My irritation with Booth began principally with this quote: "If the novelist waits passively on his pedestal for the occasional peer whose perceptions are already in harmony with his own, then it is hard to see why he should not leave everything to such readers. Why bother to write at all? If the reader were really the artist's peer in this sense, he would not need the book" (396).
Basically, what I'm getting from this is the sense that an author is not creating art for art's sake, but instead intends his work to be didactic. This quote implies a need for the reader to be someone who thinks differently from the author, and the only reason I can see for this to be necessary is if the author is intending to change the reader's mind about something. According to Booth, the author should make his novel accessible in order to make it "communicable" and therefore relate the "moral judgments" the author has made to a wider audience (397). Booth says moral judgments are naturally inherent in the novel, because "when human actions are formed to make an art work, the form that is made can never be divorced from the human meanings, including the moral judgments, that are implicit whenever human beings act" (397). Booth says it is "base" (392) to write novels which only a few people can appreciate, presumably because the moral message cannot be conveyed to as many people.
He quotes Thomas Hardy's statement that "a novel which does mortal injury to a dozen imbeciles, and has bracing results upon intellects of normal vigor, can justify its existence" (386), and interprets it in such a way to make it seem the instruction of morality is the purpose of the novel.
I would agree with Booth that moral judgments are inherent in a novel. It comes from a human mind, and humans are terribly judgmental creatures. But when he starts making statements about writing a novel which everyone can understand in order to communicate with more people, I start to get wary. I think Booth makes the novel seem more like a propaganda method than an art form. If it is "base" to write a novel which only a few can understand, it seems Booth intends the novel to be merely something which teaches people. While I agree that any novel can be a teaching method to impart understanding of certain value systems, I think that Booth is implying that this is the only thing of value which the novel does.
2 comments:
To an extent I agree with what you're saying here, and I definitely get where you're coming from. However, I want to see if I can complicate this a little bit and perhaps expand the scope of Booth's claims. First, I think it would be important to establish a frame of reference for where Booth was coming from on 392.
Slightly earlier in the work, Booth identifies what he perceives as a problem in novel writing with: "But in fiction the concept of writing well must include the successful ordering of your reader's view of a fictional world" (Booth, 388). For me, this echoes the statements made by Walter Ong in "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction." Ong claims that "if the writer succeeds in writing, it is generally because he can fictionalize in his imagination an audience..." (Ong, 11). This in itself would suggest that the fictionalization of an audience is a major component of writing itself. Ong also goes on to say that "the audience must correspondingly fictionalize itself" (Ong, 12). This is, I think, what Booth is getting at here. If an audience is not able to successfully fictionalize itself and/or refuses to accept the fictional frame of a writer, then we can say (as far as this aspect of writing goes) that the work fails.
Ong proposes that this fictionalizing frame is very socially situated, which I believe most people would agree with, but Booth takes the frame and examines only a specific aspect of the reader fictionalization frame. Booth points out that where a frame importantly might fail is in the transmission of its ideas on the level of figurative devices. "Even the great satires, in which the moral issues would seem to be crystal clear, often lead naive students astray in this regard" (Booth, 389). For Booth, the frame fails when the author's "larger ends" (388) are not achieved because the audience has not been properly framed.
Booth's assertions can likely be boiled down into: a) all artistic action is moral (at some level or other), b) if all artistic action is moral, then it carries some wisdom, c) if an artist wants to share his wisdom (which he would if his work were moral), then his work must be accessible and finally d) if the desire of the artist is to share his wisdom, then we should rate him on his success in this area. That doesn't necessarily mean that this is the only judgement criteria, but I think this might be a criterion that Booth feels is not addressed properly.
Sarah, I would agree with your post regarding the way Booth discusses the novelist. He asks, “Why bother to write at all?” (Booth 396) This is a question that I personally have asked myself more than a few times. But nearly every time I ask myself that question, I come up with a good answer. These answers I find are often different. I think that Booth fails to mention the many reasons a novelist has to write. This is where Booth’s essay feels a bit limiting for me. I really agree with you, Sarah, with the main source of my frustration being at the point where Booth asserted, “If the novelist waits passively on his pedestal for the occasional peer whose perceptions are already in harmony with his own, then it is hard to see why he should not leave everything to such readers. Why bother to write at all? If the reader were really the artist's peer in this sense, he would not need the book" (396).
I have to say, I am a little surprised at Booth for not mentioning the fact that sometimes things are just created to exist. I feel like there is a certain beauty in that that Booth ignores. I also find a certain appealing quality in reading something that does nothing but reaffirm my opinions. I would agree with you when you say that it seems that Booth is kind of promoting a sort of disagreement between reader and novelist. Don’t get me wrong, I love to be argued with when I read. But I also like that feeling when you’re reading something that you can totally related to and you’re like, “Yes! That’s totally it!”
And in regards to making a novel sort of universally applicable, I would say that is not necessary. I do like to relate to a novel, as surely many people do. But I think that there is a certain commendable quality to a piece of literature that is completely obscure. Even when novelists attempt to make things “communicable” and appealing to large audiences, there are definitely people excluded. Perhaps rather than attempt to make a novel easy for many groups to appreciate, a novelist can instead try to appeal to one group completely. And in that I think that there are certain strengths.
So I guess I just find the constraints Booth places on the novel as an art form to be quite limiting. I am wondering why Booth sees a need for a novel to meet these requirements that seem rather narrow. Can we not just appreciate each novel for its artistry rather than its applicability? Hmmm.
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