Novel Characters
Last night Isaac and I watched "Farenheit 451", the film byFrançois Truffaut based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. It's a good film even if its attempt to look modern and futuristic looks dated.
There has been a small kerfuffle lately with Bradbury saying (again) that the story is not about censorship but about the deleterious effects of television on society. Fine. Whatever. It's a good story and, like all good stories, it touches on a number of themes regardless of what it's "about". Sure, it has some things to say about television, and it has some things to say about censorship and book burning. There are themes aplenty woven into a nice tale with some good lessons. But arguing that is not what I'm about right now.
One of the characters claims that novels are useless to society because they just upset people who read stories in which 1) bad things happen to people; or 2) good things happen that make them envious of the people in the story; or 3) other combinations of events that he was determined would make people unhappy for whatever reason. It was all part of his culture's contention that books are dangerous.
Naturally, like most viewers, I sided with the "book people". I am, after all, a book person, albeit not in quite the literal way meant by the movie. I like books, I value books, etc.
But one question did come to mind that I was thinking about today: why do so many people like to read novels? Yes, yes, I've heard theories before about how novels can teach us about life and culture and other times and other places and other life lessons from which we can benefit. These could all be true, I suppose, although I never found them terribly convincing.
So, I will propose a simple thesis: people are endlessly fascinated by people. My notion, then, is that people read stories about people because people capture our interest. Short stories and novels have plots and devices and structures and language and voice and all those technical bits, but above all they must have interesting people to succeed. I read lots and lots of mystery novels, which tend to emphasize plot, but plot alone is never enough; without interesting characters the novel falls flat. Can you think of some great, satisfying stories you read that had cardboard-cutout characters? I can't.
I know that the best stories I've written are the ones that had full-bodied characters in them; they were character driven, which is to say that I created plots but that the plots had to get the approval of the characters. One veto, a balk on the part of the character telling me "I'd never do that" or "I'd never say that", meant instant plot change. Strong characters are not always the easiest people for an author to work with.
Usually, when I have trouble with a story moving along it's because I don't know the characters well enough. The best stories flowed more easily, and the common element was knowledge of the characters. I know that a story is always, always easier to write if I take the time to work out a character's biography in some detail beforehand. I've tried to cut corners at times, but the story always suffers.
Now, this detail doesn't always appear in any explicit way — maybe only a tenth of the details make it into the finished story — but it's all there hovering deep in the background, motivating the character. In one story ("Blade", from several years back) I had one character about whom I knew things like his mother's maiden name, although she was never even mentioned in the story. Nevertheless, that character had a depth to him and he was interesting to read about. Everything he did seemed to flow from his life in a consistent way, even though he did unpredictable things.
This attraction to character could be just my personal taste, I suppose. My favorite artistic expressions tend to be portraiture, and perhaps that's uncommon. However, artists have long known that landscapes can be pretty but they only become interesting with people in them.
People like to look at people. Neuroscientists tell us that our brains have specialized functions for recognizing faces and we can certainly distinguish a large number of them (even if we can't remember the names!). We see faces everywhere we look: in clouds, in trees, in the snow on televisions tuned between stations. I frequently resolve the nubs on our Berber carpet into faces.
This all leads me to suspect that fiction attracts our attention largely because it has people in it and that we largely judge a story by the quality of its characters. Once the quality of the characters is established* then we can look to things like plot and language and voice and symbols and all that to settle on a final judgement.
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*I'm sure there will be exceptions, especially among post-modern or surrealist or French-what's-it novels but — let's face it — they usually aren't very good stories, are they? And I don't care much for best-seller-style novels because they usually have characters that are merely types and pretty predictable.
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on Sunday, 24 June 2007 at 18.03
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Your post brought to mind what is to me the most complete, authentic and fully rounded TV series detective character of them all: Andy Sipowicz of "NYPD Blue."
The first time I watched the show, I saw in Sipowicz a couple of people I have known. He wasn't supposed to be the star or central character of the show, but that's exactly what happened.
Whoever wrote/formulated his character did a brilliant job. So did the producer-director. And, of course, Dennis Franz portrayed Sipowicz brilliantly throughout the series' long run. All the Emmys that show won were well deserved, none more so than Franz's.
Your post also brought to mind how police series detective characters so remarkably reflect our society and culture in their respective eras.
Recall Sgt. Joe Friday of "Dragnet." He was the quintessential, straight-by-the-book organization man. Never uttered a disparaging word about the LAPD, department brass or the citizenry. Never exhibited a life outside of his police duties, either. Flat and two-dimensional all the way. He was a sign of the times in 1950s America: a conformist just doing his job.
Twenty years later, we had Karl Malden and Micheal Douglas teamed as more-real, fully rounded detectives of different generations and outlooks, in "The Streets of San Francisco. Malden was the seasoned pro, not without passion, but cool and surefooted under pressure. Douglas was more brash and hard charging, more prone to put his foot in it.
And on the big screen in that decade we were introduced to "Dirty Harry," who was decidedly two-dimensional in his first film but gained breadth and depth as the series unfolded. He was the quintessential antihero, the go-it-alone rebel Americans so revere. He despised department brass and politicians, and had contempt for large chunks of the populace. But in his own distinctively violent way, he sought justice, as free of red tape and niceties as possible.
Harry Callahan fit the mood of the country post civil rights movement, post big-city riots, post Vietnam and post Watergate.
Do we have a current successor to these superb exemplars of their eras? Sadly, I don't see any. But that we have had them so regularly in my mind bolsters your thesis that strong, well-rendered characters are essential to fiction that works, on screen as much as in novels.
on Tuesday, 26 June 2007 at 12.53
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Really intriguing post; very thought provoking. I also believe the novel has survived so long because of people's desire to see how others live and how they perceive life. It's a way to expand our consciousness without having to suffer through everything ourselves. I think of, for example, Elizabeth Bennett or Anne Shirley as characters that have a life beyond their novel, and that's what makes the novel a classic. And I think the fascination with character explains why books in which "not much happens" are still read and admired. Thanks for making me examine the reasons for my novel addiction!