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Who through that stone?
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 19:22:59 -0500
Stephanie,
D.G. Myers had an intriguing essay about this issue a year or so ago. Search: On the existence of fictional characters by D.G. Myers and you should find it. Myers addresses two issues. First, can we know anything about a character other than what the author has shared in the text? To which Myers answers, No. For example, I don't recall that Barrie ever describes Peter Pan as white or blue eyed or anything like that. We observe context, we take cues and calculate probabilities which suggest that he probably was white but that doesn't necessarily make it so. Obviously, Myers's argument can be taken to an extreme as to what is reasonable for a reader to infer or not, but still it is an interesting idea.
The second issue is something that has come up a couple of times in our conversation about identity, specifically, casual diversity. Myers's point is that in a constrained text, anything that the author shares is necessarily relevant. An author has a limited amount of text. Any attribute specified must have significance, whether intended or not, given that there were innumerable other attributes that were omitted. When the author shares that the character is tall but omits whether they were handsome or overweight or left handed or bald, then the implication is that tallness has some significance above any of the other omitted attributes.
Correspondingly, when something is left unsaid, then whatever we impute is a product of the reader's imagination, perhaps prompted by the author, but necessarily without authority. If the text is silent then the fact is unknown. Many favorite characters might have all sorts of imputed attributes among the reading public that are never explicitly described in the text. When I first read Myers's argument, it made me wonder: just how well do we know all that cast of secondary characters in all our favorite books? I would wager that for most of them we actually have little or no idea of their appearance, race, religion, culture, etc. because it is never specified, we just conjure it up on our own authority. It would be a neat exercise to do a census of a handful of childhood classics and see just how much is assumed rather than stated.
Myers is essentially arguing that it is not possible to have some specified attribute not be in some way significant. The act of specifying makes it unavoidably significant. The corresponding implication is that you can't have "casual diversity." By calling out some attribute for inclusion in the limited space of a text, you are automatically giving it salience not accorded to the thousand other possible attributes of that individual that were not recorded.
Some excerpts from the essay:
"To pretend to know something about a character when the novel is silent about it is to reveal something about ourselves, not about the novel."
"But there is also a theoretical question, which is the more interesting. If a character in a novel is not described as being fat, is he fat nevertheless? Could he possibly be fat if the novel never says so? Obesity is treated as extraordinary, a distinguishing characteristic, but what if it is not? What if it is as unexceptional, as unworthy of comment, as teeth and nails? Obesity is extraordinary only from a specific point of view, and where it is "central," then, the novelist is testifying to his ideology."
"What is excluded from fiction signifies nothing, because it might as well not exist. Nothing outside the language of a novel is true about the men and women who are sentenced to live within it and nowhere else."
A further implication might be that the degree of diversity present in a novel, given that much/most is left to the imagination of the reader, is primarily a function of the reader's desire for or capacity to imagine diversity. With so much unspecified, it can be as diverse as you might wish. Myers doesn't actually argue that, but it is the logical implication from the predicate argument.
A pretty interesting thought.
Charles
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 19:22:59 -0500
Stephanie,
D.G. Myers had an intriguing essay about this issue a year or so ago. Search: On the existence of fictional characters by D.G. Myers and you should find it. Myers addresses two issues. First, can we know anything about a character other than what the author has shared in the text? To which Myers answers, No. For example, I don't recall that Barrie ever describes Peter Pan as white or blue eyed or anything like that. We observe context, we take cues and calculate probabilities which suggest that he probably was white but that doesn't necessarily make it so. Obviously, Myers's argument can be taken to an extreme as to what is reasonable for a reader to infer or not, but still it is an interesting idea.
The second issue is something that has come up a couple of times in our conversation about identity, specifically, casual diversity. Myers's point is that in a constrained text, anything that the author shares is necessarily relevant. An author has a limited amount of text. Any attribute specified must have significance, whether intended or not, given that there were innumerable other attributes that were omitted. When the author shares that the character is tall but omits whether they were handsome or overweight or left handed or bald, then the implication is that tallness has some significance above any of the other omitted attributes.
Correspondingly, when something is left unsaid, then whatever we impute is a product of the reader's imagination, perhaps prompted by the author, but necessarily without authority. If the text is silent then the fact is unknown. Many favorite characters might have all sorts of imputed attributes among the reading public that are never explicitly described in the text. When I first read Myers's argument, it made me wonder: just how well do we know all that cast of secondary characters in all our favorite books? I would wager that for most of them we actually have little or no idea of their appearance, race, religion, culture, etc. because it is never specified, we just conjure it up on our own authority. It would be a neat exercise to do a census of a handful of childhood classics and see just how much is assumed rather than stated.
Myers is essentially arguing that it is not possible to have some specified attribute not be in some way significant. The act of specifying makes it unavoidably significant. The corresponding implication is that you can't have "casual diversity." By calling out some attribute for inclusion in the limited space of a text, you are automatically giving it salience not accorded to the thousand other possible attributes of that individual that were not recorded.
Some excerpts from the essay:
"To pretend to know something about a character when the novel is silent about it is to reveal something about ourselves, not about the novel."
"But there is also a theoretical question, which is the more interesting. If a character in a novel is not described as being fat, is he fat nevertheless? Could he possibly be fat if the novel never says so? Obesity is treated as extraordinary, a distinguishing characteristic, but what if it is not? What if it is as unexceptional, as unworthy of comment, as teeth and nails? Obesity is extraordinary only from a specific point of view, and where it is "central," then, the novelist is testifying to his ideology."
"What is excluded from fiction signifies nothing, because it might as well not exist. Nothing outside the language of a novel is true about the men and women who are sentenced to live within it and nowhere else."
A further implication might be that the degree of diversity present in a novel, given that much/most is left to the imagination of the reader, is primarily a function of the reader's desire for or capacity to imagine diversity. With so much unspecified, it can be as diverse as you might wish. Myers doesn't actually argue that, but it is the logical implication from the predicate argument.
A pretty interesting thought.
Charles
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Received on Fri 21 Feb 2014 06:24:17 PM CST
