Philip Roth is a bit of a pill. I think I understand why his work's so appreciated by some and disliked by others, but don't really feel much about it myself. In a way that's worse. I fear showing my novel rewrite to my writing group and having them all agree, "that was nice. Nice, nice, nice" and have little or even nothing to say about it.
Discussing how he imagines his readers, Roth makes an interesting point about haters:
Paris Review: Do you show your work in progress to anyone?It's interesting that he focuses on what will oppose his work:
Philip Roth: It’s more useful for my mistakes to ripen and burst in their own good time. I give myself all the opposition I need while I’m writing, and praise is meaningless to me when I know something isn’t even half finished. Nobody sees what I’m doing until I absolutely can’t go any further and might even like to believe that I’m done.
PR: Do you have a Roth reader in mind when you write?
Roth: No. I occasionally have an anti-Roth reader in mind. I think, “How he is going to hate this!” That can be just the encouragement I need.
-The Paris Review, Issue 93, Fall 1984
- himself while he's writing
- the "anti-Roth reader."
won the National Book Award in 1960).A more useful alternative is to think ahead about what your readers might not understand. It's quite easy for a writer to become discouraged because he went into a feedback session thinking his work was awesome; then got his teeth kicked in by even the gentlest of test readers who didn't understand. It's that writer's fault for not anticipating what a reader might miss. Not hate or object to.
Roth, a famous writer, has the luxury of knowing people will respond to his work. That's not the case for most of us. Before you share your work, put yourself in a stranger's shoes. What should he understand? They can hate you later, if that's your thing.
Paulo Campos wrote his first novel in high school but didn't return to fiction until well into graduate school. He's since written three novels and a collection of short fiction. One of the novels and the collection seem good enough to shop for publication and are being revised. He was a recipient of Glimmer Train's "Best Start" competition in November 2009. His first published piece of short fiction will appear in the June 2010 issue of THEMA. He lives in New York with his wife and two suspect cats.
I think the reader, through own journey in fictive world, should understand what's not said in the story. Too much hand holding and taking reader down the path may end in "that's nice."
ReplyDeleteI read American Pastoral last year; it was my first Roth-read. It was one of those books that made me think, "What would it be like to hang out with this cantankerous bastard for a week?" He writes like he interviews.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the book though, he delivered, at least I'm pretty sure he did. I was angry and confused and generally grumpy for a week. Yes, I do believe that was his goal. I say: let the hate mail flow! (of course blogging is a different animal.)
Marisa and Ryan,
ReplyDeleteGood points. There's a spectrum from unintentional ambiguity, intentional ambiguity, and utter explicitness. As readers, it's an easier call (for example I find Stephen King to be overly clear at times and that takes me out of the story; I start thinking about how I would like the scene to be written).
As writers it can be much harder to realize we're taking something for granted. Since I've been revising my novel, I realize that I've been assuming information I cut out in earlier drafts has been on my mind so clearly that I assume the reader knows it too. A character's age or what time of day a scene took place. There have been a couple palm-to-forehead moments.
Thanks for reading & for your comments.
Oh!
ReplyDeleteAnother thing: my first Roth novel was Portnoy's Complaint and I think he did a similar thing there. The last section of the book called "Punchline" is a single page that's a game changer for the entire story. It's either brilliant or enraging *if* the reader cares about Roth or about books like Roth's.
I thought it was interesting; memorable enough to think of him when writing here, but I don't think I care enough about the kind of self- and sex-obsessed Man in Crisis the book subjected me to.