Caleb Fox

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by caleb fox

A long time ago an offhand remark changed my writing life forever.

I was taking an undergrad course in the writing of poetry from John G. Neihardt. At the time I hadn’t read any of Neihardt’s books (he co-wrote BLACK ELK SPEAKS and composed some grand verse in the style of Tennyson). He and I disagreed about everything—he was deeply mystical, I committed to what I thought were science and rationality. I didn’t like the way he taught the course either. He assigned us rigid forms like the sonnet and required us to hew to strict meter and rhyme. A bad fit for the era of free verse. That didn’t disturb Neihardt a bit.

I did like the man himself. In fact, while resisting internally all the way, I sensed a kind of greatness in him. And I stayed for that.

His method of teaching was simple—he read each student’s poem of the day aloud and commented on it. End of story. On this particular day he picked up mine first. He read, “You, Agamemnon…” (Yes, a wretched start.) Neihardt paused and said casually, "Mr. Fox is writing for those who know who Agamemnon was.”

A volcano went off in my head. I didn’t hear him read the rest of the poem (no loss), didn’t hear any of his comments on it, and in fact didn’t hear anything for the rest of the class hour. Except the eruption going on in my cranium.

I went straight to the student union and fueled up on Coke to think things over. Damn! I was writing stuff that left out almost everyone I knew, and most especially left out my mom and dad and brother and all my relatives back in Arkansas. Why the devil was I doing that? Was this why I’d gone to college? Wouldn’t it be possible to say whatever I had to say as a writer without leaving out my own folks?

I come from a mixed-blood family in the Ozarks, rednecks on one side of the mountain and redskins on the other. Not one knew who Agamemnon was (I was the first in my family to graduate from high school, much less go on to grad degrees). Was my family stupid? Certainly not. In their way, they were even literary. Those on the redneck side of the mountain knew the Bible, br'er rabbit and other folk stories, many family stories, etc. Surely our relatives on the west side of the mountain knew the big Cherokee tales. One thing all of us probably had in common was, we LOVED stories. Story-telling was the main occupation of most family get-togethers.

So why wasn't I writing for them, and the great majority of Americans who were and are like them?

For an answer I turned to my favorite American writer, then and now, Mark Twain. He was the first American novelist to write in the language of ordinary Americans of his time. (Take a look at the stilted language of Nathaniel Hawthorne and you’ll see what a tidal change this was—and two of Hawthorne’s books were published after Twain’s first.) With the language of ordinary people, and for them, Mark Twain created a great literature.

Yes, great literature. Not just popularity, fame, wealth, and all that. At his best—LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, ROUGHING IT, HUCKLEBERRY FINN—Twain is as fine a writer as our country has produced. If anyone doubts that he was a “serious” artist, let them admire this sentence for both its style and its wisdom: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.”

I follow Twain’s example of writing for most people, but feel out of fashion. Most of the novels being published, or at least most of the ones getting reviewed and adorned with prizes, are what they call literary fiction. Some of it is terrific (for instance, I like W. P. Kinsella), but most is dull and pretentious.

What exactly is literary fiction? Searching for a good definition, I found an introduction to a book of such writing that said that literary fiction “uses certain tropes not used in…” Well, in whatever. A definition that used the word “trope” for “figure of speech” made me as impatient as fiction dotted with words like “ontological” and “post-modernism.” Are we forgetting the intelligent man and woman in the street who love stories but aren’t schooled in the arcana of literature? Could that be why fiction is more and more difficult to sell?

After a good deal of fishing about, I came up with four definitions of literary fiction that, taken together, work roughly for me. The first one is boring—“the M.F.A. novel.” This one is more fun—“literature for other people with master’s degrees in English.” The first serious one is, “books written in a style that is self-consciously literary.” One more—“novels where prose style is treasured and story neglected.” As I said, take them together.

Don’t mistake me. I want to write as elegantly and lyrically (supply similar words of your own choice here) as anyone. But not self-consciously. I don’t want the reader to stop and say, “Wow! That’s a great sentence!” Why? Because I don’t want him to jump away from the characters and what those people are experiencing and think about me, the author. I want them to stay with the illusion that the tale they’re reading is real, to breathe right along with the characters.

That’s because fiction, unlike essays or lyric poetry, is a NARRATIVE art. I’m mystified that those who teach literature in our colleges, and especially our M.F.A. programs, don’t understand that.

To make a good novel I must, true enough, write good sentences. I must also create intriguing characters, find suitable ways of talking for each of them, draw a convincing world around them, and accomplish a lot of other things.

By far the most important task, however, is to envision and manage the story. To get a reader to dive all the way into my tale, I must look at my characters and see how their natures will tilt them into trouble. Then the tricky part. I figure out which sections to narrate and which to dramatize—in other words, where I can sum up what happened and where I must write scenes that show human beings yelling at each other or driving to the hospital fast or sneaking into a house or whatever, complete with lots of dialogue and plenty of body language. When I’m going well, I see scenes like a movie and transcribe.

This is the essence of the craft of fiction writing—shape the story, see the dramatic scenes in vivid colors, and render them in words that serve the passion. A story of human drama, well told, will attract plenty of readers, because readers come to fiction, above all, to get a powerful emotional experience.

Unfortunately, the lit teachers and critics divide fiction into literary and genre, the high road and the low road. What, may I ask, happened to the mainstream? The great line of American novelists from Twain to Hemingway to Steinbeck and many others didn’t have any truck with tropes. They wrote in English meant to serve the story. They strove to be effective, not fancy. That’s what the mainstream is.

It’s still with us. Recently I read Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s SHADOW OF THE WIND, Dean Koontz’s ODD THOMAS, Sue Monk Kidd’s THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES, Audrey Niffenegger’s THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, and will read the new novel by Stephen King. But these books can’t be called mainstream, because that genre is out of business, or so we’re told.

Writing for a wide band of readers reminds me that I am a member of the world’s oldest profession, storyteller. From the time we became human beings, close to a hundred thousand years ago, people have told stories. We told them not to impress the other specialists in storytelling, but for everyone gathered around the fire. Homer wove his grand tales, and hundreds of bards chanted or sang them for century after century, for the whole community of generations and generations of Greeks. Now the stories go on forever, and people read, enthralled.

I’m glad to be part of that tradition, and I invite the literary folks to join in.