Fact or Fiction?

            The extract Narrating taken from How Fiction Works, by James Wood gives a detailed analysis of the various writing styles of fictional literary works such as first or third person. While such in depth analysis is interesting to a point, I personally feel that too much analysis can distract and destroy the sheer joy of losing ones self in a piece of fiction, which the author surely composed for the readers unapologetic pleasure and not analytical post mortem. However, studying literature compels us not simply to enjoy but dissect each written word and of course there is merit in doing so. After all in doing so we stretch our minds and invite debate that challenges us beyond the simple thought of did we like the piece of fiction or not?

            Woods recalls the writer Sebald had once revealed to him that “Any form of authorial writing where the narrator sets himself up as a stagehand and director and judge and executor in a text, I find somehow unacceptable.” Therefore for writers such as Sebald third-person omniscient fictional works are a form of fraudulent writing and that first person narration is “ more reliable than unreliable and third person “omniscient” narration is generally more partial than omniscient.”  I think it matters little whether the author uses first or third person narrative style as long as the writer is prolific enough to connect with the audience. We need to be able to get under the skin of the character, feel what he feels, be privy to his most private most thoughts and therefore the style adopted to achieve this is secondary. However, is it wrong as Woods criticizes that the author uses language or thoughts which may not be fully the character’s but some of his own. Some of this was analyzed by Zamyatin in On language where he questions if the author is playing the lead role as an actor or is he the director? Often writers need to research or use language true to the characters background such as low class uneducated colloquialisms when the author may be high class. But essentially some of the author will creep into his works as it is difficult to totally remove himself when he is so closely involved in the creation. After all are not writers allowed a certain poetic license? They after all are not writing about factual events for historical archives, so surely we the reader can cut them a little slack and forgive them. As Woods states, “thanks to free indirect style, we see things through the character’s eyes and language but also through the author’s eyes and language. We inhabit omniscience and partiality at once. A gap opens between author and character, and the bridge- which is free indirect style itself-between them simultaneously closes that gap and draws attention to its distance.”

Woods use many extracts from varying fictional authors such as Austin’s Pride and Prejudice and James’s ‘What Maisie Knew’ to effectively illustrate his points. Using my own analysis having just recently read ‘ The Road ‘ by McCarthy which is written in free indirect style and in third person :it is interesting to note that McCarthy tells his tale using a very diary documented way of writing without revealing the innermost thoughts of his two protagonists which he simply calls the man and boy. This style allows himself to be emotionally detached from his characters but at the same time the reader is more so moved by their plight and feels their pain in the unspoken words. McCarthy is simply a spectator of the events and not a judge or executioner which allows the reader to assess the situation free of the authors entanglement. This increases the shock value of the novel and allows the reader to become more involved as our minds question, ponder and debate on a subconscious level.

            Again whatever the style taken the job of the author is to engage the reader to such an extent that fiction becomes fact. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, but often fiction is stranger than the truth!