"The Third Man" and Artistic Inevitability
Recently I watched, not for the first time, the film "The Third Man", directed by Carol Reed and starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton. It's an extraordinary film and one of the few that seems to stand up to my repeated viewing. This time I thought to watch it because I wanted to study some aspects of the narrative and characterization as entertaining research for a story I'm working on.
Watching the story whose screenplay was by Graham Greene so closely as I did was a firm reminder that I had yet to read anything by Graham Greene, clearly a deficiency that needed to be remedied. I'd suspected for some time that I'd find his style and subjects sympathetic to my tastes, so now was the perfect time to find out.
On the next library night (Monday) I even remembered to have a look for some Greene. I still have the Collected Stories to look forward to, but I have now read The Third Man, the novella that Green wrote as a preparation for the screenplay and later published. I was quite right about my liking for his writing, for his language, for his sentences and narrative details that seemed natural and unintrusive, and for the way he worked through his story. It was very vivid writing, easily rivaling the movie.
What interested me most, though, was not the similarities to the movie but the differences. I'll try to say why after recounting a couple of them, but I fear it may be still too complicated a thought for me to be clear about.
There were a number of little differences, but here are two that seemed significant plot or character points.
1. In the movie, when Martins goes one night with Anna back to Harry's apartment and there is a crowd outside the door, the little boy accuses Martins of murdering the concierge, and that seems to be the reason Martins runs away, to escape what could be a mob after him as accused murderer. In the book, the boy says the same things but there's no feeling that the people are turning toward mob behavior; Martins makes a quick get-away with Anna in order to avoid getting tangled up with the police right then, and not out of fear of the accusation.
2. In the movie, Martins appears at the reader's group meeting to speak on "the modern novel" and does a miserable job of answering questions from the audience; he seems quite preoccupied and his poor performance seems to cause him so much anxiety–that and all the people leaving–that he rushes from the meeting to his next scene. In the book, however, he performs adequately, if without much sparkle. The Q&A session goes along, he makes answers that are passable, and the meeting ends without providing him the same motivation to rush off to Anna's apartment.
I am not disturbed by these differences at all. I rather enjoy seeing/reading different version of a thing, seeing how ideas get worked out. I have a few personal stories about that to tell in a little bit.
The big question that interests me here, one that has interested me for some years, is the process whereby some thing being made by a creative person — an artist, composer, writer, musician, etc. — goes from being a spontaneous/considered product of creative work to being an artistic artifact and subject to artistic reverence.
For example, a painting. When the painting leaves the hands of the artist and becomes "art", it becomes an untouchable relic of some sort of artistic perfection. It must be touched — if it be touched at all! — by fresh, lint-fee cotton gloves, and it must be preserved in the state and condition that it was when the act of creation ended. I have two anecdotes to tell.
My art teacher in college painted large canvases by laying them down on his studio floor and working over them, as we've seen, say, in photographs of Jackson Pollock working. My teacher took great delight in the various things that might fall onto the surface of his canvas as he worked : bugs, used matches, bits of this and that. He felt that the universe was participating in the creation of the art work by contributing these more-or-less random elements. In one view, random bits of crap fell on his paintings and he didn't much care. But once that painting entered a collection and was hung on a gallery wall it became Art, and all of those random little bits of crap had to be preserved and taken care of as part of an unchanging, not-to-be-corrupted "artistic statement". When and how did that transition happen?
I heard a story once concerning Jackson Pollock, since we mentioned him. Apocryphal or not, I don't much care because the point of the story is useful here. It seems that Pollock had painted various unstretched canvases that were going to be mounted on frames as the backdrop for a ballet. When the canvases arrived it was discovered that the canvases were a foot longer than the frames. What to do? It was a quandary that confounded the set designers and trustees. In desperation someone suggested cutting a foot off each of the canvases to make them fit. People were horrified. This was suggesting sacrilege! These canvases were Art, created by a famous Artist!!
As the story goes, someone finally realize they could call Pollock and ask his advice. His suggestion : "Cut a foot off the damned things!"
What is the inhibition that makes the art work inviolable when it leaves the hands of the artist? I'm not saying that the attitude is entirely misplaced, not at all, but I find it hard to understand, too.
My own stories in this conceptual file folder have to do with the short stories I write. The reactions I get as a writer sometimes mirror this reverence for Art. Sometimes I have occasion to ask an editor how many words she'd like in a story to suit the space she has to fill. "Oh," she'll say, "however long it comes out is fine. I know that creativity can be unpredictable sometimes and the muse must be satisfied!" [My paraphrase, of course.] If I try to explain that I am a writer and if the editor wants exactly 2,873 words she will get exactly 2,873 words; she'll either be unbelieving or disillusioned.
A good story, of course, seems inevitable when a reader reads it, but that's the art (if you will) of fiction, making the story seem natural and inevitable. That what Graham Greene did in his novelette, then did again differently in the movie as Carol Reed filmed it. Now I hope you see my point : both tellings of The Third Man seemed unforced and natural, the uncontrived telling of this unique story in its inevitable working out. Except, it clearly wasn't that–couldn't be that–because there are two versions and they're both good.
I know many people like the idea and believe it possible to point to the correct version of a story. the one true and authentic artistic expression. Well, they will inevitably be disappointed. I have several stories that have been published multiple times and my experience says there are never two versions that are identical, even when one tries to make them so. Things happen–so do copy editors! To be honest there are a number of things about my writing that don't strike me as at all sacred and untouchable and I easily adjust to house style and hard-working copy editors. Occasionally something turns up that I feel strongly about; it's usually unexpected and since I'm generally easy going I usually get my way if I feel strongly about that detail.
Once, for example, I had written that a bear in a story went to a bar and asked for a "Diet Coke". The copy editor, for some reason, suggested changing it to just "Coke", perhaps to save a word, who knows? I saw the suggestion and suddenly realized that it mattered greatly to me. Bears tend to be larger men, some are concerned about that and the calories they consume, many others might be (as I am) diabetic, so I felt that there was an important if barely noticeable issue involved with my character's choosing "Diet Coke" and I really wanted to keep it that way. I explained and we kept it, of course.
But sometimes these things happen and changes get made because they don't matter very much to the story, really, and then the story is published and becomes Art, expected to be unchanging and untouchable, even though it can hardly happen.
Some years back I started a story, got 1,000 words into it and discovered that I had absolutely no idea what happened next. Those 1,000 words sat unused for about 3 years until I one day realized how I might finish that story. Now, if that doesn't sound like a muse of inevitability and only-one-way to tell a story I don't know what does. I mean, it took me 3 years to find the single, unique possibility that existed for finishing that story.
So, I finished it and sent it to an editor. Well, he responded, he liked the idea but he wasn't so sure about the ending. Would I consider changes? Well, yes I would, but it might take another 3 years! In fact, I jest. It required backing up nearly to the original 1,000 word mark but I wrote a second, significantly different ending the next week. So much for the inevitability of the original ending!
It got better than that, of course. The story in that second version didn't end up in the projected anthology. When another opportunity came along I wrote a third ending, once that combined elements of the first two endings, and that's how it was published. The experience did confirm for me how silly it was to believe that there's only one way to tell a story.
My final summary point? I don't have one. That's not the way I'm telling the story. I don't have a final answer for how artistic creation transforms in Art, but I'm enjoying working on the question.
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on Sunday, 4 September 2011 at 18.56
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In the political world, the artistic creation was Conservatism: reverence for what went before, care and judicious use of all resources.
Liberalism came along and messed it up.