Day 31: I'm Tired of "Fruits"--Let's Call Them Kumquats

So I've got a new article up in the catapult magazine Advent issue, yet another kumquat of NaWriMo that's developed to the point of consumption. The article's about anticipation and (im)patience, which seems in many ways to have been the theme of my life lately. It's also a bit about narrative theory.

Ya know, it's been very helpful for me to count all the things I write for public consumption this NaWriMo. It helps keep me accountable for getting stuff out there. And it reminds me that I do write a lot. This is helpful information to pile up in me for those times when people ask me whether that novel of mine's done yet. I certainly get impatient about getting that novel done myself, so it's helpful for me to remember that my writing muscles are growing strong in the meantime.

Then again, sitting down and writing these end-of-term essays--which I'm finally ready to do, and about time (there's the (im)patience popping up again)--involves more diligence than patience at this point.

The goal for the day: write (the first) three or four pages of each of the three papers. I'll feel much much better when I have a decent start on all of them, and they seem to have percolated (sorry for the swift change of metaphors from fruit to coffee) to the point where I can plow out that much , at least (ooh, another farming metaphor--or is it snow plowing?).

Anyway, I'm off to it. I hope you have a good day.

What to Read, What to Read

So yesterday both Mark Terry and Terry Whalin posted about reading the kinds of books you gravitate to, and then writing those kinds of books. I find this a fascinating concept that's probably true, to a certain degree. But I'd like to point out that reading entirely different kinds of books than the ones you gravitate to, and trying to write different kinds of genres than what you're reading, can be pretty amazing.

That, of course, is said from a girl who's been reading a lot of theoretical tomes lately. I have to admit that theoretical tomes haven't necessarily always been the first book I'd pick up when strolling through Borders, and yet, I'm finding that material incredibly enriching. Yes, I've been writing papers that respond to that theory, but I've also been finding it's been raising desires in me to write creative non-fiction, to try new fiction genres, to add deeper layers to my thought and to my characters in my fiction.

See, the theory I've been reading has touched on some pretty basic questions about who we are as humans. About meaning and communication. On the nature of story. On how we conceive history and why we like to keep and throw things away. About how we influence one another, and questions of agency and free will. This semester, I've been busy theorizing and writing academic papers in response, but I can feel my confidence toward other writings improving as I feel my ponderings on these topics gathering me lots and lots of writing material.

So yeah, I'd like to encourage you writers out there to, sure, read what you want to write and write what you want to read, but here's my two cents: don't limit your reading to that. Don't shun the hard stuff. Stretching your comfort zone is good, and can stretch your imagination along with your understanding.

Oh, and one more thing--don't forget to "read" the "texts" around you in your quest for figuring out what to write. Pay attention to what stories you like to listen to from other people and watch on TV, what locations you like to visit, what your interests are. Observe how people communicate with each other and how the cultures around you work and how they interact with each other. These things, beyond what you like to read, could open up whole new universes of kinds of things to read and to write, and add new depth to what you do write.

Life Imitates Art?: The Debate Formats

So last night I was watching the debate responses late on MSNBC when this political analyst came on. I don't remember his name (as I was still half-dead from my week of grad school insanity), but he attributed the more loosened up format of the debates in West Wing affected Jim Lehrer's insistence on McCain and Obama talking to each other. If this is true, a fictional representation may actually have had an effect on this election.

The thing is, as a West Wing fan, I knew the thing looked familiar as I was watching the debate. I knew I'd seen something similar on the show. As someone who's studying stories, particularly fictional ones, from a rhetorical, what-is-its-place-in-society way for my PhD, I found this just delightful. But beyond academics, if it's true, it could be actually quite significant within this already-unusual election.

So much to say. First, the analyst's case for this connection between the fictional and the real debate was compelling: he said that Jim Lehrer had been asked to take part in the fictionalized West Wing debate version a few years back, but turned it down because there was a rule that PBS employees couldn't appear in fiction (and Jim Lehrer himself had written the rule). That he'd talked to Jim Lehrer after the fictional version had aired, and Lehrer had liked the fiction version. We can't know for sure, but yeah, from my viewings of both (I watched that episode again a few months ago), there's a pretty significant echo here between the fictional and the real versions, particularly considering the popularity of the show and the fact that the debate moderator tonight actually had such a close connection with the fictional version.

Anyway, if this connection is true, this is huge. See, West Wing, according to teaser quote on the back of Season 4, is, at least in the eyes of The Buffalo News and those who wanted to put the quote on the season's cover, an "hour-long fantasy about what the White House might be like if honor and intellectual brilliance ever trumped cupidity and mediocrity." So this influential, well-written and award-winning show about what politics might be like may, a few years after its airing, be changing potentiality into actuality, which is pretty mindblowing to think about (though totally familiar ground for narrative theorists such as Walter Fisher).

Case in point:
LAST NIGHT There was much made in the post-debate coverage that Obama relaxed and look at McCain as Lehrer was urging them to, whereas McCain looked uncomfortable with the whole format and never once looked at Obama. And yes, Lehrer's role as the moderator highlighted this difference, as he was the one encouraging direct interaction.

IN WEST WING It was a situation with a youthful but smart Latino Democratic candidate (played by Jimmy Smits) goes up against a much older Republican mavericky candidate (sound familiar?). In the TV show version, both sides loosen up (not encouraged by the moderator but on their own--I think it was actually the Republican candidate who started the thing and insisted on a new debating style, and the Democratic candidate responded well), putting them on much more equal footing and making the audience breathe a sigh of relief as both characters became more likeable.

IN WEST WING, then, both opened up. LAST NIGHT, in the real version, only one of the candidates loosened up.

It makes me wonder, a lot. In a few directions:

1. Will art make a measurable difference in this election? West Wing was a very popular show, and that episode was only aired a few years ago. I can't have been the only one in the audience with narrative expectations based on the fictional version. Might these comparisons to the show's outcome actually affect in a significant way how the voting public interpreted the outcome of last night's debate? (One wishes someone had started a longitudinal study back at the original airing, so as to ask those people tonight was their reactions were. :) If so, the comparison can only be positive for Obama, it seems, and negative for McCain, which is incredibly relevant at this point in the election cycle.
   
   It's definitely exciting, in that the world of possibility offered within West Wing offers an antidote to what narrative theorists Bennett and Edelman say happens so often in the narratives crafted by politicians: that "stock political plots ([as opposed to] other, more useful narrative possibilities) construct meanings to counter...ambiguity," resolving "possible points of new understanding into [cut-and-dried] replays of the political dramas of the past." This means that literary representations of truth may have wedged new possibilities for the narrative genres put forth by the political culture of this country, which as Bennet and Edelman argue has difficulty achieving the sort of creativity and possibility offered by great fiction.*
   
   In other words, solutions that people have dreamed up and put into fiction are able to break into our polarized, highly conventionalized ways of thinking about politics in this country, demanding that candidates act in new ways, in a very literal sense.
   
   On the other hand, some might be disturbed that a scene in a TV show, in prescribing new ways for politicians to act, might have been able to act as a lobbyist, potentially swaying the course of the election. If you think the show's potentialities are the way candidates should relate to each other in the debate, you're likely to think it's great--if not, probably not so much.
   
   (By the way, I think Obama won the debate, and I'm perfectly aware that my judgment in that could be influenced by, among other things, the fact that I like the styles of relating offered by West Wing's version of political debating--they rang true to me when I first saw them, which gave me further grounds for the contrast between the two versions to seem particularly striking to me. In fact, if West Wing really had a conceivable influence on this election, I wonder whether it's possible that Obama's style is somewhat more accepted in general during this election because of some of the aspects of the "fantasy political world" West Wing laid before the American public.)
   
   
2. For artists, including myself: Does this raise the stakes on what we do? On the ethics of what we as artists choose to write? How we write it? This case seems to illustrate that our cultural productions have some pretty powerful rhetorical oomph--perhaps even influencing who becomes president of the US. That's some pretty amazing power--something to be taken seriously. I don't think it means that we should be making our fictions heavily ideological, allowing the "shoulds" of the world trump the "what ifs" within our stories, but it certainly makes me think we should at least be asking the right "what ifs"--important "what ifs"--and seriously considering our choices of characters, as well as other ways we might think in the ethical dimension about the persuasive power of the story to influence the world.
   
   
3. For narrative theorists and creative folks of all stripes: Not so much a wondering here as more of a WOW! Look! A pretty significant example that art, and its study, is incredibly important, and that stories are incredibly significant in how they shape our views of the world, and provide a testing ground for proving out how ideas may work in the world. Woohoo!
   
   On the other hand, though, it concerns me a bit. It makes a strong case for rhetorical and sociological interpretations of art, which is good, but with Santiago Ramos, I'm worried about our reduction of art to ONLY these aspects, so it makes me worry a bit about whether this kind of case could overly encourage that sort of emphasis at the expense of the other equally valid aspects of fiction, especially their aesthetic qualities as well as the ways they help us view people and the human condition in more complex and (often) sympathetic ways.
   

One final prediction, from a girl studying the rhetoric of conspiracies this semester: Someone in the McCain camp could so easily turn this whole West Wing and the debates thing into a conspiracy theory of some kind. I sincerely doubt that such a thing would be the result of a conspiracy--just shows that Kenneth Burke's idea in "Literature as Equipment for Living" is right--that we use situations in fictional stories to help us understand situations in the real world, as strategies for thinking differently than we are used to thinking.

* Bennett, W.L. and Edelman. L. (1985). Toward a new political narrative. Journal of Communication, 35(4), 158, 162. For more on rhetoric and possibility, see Kirkwood, W. (1992). Narrative and the rhetoric of possibility. Communication monographs, 59(1), 30-47.

Some links to stuff about the West Wing debate episode:

1. A description of it,
2. a blog post highlighting the political side of the episode,
3. a Washington Post article on the effect of the episode
4. an MSNBC post-episode report
5. AP article asking why real debates don't work like the episode
   

1:39 PM:

Really have to stop researching this soon and get back to more immediate stuff, but here's some articles making recent connections between the West Wing election and this campaign from
a Minnesota Public Radio debate article from yesterday and a BBC article from 12 days ago which says Smits' character on the show (and not to be a spoiler for DVD watchers, but Smits's character won the election, by the way) may have influenced Obama's run, and another blog post mapping the similarities and connections.

I'm Not Posting, Just Pointing...

Just wanted to point out that there's a fascinating new post over at Good Letters about what a novel is and how the author thinks one ought not to criticize it...good stuff.