The Author's Duty to Readers

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I found this article on the novelist's duty to his or her readers quite thought-provoking. How real should an author consider fictional characters to be?

Readers up close and much too personal

Alexander McCall Smith | April 18, 2009

Article from: The Australian

A FEW weeks ago, on a book tour of Australia, I found myself signing books in Sydney.

As the line of readers moved, two young women presented copies of books for signature. These books were from a Scottish series I write, one featuring a heroine called Isabel Dalhousie. Isabel, who is in her early 40s, has a boyfriend considerably younger than she is -- by 14 years, in fact.

As I signed their books, one of the women mentioned that she thought that this relationship between Isabel and Jamie, the younger man, was not a good idea at all.

I defended Isabel's choice. "Why shouldn't they be together?"

The answer came quickly. "Because it's not going to go anywhere."

"But I thought it was going rather well," Iprotested.

Again my reader lost no time in replying. "No, it isn't," she said emphatically.

That was me put in my place. After all, I was merely the author. As it happens, Isabel's relationship with Jamie had not been my idea in the first place but had come about because at an earlier stage in the series I came under attack from a journalist -- another woman -- for not allowing Isabel to become romantically involved with Jamie. I had originally intended that theirfriendship be platonic but had been told in the course of an interview with this journalist that I really had to allow something closer to develop. "Your readers will expect it," she said. "And it would be so empowering for them."

Not one to stand between my readers and their empowerment, I had decided to let Isabel develop a romantic liaison, only to be taken to task later by my Sydney critics for exactly this. This, and many other similar experiences, has made me think about the whole issue of the novelist's freedom and responsibility. The conclusion that I am increasingly drawn to is that the world of fiction and the world of real flesh-and-blood people are not quite as separate as one may imagine. Writing is a moral act; what you write has a real effect on others, often to a rather surprising extent.

The issue of reader expectations is one with which writers of crime or mystery fiction have long been familiar. Poet W.H. Auden is among many critics who have commented on how novels in this genre follow a classic pattern: first there is peace, then this peace is shattered by the occurrence of a crime, usually a murder. This leads to a search for the wrongdoer, his apprehension and punishment, and finally a return to peace.

We need to see the moral balance restored, said Auden: a view also expressed by P.D. James, one of the greatest crime writers of our times. According to James, the traditional detective novel reassures us that we live in a moral universe, one in which the detective is the agent of justice. In this respect, she suggests, the detective novel is really doing the work of the old-fashioned morality play.

Although the vast majority of mystery novels follow this well-established pattern, not all do. In some instances, we know all the way through exactly what the wrongdoer has done -- there is no mystery element here -- and the real questions are why he acted as he did and whether he is going to get away with it. If he does go unpunished, then the conventional pattern in such books is turned on its head.

Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books do just this. Tom Ripley, like many of Highsmith's characters, is a very credible sociopath, coldly capable of disposing of anybody who gets too close to his secrets. It is easy for him to kill, and the fact he does so while living the haut-bourgeois life in an elegant French house adds to the fascination we have for him.

Of course we know that it all started with the murder of Dickie Greenleaf, and as we see his life unfold over the series of novels we may cherish hopes that sooner or later Ripley's criminal past will catch up with him. But it does not and after several novels I suspect that many readers are actually unwilling for that to happen. Why? Because we are fond of Ripley? That is hardly likely; Ripley may be charming and urbane but he is not really very likable.

Perhaps we merely want his story to continue because we are enjoying it so much. If Ripley had been arrested or disposed of by somebody he had crossed, then that would have been the end of the series and that would have been adisappointment.

As it happened, Ripley survived his creator and presumably still is living in Belle Ombre, his house in France, awaiting some author to approach the Highsmith estate with a request to continue to record his dubious doings.

Of course a sociopath who gets away with it is unlikely to be tormented by guilt. For the non-sociopathic wrongdoer who goes unpunished by the law, authors often have an alternative form of punishment up their sleeve. Raskolnikov, the student turned murderer in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, initially gets away with his crime but then, tripped up by his conscience, eventually confesses to what he has done.

To be tortured by guilt is perhaps unpleasant enough to satisfy our desire that crimes be paid for, but in some cases the wrongdoer does not appear to suffer even that. Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Cask of Amontillado involves a particularly cruel murder -- the immuring of the victim in a cellar -- and, 50 years later, when the perpetrator tells the story, he does not appear burdened by regret or guilt. That, of course, is how things sometimes are. The guilty and the unpopular get away with it in real life.

Why is the writer of detective fiction put under such pressure to deal out just desserts to wrongdoers? The truth is that for many of us fiction is in some sense real and that what happens to fictional people is, in a curious way, happening in the real world.

We all remember being told as children: It's just a story. I recall being exposed as a boy to that most frightening of children's books, The Struwwelpeter. This collection of dark stories includes delights such as the story of the scissor-wielding figure who would bound gleefully into a room and cut off the thumb of any unfortunate child sucking his thumb at the time. Freudians would find little difficulty in seeing this as being all about castration fears, but for me it was a simple matter of what might happen to you if you engaged in thumb-sucking. I really believed in him and was suitably frightened.

Although we eventually learn to distinguish between the world of make-believe and the real world, I suspect that many of us continue to experience fictional characters and events as being, in some way, real. This is because the imaginative act of following a story involves a suspension of disbelief as we enter into the world it creates. When Anthony Minghella showed me a moving scene he had just filmed for the pilot of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, I found myself weeping copiously, right there on the set. I felt rather embarrassed -- it was only a story, after all -- but he put a hand on my shoulder and said that was exactly what he had done over that particular scene.

For the author, this sense that the reader has of the reality of the story has serious implications for how characters are treated in novels. It is one of the jobs of fiction to report on the sorrows and tragedies of this world. This must be done, though, from a morally acceptable standpoint. A writer who told a story of, say, rape or genocide but did so from a neutral or, worse still, complicit position would be given very short shrift indeed. Readers and critics would be on to him in no time at all; indeed, a book such as that would be unlikely to be published at all. Why? If it is only a story, where is the harm?

Stories have an effect in this world. They are part of our moral conversation as a society. They weigh in; they change the world because they become part of our cultural history. There never was an Anna Karenina or a Madame Bovary, even if there might have been models, but what happened to these characters has become part of the historical experience ofwomen.

When J.K. Rowling revealed in New York that Professor Dumbledore was gay, the announcement was widely welcomed. One would have thought it would make no earthly difference to anything whether a fictional character had a particular sexual preference, but it did; people applauded and applauded. That must have been because they felt this announcement had some significance for the real-life issue of fully accepting gay people.

It can be very inhibiting for authors if they know that what happens in fiction is going to be taken so seriously. I write serial novels in newspapers and have learned the hard way that people will readily attribute the views expressed by characters to their authors. In one of my Scotland Street novels a character called Bruce, a rather narcissistic young man, makes disparaging remarks about his home town. Although these were not the views I hold about that particular town, I was roundly taken to task, with the local member of the Scottish Parliament suggesting that I should be forced to apologise to the offended citizens. I pointed out these were the views of a fictional character, who was just the type to make such remarks. That did nothelp.

In another novel, I had Isabel Dalhousie give up breastfeeding rather too quickly for the liking of the leader of a pro-breastfeeding organisation. Again I was told that I should make a public apology to those who believed in persisting with breastfeeding. That sort of thing is quite alarming and it is such people who need to be told, politely but firmly, that it is just a story.

Mind you, I still have my doubts as to the wisdom of creating scissor-men who cut off children's thumbs. Perhaps an apology is called for.

The Wall Street Journal

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of more than 60 books, including the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,,25333301-36375,00.html

[Georgina]

Thanks for that, WS. This bit:

Although these were not the views I hold about that particular town, I was roundly taken to task, with the local member of the Scottish Parliament suggesting that I should be forced to apologise to the offended citizens. I pointed out these were the views of a fictional character, who was just the type to make such remarks. That did not help.

I've experienced something akin to that before, where someone thought that I shared a point of view with a character that I wrote. And it was a horrid -- to me -- point of view. But that character owned it. I took it to mean that I conveyed that person's perspective well if someone believed me. Still.

[Pax]

Some people are just nuts.

The woman who played "Number Six" from Battlestar Galactica -- Tricia Helfer -- had a number of stories of encounters with people who were genuinely afraid she was going to kill them. All because of her character on that show.

As for realistic characters and how to write them, I'm just coming into it myself, but it seems to me that if it feels right to you it is; if it feels wrong, it is not. The author of the article seems to feel that way in a tinge of regret that I sense in his accounting of the story of Isabel and her younger lover.

It brings up another point, though: One can't please everyone.

And reader expectations? A personal danger of mine is that I like to play with them. I'd consider it an honor if a reader said, "What--?", flipped back a few pages, or even the whole book, reread it, and went, "Ohhh...!"

One doesn't want to be too predictable.

Still, one can't have the dear old grandmother in a serious story turn out to be the axe murderer (trans-gender, donchaknow). There are limits.

I do think there is a definite relationship between the reader and the writer, transmitted through the story, and filtered by the reader's experiences. It's something I'm still exploring, how to best manage that relationship.

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The author of the article seems to feel that way in a tinge of regret that I sense in his accounting of the story of Isabel and her younger lover.

McCall Smith is a wildly successful writer. Do you think, perhaps, that he let commercial instincts cloud his judgment about what is right for his character? Would he have have made the same decision if he was writing for his own enjoyment, and not for mass publication?

[Pax]

That could easily be the case. I read in the "Writer's Market Companion" various admonitions that added up to, "If you want to get published, here's the kinds of things that are hot to write about today." And I can definitely see how one might write an entirely different kind of story, and/or take it in a different direction, if one weren't worried about whether a "mass" market would find it palatable (as opposed to a "niche" market).