LITERATURE & NEW MEDIA: At Swim-Two-Birds – Paths and Concepts

I don’t know that "concept" is precisely what I mean here, but with the multilayered structure of this novel (narrator present (?) plus three more separate story lines), it is a learning experience in itself, but the author teaches even more because of the nature of the form.  Listen to this:

The novel, in the hands of an unscrupulous writer, could be despotic.  In reply to an inquiry, it was explained that a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of credulity.  It was undemocratic to compel characters to be uniformly good or bad or poor or rich.  Each should be allowed a private life, self-determination and a decent standard of living.  This would make for self-respect, contentment and better service.  It would be incorrect to say that it would lead to chaos.  Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another.  The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they failed to find a suitable existing puppet.  The modern novel should be largely a work of reference.  Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before–usually said much better.  A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimbleriggers and persons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature.  (p. 32)

Holy guacamole.  This is pretty heavy stuff.  On the one hand, it would appeal to Barthes in the taking of control from the author and putting it in the hands of the reader.  On the other, it appears to reference the fact of the limited story lines and the extent of variation of character traits.

Storytron may figure into this.  I have to think on this some more, but wanted to get it written down and highlighted because I have a feeling that we’ll be coming back to this again and again.  I’m inclined to believe that here, in this paragraph, is the clue to O’Brien’s whole concept of writing fiction.