Guest Post by Jill Domschot: "Yes, but What Does it Mean?"

Jill Domschot has published exactly one book, and I am already a total fan of hers. My review (5-stars, of course) called her novel Anna and the Dragon "more literary than fantasy, but...still fantasy true-and-true." What I fell in love with about her writing was the depth and quirkiness and thinky-ness.

And I happen to know it's chock-full of symbolism. Which is why I asked her here to post on that topic. I am happy to say she obliged. 

Without further ado, and mainly so I don't come of as some squealy fan-girl, here's Jill's guest post:

A classic example of a skeptical English student is Bruce McAllister, who, when he was sixteen, boldly set out to foil his English teacher by sending out questionnaires on symbolism to 150 well-known authors of his day (see this article). He did this because he believed authors, and not just scholars, should have an opportunity to provide answers to the nether world of fiction. He put forth four questions: Did the writer intentionally or unintentionally use symbolism? Did readers create symbols where none existed (and did this annoy the writer)? Did the writer believe that classic authors used symbolism in their books? Did the writer have anything else to elucidate on the subject?

The responses to his questionnaire were varied. Some authors, such as Jack Kerouac, denied using symbolism because symbolism is for “fiction” and he told “true life stories.” However, Kerouac was willing to admit that some authors of “fiction” intentionally place symbolic elements in their work, while others don't. Ray Bradbury was a symbolism denier of the wholesale variety, claiming that the intentional act of laying out symbolism destroys creativity, which is unsurprising. Bradbury loved to wear the artist cloak—in his case a magician's—in whose guise creative acts sprang unspoiled from his black hat. If the world knew how he created his art, the magic would be lost.

By contrast, Ayn Rand wasn't a denier. She admitted to both consciously and subconsciously using symbolism in her stories. This isn't surprising because Ayn Rand was, by ego focus, an intellectual. Intellectuals crave acknowledgement of their intellectual abilities. If nobody asks, they'll often tell, anyway. On the other hand, they're cagey about their methods. They want others to know they understand a subject or a process, but they don't want anybody to be quite at their level of expertise. So, while Ms. Rand was perfectly happy to give an affirmative answer to sixteen-year-old McAllister, she also added, “I have no method; there is no method in writing fiction; you don't seem to understand.”

I'm not sure what Mr. McAllister expected in the way of replies. If he was attempting to prove to his teacher that most authors don't intentionally use the symbolism one learns from literature studies, he proved something else entirely—that authors are the worst people to ask such questions. I highlighted the authors above because their answers give away nothing but their own ego projections. One is too busy keeping it real; the next is too busy being creative to bother with such nonsense; the third is trying to maintain an aura of labyrinthine intellectuality.

At the same time, I'm going to make a shocking claim: all authors, even those who readily deny it, use symbolism, at the very least, on a subconscious level. Our subconscious minds are wired to respond to symbols. Many of us aren't aware of the way symbols affect us. Hence, many authors are unaware of the symbolism they employ. This general unawareness is why marketing campaigns are so successful. Once people are consciously aware of the way they're influenced by symbols, the advertising will cease to be effective. In a sense, aware authors are simply marketers of story. They might admit to using symbolism, as in the case of Ayn Rand, but what purpose does it serve them if they're too specific about their methods? They'll weaken their power to influence the reading audience.

Now that I've established how unreliable authors are when asked questions about—not just their methods—but their core motivations, I'll go ahead and do what my blog hostess, Kat, asked me to do in the first place. I'm going to give away some of the symbolism I used in my debut novel Anna and the Dragon. I take that back. I'm not going to give away “some.” I'll highlight one piece of symbolism I consciously used. After all, I'm an intellectual like Ayn Rand. I want the world to acknowledge my brilliance without understanding how I arrived at the dreamscape that creates my story.

When my protagonist, Anna, first meets the love interest, Franklin, he takes her to his apartment, where he falls asleep on a bed covered with an Indian tree-of-life spread. The tree-of-life is a simple, workable symbol for several reasons. First of all, it fits with the Portland environment of the nineties. Portland in the nineties has taken on the character of a hippy, free-wheeling place. Imagine for a moment walking into an upstairs, downtown apartment in a city covered by perpetual cloud cover, where all is green and dusky and gray outdoors—and set with brilliant, billowing Indian spreads indoors. That's the Portland I remember from my youth.

On a deeper level, almost every culture will instantly recognize the tree-of-life. It's what God barred Adam and Eve from in the garden of Eden. Its branches connects us to the heavens above and the underworld beneath. It is present in mythology. Even science uses it to denote common descent through evolution. In short, it's a powerful pictorial representation of physical and spiritual life (for an overview). This symbol, then, connects my story to a larger human reality. Ultimately, Anna and the Dragon is a story about characters choosing life. Franklin has a genetic heart defect, but Anna chooses life when she joins him on his bed—becomes his wife, has his child.

Even though authors will be cagey about their symbolism, naturally projecting their egos when asked to explain their methodology, I've chosen to be candid about this one small element to the point of … insecurity. I'm insecure at the moment, having just given away a secret. It's much easier, and just as enlightening, to sit in an English class taking apart the works of long-dead authors than it is to become self-aware about my own work. I hope the skeptical Bruce McAllister understands that writers are the worst people to ask now that he's no longer sixteen and, in fact, a writer of some merit himself.

Thank you, Jill!

And readers, if you didn't catch the links in the text up there, here's Jill's website and Anna and the Dragon on Amazon. 

Beating a Dead Battle Horse

Again, I'm not sure why I'm continuing this. It's not like I'm getting much feedback. But I feel the need to clarify some things regarding this whole literary vs. commercial thing rampaging in my head. Call me obsessive--it won't be the first time, I promise.

You can read my first post HERE and my second post HERE.

What I want to say first and foremost is this: The whole thing started because of a chat I was in, where a commercial writer made some comments about having been snubbed by literary writers. A literary writer commented back--and let me be very clear: the literary writer showed no snobbery at all. She was quite gracious.

BUT, most genre and commercial writers have, at some time, experienced literary snobbery. It has put us on the defensive. My purpose for the two previous postings was to explain why. My last commenter made it sound as if we commercial writers misunderstand. That it's not snobbery that is pervasive in literary circles--but rather poor writing that is pervasive in commercial ones.

Um.

I'm fully aware of the amount of commercial garbage out there. Yep, I am. And when I started my first post I said that many literary writers would probably agree with me--as commenter did--that there's a good amount of literary navel-contemplating trash as well.

What I have meant to convey--and apparently failed at--from the very beginning, is the idea that when you compare GOOD commercial writing to GOOD literary writing the choice comes down to preference. A good literary story is not "better" than a good commercial story for the simple fact that it is literary.

Yet, there are literary "snobs" out there who don't see that. The one involved in the chat that started this didn't exhibit this quality, but others do. I know this because I have experienced it and so have other commercial writers I know.

What creates my frustration is that I know full-well that if I sat down with a group of literary sorts and plunked down a copy of their favorite literary masterpiece and said, "I don't get why anyone would read this by choice," many (maybe not all, but many) noses would rise, eyes would narrow, and in their minds my IQ would sink like a stone.

Am I saying that each and every literary writer out there is a snob? No. But nor is every commercial writer a brainless mass-pleaser. I think gobs of writing falls in-between commercial and literary, with elements of both. And good writers are found in every position along the scale. Both types of writing take a certain type of talent--that is all we on the commercial side want understood. We simply want the literary side to stop lumping us in with Twilight-mongers, and we need to try to see the difference between true literary art and splatter-painted toilet seats.

More on the Literary Battlefront

I have no idea why I'm doing a second post on literary fiction. I mean, I had all of one comment on the first post. But it's something that keeps lurking in the back of my mind. I looked up some other blog posts on the topic, and found an interesting one by literary agent Nathan Bransford: What Makes Literary Fiction Literary?

He boils down the difference between literary and commercial fiction as this:

In commercial fiction the plot tends to happen above the surface and in literary fiction the plot tends to happen beneath the surface.

I, personally, see this to mean pretty much the same as character-driven vs. plot-driven. The important thing he points out, though, is that literary doesn't mean "plotless." Things must happen--it's just that the changes take place inside the character. It is the character's inner journey that is most important.

This is why the books I mentioned in my last post are considered literary even though their style is very commercial/mainstream. Thirteen Reasons Why and Hold Still are the stories of the inner journeys of teens dealing with the suicide of a friend/classmate. Things do happen in the story. Those things create changes in the character, and those changes are the ultimate focus of the book. The book cannot, as Bransford says, simply be "a character musing about the vagaries and eccentricities of everyday existence."


I also like Bransford's description of genre fiction: 

Most genre fiction involves a character propelling themselves through a world. The character is an active protagonist who goes out into a world, experiences the challenges of that world, and emerges either triumphant or defeated. 

The character can--and in good genre/commercial fiction does--experience inner change during this process. But that change is generally secondary to the main, "outer" plot. In the Harry Potter series, for example, Harry grows up and grows stronger, discovering all sorts of things about himself as a person, but the main focus of the series is still the ongoing battle between Harry and Voldemort.

The fact is, literary and commercial writing are simply different animals. One is not "better" than the other. They serve completely different purposes. That is the end of the story.

BUT...

There is something that tends to go unsaid in this debate, and today, I'm going to say it.

This resentment between commercial authors and literary authors comes down to one thing--Intellectual Snobbery. There is a pervading attitude among the literary set that literary writing and its writers are simply smarter. Many literary sorts believe commercial writing is just that--commercial. Common. Base. Dumbed-down. For the mass of mindless drones that occupy this quickly degrading chunk of rock, who wouldn't know a simile if t hit them in the forehead....

To that I say, Bleh. No. Not so.

Literary does not automatically equal smart. I have the papers to prove my "smart"--IQ test, SAT score, high school and college transcripts. I promise you, I am not sitting to the left of the bulk of the literary writing world when it comes to position on the intellectual bell curve. And yet, I do not like literary as a whole. I don't like much mainstream fiction either--romance and mysteries rarely hold my attention because I know the ending by chapter three. My love is dark and weird, fantasy, sci-fi, and horror--and much of it falling into the middle grade and young adult categories.

I am perfectly capable of dissecting a deep and meaningful literary book. I love the messages behind books such as The Picture of Dorian Grey. I do savor the wording of much beautifully constructed prose...but nine times out of ten, I read a book because I want to be sucked into story. I want to be lost in another world.

That, folks, does not decrease my intelligence. And commercial writers and readers do not like being looked at as lesser, as inferior, as dumb. Your abstractness does not make our straight-forwardness less interesting, or less intelligent.  There, I said it.

I'm not deluding myself, though...the battle will most assuredly rage on.

Literary Minefield

I participated in a chat last night that sidestepped into a discussion about literary fiction. Nasty territory when you bring commercial writers and literary writers together. It fortunately stayed pretty civil, but it's obvious there are seriously different views on the topic depending on what side of the fence you stand.

I happen to be more on the commercial side. That's not to say I don't like literary at all. Yes, I know, in a recent blog post I said, "I hate (most) literary fiction." But that "most" is in there, and it is very important.

You see, just like commercial fiction, literary fiction has more than its fair share of hacks. There is good literary fiction, and like the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead--when it's good, it's very, very good...but when it's bad, it's horrid.

Most literary fiction bores me to tears. It's dry. The convoluted wording makes reading the book tedious. And I simply can't relate to the characters. A friend recently recommended the book "Prep" because it's a YA literary novel that she adored. It's gotten some rather high praise from the big reviewers. I, however, could not get past the first two chapters. I couldn't relate to the MC, at all.

But I have read literary novels that made me absolutely swoon. There is a sweet spot among literary novels that happens to fall within my circle of interest. "Hold Still" by Nina LaCour and "Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher are two teen literary novels that blew my mind. Admittedly, they are written in more of a commercial style, but they touched on real-life tragedy in a way that was beautiful and soul-changing.

I just mentioned "commercial style." I said that because so many people think it is the style that makes a book literary--specifically a classic style. As though the book must read like one of the novels you were forced to trudge through in high school. Sometimes literary fiction is written that way, and many literary fans say it's about wording, but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between literary and mainstream. To me, it has to do with the subject matter. Literary novels focus on character over plot, first and foremost. Also, they are more "real life" than mainstream.

Hm, I say "real life" but I need to quantify that. You see, literary writing is popping up in genre novels. Literary sci-fi, literary fantasy. Style is part of it, but what really makes the difference is the character focus. It's real-life, completely recognizable as what we go through here, now, but in completely fantastical settings.

As you can see by the direction this post is taking, there is muddy water. There is a place where literary and commercial merge, and it's hard to separate them.

Some writers on either extreme, though, ignore that mud pond, staring over it at each other with arms crossed, and noses held high. Both sides feel slighted by the other. The literary fans because they know they are seen as obscure and niche and are unwanted by the norm. The commercial fans because the literary snobs maintain that commercial fiction is so much pig slop.

In all honesty, I just try to stay out of the cross-fire. I see literary fiction the way I see opera. It's something that takes talent in order to be truly good, but it's simply not for me. You're welcome to listen to whatever you want, and read whatever you want--I won't make fun of your too-tight literary bun if you don't scoff at me when I bust out my Stephen King and crank up The Ramones.