I had mentioned in my earlier quick post (a bloguick? I qblog?) the cause of my lack of writing stemmed from an urgency to complete the Prince by Machiavelli for my book club (the 250 pages or less club, the only club I have been in to last more than two books). This isn't completely true as anyone familiar with the book will recall it isn't very long. As with all things, there were many tasks that needed to be done this week that can't be tossed aside for the consumption of a book; writing time gave way to the Prince.
It was a good book club pick and I won't go into what discussion it created over Italian food here. I will pick up on one thread as it ties into the movie I watched afterwards. The Prince is a guidebook of questionable morals for rulers. Peeling back the political analysis and morality of the piece, the writing is an exercise in logic. You almost feel you can hear the Machiavelli's mind gearing up to explain his case, a pride in the many examples carefully researched to support the premises discovered in his years of experience. The argument is laid out for the reader to consider and decide. One of the lures of non-fiction for me is the forthrightness of intention. You approach non-fiction ready for an urgent in your face discussion about a particular question; like Jeopardy, you know don't know the details yet but you have been given the categories of answers being given.
This isn't say that logic is only dealt with in non-fiction. Fictional logic is fun for a completely different reason. Oddly enough, when you are allowed to make up things the constraints of logic are greater. You often hear it called "suspension of disbelief", "sound or good writing", but it really boils down to logic—does the story logically hold together? The cool factor for fiction is that you don't have to be upfront about anything. The reader's mental back doors, open windows, and secret passages are available to the fiction writer, whereas the non-fiction writer has to use the front door (I realize that creative non-fiction is a hybrid that can challenge this assumption, my reply would be that the reader is usually presented the central argument on the back of a non-fiction book, regardless of how around the bush the prose turns out to be). A movie about aliens can contain a position against racism, a coming of age story display the alienating condition of modern civilization, etc.
The subtle is possible in fiction (or more malleable perhaps), yet it is weaker in structure and more easily blown over. A non-fiction can shrug its shoulder and say "listen that's what happened, here's the reference" when the reader's expresses doubts—it is what it is. What defense does a novelist have? They can't even say "This happens in real life" as the reader shakes their head and says "but it doesn't make sense here".
This brings me to the second exercise in logic yesterday. After book club, some people remained behind and watched Inception. I had been late to seeing the movie, but loved it. It's an old school "mess with your head" science fiction story. Admittedly, it is another "what is reality sort of story", but unlike the Matrix or Scanner Darkly, it seemed to be more engaged with the argument of "what makes what you experience real? The meeting place of dream logic and reality" and aesthetically, it was just slick. The movie is a maze of dreams with dreams, where the viewer if left wondering what had just happened and the eerie feeling that the movie is a labyrinth with many false exits—you just hope they are multiple real ones. Why go through all this? Sense of accomplishment and the simple fact that many ideas are inherently complex and you must work through them.
The end result was that my head was spinning from all the questions which will challenge my mind for the next couple of weeks (I believe I have to walk Inception again). Fortunately in cases of too much logic, one needs only set up a Victorian lamppost in their back wood lot and all sorts of happy nonsense will occur. The link is explained, if one believes nonsense can be explained, here.
S
No comments:
Post a Comment