Where the novelist has to start from scratch and endure the terrible labor of constructing a world, the nonfiction writer gets his world ready-made. Although it is a world by no means as coherent as the world of fiction, and is peopled by characters by no means as lifelike as the characters in fiction, the reader accepts it without complaint; he feels compensated for the inferiority of his reading experience by what he regards as the edifying character of the genre: a work about something that is true, about events that really occurred and people who actually lived or live, is valued simply for being that, and is read in a more lenient spirit than a work of imaginative literature, from which we expect a more intense experience. The reader extends a kind of credit to the writer of nonfiction which he doesn’t extend to the writer of fiction, and for this reason the writer of nonfiction has to be punctilious about delivering the goods for which the reader has prepaid with his forbearance. Of course, there is no such thing as a work of pure factuality, any more than there is one of pure fictitiousness. As every work of fiction draws on life, so every work of nonfiction draws on art. As the novelist must curb his imagination in order to keep his text grounded in the common experience of man (dreams exemplify the uncurbed imagination—thus their uninterestingness to everyone but their author), so the journalist must temper his literal-mindedness with the narrative devices of imaginative literature.1. That's one of my favorite books, which I was just rereading last night and which I just bought on Kindle instead of typing out the last sentence.
2. One copies a larger chunk when it's not a matter of typing out each word!
3. I used the phrase "someone else's dream" in the post title because there's a song I like with that title. It's not this Faith Hill song, which I'm noticing for the first time because I'm Googling looking for the one I like, which is this. You have to get to the second page of search results to find the one I was looking for, and there's even another song with that title — by Laurie Anderson — before you get to the Youth Group one. These are 3 completely different songs, and the phrase is used to mean 3 distinctly different things:
A. She was daddy's little girl/Momma's little angel/Teacher's pet, pageant queen/She said "All my life I've been pleasin' everyone but me/Waking up in someone else's dream..."4. If other people's dreams are uninteresting (because they contain too much fiction) and if it's bad to find yourself in someone else's dream, why is "dream" such a buzzword in American culture today? In the field of politics, we're played by characters who talk about dreams. The President of the United States introduced himself to us as a man composed of someone else's dreams.
B. You know those nights/when you're sleeping, and it's totally dark/and absolutely silent, and you don't dream/and there's only blackness/and this is the reason/it's because on those nights you've gone away/On those nights you're in someone else's dream....
C. Let's all go to the holy soul/to that soulless hole where the restless people go/To shout, oh you never got out/Don't you hate it when they just say hi?/They don't see the sadness in your eyes /Oh yeah, let's dream it down/You're having someone else's dream...
5. A stock message to schoolchildren is that they must have dreams and that their dreams not only can come true but actually will come true. That seems designed to counteract what we presume they are thinking: Nothing big will ever happen to me. We seem to assume hopelessness and rush to dispel it. But why do we think that assertions about dreams would accomplish such a feat?
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33 comments:
Dreams are cultural unconscious based.
The popular new assertion by youth that, "I have a dream" and therefore I am entitled to what I dreamed is a quasi-religious faith claim to tap a god's powers.
It's god Obama.
I'm never sure what people mean by the American Dream. Sometimes it's home ownership, sometimes it's going to college, sometimes it's succeeding in business. The vagueness didn't used to bother me. When you ask people what they mean they act like you just don't get it. It's just journo talk I think.
Two-bit ad people use "dream" all the time too. I think it's targeted for women and girly-men.
Dream lover, where are you?
Answer to all the questions... the triumph of feminism and the feminazation of society.
All of which negates the male preference for action.
The preference for dreaming is part of the overall preference for security and safety.
In the dream state, there is no payback for actions. Which is the predominant female preference.
And I'll be happy in my dreams
Only in dreams
In beautiful dreams
A girlfriend will tell you what you did in her dream and she'll still be mad about it.
If we're going to quote all the songs with "dream" in them, this will be a very long thread.
When I want you in my arms
When I want you and all your charms
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Dream, dream, dream, dream
Kind of masturbation-y, isn't it?
@rhhardin/
LOL!!!
I've wanted to read Malcolm's "The Journalist and the Murder" for a while now - just never seem to get to it. If I understand correctly the jump-off point is based on Joe McGinniss and his interactions with Jeffrey MacDonald, ending up in "Fatal Vision."
I also read the 'response' book "Fatal Justice." Without getting into the did-he-or-didn't-he aspect, the section on McGinniss during the subsequent fraud trial ia alarming in McGinniss' duplicity and creation of 'facts'. (Errol Morris' new book on this case substantiates McGinniss' fraudulence).
Of course, McGinniss later bought the house next to Sarah Palin to write another book.
The fiction of nonfiction indeed.
Re: "uninterestingness of someone else's dream."
A gorgeous girl in a bikini on a sandy beach could tell me her dream and I'd be interested. Especially if she spoke a foreign language and I could just nod appreciatively.
Or maybe that was a dream I had.
It gets confusing.
"I'm never sure what people mean by the American Dream."
I think the only constant here is keeping the King of England out of your face.
I dreamed I was a man composed of someone else's dreams in my maidenform bra.
@ Mitchell the Bat
LOL
In your dreams!!.....as IF.
I dreamed the dream, that we didn't talk about Anne Hathaway's teeth.
I had a dream that Anne Hathaway's teeth were especially large Chiclets and I could pull them out one-by-one and chew them.
She cried the entire time. It was embarrassing.
Dreams are for people who are asleep (ask Sigmund).
What you want are goals.
C.S. Lewis had something to say about dreams in The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. Not every dream is a happy one. The other kind are often the ones that come true.
The reader extends a kind of credit to the writer of nonfiction which he doesn’t extend to the writer of fiction, and for this reason the writer of nonfiction has to be punctilious about delivering the goods for which the reader has prepaid with his forbearance.
Where does historical fiction fall on this spectrum? I', thinking of fiction that uses real historical figures for its characters and real events that drive them, but which isn't so literally real in the sense of a biography or "true-story" book. It's easier to think of plays and movies in this genre than it is of books - Shakespeare's histories, Nixon, Lincoln, ,That Hamilton Woman, The Santa Fe Trail come easily to mind. The only book I can think of is The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag, but I am sure there are others.
I am thinking historical fiction gets more credence from the reader than it deserves, thus the damage Hollywood so often does to the truth of history.
Anne Hathaway's molar Chiclets were the best, but also the hardest to pull out. I gave up on the wisdom teeth: impacted.
It's been rumored that Brad Pitt's Chiclets taste suspiciously like George Clooney's ass.
A dream is a wish your heart makes when you are fast asleep. If you are living in someone else's dream, you are only fulfilling their wishes for you, not your own.
My American Dream is to live free not just of the King of England, but of all Kings, even those elected who presume to themselves the powers of kings.
Re: "My American Dream is to live free not just of the King of England, but of all Kings, even those elected who presume to themselves the powers of kings."
I certainly sign on to that.
The pervasive idea that a child 'can do anything they put their mind to' (i.e. dream of) may be as pernicious a thought as we've ever encountered...it's fueled the housing bubble, the higher education bubble, the runaway spending...
It was a short step from telling children they had the right to expect greatness to happen to them to expecting the government to provide it.
The world needs both janitors and astronauts.
Oh, I thought of some other novels whose characters are historical people - I, Claudius and Dear and Glorious Physician.
Another excellent book that discusses these subjects is Umberto Eco's 'Six Walks In The Fictional Woods'. I highly recommend it.
Six Walks...
The book is based on a series of lectures he delivered at Harvard, part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures series.
The American Dream is not a basket of goods as often described. It's that an individual can have their own custom dream, and it's actually possible. The American dream is that dreams can be more that just dreams. America was where you went to do what what could only be dreamed of other places, and it was true, if you would work for it.
The mechanism is now clogged with small dreams with even smaller energy and drive. Too many are trying to ride on too few dreams. Dreaming itself is what's lacking as much as anything, on an individual and national level. Not talk about dreams - there is plenty of that, but actual dreaming, and wanting, and lusting for something better.
"Although it is a world by no means as COHERENT as the world of fiction," True
"and is peopled by characters by no means as LIFELIKE as the characters in fiction," --- Not necessarily
"the reader accepts it without complaint; he feels compensated for the INFERIORITY of his reading experience" --- WTF!!
"by what he regards as the EDIFYING character of the genre:" --- No
"a work about something that is true, about events that really occurred and people who actually lived or live, is valued simply for being that, and is read in a more lenient spirit than a work of imaginative literature, from which we expect a more INTENSE experience." --- No
Althouse, you say this is one of your favorite books. Do you agree with these presumptions about the superiority of the experience of reading fiction vis-à-vis non-fiction?
There is a statue on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall in Boston of Samuel Eliot Morrison, a famous Bostonian - writer, educator, and historian - as well as a man of the sea. He was the official historian of the US Navy during WWII. There is a quote on the monument that is advice for writers, "Dream dreams, then write them. Aye, but live them first.”
sydney,
"It's easier to think of plays and movies in this genre than it is of books "
Try August 1914. Don't try it if you don't like Solzhenitsyn, though.
I remember years ago Ann's writing a blog about this book, which caused me to get a copy and read it. I had met Malcolm briefly some years before that and had read a few things she had published in the NYer.
Janet Malcolm has always struck me as a nasty character who nevertheless writes wonderful books. This one about the Doctor who killied his wife (MacDonald if I remember correctly) was good. She got sued for it too. Her book on reading Checkov is even better, my personal favorite of hers.
When she says that dreams are only interesting to the dreamer, she is being a bit coy. She is keenly interested in psychiatry (wrote a nice book about the internecine fights in that world too) and knows that dreams -- the subconscious kind, not the MLK or literary kind -- are of intense interest to psychoanalysts. And to her.
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