Fiction and the Smartphone
A few years
back, author
Ann Patchett complained that “this technology thing, the ever-encroaching
creep of communications” was making it hard to write fiction:
“I just don’t know how to write a novel
in which the characters can get in touch with all the other characters at any
moment…I don’t know how to write a novel in the world of Google, in which all
factual information is available to all characters.”
Turns out many
authors share Patchett’s “problem”. Steve
Himmer says many solve this problem by using “settings close to the
present, but far enough back to avoid such inconvenience”. Author Jared Yates
Sexton calls this setting the “nostalgic present”.
Himmer himself
doesn’t approve of this technique. Instead, he recommends embracing the new
world so that the disrupter of art becomes part of the art. After all, he says:
“The more we expect
to always have a signal, the harder it is to conceive a convincing
situation in which a character does not.”
He recommends a
mindset change amongst authors:
“I don’t see these elements of
contemporary life as destructive of narrative possibilities, but as sources
for new possibilities.”
If present day
authors avoid adapting their plots to factor in for the ubiquitous device of
the day, Himmer’s warns:
“Pretending otherwise in our stories will
only make them appear ossified and exacerbate complaints that literature has
nothing left for today’s readers, never mind tomorrow’s who might someday ask
how we made sense of ourselves.”
Nobody is saying
any of this is easy. In her books, JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, had Hermione
Granger running to the library for information. It made sense when she started
writing in 1997; but it was already raising questions like “Why doesn’t she
just Google it up?” by 2003, mid-way into her series! At least Rowling’s plot
and story-telling was awesome; so she could evade the question. But let’s face
it: most authors aren’t anywhere near as good as Rowling and so they can’t
avoid such questions. At least not if they want to be read.
Is literature about such issues? Is literature about whether information is gathered from libraries having books and persons turning pages in many books laboriously, or, whether persons press buttons while sipping coffee and get it on their screens?
ReplyDeleteI haven't read any Rowling but I know this. When William Shakespeare writes or when Alexander Dumas writes, or when Loe Tolstoy writes - not to mention the big list of Hemmingways, Bernad Shaws and many others - there is something fundamentally human and life in what they write. They reflect understanding and wisdom, ask questions about morality and values, not to push anything down the throat, but to make us introspect and maybe feel.
Machine age and cyber age have dimmed our emotional capability and eroded our moral/values sensibility no doubt, but they have failed in making us non-human. Not yet certainly. In that sense, it looks to me it is not at all possible that literary value would be decided by the transport means being a horse-driven cart or a jet aircraft that the hero or heroine or even the villain (if any exists) would take! For that matter, such technological advanced world comparisons, such as information availability.
In physics and maths, humanness does not count. Actually there is no place in their domain for such a thing. It is all head, no heart! Physics will only ask, "Are human beings one of the four forces of nature?" "No". "Forget them!" Maths has a different question, "Are human beings numbers?" "No". "Well then, shall we continue with our Laplace Transforms, ignoring them whatever they may be?"
In literature humanness counts! Actually it is all about that only. One needs a heart to feel, and feel for others, and feel situations people are in. Literature is about it, gently and subtly; it is not into intellectualizing people and situations.