Identifying the Protagonist: Narrative Theory Tome Versus MFA student

Identifying the Protagonist: Narrative Theory Tome Versus MFA student

I am weighty and insist on provoking thoughts. I broke ground, but am I still a groundbreaker? All those literature students from the last 45 years, what did they do with me after they finished my pages?  Have they forgotten me? Am I obsolete? Will the younger generation understand me?

An astonishing change happens in Chapter 8 of the new edition of The Nature of Narrative—we get a pitching change, the new guy trots in, and scholarship jumps four decades in one go.  Luckily for me, the author (Phelan) has been channeling Gerald Graff. He begins with a direct appeal; he understands my theoretical pain.  (“Who else is ready to cry, ‘Hold, enough!” 283).  He gists and uses reductive language; he whips out a sense of humor and casual-type phrases and is not above writing in the first person.  He acknowledges the looming “large Terminological Beastie” (283).  He talks about the big picture and introduces context and politely moves Scholes and Kellogg’s once-ground breaking book into the next millennium.  He is, for me, a magnitude or twenty easier to read. 

I struggled with this book. I slogged through the chapter on oral Icelandic history (duly note—I love Icelandic sagas, or at least the idea of reading them) and many (!) references to Greek and Roman literature.  At least once, I considered throwing the book in the snowbank.

Why? I don’t think it is just a matter of the book’s complexity or a kneejerk reaction to a book that gave me trouble.  At this point in my scholarship, I can keep myself from elevating my private “I don’t like it” into a categorical “It’s no good” (278).  Instead, I’d like to blame a combination of a change in literary education, Scholes and Kellogg’s perhaps dated approach to theory, and a dense, more traditional writing style.

Theory 1: That’s Greek to Me

I make you go waaay back. We’re going Greek! What do you mean that your school doesn’t teach Latin? That you never had to read the Greeks? I don’t believe in shortcuts or teaching to the lowest common denominator.  I don’t support the whiny ignorance of wanna-be writers.  Start reading the Greeks! Apprentice yourself! Then we can talk.

P.S. In high school, you watched Star Wars instead of reading Homer? Really?

In the past, the path to being considered a cultured and educated person went straight through the classics.  You could not consider yourself cultured without such an education. Then maybe the world cranked up the complexity, added a dizzying amount of information to be learned, sciences took over, and curriculums have diversified to the disturbing point where some teachers indoctrinate their students about zombie apocalypses.  In other words, the curriculum has diversified, and since no one has figured out an osmotic way of absorbing Greek classics, many of us complete our educations and set off into the world without this background. Even the literature students, perhaps overwhelmed by all those writers who just keep writing and bloating the size of our canon, get diverted by Dickens and Joyce and (shocking) even women, who are up and running after all those millennium of limited opportunities, and it turns out they are cranking out a canon of their own. 

 Scholes and Kellogg, however, seem to assume at least their readers possess a fluency in classical literature. While they supplement their text with quotes, it helps to have a working knowledge of the cited texts in order to fully appreciate the points being made.  Phelan, on the other hand, knows the Greeks existed, but he draws most of his examples from more recent works.  He also presents, in text, an extended excerpt from Ian McEwan’s Atonement, thus establishing for his readers a common text to which he can apply his theoretical points. His text is self-contained. 

Theory 2: Progress and Evolution Are No Longer Linear Concepts

I believe in progress!  I don’t cringe at the word “primitive.”  I believe that the key to understanding narrative lies in tracing history.  If you compile all the texts and sort through them, you can find universal patterns.  In my heart of hearts, I believe a unified theory of literature is possible.  There is a proper way to interpret a text. 

The tone of the book reminded me of the anthropological theories I studied as an undergrad—and how many of those theories are no longer exclusively followed because it turns out it is hard to understand huge complex subjects solely through the lens of a single theoretical approach. In anthropology, the new talk (well, twenty years ago anyway) is to think of all these theories as tools in the toolbox.  When a theory seems relevant or helpful, pull it out and apply.

The Nature of Narrative seems to assume the existence of progress and hierarchy, concepts that don’t fare as well today. These assumptions seem buried everywhere in the text, from the invoking of Sir James Frazer (who is known in anthropological circles for a sort of passé primitivism) to sentences such as “the concept of time current in a culture shifts from a primitive cyclical view to more sophisticated linear concept” (221).  This sentence does several things: it establishes a pattern of evolution (primitive to non-primitive) and it applies a value judgment (primitive is less sophisticated).  Such sentiments smack alarmingly close to the outdated anthropological theories of the stages of man, and Western societies being more evolved and sophisticated versions of the primitive. While there is obviously a reason why such scholarship held sway—there is a lot of complexity in the world, and it makes sense to look for patterns—we can now see that evolution does not occur in a simple straight line, and answers don’t come in single narrative packages.

Indeed, Scholes and Kellogg seem to work from the assumption that if you collect all the pieces of the puzzle, and go back to the origins, then it is, in fact, possible to come to Truth and discern the “nature of narrative.” Is this possible? I tend to think not.  What Phelan’s update suggests, however, is that even a definitive answer to such a question is no longer, in fact, definitive. This is because there are so many other questions that can be asked, such as the role of the reader in creating the text. Phelan’s chapter suggests that the original version of The Nature of Narrative represents only one way of approaching the nature of narrative, rather than (as I think Scholes and Kellogg hoped) the way of approaching the nature of narrative.  Because of this, as a reader I would have appreciated more framing, up front, of how I should read the original chapters considering what I learn in the last chapter. In other words, rather than pitching my book in the snowbank, what can I take home from the book and apply to my own studies?

Theory 3: Long Live Omniscience!  

Is that all you’ve got for me?  Abstract arguments based solely on what I fail to do, rather than putting forth any proposals of your own? Vague rants in place of specific citations? What kind of scholar are you? Oh, and omniscience belongs to dictators and controlling societies.  You’d better not bring that around to the twentieth century!

Well, I had great hopes for this response and intended to get around to more than why I struggled with the book.  Such as, perhaps, some ideas it gave me about linked stories (75), the central of voyage stories to literature (73, 234, etc), or what narrative strategies a writer might use in order to depict a character’s hidden layer or subconscious (201). Alas, I failed to synthesize my ideas as coherently as Scholes and Kellogg tackled the history of narrative.

One example, though, of how this book might both provoke and challenge: Scholes and Kellogg declared my favorite narrative technique dead, untenable for the modern reader (275).  Phelan, however, resurrects this technique (298). Long live omniscience!

P.S. Dear Scholes and Kellogg: the twentieth century is over, at least if you believe in linear time.