Aristotle and Keeping it Real
First appeared in The Guardian
It's one of the most contentious debates in the literary blogosphere, but its roots stretch back more than 2,000 years. Is realism, "lifeness" or verisimilitude a necessary quality of good literature?Former Guardian books editor James Wood argues forcefully that it is, and in so doing has trampled on and trounced some glamorous, bulgy, iconic American novels. This has fuelled fireworks and lit up a lot of Yankees. Votaries of Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo are particularly hostile. Wood's extolling of "lifeness" and character as key to "how fiction works" has resulted in much red-flagged response from those who favour avant garde experimentalism. Attacks have been frenzied and in some cases gratuitously insulting. Much of the name calling can be put down to envy - Wood writes better than almost all comers - or a misplaced national pride - how dare this upstart limey besmirch our holy texts.
Wood's contention is that the best drama/fiction uses techniques that create lifelike characters because this is how emotions and feelings are most effectively communicated, how the most pleasure is gained and how moral improvement is best achieved. Of course, words on the page do not perfectly replicate the real world - they're just scribbled signs - but gain their power by creating reactions in readers which approximate those experienced in their real lives. If I can get psychoanalytical for a moment, when a situation replicates something first encountered in childhood, this often triggers feelings similar to those experienced years ago.
The origins of this theory of literature go back much further than Freud. Wood is an Aristotelian. Between 350-365 BC Aristotle took on Plato's provocative denunciation of the arts in a series of lectures, the incomplete notes for which are now called the Poetics. In these he argued that art not only imitates sensible things, but also the whole of the human mind - character, emotion and action - in a process called mimesis.
Mimesis, roughly translated, means putting the artistic presentation of an idea into the minds of people who then relate it to their experience and end up feeling the way the artist intended them to feel. Aristotle defined mimesis as imitation, but imitation with sufficient difference from original life to attract and hold the audience's interest. Imitation, he argued, is a natural human instinct from which we gain pleasure and learn our earliest lessons. Poetry originates from this instinct, plus a natural delight in imitations presented by others.For Aristotle, successful drama and poetry selectively imitate the kind of physical, emotional or intellectual "reality" which best causes feelings, notably pity and fear, in its audience. In answer to Plato, the best art results in moral improvement by conveying good emotions.
Following this, how can Wood, writing 2,000 years after Aristotle, cope with the giants of the 20th century? Look at Samuel Beckett. Contrary to Aristotle, he eschews, in most cases, imitation of the real world. Despite this, his work is considered by many to be canonical. Similarly, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in emphasising the "magical", frees his texts from the strictures of the real world. He too is widely acknowledged as a great writer. How does the Aristotelian address this contradiction? By emphasising reader response.While Aristotle sees verisimilitude as the "best" way to convey emotion, clearly there are others he may not have anticipated, but which would, I'd say, meet with his approval because they create the desired effects.
I recently watched Beckett's Happy Days. In it, the lead actress is buried in mud up to her waist in the first act, up to her neck in the second. Despite, or perhaps because of this, we are made to feel her claustrophobic existence. It's funny, but also inspiring that despite all the limits, this woman gamely proceeds with her life. And for all his florid fantasy, Marquez is able to communicate the nature of love, the strength of family and the impact of political oppression with great depth and emotional power. These depictions may be far from "real", but the reader is still touched by a powerful experience - in many cases, as powerful as any provoked by lived events.Just as western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, I'd suggest that literary criticism is a series of arguments, many of which were started by Aristotle.