comments mentioned writers mistaking "show don't tell" as a superior form of writing. I totally agree with that and would also add this idea of spare prose as superior (and there's a lot of spare, stripped down prose I like, like Claire Keegan!) But I've thought about how this kind of tight, curt writing is difficult to nail and takes restraint, yes, but maximalist, lush prose is more of a risk. To linger on an emotion, a bodily response, opens it up to greater scrutiny. It's in some ways easier to gloss past the big event than to sit in it bc how many times can someone's throat tighten, their heart hammer etc hard emotions, layered thoughts are hard to convey. So why not reach for bare bones sentences if you're still going to get the award and the respect? If you tip too far into emotion, then you might get called sentimental, spend too much time on description, your language deemed flowery. The more words you use, the more opportunities there are for those words to fall short, for the sentences to clunk up. It's like taking a big swing that doesn't land. So I do think part of it is fear of 'doing too much' and also, being attached to our phones probably has affected our ability to access our emotions/thoughts, there's always a buffer to reach for. Anyway, I love your voice in this piece and I'm glad I found in it when I did !
thank you!! I loved this comment so much. I'm definitely also struggling with it in my own work (which is why I came out swinging so strong lol, the call is coming from inside the house!) totally get the fear of flowery language, but the more I read big-boned classics, the more excited I get to get into the weeds of interiority. I'm currently reading "lies and sorcery" by Elsa Morante and it's become one of my favorite books of all time already BECAUSE she really guides (AKA hand-holds!) the reader through each character's backstory, emotions, and responses to events in the plot.
I'm definitely going to pick up that book, thanks!!!
woah, really loved this sharp and funny piece of criticism and craft—made me feel at first deeply defensive in the way hearing a hard truth almost always does! thanks for sharing that taylor piece, too. lots to think about!
thank you!! and yes, Brandon Taylor's newsletter is literally like a virtual MFA lol!
A great read! And I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve been trying to understand what it is that’s been bothering me about some lit fic books I’ve been reading recently and you’ve put it into words perfectly. I hate books that are purely made up of these vignettes
thank you!!
inspired and pointed wrath is what this felt like. pat yourself on the back, i feel like i just got taken to school in a good way. interiority is crucial to an engaging story.
thank you!!
i love this wow
love ur takes
I take your point about vignettes, but not sure you’re correct in blaming lack of interiority on a video culture and short attention spans. You can read the greatest Norse sagas without coming across a single thought or feeling but you know exactly who these characters are.
interesting point! which norse sagas are you referring to?
Lots to choose from. The most well known are probably Njals Saga, Egils Saga, Gisla Saga and Grettis Saga (with slightly different names in English). I read them years ago as an undergrad, and remember being struck with how well you got to know the main characters through what they did and, in particular, through their relationships with other characters. Of course the sagas were written in the 13th century (or thereabouts; I'm probably off by a hundred years one way or the other), long before our current understanding of the individual - an understanding I associate in part with the rise of romanticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I'm sure someone has already explored the link between the idea of the individual and the emergence of interiority as a literary device. I'm only suggesting there are other ways to get close to fictional characters.
I'll have to add them to my reading list to get into these other ways, thanks for sharing!
Really love your personality and (at times sharp) critical honesty. I wonder whether there are any contemporary fiction you do enjoy and find does not fall into these structural issues? But I guess the issues of the new style become really apparent when you read a lot of classics. I really like how shamelessly Victorian the style of “Pachinko” is, f.ex., because the style seems to serve that type of story and not simply because of any nostalgic notion of The Great Stories.
But if I had to give a guess on a factor in this change, the lower emphasis of big survey courses and understanding of the deep roots of the art forms in general and its great variety of traditions, where many institutions primarily focus on fiction of the past, what, maybe 80 years? My degree in Comparative Literature offered insights in writers from Enheduanna to Dante to Nabokov, and I cherish that experience considering it seems to become more and more rare
thank you!! tbh, i can't really think of a recent book that's really floored me in the past ten years like a classic has (the most recent one I can think of is "parable of the sower" from 1993.) not to say i haven't enjoyed recent ones (i did like the two i critiqued in this piece, which is why i was so frustrated because i wanted them to be stronger!!) your point about the big survey courses is interesting, hadn't thought about it like that
I really enjoyed reading this! Thank you for sharing
thank you!!!
Enjoyed this immensely. Was nodding my head in enthusiastic agreement the whole way through. Id planned to continue to trudge through 𝘜𝘯𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘕𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭 𝘟 today but think I'll take a break and revisit 𝘙𝘢𝘣𝘣𝘪𝘵 𝘙𝘶𝘯. Have you read any of the sequels? I just learned there are sequels.
thank you! I haven't read the sequels yet but they're definitely on my list