The Mind of the Reader
31 July 2020 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI'm still not convinced (or converted) by Dorothy L. Sayers' intricate doctrinal analogies in "The Mind of the Maker", although as literary analysis they hold the customary satisfaction of finding a prominent public figure pointing out things with which one oneself agrees :-p
Having asserted with a reasonable degree of conviction that the creative process can be considered tripartite (although it seems a bit arbitrary to pick out three elements), she then goes on to announce that the process of reading can itself be divided into three interdependent parts. "Firstly, the Book as Thought": the assumption that the book at some point existed as a concept in its writer's mind, although one has to take this on faith. The reader "knows that [the Thought] does exist, but it is unknowable to him except in its manifestations". All that we get to see is the finished result, which implies the original idea and the work put into putting it down on paper but in itself comprises neither of them.
"Secondly, the Book as Written"; "if we do not like it, we are at liberty to burn it in the market-place, or subject it to any other indignity". But the idea of the book does not have a corporeal existence; a book is not the paper it is printed upon. Even if it is burnt, the ideas in it have been let loose into the minds of the readers and may re-emerge in a more or less accurate fashion.
"Thirdly, the Book as Read": its effect upon the mind of the reader, which she considers impossible to pin down or analyse, but I suspect this is because she is trying to force her analogy with the Holy Ghost :-(
It seems to me that the experience of reading the book is precisely what most people would consider to be the book, what they would review and critique (rather than, say, the number of pages or the typeface used) and, contrary to her claims, the most familiar and simple aspect of it for the average reader to conceive of.
After reading, "the Energy is now related to the Idea more or less as it was in the mind of the original [author]"; we now have a concept of the book as an entirety, with a satisfactory or unsatisfactory fitting-together of all its parts, which we cannot have while still in the process of reading it. And if we later re-read it, we will see episodes within it in a new light, one more closely related to that of the author who is conscious of its dramatic ironies and foreshadowings as the story unfolds -- because he holds the Idea of the book in his mind and compares the unfolding energies of reading/writing it along the way to that existing whole.
"In coming into contact with the author's Power, through the ink-and-paper body of his Energy you are taken up into [... his] Idea. If you react to it creatively, your response will again assume the form of: an Idea in your mind, the manifestation [of it]... in some form of Energy or Activity... and a communication of Power to the world about you", for example the writing of a book review which will transmit your indignant reaction to those who read it in turn ;-p
However, I don't think that you can claim that there is bound to be a threefold process of reading "because that is the structure of the creative mind"; rather than this being some inherent property of creativity, I feel that it's much more a case of reading back the three elements that you already determined as constituting the process of writing the story, i.e. trying hard to make your data fit the desired theory! (I don't have an alternative definition of the reading process, but I'm very sure that it would be possible to come up with definitions all containing precisely as many elements as the particular mystical number the researcher required.)
But one analogy that I did find very striking was her explanation for the thorny Christian question of Free Will and a loving God in terms of a writer's relationship with his characters. "A work of creation is a work of love, and that love is the most ruthless of all the passions, sparing neither itself, nor its object, nor the obstacles that stand in its way... The creator's love for his work is not a greedy possessiveness; he never desires to subdue his work to himself but always to subdue himself to his work. The more genuinely creative he is, the more he will want his work to develop in accordance with its own nature, and to stand independent of himself. Well-meaning readers who try to identify the writer with his characters... are frequently astonished by the ferocious rudeness with which the author himself salutes these efforts... They are an assault upon the independence of his creatures, which he very properly resents."
She quotes a wonderfully evocative description from Somerset Maugham: A character in a writer's head, unwritten, remains a possession; his thoughts recur to it constantly, and while his imagination gradually enriches it he enjoys the singular pleasure of feeling that there, in his mind, someone is living a varied and tremulous life, obedient to his fancy and yet in a queer wilful way independent of him.
When the story is by its nature a tragedy, the author will sacrifice the happiness of his creatures to the power and integrity of the work. It doesn't mean that he loves them any the less; only that tacking on a happy ending to the story or forcing them to act out of character will create bad art.
The writer wishes his creations to have an independent existence and manifest a will of their own, but he also needs them to co-operate willingly with his plans for them, always assuming that those plans are in accordance with "the law of [their] nature". Forcing your protagonists to act OOC damages the story, even if a happy ending is only possible by that means, and in any case makes it very hard to write.
"For the satisfaction of its will to life it depends utterly on the sustained and perpetually renewed will to creation of its maker. The work can live or grow on the sole condition of the maker's untiring energy; to satisfy its will to die [its resistance to being created, requiring a constant supply of Creative Energy to overcome] he has only to stop working.... It would not, if it were wise, petition its maker to wrest its own nature out of truth on any pretext at all, since... [this] serves only to diminish its vitality and diminish its identity. Still less would it desire him to... alter his purpose in the writing, since any such deviation from the Idea will disintegrate the work."
In other words, we're all characters in an unknown story that God is making up, and he does bad things to the world in pursuit of artistic integrity, for which we should be grateful :-p Well, it's an interesting analogy which actually does bear an unforced relationship to the creative experience...
There is an interesting section of literary criticism defined in terms of her creed which she entitles "Scalene Trinities"; faults of writing analysed in terms of 'too much Father' (all idea but no emotional involvement), 'too much Son' (all technique and no vision), 'not enough Son' (those with an Idea but not enough creative talent to express it adequately) and 'failure in the Ghost' (a lack of critical judgment resulting in leaden prose).
Having asserted with a reasonable degree of conviction that the creative process can be considered tripartite (although it seems a bit arbitrary to pick out three elements), she then goes on to announce that the process of reading can itself be divided into three interdependent parts. "Firstly, the Book as Thought": the assumption that the book at some point existed as a concept in its writer's mind, although one has to take this on faith. The reader "knows that [the Thought] does exist, but it is unknowable to him except in its manifestations". All that we get to see is the finished result, which implies the original idea and the work put into putting it down on paper but in itself comprises neither of them.
"Secondly, the Book as Written"; "if we do not like it, we are at liberty to burn it in the market-place, or subject it to any other indignity". But the idea of the book does not have a corporeal existence; a book is not the paper it is printed upon. Even if it is burnt, the ideas in it have been let loose into the minds of the readers and may re-emerge in a more or less accurate fashion.
"Thirdly, the Book as Read": its effect upon the mind of the reader, which she considers impossible to pin down or analyse, but I suspect this is because she is trying to force her analogy with the Holy Ghost :-(
It seems to me that the experience of reading the book is precisely what most people would consider to be the book, what they would review and critique (rather than, say, the number of pages or the typeface used) and, contrary to her claims, the most familiar and simple aspect of it for the average reader to conceive of.
After reading, "the Energy is now related to the Idea more or less as it was in the mind of the original [author]"; we now have a concept of the book as an entirety, with a satisfactory or unsatisfactory fitting-together of all its parts, which we cannot have while still in the process of reading it. And if we later re-read it, we will see episodes within it in a new light, one more closely related to that of the author who is conscious of its dramatic ironies and foreshadowings as the story unfolds -- because he holds the Idea of the book in his mind and compares the unfolding energies of reading/writing it along the way to that existing whole.
"In coming into contact with the author's Power, through the ink-and-paper body of his Energy you are taken up into [... his] Idea. If you react to it creatively, your response will again assume the form of: an Idea in your mind, the manifestation [of it]... in some form of Energy or Activity... and a communication of Power to the world about you", for example the writing of a book review which will transmit your indignant reaction to those who read it in turn ;-p
However, I don't think that you can claim that there is bound to be a threefold process of reading "because that is the structure of the creative mind"; rather than this being some inherent property of creativity, I feel that it's much more a case of reading back the three elements that you already determined as constituting the process of writing the story, i.e. trying hard to make your data fit the desired theory! (I don't have an alternative definition of the reading process, but I'm very sure that it would be possible to come up with definitions all containing precisely as many elements as the particular mystical number the researcher required.)
But one analogy that I did find very striking was her explanation for the thorny Christian question of Free Will and a loving God in terms of a writer's relationship with his characters. "A work of creation is a work of love, and that love is the most ruthless of all the passions, sparing neither itself, nor its object, nor the obstacles that stand in its way... The creator's love for his work is not a greedy possessiveness; he never desires to subdue his work to himself but always to subdue himself to his work. The more genuinely creative he is, the more he will want his work to develop in accordance with its own nature, and to stand independent of himself. Well-meaning readers who try to identify the writer with his characters... are frequently astonished by the ferocious rudeness with which the author himself salutes these efforts... They are an assault upon the independence of his creatures, which he very properly resents."
She quotes a wonderfully evocative description from Somerset Maugham: A character in a writer's head, unwritten, remains a possession; his thoughts recur to it constantly, and while his imagination gradually enriches it he enjoys the singular pleasure of feeling that there, in his mind, someone is living a varied and tremulous life, obedient to his fancy and yet in a queer wilful way independent of him.
When the story is by its nature a tragedy, the author will sacrifice the happiness of his creatures to the power and integrity of the work. It doesn't mean that he loves them any the less; only that tacking on a happy ending to the story or forcing them to act out of character will create bad art.
The writer wishes his creations to have an independent existence and manifest a will of their own, but he also needs them to co-operate willingly with his plans for them, always assuming that those plans are in accordance with "the law of [their] nature". Forcing your protagonists to act OOC damages the story, even if a happy ending is only possible by that means, and in any case makes it very hard to write.
"For the satisfaction of its will to life it depends utterly on the sustained and perpetually renewed will to creation of its maker. The work can live or grow on the sole condition of the maker's untiring energy; to satisfy its will to die [its resistance to being created, requiring a constant supply of Creative Energy to overcome] he has only to stop working.... It would not, if it were wise, petition its maker to wrest its own nature out of truth on any pretext at all, since... [this] serves only to diminish its vitality and diminish its identity. Still less would it desire him to... alter his purpose in the writing, since any such deviation from the Idea will disintegrate the work."
In other words, we're all characters in an unknown story that God is making up, and he does bad things to the world in pursuit of artistic integrity, for which we should be grateful :-p Well, it's an interesting analogy which actually does bear an unforced relationship to the creative experience...
There is an interesting section of literary criticism defined in terms of her creed which she entitles "Scalene Trinities"; faults of writing analysed in terms of 'too much Father' (all idea but no emotional involvement), 'too much Son' (all technique and no vision), 'not enough Son' (those with an Idea but not enough creative talent to express it adequately) and 'failure in the Ghost' (a lack of critical judgment resulting in leaden prose).
no subject
Date: 2020-08-01 08:31 am (UTC)Thinking of all the terrible things I have done to beloved characters in stories over the years...
no subject
Date: 2020-08-01 04:30 pm (UTC)Yes, that was my reaction!