Literature's Many Tools: The first full step into Game Gene Theory

Geoffrey Hamilton

March 26,1996

There is a great deal of misapprehension, within the Canadian literary community, as to what constitutes successful, and 'good' literature. This misapprehention constitutes an entire paradigm within Canlit, one which evangelizes a form of realism. Within this paradigm, this convention is regarded as the only believable form, and therefore the only acceptable one. As a result, followers of this paradigm have allowed their prejudices to rule their view of the literary decisions I have made in my novel, The Nature of Puppets.

My novel uses tools not used by the realist school, and I wrote it according to my understanding of the purpose of literature. In this paper, I've set out to prove that my instincts were correct. My investigation has elicited more then enough evidence to establish that I was, and what I have discovered is that my novel happens to employ structural tools which originated prior to Don Quixote, and have lasted beyond The French Lieutenant's Woman. The tools I use come from three basic areas: from the self-conscious school (of which satire is a part), from a belief that all storytelling is game playing, and from an understanding that all stories are arguments.

The relevant features of my novel employ the following tools: omniscience, self-reflexivity, story within the story, consciousness of the reader, ironic epiphany, overt internal references, fast pacing by minimizing description, subservience of charactor to plot, myth structures, satire, parody, the fairy tale, fantasy, false history, 'real' history as counterpoint, literary criticism, and many other tools. I used these delibrately, before I became aware that they followed the self-conscious tradition (according to Metafiction, The Self-Conscious Novel, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, and Partial Magic). I originally used what I now call self-conscious tools because they worked for me, and they were appropriate for my aims. My using them is what Mavis Gallant would call using my thumbprint. She said that unless it is a true voice, it is nothing.

I always intended my writing to be for non-realists, who I believe form a majority of the population, and so far, outside of the Canlit realists, it is being well received. The premise of the self-conscious school is formulated by the 'ludic theory'. It states that stories are projects which the audience seeks to play with.

The rules (for lack of a better word) are set by the writer and the audience willingly agrees to play - if it seems like a worth while project - and so there is a contract. If the story begins with a prologue, the rules are being told relatively directly. If there is no prologue, the rules are presented more subtlety. Either way, the audience is not suspending its disbelief simply because the writer has tricked it into doing so. After all, how can an audience be tricked before the play begins? It is doing so because it willingly desires to enter the project. Such is the essence of all storytelling whether it is Shakespeare or Joan Collins.

However, these tools go against the school of realism first formulated by Aristotle - a school which is currently dominant in Canlit circles. Canadian writer Ray Smith demonstrates the realist paradigm, and the assumption that there is no alternative: "The problem of the artist is to make a representation of the world. That seems general enough to be taken as acceptable by anyone" . This school believes, more of less, that a story is a convincing imitation of nature (including dreams, some magic realism, stream of consciousness, history, ect.), and that any break with the ability to convince the audience of its reality is what Henry James once said was "a betrayal of a sacred office" .

Voltaire satirized this attitude in Candide . A 'man of taste' sets the rules of the realist paradigm for Candide: ". . . ` one must a be original without being far-fetched; often sublime and always natural; to know the human heart and to make it speak; to be a great poet without any of the characters in the play appearing to be poets themselves; to have perfect command of one's own language, and to use it with fluent euphony, without forcing it, and without ever sacrificing the sense to the rhyme".

Then the 'man of taste' is earnestly puffed-up by a supporter: "He knows all about tragedies and books, and he has himself written a tragedy, which was whistled off the stage, and a book, of which but one copy has ever been seen outside a bookshop, and that was the one he presented to me with a dedication".

The 'man of taste's' failure is cited as proof of his greatness. If one thinks of how marginalized much of Canlit is from the public, and the pride many Canlit artists have in it, perhaps Voltaire's ridicule is still current. Later in Candide a critic of 'fine art' says, "I don't consider they're a true imitation of nature. You'll only get me to like a picture when I think I'm looking at nature itself--and there aren't any like that. I have lots of paintings, but I don't look at them any more" . Candide shows that the realist / non-realist debate is not new, in fact it may be the oldest of literary debates.

Two millennia earlier, Plato also saw through the realist pretense (the view might have been common in his day) and concluded that therefore stories had no value, and so he eliminated the poet from his ideal republic. However, Plato failed to see the significance of this pretense, as much as Aristotle failed to see the significance of imitation. Whether the story is realism, history, or the overtly self-conscious story, when a audience willingly suspends disbelief, it is willingly deciding to play. The self-conscious storyteller recognizes this, and knows there is no set limit to the number of times the audience is willing to play what i call a game. In other words, he can change the rules, or break it off in mid stride, and then start the game over again as many times as the audience allows - a number which is indeterminable. My experience as a reader and a writer bears this out.

This self-consciousness is older than the Greek chorus, but it is Cervantes' Don Quixote which gives it a fresh form. Widely considered the first novel, its whole premise rests on a man attempting to turn fiction into reality, and his own pitiable reality into great fiction. This is true to the point where, in the second chapter of Don Quixote, he reads the first chapter of Don Quixote and, critiques it. This self-conscious game is found in every century since Cervantes; it is found in Hamlet , Candide , Tom Jones, Tristam Shandy , Ulysses , The Woman in the Dunes , The French Lieutenant's Woman , and Gravity's Rainbow . All stories which were very successful, while using some, or all, of the self-conscious tools at a writer's disposal. And the most widely used tool in the self-conscious repertoire is satire.

Most examples of self-conscious fiction are, or have elements of, satire, and my novel falls into this sub-grouping. The form of satire it follows is both Horatian and Menippean: Horatian, because my novel is narrated by Nature, and Nature is mildly ridiculing its own reason for existence; Menippean, because it is overwhelmingly intended to be an intellectual game.

The fact that my novel is a satire gives a further reason why the realist paradigm has difficulty with it. John Clark and Anna Motto give this account of satire: "In reading almost any satire, readers will frequently find themselves face to face with the disruptive, the paradoxical, the grandly illogical, the unacceptable". The satire I use is relatively subtle; it is an absurd, black humour. The fact that I also parody some fairy tale conventions, and include within that frame 'historical fact' seems to bother some in the realist paradigm. The unrecognized satirical cause I espouse with this parody is the ridicule of historical 'reality'.

My use of parody must also be defended. Clark and Motto explain it this way, "...the reader can never become immersed in the story line per se : He is automatically aloof from the characters and the fiction; in the absense of empathy the reader is prompted to stand off from the work and to scrutinize the finer points of its conception and composition. Clearly, such an "asthetic distance" is a prime requirement of irony" . Clearly, if one reads my book, it is what I am doing.

The problem is that realism distorts the idea of storytelling so much that often people within the realist paradigm become incapable of appreciating the 'required distance' of parody and so fail to see the irony
(There are two uses of the word distance in this essay. The 'required distance' here is one which allows the reader to know of the game and to play it. The other distance in this paper refers to the separation which description creates between the reader and the story game. More on this in the next paragraph.)

I once attempted to explain my use of exaggeration to a realist writer and he responded, "If it's not going to be real, who's going to read it?" Satire often goes unappreciated in this way.

An interesting sidebar regarding the realist paradigm is its emphasis on description. I have never accepted the need to use the five senses to any great degree, or to make love to the language in doing so. Relevant description is necessary, description for it's own sake is not and I believe it is detrimental to a narrative. The realist idea of description is that it is fundamental, not subservient to narrative - I include character description in this catagory.

Flaubert and Zola are the instigators of this emphasis according to Georg Lukacs. He gives a useful analysis of the problem this creates. He differentiates the realist emphasis on description, and the ancient concept of storytelling exemplified by Voltaire's Candide (characters reacting to events), as that between observing and participating . Notice that this distinction is relevant to the game concept. I have long felt this distinction; I would rather participate in the story game than observe it from the sidelines. I put the blame for this distance I feel from some realist texts, on excessive description, not on realism per se.

There is another misapprehension regarding storytelling which needs to be addressed: the message, or the point of a story. Canadian writer, Kent Thompson, remarked, ". . . by making us 'see the point' the author has turned his story into an intellectual exercise." This typifies the realist's fear of didacticism in regards to stories. This attitude, in realist creative writing circles, even extends to the intention of having attainable meaning. In regards to this, one writer has said to me, "If you want to say something, write an essay."

There are several responses to this attitude. First, if one has nothing to say, why write? Secondly, all communication has meaning, one might as well try to direct it. Thirdly, all meaning is argued, subtly or not, for the reader to except.

Next, the need for meaning was as much as admitted by Thompson, "We tend to read all stories as parables", yet there is still resistance among many realists to accept this, and serve this expectation on the part of readers.

Two writers have told me, separately, that once they feel they are starting to have a point to their stories they abandon them; that is how absurd this resistance has become. Lastly, story telling is an historically important method for communicating meaning. In addition, the story is intended as the game playing method of communicating meaning. An essay is not intended to be seen as a game.

The meaning of my story is far from didactic, yet many have taken the views of my characters, including the narrator, at face value. In my novel, I have a parable to tell, but the moral is indifferent, and it is ironic towards the characters' beliefs.

Now I will talk about the significance of the storytelling game. It has been observed in many animals, including humans, that game playing in the young is vital for leaning how to act in the 'real' situations which crop up in an individual's life. Horseplay in childhood can help one learn to how fight off a mugging in adulthood. As adults, we play sports, tease one another, exercise, practice things, and try to have fun. Games like these, and of all kinds, are valuable to people often because they are not 'real'. Recently, the relief of stress has been discovered to be possible by employing an alternative stress. Sports are the most common alternative stress to be employed, but I have heard on the news of people being given movies on video, movies which deal with a specific problem in their lives. For example, a bereaving husband is given a movie in which a fictional husband loses his wife. The stress is relieved within the husband when he practices the grieving process through the movie. This idea is not a new therapy, in fact it resembles Aristotle's idea of catharsis. The therapy recognizes the traditional purpose of stories, and the vital service they do for humanity (something Plato failed to notice).

Even dreams are beginning to be understood as narrative games; in dreams we test potential future situations, or vary past experiences, all for therapeutic reasons. However, I don't wish to imply that storytelling is only a serious therapy, or a silly game with no meaning, rather it is both, and everything in between.

As a last point, it has been often said that life itself is a game, and I have yet to hear of any evidence to disprove this hypothesis. It is also frequently the case that, with many people, games are taken as seriously as life itself. I have yet to see any evidence which would show why games shouldn't be. The story game can be understood through this light.
Despite the general usefulness of Aristotle's ideas on imitation and catharsis, he and his subsequent adherents have failed to understand that stories are indeed games. The idea that realist forms come even close to reflecting reality is preposterous. The realist form is only an agreed convention which purports to be realistic by its consistency with its own criteria. It is in this sense that the realist ideal involves play, and so it conforms to the ludic concept, and thus there is no harm from the realist conviction in and of itself.

However, the realist paradigm allows the misconception as to what stories are for, and can cause problems for the practitioners of the self-conscious tradition. Therefore the self-conscious practioner is often blocked by keepers of the realist faith, who have formed informal cliques to protect their paradigm from self-conscious interlopers. Realists have come to control much of the Canlit community, and their paradigm is, today, powerful enough to block writers who understand the ludic concept, and use the self-conscious tools of storytelling. These realist fans enforce versions of Henry James stipulation, that no one should break the realist's sacred oath .

The following phrases embody the self-conscious school: "Art is not about something but is something" (Barthelme); "You are actually creating this situation when you are reading it" (Kosinski); "No art can succeed when it is willingly taken for reality" (Sorrentino).

I personally believe that the writer makes the world in literature, and not the other way around. His job is to set the rules, within the capabilities of the desired audience, and to carry out a game which the audience sees as valuable enough to play.

This defense of my novel's literary tools is only necessary due to the realist's power within the community in which I find myself. My story, or game, is called The Nature of Puppets , and it falls neatly into the self-conscious tradition. Finally, under the presumption that a story which prescribes to traditional tools should be successful, then my novel should be immensely successful.

GRH