Just some thoughts that pass by my head as a writer, and not a lot of harmony between all of them.
You’ll tell me without hesitation that “Harrison Bergeron” was a work where the author intended to point out the flaws in a society that was slowly moving towards complete conformity and lack of personality. The author obviously scorns complete equality and believes that every member of society should have the ability to express their concerns and have individual free thought, right? Well, who says so? Did you personally sit down and have a talk with Kurt Vonnegut Jr.? And even if you did, how do you know that he was not lying to you about his intentions? What if he created this society with hopes that it would happen, laying out his ideal paradise and masking it with ironic moments to have it be taught to adolescents in school?
Surely his background and experiences growing up could provide some evidence against that statement, you may rebuke. Well consider the fact that his studies, public statements, quotes, education, and talks may all have been a disguise… that he was a lie. Not just Vonnegut, but everyone. Everyone. You too have constructed an outward appearance that you have come to believe.
Do you really enjoy literature or mathematics? Do you really enjoy what you do? Really?
Is this not just what you have become used to, a path that you have given yourself in order to build an outward identity? Would you rather not just rest, run, explore the outdoors, quit thinking about human made ideas and ideologies and soak in the one natural world that we have at our feet?
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one,” Einstein said.
Perhaps you do not. I don’t. I have enjoyed writing this, and in doing so I have grappled with questions that have developed over the course of human thought. One will eventually turn to writing during times of exploration, wonder, and boredom, since pen and paper have allowed the mind to be projected to the rest of the world in a way that is in everybody’s reach— after proper education, of course (an issue I hope to speak about some other time)
I suppose this is why the concept of finding the balance between one’s interior and exterior is so cliché, it is a concept that has permeated every society since the beginning of time. Since the beginning of the exploration into the soul. Since the creation of religion. Is the body a cage for the soul, or is it a beautiful entity in itself? Walt Whitman would have sided with the latter, and many in our time seem to think so as well.
In pursuing what we claim to “love” or to be “passionate about,” we find that there are often obstructions set up by people who have embarked on a similar journey at previous times. Though we have become much more able to realize our potential, to visualize ourselves reaching Mars after the Moon, it is still a laborious process of surpassing the notion of being the first. The first person to write a two page book, to release a movie that has no visual images, to construct a luxurious hotel that is only meant for animals… would be a ridiculous person to our contemporary eyes. It would certainly have to be a famous person, or else it would not matter.
The last point I made it one that has always been of interest to me. The people who attain cultural fame, whose actions are automatically highly regarded by the general public, have the ability, almost a responsibility, to propose or play around with change. I want novels to continue telling a story— but I would also love to see a novel that interrupts the middle of a story with the author’s perspective on some completely arbitrary topic. Just one. An exception, we’ll call it.
Slight digression: Does a speaker, author, or narrative have unlimited rights over a reader since they are the ones creating the content and making it available?
Consider a family grouped around a television. If they have chosen to purchase a mystery film about a group of detectives that unveil the solution to a crime, then they are expecting to see this sort of plot unfold before their eyes. Abrupting the story midway to introduce the filmmaker's ideas about a certain topic would be catastrophic for the success of the movie, and ultimately the industry of film in itself.
A book, though special in its own right, is extremely similar to a film in that it is a means of communication that is directed to an audience by a producer of some kind. One ignites images in the mind, passing through a filter of words, while the other directly places the images in front of the eye with no boundaries to the audience’s comprehension. This does create a massive difference, however. Though a young toddler may not realize that a clip of the destruction of the World Trade Center holds a profound significance to the majority of a certain population, the image is still flashing in his eyes like any other person witnessing it. Providing this same infant with a book about the incident, however, and a disconnection immediately forms.
Felix’s mother showed an understandable amount of dismay, though it was exaggerated in the way that it manifested itself. It was of great surprise to him, since she was the recipient of an education wholly based around acceptance and an open-minded approach. It was somewhat clear that her reaction was only an instantaneous moment of confusion and that she would soon recover from her shock, but Felix still feared the long-term effects. Her decision would prove to be much more problematic, a hypocrisy that undermined nine years of hollow words and superficial demonstrations of filial amour.
I’m back. I thought it would be partly humorous and interesting to exemplify the point I had been making about the relation between the narrator and the reader. Undoubtedly, a sense of trust establishes itself between the reader and the speaker in a story, the very same one that you constructed when reading the previous paragraph. If that was a part of a story, you would have trusted the narrator that Felix’s mother had a strong reaction to a particular circumstance, even with the knowledge that he does not really exist. You somehow come to believe that the character in the book existed at some time in some place, and that the narrator is truly recounting the events in the way that they transpired.
Huckleberry Finn never existed, but Mark Twain makes it so that he does. The rules of the world are set in place, supplemented by additional descriptions and tender interactions between the players involved. Not once does Twain refer to a situation that could not have happened, or introduce some impossible idea that discredits the story he composes.
The book creates a situation in which life is brought to paper and the reader gains a genuine interest/passion for what is involved, or they have the intention of using the relationship to their own advantage. In regards to my latter point, a dictionary is an example of a book that does not foment passionate feelings like the ones I described in my former point. Its chronological, pedantic, and dull nature makes it so that the receiver of its wisdom is using the relationship between the two for his or her own advantage (for the most part, this includes gaining short term knowledge about the definition of a word before abruptly closing the book once again and deciding that the Internet is a more favorable and quick alternative).
Despite my temptation to digress to the topic of the dying phenomenon of the dictionary, I will finish this short essay by terminating with a brief addition to the point I was making earlier, trusting authorship. What if I actually believe that authors are completely invested in what they are writing, and this whole essay is the result of me playing “devil’s advocate?” To avoid complexity, I will simply say that this is not true and I am trying to examine a particular aspect of writing. The human behind a piece of writing, no matter whether it is physical or electronic, could have completely different intentions that what he has written down.
Very rarely are we completely transparent about a particular issue, unless we are very motivated to convince the people around us. In every piece of writing that goes outward, publications, news sources, blogs, etc, there is always a part of it that is altered for the public eye. I am not asking that you read every paragraph twice to scrutinize how the author could have changed it. I am simply asking you to consider a different approach to when you read somebody else’s writing— imagine the author sitting behind that work and crafting it all on his/her own. Thoughts, ideas, biases, political preferences, inward struggles, hypocrisy are all bouncing around their head and leave a small trace in their piece of writing. Keep your eye open next time you read.