This is another post by me that came from a former larger feature that had many contributors. Like the last one it had others who are much cooler than me sharing their answers to a single question we all shared. The likes of Tobias Buckell, Lydia Millet (who was a finalist for the damn Pulitzer Award), Felix Gillman, K.J. Bishop, all gave answers to a rather complex question:
One of the rewarding aspects of talking with other readers of fiction is realizing what a great variety there exists in how people read, in the conceptual lens or lenses we use. We all have a different sense of identity, different life experiences, areas of academic study, professional training, leisure activities or interests that impact how we read. Can you share something interesting about how you read fiction, the elements of story that you focus on that you’ve noticed others may not — ideally providing a few examples — and why you do so (if you know)?
(For example, some readers may bring a focus on gender, sexuality and sexual experience, race, culture, age, class, religion and/or power dynamics. Some readers may feel a heightened awareness of place, a concern with the details and groundedness of a story’s setting. Some readers may find themselves reading with extra care any passages mentioning art, architecture, and other areas of study. Etc.)
The question was asked by Matt Denault who was a really excellent writer and reviewer we had the pleasure of giving a platform. I really enjoyed his writing and hope the years have treated him well (as long as he didn’t turn into like a crazy person). Anyway the way I chose to tackle the question is below (though I have polished it up a little).
I’m very selfish.
I’m very much a proponent of the idea that reader perception—reader reality—is what truly motivates the joy of reading, far more than understanding authorial intent. The latter, in my mind, is merely a step to the former. Don’t you read books and assign characters a certain look, a style, a presence in your mind, and then—should you revisit specific descriptive passages or see someone draw or sculpt them—they look nothing at all like the people you imagined? And if you asked ten different people to do the same, you’d get ten entirely different results. That’s just the surface.
Has anybody ever seen Moorcock’s Elric as depicted in the Conan comics by Barry Windsor-Smith? Smith is a legend in the field, but what he produces there is unlike what you’ll see on older paperback covers or even other adaptations. And that’s the beauty—the craft—of non-illustrated writing: you paint one canvas that becomes however many people read your book. It’s beyond inspiration. We do this with all characters, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not. It’s creation.
I used to know this very cute girl in high school—Jessica Moore, if you’re out there—who had this line: “ummm… back to me,” which she’d drop every time a conversation wandered too far from, well, herself. It was funny, a little obnoxious, charming in exactly the way a high school crush should be. And somehow, it became a sort of internal mantra for me when it comes to reading. “Back to me.” Not in the selfish, spotlight-hogging way she meant it—but in the sense that I bring myself into every reading. That I look for ways in.
Because of that, I tend to (gladly and wrongly) think it’s impossible—especially in non-Earth fantasy settings—that an author hasn’t built a fourth door to stride into from time to time. I search for these, find them where they are and where they aren’t, veiled or blatant. Matt asked us to point to examples, and finally—back to me—I found something useful from this online reviewing gig.
I can read a novel as rich and layered as Jeff VanderMeer’s Shriek: An Afterword and focus on the presence of his non-self. In an interview I conducted with him, I brought this up. VanderMeer responded:
“Because, really, what that’s intimating is that X is not really me. That there is a doppelganger Jeff in Ambergris—my shadow cabinet counterpart, so to speak. And that would mean that everything in Ambergris is mapped to everything in the ‘real’ world. And if that’s true, it ought to be possible, through reverse engineering, to find our way to Ambergris and at the same instantaneous moment for our doppelganger to break through into this world. Are you stepping into a mirror? Or through a window?”
That’s it exactly.
I’m not a writer, but the reader in me still drifts back to Huck Finn on the river; to rolling with Snake Eyes, Scarlett, and Stalker on a special mission; to imagining I was once stopped by Marco Polo himself to give directions in my and Calvino’s invisible cities. It goes back to tying towels around your neck and pretending you can fly. Some see that as escapism, but escapism is just one of many possible motivations for a grander journey—exploration. That Bastian Balthazar Bux scenario, where at first you’re reading the adventure, and before you know it, you’re a part of it.
When I reviewed Ian Cameron Esslemont’s Night of Knives, I floated the thought that two mortals who ascended to godhood in the Malazan series—Kellanved/Shadowthrone and Dancer/Cotillon—were pseudo-avatars of the two authors themselves. These are explorers who literally and figuratively transcended mortality so they could have more time to keep exploring. While they’re featured characters, they mostly flit in and out of the books, shifting the course of events in passing. And for me, it would be impossible to sit down over years with a friend and co-create what is perhaps the most ambitious secondary world in modern fantasy, and not build a personal Azath—a back door. A doorway for myself.
I don’t even know if it’s true. But in my interview with Steven Erikson, he offered this:
“I think what exists with those two characters is a sense of a longstanding shared history, a trove of experiences. At the same time, it should be clear that each is his own person, and while they are together they are also separate, and this establishes a balance between the two. Maybe in some ways they are the most accurate (not in terms of madness!) composites of the creative side of myself and Cam. We share a world, but we are each distinct as individuals.”
There’s a kind of preoccupation with this that we see more and more in writers—this touch of reality to bring fantasy closer to us, and maybe to bring reality closer to the unknown. Gaiman has made a career doing this. So has Moore, Moorcock, Ellis with Planetary. It’s never a search for answers—that’s just what we tell people to get the grant, or avoid sounding crazy. It’s a search for questions we haven’t figured out how to ask yet, in truths we think we already know.
I’m also strangely affected by even the most blatant homages and memorials in fiction—even when I’m not fully aware of the weight they carry beyond simply recognizing them. I say affected, not just noticing, because most of them are fairly transparent by design. I tend to be self-referential when I review; I drop nods and breadcrumbs that only ten people in the world would ever catch. I do that to amuse myself and that tiny audience. But when I see those gestures in books, I feel something closer to a small, private ache. Some embarrassing remnant of the romantic in me—some fuzzy warmth I can’t entirely explain.
I’ve thought a lot about it. I still can’t say more than this: they’re bonds. Connections. When I read Hal Duncan in Vellum he wrote:
“Peake sitting at the table at the corner, working away on his notebooks with all the cartoons scribbled in the margins, all the faces with their hidden caricatures of nobs and lackeys…”
—I just love that shit.
Same when I see Matthew Stover’s Caine reflect on his favorite 20th century authors, or Brad Meltzer slay me with the perfectly timed delivery of something as simple and weighted as “the brave and the bold” in Identity Crisis. There’s a selflessness in these gestures that stands in contrast to the selfishness I began with. While you evolve and move forward and pass the read to someone else, the homage is a wink in the rearview mirror—an acknowledgment of all the people who were part of the ride until you found your own road.
Bridges, if you will. And who doesn’t like maps?
In my more melancholic moments, it’s not lost on me that most of the examples I’ve offered above depict madmen.