Good Fiction Is Not Created

Good Fiction Is Not Created

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

What I mean is, Good fiction is not created, but rather, it is discovered. Let me explain.
Take, for instance, the wonderful To Kill A Mocking Bird, by Harper Lee. Here we have an author who writes this amazing novel, one that takes the country by storm, one that is raised to the level of Classic, one that is voted the greatest novel of the twentieth century by the Library Journal, and this talented and enormously gifted Pulitzer Prize winning author...never writes anything else.
Huh?
Now she wrote a couple of essays here and there, but as far as novels go, nothing. Zip, zero, nada! When one contemplates such a thing, many questions come to mind, questions of great depth, questions like, What the Hell?
Margaret Mitchell was another Pulitzer Prize winning one-hit-wonder. Her novel, Gone With The Wind, is the story of the American South, before, during, and after the Civil War, showing the struggle of the human spirit, and the blackness of the human heart. In this great work, Mitchell gave us something of a treasure, a delicious and lasting historical epic that we hold so very dear in literary fiction...and that’s it. Writing over.
What happened?
And what of Mary Shelly and her infamous work, Frankenstein. She has written other stuff, but the only thing anyone is familiar with is her fantastic tale of science fiction, the only one for which she garnered any attention (for a defense of the categorical placement of this novel, see my column, The Taxonomy of a Genre).
Then we have Dracula. That nineteenth century novel of horror, by Bram Stoker, one that seeded countless copies, imitations, and inspired a whole new genre of works in literature, film, television, music, even breakfast cereal. It is probably the greatest horror novel ever written, matched by few if any. Of coarse, all those other novels of Stoker's were great too, let's see, there was um...
Get the point?
Now I know that these writers are not the only ones out there who have written great novels, and I know also, that there are novelists who have more that one work of great import to their credit. But they make my point as well. They will turn out books of good, quality, substantive art, one after another, then all of a sudden, bam! They write some slop that looks like they told their man-servant to write it for them when he's done polishing the hood of the limo.
Again – why?
Thus the heading of this article. Could it be that great fiction isn't created. Rather, it is discovered. To Kill A Mocking Bird, Gone With The Wind, Frankenstein, Dracula, and all the other sparkling diamonds of the literary, film, music – indeed, all products of the artistic world, seem to be set apart from the vast volumes of more common, lesser quality works. Could it be that the rare and unsurpassed works of superior weight, works such as the afore mentioned, were floating around in some artistic forth dimension, hovering up there in the ether like clouds of spectral gold dust, or precious gems sprinkled from the heavens by the hand of the Divine, a gift to we lowly and undeserving humans as suspended artistic Manna, waiting to fall into our open and eager palms.
Perhaps that which we create – works of a lesser quality – are no more than iron pyrite, a fools endeavor that we generate from our own simple and lustful minds, seeking only an ego-maniacal personal glory. Contrastingly, that which is true art, the real artwork of note, works of bright, radiating beauty that cut through the murky water of the mediocre to shine like a beacon in the darkness, impossible to ignore, works that move people, works of greatness, works of arresting gravity that take the reader or listener or viewer to a whole new world of unimaginable pathos and awe, are the works that come from a higher source. Perhaps those works are presented, unveiled, given to us. Perhaps these works we discover, these works are the pure, precious, and coveted metal, the virgin gold that is so longed-for, sought after by the aching and febrile heart.
Perhaps these are 'Created' by God and 'Discovered' by man.
Of course, I do not really know if this is the case. However, the idea is tempting, if we consider the disparate products resulting from the same pen of such capable artists.
Being a writer myself, if such a concept is true, I pray that God places some of those gems within my reach. If He does, diamonds though they be, they will not be of much value sitting on my own bookshelf, alone. They must be polished and laid out by the Jeweler in the display case on black velvet for all to see. If they are, and I am one day published, then I sincerely hope that I 'Discover' much and keep my own Frankensteinian 'Creations' to a minimum.
And, if I am right about all this, then I think I can safely inverse the reliable and true, time honored adage in saying, 'It is better to receive than to give.'

Keck