Trust the tale, not the teller

[thuviaptarth]

Thank you to everyone who responded to this.

I really do think this is the oddest meme. I don't even know how to express what strikes me as so odd about it. The phrasing seems to depend on assumptions about how fiction writers relate to writing, and fiction readers relate to reading, that ... are just so far from the way I have always thought of these things that I don't even know how to say what's off about them. Maybe also about how people present themselves in particular circumstances versus what they really think or feel, too.

Also, either some of you are much better at stripping out what you know of people than I am, or else I haven't made clear things about myself that I think are perfectly obvious. I haven't been able to respond to posts by people I know even a little because I do know them even a little, and unless I remember very clearly my impression of them before talking to them, it's ... no, I can't make it go away.

Comments

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

I find the meme kind of entertaining, but at least partially that's because...I do, in some ways, learn things about authors through their writing. Just not always the things that the authors would expect I would learn.

Sometimes the things I learn are...kind of obvious, as when someone only writes rape, or only BDSM, or only schmoop. The thing I am learning is simple: what kind of story that person is most into. And...that can interfere with whether I enjoy the story, esp. because sometimes I get the weird feeling that the author is REALLY GETTING OFF on their own writing. I tend to be more comfortable with writers who change things up, because of this; the sensation of, "wait, I have read this one before...three million times...almost like it is the author's favorite masturbation fantasy...eeewwww...." is not a pleasant one, and if I never have it again, I can't say I'll miss it.

Sometime the things I learn are obvious in another way; sometimes people write message-fic, where the characters are mouthpieces, and that's a whole level of stabbity that I don't feel like addressing right now.

And sometimes the things are...different, and interesting, and weird. Like, what if someone uses a lot of structured and layered and overlapping metaphors? It's a style thing, sure, but what I find is that people with that particular style tend to be better educated by quite a bit than those without it - not just in level of education, but in where they acquired it. (So why is that? Do top educational institutions draw those people, or do they teach the kind of thinking that generates that style, or is it a little of both, or what? And, like any generalization, there are exceptions.)

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I really do think this is the oddest meme. I don't even know how to express what strikes me as so odd about it. The phrasing seems to depend on assumptions about how fiction writers relate to writing, and fiction readers relate to reading, that ... are just so far from the way I have always thought of these things that I don't even know how to say what's off about them.

That's what I said. It suggests the use of certain very primitive hermeneutic strategies which, frankly, I'd be offended to hear could be effectively applied to me and my work!

[snacky]

I really do think this is the oddest meme. I don't even know how to express what strikes me as so odd about it.

If it helps, the meme originated because a Harry Potter fan posted a rant about how J.K. Rowling was a hypocrite, since she wrote on her website about female body issues (young girls under tremendous pressure to be thin) and yet, in her book, all fat people are evil*. Thus this makes JKR, in addition to her many other sins against fandom, a hypocritical fatphobe, and consequently, someone the ranting fan would hate in real life, since she is surely anti-feminist too.

In response to this rant, another irate fan posed the question in her LJ, and it developed into a meme. But there was an agenda behind it, and perhaps that's what you're getting.



*pointed out to her by commenters that this was not true.

[oyceter]

It really is odd. I was noticing while I was trying to comment on both yours and edonohana's that I was probably picking up things that I particularly liked about your fic, so it was probably saying more about me than about you!

Oh the brain, it boggles.

It's also very strange, because I've had so many instances of reading essays by authors I like and finding that they hold views that are very contrary to what I thought they would hold, given what I'd read of their works.

I can do it backwards better: I can pick out things in edonohana's fic that make me go, "Oh, yes! She got that from there!"

I wonder if the meme would work better the other way around: what do you think your fiction says about you?

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I agree: there's something deeply strange in the way it asks for you to guess social/political positions based on somebody's fiction. Which probably explains the degree to which people who try to respond to it find themselves talking about stuff that has nothing to do with positions on pressing social issues.

I do think that a large enough body of work is going to say things about the writer beyond what her artistic interests are, although not in a straightforward way, and not to the same extent that a body of nonfiction would. But what we say and how we say it, how we present characters, what we show to be important to them and whether or not the narrative supports their own evaluation of that thing's importance, how other characters respond, what kinds of stories we tell -- all of that, and indeed everything in a story, is shaped by the assumptions about the world and the people in it that we each carry around with us. Some of that shaping will be invisible, because anyone who can read a work in such a way that it's intelligible will have been shaped by the same culture, and will share some of the writer's assumptions on a level below consciousness. But not all of it's invisible, and there are readers who'll be aware of a great deal of it, either because they're wired that way or because they've had training that inclines them to it.

Which isn't to say that any reader can't or won't get her reading totally wrong. But I do think that there's a lot more information there in the text than people necessarily give it credit for.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I've been able to answer for...three people now, only one with any degree of seriousness.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I don't like this post! It's against the way I was reading the meme, which was that it wasn't serious. As far as entertainment goes, wrong anwers are just as good as right ones. (Although reading snacky's comment above, I appear to have been wrong about the non-seriousness of it.)

More importantly, you did ask -- and because you asked, people answered. Not necessarily because they thought the meme was valid, or were somehow more comfortable with the its assumptions than you were, or had thought at all about the question beforehand.

It's unfair to ask people to answer a meme if you're going to post about how uncomfortable it makes you afterward. It forces defensive answers from people who shouldn't have to defend themselves. I doubt there are many people on your flist, at least, who don't know the difference between the tale and the teller.

Ahhh, I feel better now. No offense intended, by the way.