Le Nénuphar Isolé Incarne La Solitude Essentielle De L’existence
By
Richard Steinberg
In our work, when it properly reflects the essence of the above quotation, it becomes clear that . . .
What?
I don’t . . .
I don’t understand you.
Oh! You mean you don’t read Afrikaans?
Huh.
How can you NOT understand it? It’s one of the most wonderfully written things I’ve ever come across!
But then, wonderful writing can’t make up for an inability to communicate something, can it?
I’m talking about the personal regret Robert Louis Stevenson felt when Edward Hyde was perceived as the hideous freak and Henry Jekyll the pure at heart victim.
What Curt Siodmak experienced when The Wolfman was seen as the monster doomed to “B” remakes opposite Maria Ouspenskaya.
The pain of Bram Stoker when his Count was vilified, rather than Victorian morality.
Don’t get me wrong, there are smart readers and stupid readers – none of the latter viewing this website, of course – those that get it and those who couldn’t get it if it was force fed them in a world with no distractions. Nothing we can do about that.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with beautiful strings of words laced together in a necklace of flawless prose that signifies absolutely nothing.
But there is nothing right with it either.
And the truth is, no matter our facility, our talent, our gift(s), or our experience, if the reader doesn’t get it, the blame belongs only on our shoulders.
The first responsibility of the writer is to be understood. After that comes entertaining, influencing, teaching. But none of that is possible without understanding coming first.
I’m not arguing for “writing down” to our readers, and certainly not for assuming that our readers are so dumb we can only write to the level of a Me & The Chimp episode. Far from it! I’m arguing that we respect our readers enough to take personal responsibility for communicating our message to our audience.
I was at a Book Show several years back, sitting in the green room waiting to take my place at one of the autograph stalls, and got into a conversation with a major author of “important” books who was always well reviewed by the most “edgy” reviewers. This individual was lauded, and promoted – and most importantly to me at the time – highly paid.
Work that I had read, but didn’t have a clue what the books were about.
This writer wrote with some of the finest licks I’ve ever seen. I mean profoundly moving imagery, stunning narrative, compelling dialogue. And images, well . . . I hope one day to create images as vivid. But, in the end, the books left me essentially empty; as I didn’t understand what the message was, barely understood the story, and hadn’t a clue as to the purpose of those 400+ pages I’d consumed.
And as the author and I stood to take our places, they turned to me and said: “It’s not important that you understand. It’s only important that I understand.”
Wow! Cool! I mean think of the poetry of . . . wait . . . uh . . . what was that again?
Bullshit, is what it’s called.
I’m not arguing for the lessening of majesty. I could’ve started The Gemini Man with the words: “Piatigorsk was a really depressing place.” Instead I chose to write: “The Rainbow never made it to Piatigorsk.” I love well put together words almost as much, if not more, than I love well put together women!
Yeah, I need to get out more; I know.
But don’t let the poetry get in the way of the story telling. Don’t get so caught up in vocabulary that you end up not saying anything. Don’t let your love of language reduce your point to an indecipherable hodge-podge.
Write from your heart and your soul; and if those words demand artistry, then by God give them artistry!
A whaling vessel has had two people lost at sea, this is known by another whaler that is passing her. And the author writes:
“But by her halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.”
Beautiful writing. Fat, gorgeous writing. Wholly understandable writing. Written, more or less, in the style of the time, but so much of the rest of the novel was written in stark phrases and dark imagery that this was clearly an attempt by the author to elevate . . . if only for a moment.
A doctor’s patient continues to worsen, so he decides to consult another. And the author writes:
“My news today is not so good. Lucy, this morning, has gone back a bit. There is, however, one good thing which has arisen from it; Mrs. Westerna was naturally anxious concerning Lucy, and has consulted me professionally about it. I took advantage of the opportunity, and told her that my old master, Van Helsing, the great specialist, was coming to stay with me; and that I would put her in his charge conjointly with myself.”
Beautiful writing. Stark, to the point writing. Wholly understandable writing. Written, more or less, in the style of the time, but so much of the rest of the novel was written in poetic images and soaring rhetoric that this was clearly an attempt by the author to impart, rather than to affect . . . if only for a moment.
And the grace of Herman Melville and Bram Stoker rings in our ears over a century after they wrote those words.
Because we understood them.
I’ll be honest with you, gentle readers, as I hope I always have been. I haven’t always been able to write understandably, to communicate my purpose, to even write in a clear enough tone to be generally understood.
Big Bad Bob (the Baddest man ever to walk down Broadway) who has been my friend, mentor, manager (perhaps keeper) for going on twelve years now tells me that sometimes he has to read my drafts several times; he can feel that something’s wrong in them, but my facility with language makes it hard to find right away. And it must be found for the project to succeed.
The Sexual Rapscallion – a bright, vibrant minded individual – told me after reading a draft that “it’s good, but I don’t get it.”
The Entrepreneurial Schoolteacher – smart, sharp, and insightful – says that one of my published novels he can only understand if he reads it in the bathroom . . . sitting down.
Writing to be understood, while still creating art and affecting other souls, is a stone bitch of a job, no question.
I know this from reaction to my own works, as well as my own reactions to the work here at Storytellers. Each day you read entries from some of the best there are at what we do. Yet, I will admit that there are times when I don’t get it. I read their words, recognize their imagery . . . and yet somehow their meaning sometimes slips right past me.
If we write to be read, mustn’t we also write to be understood? And as the world has become genres and subgenres, sub-subgenres, isn’t that making our task easier?
Which is better, the title I placed at the top of this essay or it’s English translation: The Lone Water Lily Signifies The Essential Loneliness Of Existence
Here’s your answer: neither of them.
I love the sound of French, and as I am currently having an affair with existentialist impressionism, I am drawn to Monet. But in French or English, the title has nothing to do with anything that lies above this line.
So let’s do a rewrite. Some sweeping language that also clearly imparts the intent . . . as is the purpose of a title. How about, with apologies to Gloria Estefan:
When Words Get In The Way
By
Richard Steinberg
How’s that stack up? Is it clear, literate, evocative?
Easy, right?
Not really.
Heavy sigh.
Not at all. Those of us in a life long romance of passion and lust and fury and tenderness with words struggle with the issue of clarity on a regular basis. Which is why I always wait for a rewrite to dial back the rhetoric a bit.
Put it down the way you hear it in your head. Fancy or stark, flowing or in snippets. Get it down, get it out. You can’t rewrite what hasn’t been written. So let it go and get the first draft finished.
But then sit back, morph from writer to reader; and read your draft. Discount style, and concentrate on how well the ideas in your work have been expressed, and how easily they’re understood.
Now morph back to writer, and begin again.
Some of what you’ve written will be reduced to low, gentle murmurs from the string section. Other parts will reach shouting crescendos with all sixty-four pieces joined in a symphonic exclamation point. There will be moments of starkness, and moments of poetry. Mix and match, play with it, juggle the tones and the rhythms and the stylings so that when you’re done, and you’ve stepped away from it for a few days, you can return – as a reader – and decide whether or not you will be understood by your future readers.
Because if you don’t, if you allow great writing that says absolutely nothing (but in a flowery beautiful way) to be what you would have the rest of us read, then all you’ve done is prove the truth of the quote I opened this essay with:
“Al dra ‘n bobbejaan ‘n goue ring, bly hy nog ‘n lelike ding,” C.J. Langenhoven
“Even when a baboon wears a golden ring, he still remains an ugly thing” C.J. Langenhoven
I hope, no . . . I pray you understand.
Believe!
Related posts:
- Deep Blue in the Land of the Ladies of the Round (actually rectangular) Table
- Writing and ADD
- Writing Is Difficult For Me
- The Five Percent Solution
- THE NO BALONEY GUIDE TO SUCCESSFUL WRITING
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Ah, Rick, we share some of the same demons, and of course this is one of the reasons for our kinship, but you’ve become an example in kind with your point in this lucid essay. Clever exaggeration by using foreign languages to nail down the effect of what you say. And all the rest of it. In my own struggles, back when I was teaching, I used to put a sentence on the blackoard: “Remember this and you’ll aways be right, a wet bird never flies at night.” The students would wrestle for interpretation, and of course the sentence means nothings, says nothing, except by mental gymnastics of the reader. All by way of trying to make the point you make here.
Killer statement in your posting for me is: “…in the bathroom…sitting down.”
Thanks, amigo.
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Oddly,
I just started the audio book of “The World According to Garp,” which I’ve never read. It included a note from the author in which he claims that adults should KNOW what a novel is about, as if they had an obligation, having taken up his words and determined to read them, to understand him….sort of pompous. I was also interested to note that he let his 12 year old son read the book…which he of course makes “okay” by commenting on what adult views the boy had and how intelligently he “got” the book. I wonder…is the fact that a 12 year old can grasp a very adult-themed book a good reason to give it to them? (lol) I don’t know…
D
Hey Richard, how fitting your reference to Monet, for, though his genre was impressionism, he understood that realism is the soul of art. What would he think of the non-objective painters who hijacked the back end of the last century as they wallowed in color and shape and meaningless expressionism. I remember viewing a painting once that was titled “Shades of Black.” And that is exactly what it was, black oil paint on oversized linen. The artist was a name brand, New Yorker who priced his stuff in the high five-figure range (This was back when five-figures still bought a cup of coffee). Why, I asked, would the critics rave over this? Why would someone plunk down hard cash for it? But they did.
Me, I’ll take honest, realist paintings every time. Ah, the monkey in the woodpile here is that, as the painting must have an object, a subject matter we can discern, so too must the story have a message. Without that pesky old message, what matter how well a thing is said? After that, if the meaning of convoluted prose is abstruse, the belletrist has foozled the task.
Great post.
Frank
Fantastic essay which could be the core of a whole book.
As for those baboons, I can tell you from personal experience that they are mighty dangerous. They open their lips and look as if they’re smiling, but they are always in attack mode. –J.
Vegas Rick,
I like your essay so much that I’m going to put my name on it and sell it for the million bucks it’s worth.
At very least, I plan to quote you in my own essay a couple of days hence in a doubtless ill-fated effort to elevate my own stark phrases and dark imagery, written in the bathroom . . . sitting down.
And I admire the heck out of any man who can work Gloria Estefan into an essay hereabouts. I may do the same, just because I want to.
Stan
Nothing but top-notch–akin to the always important message, “Nothing said beautifully is still nothing.”
BTW: My philosophical quote of the day translated from the Yiddish: “And are you thinking of where the gesse go to pee?”
Reb Mort
Actually, Mark, ULYSSES is the real deal.
You can’t blame ULYSSES for every pale imitation of it that’s come down the pike for the last 80 years.
I don’t think you can even blame it for FINNEGAN’S WAKE. Oh no, wait a minute. I guess you can.
No book is made for everyone, and references and a vocabulary suitable for one reader may not be suitable for someone else. As a writer, I would think making yourself understood to the reader is a selective process. As a reader, that’s a limiting factor imposed on me every time I read away from my comfort zone.
The worst prose I’ve ever read in any kind of fiction is the kind that is written for the dumbest person in the room. Explaining things to death to the inattentive reader, repeating obvious references for those who don’t read closely enough to get the reference the first time, is to make the author seem like the dumbest person in the room.
In something I wrote recently, I had a character write the day’s date on a drawing he was working on. It’s something some people do when signing their work, and I thought it was a nice way of getting the timeframe across. Someone read it and asked, “But why would he date it (such-and-such a date)? That confused me.” Well, sorry, but maybe I’m not going to act on that particular criticism.
I’ve certainly fallen prey to this often enough, and I know the frustration of writing something you feel is amazing, only to find that whatever message you believe it contains is well-sealed and hidden from most (if not all) readers…and you can derail a reader quite easily. One story I wrote, a short short, started with a tattoo that the wearer of which had removed, and wore around his neck. There is a world of symbolism lost in this because half the readers either never figured out what was hanging around his neck, or said GROSS and quit reading … my fault entirely.
Great essay, as usual…
DNW