Sunday, January 27, 2002
This evening I made a trip to Barnes & Noble to pick up a couple of books (Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume II and In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life). I've become much less fond of visiting bookstores than I once was, and there's one thing that I'm never supposed to do, ever, under any circumstances. That's stop at the magazine racks and look for reviews of my own work. Even when it's good, it's bad (you'll just have to trust me on this, because I'm not up to an explanation right now). But tonight, I slipped. I picked up the latest issue of Fangoria, flipped to the scant two pages at the very back that the magazine sets aside for books, and saw that someone named Don Kaye had written a review of Steve Jones' The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror: Volume 12, which happens to include my short story, "In the Waterworks (Birmingham, Alabama 1888)."
In his very brief review, Don Kaye noted that one of the collection's "downsides" was my story, because of my writing style, which he found to be "too contrived" for his tastes. Upon first seeing this comment I felt that little twinge of disappointment that always comes when I see a bad review (well, okay, so it's more like a stabbing pain than a twinge, but you get the point). However, in the very next sentence, Kaye added that he felt precisely the same way about Kathe Koja's "Eventide," which is also in the collection. Now, I've said online, a couple of times, how much I admire "Eventide," that I think it's one of Koja's best work's yet, and it's probably general knowledge that I am constantly in awe her writing. So, immediately, the sting began to subside.
However, it did leave me to puzzle over Kaye's opinion of "contrived" as an objectionable aspect of literature. To be honest, this is certainly not the first time a reviewer has called my writing "contrived," but I've yet to figure out exactly what they're trying to say. After all, all literature is a contrivance. Something that is contrived. As a writer, I contrive to create an illusion, a story, whatever.
A quick peek at the OED and I see that "contrive" is defined as "plan or design with ingenuity or skill." Hell, that sounds pretty good, right? However, I'm pretty sure that's not what Don Kaye is trying to say about "In the Water Works . . ." Here's another definition, of "contrived," from the OED: ". . . obviously planned, artificial, not spontaneous." I think that's the one he would prefer.
But again, from my point of view, all three of these things are at the heart of good writing. Any good story must be planned. All art is artificial by definition. And spontonaiety rarely results in anything but crap.
To be fair, though, I think I know what Kaye is saying. To him, the two stories, mine and Kathe's, did not feel accidental. Like many readers who have suffered through high school and perhaps some form of higher education, he has contracted the unfortunate belief that prose fiction should proceed from a common voice, should be instantly accessible, should be simple in style and theme, and, while these things are generally true of all fiction, they are most especially true of anything perceived as "genre." Avoid flourishes, detail, "excessive" description, and, above all, keep the language simple and standard. To do otherwise alienates readers and shows a tendancy on the part of the author to take himself or herself too seriously. Contrivance, Don Kaye might say, is a mark of arrogance. And art should never, ever appear arrogant.
This is, of course, twaddle.
You can quote me.
Twaddle.
If I do nothing else in whatever time is left me as an author, I hope I can disabuse at least one mind of such absurd "postmodern" aphorisms.
Art is artificial. That is, art is artifice. It is constructed. It does not come when you call, but has to be wrestled into any shape it assumes.
God, it's too late for this shit.
Never mind. Go to bed. Talking literary theory before bedtime is as bad a eating pickled jalepeno peppers before bed. It can't possibly be good for my digestion or my sleep.
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