Imaginationland*
I was reading Jeremy Blachman's Anonymous Lawyer blog for the first time last evening. I had heard of it 3 years ago, when he was outed to the world at large as the brain behind this fictional Lawyer and went on to get a lucrative book deal. I also used to read his other blog regularly. But somehow I just never visited that Anonymous Lawyer blog.
Yesterday, I was tooling around the web for something to read and chanced upon the blog. I started reading it from the time he created this Anonymous Lawyer character and continued reading the entries written roughly a year after he started this blog. There were many commentators who would regularly say stuff like, “Oh this post was out-sourced to someone else. The tone of AL is different here,” and so on and so forth. What struck me was this: when writers create characters and continue writing about/as them for a sustained period of time, just how do they develop their personalities and keep their traits consistent with everything else they’ve written about these characters? I mean, I know how, but I just wonder at it. I wonder at what it must do to these writers. I look at J.K. Rowling and C.S. Lewis and a whole lot of such novelists, who kick-start a series with a set of characters and keep plugging away at them, for years sometimes. And I wonder what must go on inside their heads all that time as they produce book after book (or in Jeremy’s case, post after post) and all centering around one or a bunch of fictional character(s). Two-dimensional people existing solely inside the brains of these novelists. It seems remarkable to me that these people live, day in and day out, with these imaginary characters, who nonetheless, have to assume very realistic personas in order not to look amateurish or cartoonish. I find this interesting for 2 reasons.
One, it’s interesting because it’s difficult to figure out a person you know, in real life, a real three-dimensional person whom you go have dinner with, down beers with, and sometimes, share physical intimacies with. How much more difficult must it be to figure out an imaginary person, and ensure that your work product corresponds with all personality traits and quirks of this character? Of course, even as I’m writing this down, it occurs to me that perhaps it’s easier precisely because it’s all imaginary. You can create anything and then follow a vague-yet-traditional logical behavioural pattern, without having to make allowance for human irrational deviance from such convenient behaviour. But still… Novelists must live with these fictitious characters. For years at a stretch, sometimes. Rowling has said life after Harry Potter is something she is still coming to terms with. How does a two-dimensional character assume such importance and relevance in one’s life? I find that quite fascinating!
The other reason I find the maintenance of consistency interesting is that we all know these characters are fictitious. We know, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a talking lion-king (Aslan), in reality. We know that our cupboards are devoid of interesting worlds where Good battles Evil and Time moves at a different rate than on earth. We know that there’s no such thing as a “squib” in real life; indeed, there’s no such thing as a witch for that matter. Yet, when such books come out, there’s serious analysis going on about characters who behave out of sync with their personality traits. The fact that we know such traits are assigned makes no difference. We demand consistency and we demand it vociferously. Anything less, and we take it as a personal affront to our intelligence.
Yet we will spend 8 straight hours eyes glued to a book where “The Boy Who Lived” defeats “He Who Shall Not Be Named” with the aid of house elves and centaurs and fellow witches and wizards.
Where do we draw the line between suspension of disbelief and logical thought processes? How do the authors and writers and creators of fictitious characters know where this imaginary line exists? Fascinating.
This post is nothing but mere thoughts in my currently unoccupied mind. Do not mistake it for a cry for answers to the way the human mind functions, human psychology works, or to “Life, the Universe, and Everything”. But comments and thoughts are more than welcome. As always.
* The subject is a title of one of the episodes of Southpark, which I'm yet to watch. I happened to click on it (on my laptop) but for some reason, the video didn't load. It's scheduled for this weekend.