In praise of authors

[girlyswot]

I've just read C. S. Lewis's essay on 'good' and 'bad' literature.  Essentially he argues that 'good' literature is determined by the kind of reading it permits, invites, and perhaps even compels.  Good literature may allow 'bad' readings, but bad literature (like bad music, bad poetry and bad art) will never sustain a 'good', literary reading.  A literary reading is seen in things like the desire to re-read, an open-ness and receptiveness to allowing the text to mould and transform you, and time spent thinking about the text itself (rather than just the ideas it refers to).  This is distinct from the 'unliterary' reading which 'uses' the text for information, entertainment or other things (which, Lewis asserts strongly, may be good things in themselves).

Anyway, it made me think quite a lot about fanfiction.  I can count on less than the fingers of one hand the number of fanfics I've read that I've wanted to re-read, to savour, to mull over.  Or those where I've been blown away by the literary artistry of the text itself.  Or those that have done anything more for me than pass a dull hour or two.  After the End, perhaps.  Roger and Lisa springs to mind (and probably others of St M's too).  

I'm sure that this is, at least in part, to do with the democratization of publishing.  But I wonder if it's also partly to do with things like serial publication of chapters?  And reading on screen?

Anyway, this is how Lewis's essay ends, and this is what I wanted to share with all of you who are authors, in grateful thanks:

Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors.  We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend.  He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world.  In it, we should be suffocated.  The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison.  My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others.  Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough.  I will see what others have invented.  Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough.  I regret that the brutes [animals] cannot write books.  Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog.

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.  There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege.  In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality.  But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.  Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see.  Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

Thank you.

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[stmargarets.livejournal.com]

"It was the rocks—the fairy hill. The standing stones. Merlin's stones. That's where I came through." I was gasping, half-sobbing, becoming less coherent by the second. "Once upon a time, but it's really two hundred years. It's always two hundred years, in the stories. ... But in the stories, the people always get back. I couldn't get back." I turned away, staggering, grasping for support. I sank down on a rock, shoulders slumped, and put my head in my hands. There was a long silence in the wood. It went on long enough for the small night birds to recover their courage and start their noises once again, calling to each other with a thin, high zeek! as they hawked for the last insects of the summer.

I looked up at last, thinking that perhaps he had simply risen and left me, overcome by my revelations. He was still there, though, still sitting, hands braced on his knees, head bowed as though in thought.

The hairs on his arms shone stiff as copper wires in the firelight, though, and I realized that they stood erect, like the bristles on a dog. He was afraid of me.

"Jamie," I said, feeling my heart break with absolute loneliness. "Oh, Jamie."

I sat down and curled myself into a ball, trying to roll myself around the core of my pain. Nothing mattered any longer, and I sobbed my heart out.

His hands on my shoulders raised me, enough to see his face. Through the haze of tears, I saw the look he wore in battle, of struggle that had passed the point of strain and become calm certainty.

"I believe you," he said firmly. "I dinna understand it a bit—not yet—but I believe you. Claire, I believe you! Listen to me! There's the truth between us, you and I, and whatever ye tell me, I shall believe it." He gave me a gentle shake.

"It doesna matter what it is. You've told me. That's enough for now. Be still, mo duinne. Lay your head and rest. You'll tell me the rest of it later. And I'll believe you."

I was still sobbing, unable to grasp what he was telling me. I struggled, trying to pull away, but he gathered me up and held me tightly against himself, pushing my head into the folds of his plaid, and repeating over and over again, "I believe you."

At last, from sheer exhaustion, I grew calm enough to look up and say, "But you can't believe me."

He smiled down at me. His mouth trembled slightly, but he smiled.

"Ye'll no tell me what I canna do, Sassenach." He paused a moment. ... A long time later, he spoke.

"All right. Tell me now."

I told him. Told him everything, haltingly but coherently. I felt numb from exhaustion, but content, like a rabbit that has outrun a fox, and found temporary shelter under a log. It isn't sanctuary, but at least it is respite.


You won't be able to put it down!