We had a great time at the "What's Fiction For?" salon, and I could tell it had been a good topic because while we were hanging around afterward, we continued to talk about it, throwing out more ideas and confabulations. And now, days later, it's still being kicked around. Thanks to Ken Lutes for his comments (personally, Ken, I don't really know how to answer your question, because looking at Mr. Singleton's curious quote, I can't really understand what peculiar definition of "life" he is operating under), and Megan Evans has also posted a short summary of the salon and some of her own thoughts about the topic at her own blog.
During the salon I mentioned that one of the questions I struggle with is this: There's been a huge amount of great fiction already written. A reader walks into a bookstore, and there's Anna Karenina on this shelf, and over here is Moby Dick, and over there is To the Lighthouse, and on and on. And, the question is, with those options available, why should the reader pick up your book and spend hours with it? Since then, I've come across an interview with George Saunders, where he does a neat job of summarizing the origins of an answer to that question. He says,
I’ve started to think that this is one of the hardest and most important things a young writer can do: look at his/her heart-influences and ask, very respectfully: OK, given that this great master existed in the world, what else is there left for me to do? That is, you love (for example) Tolstoy, you give Tolstoy his due. But then you have to say: All right, given that Tolstoy has already existed, is there anything in his world-view that I might, slightly, disagree with? Is there anything that I have known and seen and felt in my life that, perhaps (sorry, maestro!) is not fully accounted for in his work? If not—well, there are other things to do in this life. If so, go for it.
For example, I remember reading Hemingway and loving his work so much—but then at some point, realizing that my then-current life (or parts of it) would not be representable via his prose style. Living in Amarillo, Texas, working as a groundsman at an apartment complex, with strippers for pals around the complex, goofball drunks recently laid off from the nuclear plant accosting me at night when I played in our comical country band, a certain quality of West Texas lunatic-speak I was hearing, full of way off-base dreams and aspirations—I just couldn’t hear that American in Hem-speak. And that kind of moment is gold for a young writer: the door starts to open, just a crack.
The complete interview is over at BOMBLOG, and it is full of terrific stuff, about what fiction is for, and the process of writing it, and MFAs, and pinesmellgoldenpapercookiesnowman. You should run over there and read it all.
