How to Write a Masterpiece
Toni Morrison’s Beloved is among my ten favourite novels. In this marvellous fictional dream Morrison transported me into a world that was completely unfamiliar, yet I was utterly convinced that every detail was accurate, every nuance correct. I never had a moment of doubt that the characters, the events, the tragedy were misconceived in any way. It was quite perfect. You will understand then, why I take Morrison’s wisdom to heart.
There is a stock piece of advice dispensed to new
writers: write about what you know. But a writer who
has completed her apprenticeship and who is now
approaching her masterpiece must take Morrison’s
counsel: imagine what is not the self. It
sounds so simple, but in this hyper-narcissistic age
who among us routinely reveals an empathetic
spirit—even if he possesses one? The mavens of
Hollywood, Nashville, Washington or Wall Street?
Hardly. True empathy requires self-effacement,
humility, a belief that other people deserve to be
heard—or better—understood. Artistic empathy
makes even greater demands: to create convincing,
imagined worlds that are beyond the self. This is the
“artistic space” where new discoveries are made.
To familiarize the strange. I do love this
invocation, this challenge to bring a new dimension
into words so powerful that the reader feels it in
her bones. In my new work-in-progress, Exit from
America, I’ve being toying with the experience
of meditation, trying to figure out how to make
this “strange experience” (since many people have
never meditated) seem familiar. After
acknowledging that the task is impossible, I
decided to try a narrative simulation, to break
the experience of meditating into a sequence that
leads to “empty consciousness,” that fullness of
being that is no-thing located no-where in
no-time. The best I can hope for, it seems, is an
engaging experiment.
To mystify the familiar. Brushing your
teeth, sniffing a whiff of smoke in the air,
penciling the last word into the daily crossword.
James Joyce built empires from daily experiences like
these and tied the simplest rites of passage to
centuries-old myths. Who can read Anaïs Nin without
learning something new about lust and sexual passion?
Or read Hemingway’s fishing stories without touching
the pulse of nature? These writers have discovered
the mysteries in life—and miracle of miracles—they
have revealed them in their work.
This, certainly, is the test of their power.
A Koan from Jean Cocteau
Mosaic by Sandra
Millott, 1991, in Rebar Restaurant
An original artist is unable to
copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
— Jean Cocteau
Cocteau’s clever paradox began to gnaw at
me the first time I read it. The text seems
contradictory and like a lot of quotes I come across
on the internet, it would be easy to dismiss and
forget. But when I took a moment to unravel this
little knot and I found something worthwhile (...I
think...).
A French modernist, Jean Cocteau was at the center
of the Parisian avant garde in the early twentieth
century. As a proponent of surrealism he was eager
to expand our sense of reality, to discover our
boundaries and fields of gravity.
This “frisson” is evident in Cocteau’s
paradox. His first sentence, an original artist
is unable to copy, provides our center of
gravity: his premise, which we can accept, or debate.
I’m inclined to allow it as something close to
self-evident. The leading clause in the second
sentence, he has only to copy, acts as a
hinge to open the boundaries of our understanding.
Because it’s impossible for an original artist to
copy, when she attempts to imitate or copy others,
she simply CANNOT. Therefore whatever efforts she
makes to copy all result in something new and
original.
Consider an example. Pablo Picasso was well known
for his obsession with primitive art forms. He
collected them, studied them, tried to incorporate
them into his own sphere. But it was impossible
for him to copy them. Every effort he made
generated something unique.
I’m not surprised that Picasso and Cocteau were well
acquainted. The painter and poet shared a certain
approach to their work and audience. They both amuse
and perplex us. Both artists open our eyes to new
perspectives on the world. Fifty years later, their
influence still resonates and their work rings
true.
The Trinity of Art
As far as I’m aware, William S. Burroughs is the first contemporary writer to openly acknowledge the bond between a writer and his readers as the process of imaginative collaboration is about to begin.**
His story, “Twilight’s Last Gleamings,” was supposedly written in 1938, when he was twenty-four, then re-drafted in 1949. Regardless of the genesis, the story presents a remarkable about-face from the standard notion of the story as a “delivered object” which the reader “receives” as a kind of second-class citizen in our hyper-narrative culture. Burroughs runs the traditional equation backwards. First, the reader’s imagination—not the author’s—is required to bring the story alive.
Burroughs provides the same sort of jolt to readers that René Magritte offered to viewers of his painting “This is not a pipe.” Burroughs and Magritte are having a bit of a joke, of course, but they both force their audiences to pause and consider three interdependent elements: the work of art, its creator, and those who experience the work—be it fiction, painting, music, or whatever form is on offer.
Ultimately all three keys are required to unlock the experience. Furthermore, two elements of this trinity—the audience and object—can be separated by any span of time, a fact demonstrated by the awe-inspiring re-discovery of the 17,000-year-old cave art in Lascaux, France. I imagine we in the 21st century would enjoy similar delights if an unknown play by Sophocles was screened on YouTube or a lost score by Mozart went viral in MP3 format.
The point is that art connects us to one another, one by one, in an instant (or across the millennia) as soon as the third link—the audience—attends to the work of art. No matter how long the work has been lost or found, no matter if the artist is renowned or obscured in the dust of time, the audience ensures the work can live and breathe.
The unique trinity of art is as durable—and as fragile—as humanity itself, and accessible to anyone who seeks to know the inner life it reveals. Art is a gift we offer to one another with generosity and affection. Embrace it and take comfort.
** There may be others; perhaps as an invocation at the opening of Elizabethan or Greek plays. Please email me if you know of earlier precedents.
The Original "K"
We owe a debt of gratitude to the original Mr. “K.” For a writer who published very little during his lifetime, Franz Kafka knew a lot about how to do it well. An original stylist, a social visionary who extrapolated the dynamics of his working life (in insurance) into a portrait of a world gone mad—Kafka is one of the few artists who anticipated the pervasive and perverse horrors of Nazi and Soviet bureaucracies.
Q: What can today’s
writers learn from Kafka?
A: Commitment to an inner vision. Disregard of
fashion. Abandonment of a logical framework to
support metaphors, ideas, narratives.
So many young writers are desperate to make it, to
break through, to land a triple book contract and be
celebrated by Oprah. Kafka is the paragon of the
artist who forsakes all aspirations for fame, glory,
money. He is the opposite of Hemingway: sickly,
insular, unmarried. He turned to writing for
salvation. There he found the universe sprawling
before him. He took dictation from his imagination,
unfettered by pop fashion and contemporary flare.
The importance of Kafka to me? The imperative of
embracing writing for its own sake. The experience is
self-sustaining and complete—a feeling, I think, akin
to levitation.
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