Discussion:

The Art of Fiction

John Gardner

In chapter 3 (Interest and Truth), Gardner says:

"Anything we read for pleasure we read because it interests us. One would think, since this is so, that the first question any young writer would ask himself, when he's trying to decide what to write, would be what can I think of that is interesting. Oddly enough, that is not a very usual first question; in fact, when one points out to young writers that it might be, they often react with surprise."

Is this true? Do modern writers NOT ask if their writing is at least interesting? If not, what kinds of questions do they ask themselves?

Gardner finds many problems in modern fiction. And he often blames teaching. Do modern writers of fiction attribute their success, or their failings, on their teachers?

In Chapter 6 (Technique), Gardner says:

"... thanks partly to certain movements in modern philosophy, the art of fiction, like all the arts, has become increasingly self-conscious and self doubting, artists are reportedly asking themselves what it is they are doing. Chekhov and Tolstoy could say with great confidence that the business of fiction was to "tell the truth." Contemporary thought, as we've seen, is often skeptical about whether telling the truth is possible."

Which modern philosopher is he referring to? Many consider modern philosophy as beginning with Kant. Kant was a member of the German idealists group who wrote in the middle to late 1700s with a focus on what he called "pure reason." He postulated that before we can understand the nature of things we need to understand the nature of the mind. Leading to modern fiction that is more and more self-analytical?

More likely Gardner is referring to more recent schools of philosophy such as the existentialists. Perhaps he was thinking of Kierkegaard who talked about personal, "subjective" reality versus "objective" reality. Some might take that as questioning the existence of reality, but Kierkegaard was actually saying that although science can "prove" certain aspects of physical reality, we make our important decisions based on our personal interpretations of reality, our values. Because values "color" each individual reality, each individual reality varies. Therefore, Gardner may be saying that - because of Kierkegaard - fiction writers are now free to create (and write about) their own "personal" realities, rather than the "truths" that were respected by the classical writers.

Maybe he was thinking of Jean-Paul Sartre who talked about nothingness and personal responsibility. Or he may have simply been speaking in general terms of philosophical self analysis: for example, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's explanation of the primacy of perception, that our experience of perception comes from our being present "at the moment when things, truths, and values are constituted for us." In other words, to recover the consciousness of rationality through a focus on perception. Kierkegaard and Sartre also speak of this kind of "existential moment," a moment that comes to consciousness in an instant, a moment during which an individual can, for the first time, come to realize the true nature of their own existence, and the nothingness beyond that experience.

Awareness of such concepts of modern philosophy could influence modern fiction writing, but at what level of consciousness does such a writer write?

At end, Gardner is undoubtedly correct in asserting that the classical writers of fiction - Homer and Shakespeare and Dante and Chaucer and Charlotte Bronte and Dickens (to name a few) knew certain "truths" about human existence and tried to depict them in "true" ways. Younger, modernist writers and teachers that ascribe to the modern relativist reading of fiction (related to "reader response" and the "new criticism") would suggest that there is no meaning in any art; in other words, we all make our own individual meaning of fiction and there is no central, enduring, finite "truth." Therefore, all art is just a shifting mosaic, dependent on the reader or viewer to create the meaning. (Refer to Stanley Fish's "Is there a text in this class?")

If Gardner is saying that modern philosophy (which fosters doubt about absolute truth) is responsible for a change in modern fiction, then is it for the better, or, as he suggests, for the worse?

Some might just as easily say the opposite, that modern philosophy is responsible for giving writers a more sophisticated sense of the meaning of things, a deeper probing into the nature of our human reality. This could be revealed in modern fiction that displays an unwillingness to accept the surface explanations that might seem "right" to the average reader.

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