Social claustrophobia and its discontents
0 Comments Published by ginny on Friday, January 19, 2007 at 2:12 PM.
I've begun reading Fanny Burney's Cecilia for the class on Georgian Spaces I'm taking. It's distressing! There's the same kind of claustrophobia I would expect out of a novel set in prison – only this is a novel set in supposedly polite society. Poor Cecilia. I can hardly blame her for her confusion at every turn. Unlike, say, Jane Austen's Fanny Price, she doesn't shrink from the nasty behavior around her out of secret disdain – she would love a chance to express her generally moderate views, but no one will even let her talk. The book moves fast – I'm already about a hundred fifty pages in – but I'm not looking forward to being slowly smothered along with the main character for another eight hundred pages.
Oh – I forgot another on my list of Things That Have Been Bothering Me Lately: when writers, particularly writers of genre fiction, inform me in the middle of conversations that characters have taken a bite or sip of something, or are chewing. I find this distracting and unnecessary – the literary equivalent of chewing with one's mouth full. It's clearly intended to boost the sense of verisimilitude – but I think instead it only obtrudes on the reader. I don't need to know when characters take bites of things! Not unless those things are poisoned and the character will die from them pretty soon! In fact, I HATE knowing when characters take bites of things. Just like I would hate knowing every time chacters scratched, or sniffed, or shuffled, or moved their hands. Unless it's showing me something (i.e., that this character is uninterested in the conversation, or sick, or bored, or afraid), then LEAVE IT OUT.
Unfortunately, though, many writers don't seem to agree with me, especially on the biting, sipping, and chewing front. There's this almost obsessive desire to tell readers the precise detail of the food and beverage consumption of discoursing characters, even though these details add nothing to the plot. AND I DETEST IT. And now so will you, because I've called your attention to it, and now you won't be able to stop noticing. Misery loves company.
Meanwhile I'm going out of town this weekend to my cousin's bar mitzvah. There are new Blue Ridge Sanatorium pictures up on my flickr.
Oh – I forgot another on my list of Things That Have Been Bothering Me Lately: when writers, particularly writers of genre fiction, inform me in the middle of conversations that characters have taken a bite or sip of something, or are chewing. I find this distracting and unnecessary – the literary equivalent of chewing with one's mouth full. It's clearly intended to boost the sense of verisimilitude – but I think instead it only obtrudes on the reader. I don't need to know when characters take bites of things! Not unless those things are poisoned and the character will die from them pretty soon! In fact, I HATE knowing when characters take bites of things. Just like I would hate knowing every time chacters scratched, or sniffed, or shuffled, or moved their hands. Unless it's showing me something (i.e., that this character is uninterested in the conversation, or sick, or bored, or afraid), then LEAVE IT OUT.
Unfortunately, though, many writers don't seem to agree with me, especially on the biting, sipping, and chewing front. There's this almost obsessive desire to tell readers the precise detail of the food and beverage consumption of discoursing characters, even though these details add nothing to the plot. AND I DETEST IT. And now so will you, because I've called your attention to it, and now you won't be able to stop noticing. Misery loves company.
Meanwhile I'm going out of town this weekend to my cousin's bar mitzvah. There are new Blue Ridge Sanatorium pictures up on my flickr.
Labels: anger, books, reading, representation, writing
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