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Writers like
Charles Dickens and P. G. Wodehouse are sometimes accused
of creating incredible characters, mere caricatures who perform
fantastic deeds in improbable settings. Perhaps. But as opposed
to what? Surely, what is being invoked is largely a matter
of degree. All fictional characters are, by definition, fancied,
unreal, imagined. In telling a story, any writer must dispose
of imaginary time and space and move his imagined characters
through them. Is Hamlet real whereas the Man Who Was Thursday
fantastic? Bertie Wooster unreal and Falstaff the man next
door?
No doubt it is
only a matter of degree, and we should be willing to consider
a spectrum on which fictional characters can be located in
terms of the extremes of lifelike and realistic, on the one
hand, and fanciful and highly imaginative, on the other. No
need of course to locate high art at either extreme, or in
between. But my point is that the most realistic fiction
is light years from the real world.
Consider dialogue.
Sinclair Lewis, the American novelist, was often praised for
his dialogue, but the praise became unwelcome when critics
suggested that he simply reported transcripts of actual conversations.
Hence their effectiveness. Well, Lewis set up microphones
in a room, invited in some people, and recorded what they
said. Of course, the result was a jumble of uncompleted and
overlapping sentences, a veritable Babel, the whole offensive
to the ear and anything but aesthetically pleasing. Conclusion:
Realistic fiction, like all fiction, reshapes the real to
the purposes of art.
The truth of
art is not to be found in its conformity to the raw materials
from which it is fashioned. Art is an imitation of nature,
yes, but of human nature, of moral agents fashioning their
eternal future of weal and woe, as Dante pointed out to Can
Grande della Scala. Flannery O’Connor meant the same thing
when she said that all literature is anagogic. I think that
is the meaning of Aristotle’s ‘plausible implausibility’ too.
Ralph
McInerny |
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