Which makes all that in terms of literary text a very different launching place.

Love, C.

I don’t think there is such a thing a “transparent” prose (I’m with the “text” people here). Writing is always a thing in itself that a writer has made, good or bad. How many times has the Odysseus story been told? Why are Homer and Joyce still read? Not because people are excited by the plot… What counts is style, which I guess I define as language used as economically and expressively as possible to the ends the writer defines for him or herself. No matter how “literary” a writer is, if they’re any good their writing convinces you that they’re saying what they want to say in the only possible way it can be said (as true of Joyce or Celine or Beckett or Kadare as of Le Guin). Good style isn’t about showing off, it’s about getting the job done. I hold close to my heart Peter Handke’s comment that a writer’s ethics is in his style.

I can say that as a photographer (amateur yet) I wrestle with this, sometimes instant by instant when I’m doing street photography. With photography, often what I am after is that single instant (what Cartier-Bresson called “the decisive moment”) that captures the significance of an event (and thus the unrecorded “narrative” leading up to and from that moment), or finding that one best view for more static subjects. Ideally, one captures more than just the subject and you don’t always know, at the moment you decide to press the shutter, what that something more is going to be. Other times you do know what it is and you go looking for it, hoping to convey some sense of emotion, some sense of spatial involvement. Written texts (whether plottishly narrative or not) do this.

I wish I had more time to dwell on this but deadlines (of the writerly sort) are consuming too much of my attention and effort. Meanwhile, Lois, thank you for a most thoughtul, and thought-provoking, post.

(And Sherwood, thank you for mentioning Why We Read Fiction. It sounds worth investigating.)

I do, definitely, intend more by “story” than the plot. I mean by it the entire thing that the author [or other artist] is trying to put into words [or other media] - including sometimes, paradoxically, some of the words. [tho this leads to certain vexing philosophical problems of identity]

I have a terrible migraine (which is why I’m not attending to this pile of overdue dayslog) or I’d fumble some kind of an answer, but this post is to acknowledge your riff, and to point up the Zunshine book to anyone who might have an interest.

I suppose you’re right that not all plots are more easily conveyed via film. Now that I think more on the subject, I’m coming up with all kinds of things that could be more easily expressed on paper.

Perhaps the sentiment could be better expressed in the negative: if you’re just trying to transfer a plot from author’s mind to reader’s, text is often not the most efficient way to do it.

Because when you say But if you’re just trying to transfer a story from author’s mind to reader’s, film is much more efficient. I’m not sure I agree. Or maybe I do agree and just don’t know it yet.

But anyway, film isn’t necessarily the most efficient way to transfer some kinds of stories; indeed, certain kinds of stories are far more efficiently transfered within text, or even can’t be duplicated in film. And vice versa, I expect.

Thanks for putting into words a concept I’ve had a lot of trouble explaining to people.

One clarification I’d add is that it’s also important to differentiate between “style” and “media.” For example, I just went to see Pan’s Labyrinth. My reaction was pretty much Omigod, this is the first time I’ve seen an actual fairytale on film. Reading an interview on the website, I found that Guilermo de Toro had intended it as a sequel to one of his other films, which was more of a horror movie, but he’d realized that this tale would be best told as a fairytale.

A lot of this is like the book designer’s task of choosing the right font and page layout to present a story. The “transparent” mode is to basically use something like Century Schoolbook or Goudy Catalog, vaguely timeless and highly readable, whereas the more fancy presentation requires something quirkier. Ditto the illustrations. Look, for example, at different editions of Alice in Wonderland. The words are identical, but the presentation of the book designer enhances or detracts.