Camera Lens
How does a writer see?
Buenos Aires 2014
Consider whether you believe this short quote:
One reason fiction writers seem creepy in person is that by vocation they really are voyeurs. They need that straightforward visual theft of watching somebody who hasn’t prepared a special watchable self. The only illusion in true espial is suffered by the voyee, who doesn’t know he’s giving off images and impressions.
The judgement here comes from a 1990 essay by David Foster Wallace, where he examined how television affected an entire generation of fiction writers. Unlike previous generations, this new crop of writers had been seeped in endless hours of television long before they began to write; how these writers viewed the world, experienced the world, and interpreted the world, was mediated through a square box in their living room.
There’s much more to this lengthy essay, and perhaps what’s most notable is Wallace’s estimation that the vast majority of emotions which we see are fictional emotions portrayed by actors. Most people have, for instance, witnessed more portrayals of crying and laughter than they have seen people cry and laugh in person. For fiction writers this is crucial, as the primary reference for emotion is a representation of that emotion rather than the actual emotion. But I want to push aside most of this essay to underline just one point: how we’ve become accustomed to seeing the world through a frame.
I was reminded of this point while skimming through a collection of stories by Samanta Schweblin in her collection Mouthful of Birds. Although this is translated from the original Spanish, look carefully at these lines, where my eye happened to halt. We’re in the front seat of a car, speeding away from a crowd:
The newcomer presses her own foot down on Nené’s to floor the accelerator. And with the image framed in the rearview mirror of the crowd of women falling upon the man, Nené manages to get the car back on the road. The motor drowns out the shouts and insults, and soon all is silence and darkness.
Isn’t that second sentence rather curious? The crowd and man are visible in the rearview mirror, but who sees that image? The newcomer presses her foot down; Nené strains to get the car onto the road; so who is left to look into the rearview mirror? What’s visible in that rearview mirror is clear to the reader, but it’s a curious choice. Rather than a description of what’s happening behind the car, or a description of what’s happening from the perspective of a character inside the car, the reader is presented with a camera that’s pointed toward the action, almost like stage direction in a screenplay.
Perhaps a case could be made that Nené is looking into the mirror, and we’re viewing the scene from her perspective. The independent clause in that sentence follows her decision and the rest swings on that hinge. Nevertheless, the presentation of a rearview mirror lit with action shows us the frame of an action rather than simply an action.
Yet there’s always a broader context to how a writer decides to present a scene. Nothing emerges in isolation. Nothing is incidental about the changing norms of literature. Though artists push and prod, a work is forever dated by its time, whether that’s a lyrical epic or a bohemian narrative. I’ll limit myself to just the Js and make a little list: Jane Austin, James Joyce, John Steinbeck, Joseph Conrad, Joyce Carol Oates, Jack Kerouac, John Milton, Jorge Luis Borges. In each case, we have a particular style, a distinct voice, and works that are clearly from a specific point in time. You can detect ripples of the broader world even in the most oblique of writers. And, for contemporary writers, it’s difficult to overlook how much of today comes through the frame of a screen.
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