Confessions of a Plot Junkie

[Sancho]

I've read Joyce's Finnegan's Wake; also Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. I've even read Wallace's Infinite Jest. From Aristotle to Zola I've read more highfalutin, hoity-toity, egghead books than you can shake a stick at. (Whatever that means) But when you get right down to it, what I truly enjoy is a good page-turner - the kind of a book I can't wait to get back to after I've had to lay it aside, the kind of a book I'll stay up all night to read, just to find out WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

Anybody else here share my addiction?

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

The first one I recall, just after the rug rat years, was "Where the Red Fern Grows" not long after about 12 or so, I set sail on on my grandfathers copy of "Toilers of the Sea". I recall Krackauer's "Into Thin Air" kept me up late into the night. I'm sure there's more but my mind is underperforming at the moment.

[qimissung]

Oh, yes. I still and always love a book I can get lost in. Most recently for me was "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed. I remember staying up all night to read "The Exorcist" and "The Shining" in college. Others across the years include "Jane Eyre," "To Kill a Mockingbird," The Robe," "They Loved to Laugh," "The Once and Future King," "The Woman in White" and too many mystery novels to mention here.

[osho]

I've read Joyce's Finnegan's Wake; also Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. I've even read Wallace's Infinite Jest. From Aristotle to Zola I've read more highfalutin, hoity-toity, egghead books than you can shake a stick at. (Whatever that means) But when you get right down to it, what I truly enjoy is a good page-turner - the kind of a book I can't wait to get back to after I've had to lay it aside, the kind of a book I'll stay up all night to read, just to find out WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

Anybody else here share my addiction?

I have read some of the books you mentioned but I did not like them and I read them just thinking that I must read them to be mature and well-read and they did not interest me and I ended up coldly and I do not like to touch those books though they are great classics. I have read the Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky and this book gave me all I expect of a book, the philosophy, the story, the intellect and the emotions I want in a book. A book must transport the reader to a newer world and transform him and entertain him apart from erudition.

[JBI]

I'm allergic to narrative, for the most part. I am far more a lyricism junky, in the sense that I even take lyric poetry over narrative poetry (epic, Ballad, etc.). I think the problem with literature is the so called "plot" heavy nature of so many people's reading habits. To me, the emotional connection between text and reader is what matters, and the actual framing of a narrative is merely an amateur academic whitewashing for those who cannot actually appreciate artwork, the same way narrating the actual "painting's story" doesn't tell me exactly why it moves me, any more than knowing who actually painted it. I can eat the eggs without knowing the chicken.

I think that is generally one of the major challenges art faces, this sort of push toward plot over a sort of closer interaction with style. Generally, all plots are more or less the same half dozen stories, with very little in terms of thematic development. Themes generally change once every 100 years or so, so we are not actually reading new things, we are rereading the same thing with different names.

what changes more often, and for more reasons is the nature of style, the development of forms of representation and artifice. So painting styles like poetic styles are constantly reforming and rebuilding themselves in technical ways, the same way a metaphor can be developed over and over again. This is to me what is important. The actual idea of plot is really secondary. The same way when you listen to more of the same genre of music you start to appreciate new things you would have missed (especially things like Jazz which constantly borrow and share) so to is literature. The actual conclusion of a novel is more or less inconsequential, the art is in the expressive force of the medium.

[SilvanDitties]

I think a good example of what you're saying is Madame Bovary, JBI. Flaubert takes a rather simple, almost boring plot and creates a masterpiece with his unique brand of realism, influencing countless future writers. I think it kind of shows that there's art in almost anything.

[Sancho]

El Sancho walks past the alleyway on his way out of a highbrow bookstore:

- Psst. Yo, my man. I got what chew need.

- What you got?

- I got it all, man. Thriller, Romance, Crime. I got fiction for yo addiction.

- Naw, man, I can't. I'm fresh out of rehab. I'm trying to rebuild my personal relationship with lyricism.

- C'mere, man. Check it out. I got a stash of James Patterson, ain't never been read before.

- Oh man! Does he use metaphor?

- Hell yeah! Jim-Pat got a freakin metaphor that'll knock yo socks off, my man.

- Mmm, I don't know, man.

- First one's free. My gift to you.

- Gimme that book, man. Oh yeah, and gimme two of those, and three of those, and uhh, you got any Steven King?

- Does a crack ho put out? Hell yeah I got some, special reserve, you know. Go easy on this, man, King of plot will explode your head.

- Gimme four of 'em and make it snappy. I gotta be somewhere. C'mon - c'mon - c'mon, hurry up!

- Now yer talking, my man.

(And so it goes with a plot junkie)

[YesNo]

I got through about two or three pages of Finnegan's Wake. Great stuff, I'm sure, but I finished all of Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I couldn't put it down, and I can usually put a book down without any problem. It was way better than that movie Marilyn Monroe starred in long ago. Skip the movie. Read the book. There's plot all over the place, but what really made the book great was that it was all from Lorelei Lee's blonde perspective.

[Ecurb]

The classics relied on time-worn plots. Aeschylus, Euripides, Homer and Virgil didn't invent their plots -- they rewrote standard stories. This certainly suggests that something other than plot is essential to the artistry of their works. Shakespeare borrowed many of his plots, too.

Let's look at (famous) modern adventure stories (which, it would appear at first glance, depend on the thrills of their plots for their artistic impact). "Treasure Island" cerainly has its thrills. Jim Hawkins is threatened by Blind Pew, Israel Hands, and any number of other pirates, and barely escapes over and over again. But (I'd suggest) the excitement of the book is only minimally in these hair-raising adventures. Instead, the mood of the novel is suffused with "piracy",with strange, lawless men, missing legs and eyes, who live by their own strange and terrifying codes. Stevenson's demonstrates his genius with "Blind Pew". Being chased by a blind pirate would surely be less adventurous than being chased by one who could see. But Stevenson recognized that the "otherness" of deformity and blindness added to the mood of lawless piracy, where the normal rules governing life are changed. As a chld, I had nightmares about Blind Pew. The desert island, the marooned pirates, the quiet stillness of the apple barrel, and cries of the parrot add to the mood, and it is the mood that makes "Treasure Island" so readable and enduring. The mood is captured in the last sentence:

"Oxen and wainropes would not bring me back again to that accursed island; and the worst dreams that I ever have are when I hear the surf booming about the coasts or start upright in bedwith the sharp voice of Captain Flint still ringing in my ears: 'Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!'."

Let's look at another children's classic: "The Jungle Books". Mowgli certainly has adventures. We readers worry about him when he is captured by the bander-log, we fret over his battles with Shere Khan, and we root for his team in its battle with the red dogs. Nonetheless, the "incidents" of the book are not what makes it so good. Instead, it is the mood of the jungle -- the "jungliness" of the setting. My brothers and I greeted strangers with, "We be of one blood, you and I", and departed saying "Good hunting." The poignant sadness of the last chapter ("Spring Running"), in which the adolescent Mowgli leaves the jungle to return to Man is devastating, not because there are no dangers or adventures among men, but because he is leaving this "jungliness' behind him.

Now, in some senses, this mood is created by "plot". When Odysseus lands on Circe's island, and sees all his men turned into pigs, with warnings from Gods and mysterious smoke curling up through the mysterious woods, no ordinary risk to life and limb will do. The "plot", the "peril" of changing from man to brute, is essential to the mood -- although the mood is also influenced by other factors.

The novelist needs a story to tell. We all read to find out what happens next. But the excellence of the novel generally depends on other factors.

[qimissung]

The classics relied on time-worn plots. Aeschylus, Euripides, Homer and Virgil didn't invent their plots -- they rewrote standard stories. This certainly suggests that something other than plot is essential to the artistry of their works. Shakespeare borrowed many of his plots, too.

Let's look at (famous) modern adventure stories (which, it would appear at first glance, depend on the thrills of their plots for their artistic impact). "Treasure Island" cerainly has its thrills. Jim Hawkins is threatened by Blind Pew, Israel Hands, and any number of other pirates, and barely escapes over and over again. But (I'd suggest) the excitement of the book is only minimally in these hair-raising adventures. Instead, the mood of the novel is suffused with "piracy",with strange, lawless men, missing legs and eyes, who live by their own strange and terrifying codes. Stevenson's demonstrates his genius with "Blind Pew". Being chased by a blind pirate would surely be less adventurous than being chased by one who could see. But Stevenson recognized that the "otherness" of deformity and blindness added to the mood of lawless piracy, where the normal rules governing life are changed. As a chld, I had nightmares about Blind Pew. The desert island, the marooned pirates, the quiet stillness of the apple barrel, and cries of the parrot add to the mood, and it is the mood that makes "Treasure Island" so readable and enduring. The mood is captured in the last sentence:



Let's look at another children's classic: "The Jungle Books". Mowgli certainly has adventures. We readers worry about him when he is captured by the bander-log, we fret over his battles with Shere Khan, and we root for his team in its battle with the red dogs. Nonetheless, the "incidents" of the book are not what makes it so good. Instead, it is the mood of the jungle -- the "jungliness" of the setting. My brothers and I greeted strangers with, "We be of one blood, you and I", and departed saying "Good hunting." The poignant sadness of the last chapter ("Spring Running"), in which the adolescent Mowgli leaves the jungle to return to Man is devastating, not because there are no dangers or adventures among men, but because he is leaving this "jungliness' behind him.

Now, in some senses, this mood is created by "plot". When Odysseus lands on Circe's island, and sees all his men turned into pigs, with warnings from Gods and mysterious smoke curling up through the mysterious woods, no ordinary risk to life and limb will do. The "plot", the "peril" of changing from man to brute, is essential to the mood -- although the mood is also influenced by other factors.

The novelist needs a story to tell. We all read to find out what happens next. But the excellence of the novel generally depends on other factors.

Well done, ecurb, well done.

[Sancho]

^Ditto, nice post, E'.

I know I've got a problem, but I'm weak, man. Does that make me a bad person? I'm in a program. Twelve steps. I'm up to step 1 so far. Well, okay, I'm planning to get to step 1 just as soon as I finish this Detective novel. Maybe I should join a church.

My father was a plot junkie too. He used to hide Science Fiction novels all around the house, stuffed behind the sofa cushions, jammed in the pockets of his overcoat, stashed away behind the toilet. My Mom too. She'd call in sick to work just so she could finish a steamy paperback. I never stood a chance. It's genetic, man.

I have a confession to make: last week I bought a book at the airport. I know, I know, pathetic huh? Then I further debased myself by taking it into the restroom by the gate. I almost missed my plane. It was pretty good though. A guy from Mississippi wrote it. It's all about this badass lawyer who gets in a lot of trouble because he won't do things by the book, but then in the end he winds up saving the day.

I need help, man.

[Ecurb]

Thanks, Sancho and gimissung. But, Sancho, if you've misdiagnosed your addiction, the wrong treatment might have been prescribed. Sci Fi is all about what Tolkien called "sub-creation" -- not plot. And those detective stories are dependent on mood, too. By modern standards, Sherolck Holmes stories have some of the dumbest plots and most far-fetched solutions possible. Yet Shelock and Dr. Watson discussing the case is always good fun, and Sherlock's ice-cool logic creates a great mood even when he's cooly compassing the most ridiculous mysteries.

Find a new doctor. With the proper diagnosis, help is only as far way as the local pharmacy (or dealer).

[papayahed]

^Ditto, nice post, E'.

I know I've got a problem, but I'm weak, man. Does that make me a bad person? I'm in a program. Twelve steps. I'm up to step 1 so far. Well, okay, I'm planning to get to step 1 just as soon as I finish this Detective novel. Maybe I should join a church.

My father was a plot junkie too. He used to hide Science Fiction novels all around the house, stuffed behind the sofa cushions, jammed in the pockets of his overcoat, stashed away behind the toilet. My Mom too. She'd call in sick to work just so she could finish a steamy paperback. I never stood a chance. It's genetic, man.

I have a confession to make: last week I bought a book at the airport. I know, I know, pathetic huh? Then I further debased myself by taking it into the restroom by the gate. I almost missed my plane. It was pretty good though. A guy from Mississippi wrote it. It's all about this badass lawyer who gets in a lot of trouble because he won't do things by the book, but then in the end he winds up saving the day.

I need help, man.

It started early for me, man. The alley behind my house, just laying there, out in the open in broad daylight - "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing".

[Prince Smiles]

I found the anti-gravity novel, 'The First Men in the Moon' by H.G. Wells impossible to put down.

[Sancho]

^Me too!

And no doubt about, E', I may have miss-diagnosed my addiction. And anyway I'm beginning to think that Plot is a gateway to the hard stuff - character development, symbolism, allegory, irony, onomatopoeia, anthropomorphism, and the granddaddy of them all: stream of consciousness. <<shudder>> Go easy up there, man, I heard that those yahoos one state north of you made Plot legal during the last election cycle.

***

Okay, I'm having a hard time staying in character. So I'll ask a question. A couple of people here have put forth the idea that most plots are simply variations of a very few standard plots that have been around for a long, long time. It may go all the way back to a time when a bunch of folks were sitting around a fire, on rocks, in their cave, picking lice out of each others hair, and one of them said, "Hey, you guys remember when that stranger came into our valley? You know, the big fella. He was wearing a sabertooth cat skin, and he was riding a mastodon. Remember? Hahaha, Ug nearly shat his loin cloth."

I've heard the theory before, but do you-all think that most plots come down to variations of these two?
- Stranger comes to town
- Hero takes a journey

"Sing me a song oh muse, of the man..."

Or,

"I was taking a trip out to L.A., tooling along in my Chevrolet, toking on a number and digging on the radio..."

Odysseus was definitely an uneasy rider.

Anyway I also like the connection several people have made between literature and music. There is certainly something comfortable about variations of the I, IV, V chord progression - to western ears anyway.

***

Okay, okay, back to my twelve-step program. Or perhaps I should break out my old dobro and rip into a twelve-bar blues tune instead.

So many parallels in this thread.