Prose

[sartorias]

Today's BVC riff is on grammatical oopsies.

While I was writing that up, I was thinking about transparent prose. Over at nineweaving they've been talking about these matters.

It doesn't surprise me that writers (poets, really) like sovay and nineweaving find references to transparent prose objectionable. I don't know if anyone else's brain works this way, but for

Comments

[breathingbooks]

When I read transparent prose I am not aware of being a reader sitting with book in hand. I'm inside the story world, and the text is the medium to experience the story in a kind of dreamtime.

I think the high style is a different reading experience, in which the sound of the words runs parallel to the story.... The story itself is one step distant from me.

This. High style means that I am often conscious of the individual words, where with transparent prose I rarely am. Generally if I want a story, I pick up a novel with transparent prose and get lost in a world, and if I want high style I pick up poetry and roll the sounds around. There's nothing wrong with high style books, of course, and I've enjoyed some of them, but I read novels above all for the story, and if the prose in any way makes it hard to get at that...

[sartorias]

Some feel that there is virtue at having to work at prose. I suspect that that comes down to the payoff: if there is sufficient intellectual flavor bursts, then yep, it's eminently worth it. But if difficult prose feels akin to the labor one does to translate a text from a language one doesn't really know well, it can feel just. . . tiring. And so many of us come to books to relax, to enjoy.

[breathingbooks]

Between not reading word-for-word, generally not seeing images or hearing when reading novels, just not noticing phrases or words I don't understand, being used to sort of downloading the story directly into my brain without having to process it sensorily first as High Stuff wants me to, and never having been assigned Joyce in college, I don't really get the idea of having to or wanting to work at understanding the basic level of prose. A short piece, perhaps, but... Maybe it has something to do with the idea of some people reading primarily for the experience, not the product?

[sartorias]

There are so many reasons why people read--and sometimes are in the mood for some intellectual puzzle-work, and other times just want to sink into an easy story. Reading James Joyce in a group can be like experiencing hypertext, that is, you read a thing, you click on the link on this or that word, and a whole new set of images or meanings attaches to what you already have at hand.

Another thing about Joyce: he did intend his work to be rich with literary image, but I don't think he intended to be unreadable, any more than Shakespeare did. As time goes by, the immediate reference becomes difficult to parse.

Take this sentence: While Mary chugged her classic C, she buzzed her bro.That might very well have to be footnoted in a hundred years--people might think they know what classic is, but will have endless discussions about 'C''s meaning, especially if "chugged" has long been out of fashion. Ditto 'bro' and 'buzzed' is already going out of fashion for 'telephoned

[gategrrl]

Changing the subject for just a moment, your article on scaffolding was fantastic. It clarified much about what I find objectionable in some books that I read, without being able to figure out exactly what the puzzlement is when I don't like it as much as I thought I might.

Onto High Style and Transparent writing. Many wonderful points have been made so far. High Style books are desserts for me, while transparent style books are the main course. It's hard to find a decently, unmannered High Style book that I can get into. Is there such a thing as Transparent High Style, where the High style lapidary wording is so much the weft and weave of the story, you "forget" it's there as "high style" wording?

[sartorias]

Thanks! :-)

I think that accessible high style is a personal taste thing, but it also comes through many years of reading. Have you noticed that the more you read of a favorite genre or type of story, the less satisfying they are, because you know pretty much everything that's coming? Wah! You still love that type of story, but you're finding yourself way harder to please.

I think sometimes that High Style can be accessible for very sophisticated readers who either have read tons, or whose brains process text at a more complex level than others'.

[norilana]

Great post, Sherwood, much to think about

[sartorias]

I agree--I love character description and lots of sensory details.

Things that get in the way for me: scaffolding (that tips toward 'klunky' prose, and wooee, do I find a lot of that in rereading my own books, if I manage to see past the automatic images and look at the actual words I used, this is a lifetime fight)

Belaboring a point. I don't care how important the point is, or how wittily it's phrased. Three descriptive, or cute, iterations of the same point is one point plus two sentences of clutter, to me. (Others might feel differently, I feel I have to keep adding that.) This can show up in supposed comic writing, where the author just loads on the 'cute' so that every joke moment gets dragged out far too long.

Obscuring a point. Using oxymoronic metaphors and tricksy imagery might work for some kinds of minds, but it doesn't work for me. I have to stop and try to figure out what I think the writer is trying to say, and that is not fun. Too much of it, and I lose interest.

[norilana]

What is scaffolding? Sorry to ask a dumb question (I might have missed your previous posts on it), but I don't think I remember hearing that term before. And am very curious now...

[sartorias]

Here's the post on scaffolding--basically it means verbiage that actually adds nothing, but is often POV shoring up on the part of the writer.

[pameladean]

I don't like movies very much, with rare exceptions, and I don't want them inside my head when I'm reading. My real problem with all the exaltation of transparent prose is that to me, it just isn't. A lot of what is hailed as transparent is ugly and vague. Some of it is lovely and elegant; some, to my puzzlement, actually seems rather ornate. I understand that transparent prose, whatever it is, works for many readers, and I don't think writers shouldn't write that way or readers shouldn't like it. I mostly get exercised when critics start in on how it's the only way.

Luckily, I don't have to worry about it when I'm writing, because the viewpoint dictates the prose.

P.

[sartorias]

I think it's annoying when any critic gets up on their hind legs and proclaims that anything is "the only way" and everything else is [insert dismissive word here].

It does get exasperating when definitions of transparent prose can vary so much. (Or for that matter highly stylized or poetic prose can be perfect to this person, and overwrought and self-conscious or cluttered to that person.)

[norilana]

I just had a funny moment of semi-related linguistic insight. In Russian, people speak normally in a more poetic social language than they do in English!

It really is true, lots of High Style and superlatives are used as normal conversational tone in polite company (I am not talking street slang, that's a whole 'nother thing). And if you literally translate some of it, it sounds like stilted and old-fashioned or even archaic English.

[sartorias]

"Ornate" might be the word you are looking for here. Ornate as a style/voice went out of fashion in this country with Raymond Chandler and those who copied those guys.

But there are plenty who like it to varying degrees. I personally love an ornate style as long as it isn't repetitive.

Re: eleven

[sartorias]

It's just a story thing.