Books: a secondhand medium

[Warsaw1965]

I would like to open up discussion pertaining to the relationship between original inspiration and the end result. All art is, by nature, secondhand, but this phenomenon is most blatantly obvious when examining a piece of literature since, at a macro level, it is simply a retelling. Stories are inspired by a number of things, but a common factor of all sources of inspiration is that the art that ensues is not and never will be a pure reproduction. Let us, for the sake of stimulating conversation, explore the process that turns inspiration into art, reflect on how the inspiration to art process in writers specifically may have changed (if at all) throughout history, and if interest arises, theorize on how the process may have played out during the creation of a favorite work of a specific author.

[mal4mac]

I would like to open up discussion pertaining to the relationship between original inspiration and the end result. All art is, by nature, secondhand, but this phenomenon is most blatantly obvious when examining a piece of literature since, at a macro level, it is simply a retelling. Stories are inspired by a number of things, but a common factor of all sources of inspiration is that the art that ensues is not and never will be a pure reproduction.

The best literature is an original inspiration that takes the form of words, based upon experience certainly, but it is also the first-hand original inspiration of a genius. A second hand report of someone contemplating suicide is likely to be banal, but when it's Shakespeare you get "To be, or not be..." - first hand genius.

You can't just take literature at the "macro level" - the "way it is said" is important.

Art is not a pure reproduction. What would that be, anyway? Since Kant, surely, we have got away from thinking of being able to purely reproduce anything. Everything is filtered through the human mind, and the human mind is far from pure...

[Warsaw1965]

Thanks for getting back to me.

My brief zooming out to the macro level was simply to put emphasis on the fact that books especially are most blatantly reproductions. I wasn't suggesting that the nuances of literature are of little importance when compared to the work as a whole. I'm also not suggesting that art is a pure reproduction. In fact, I'm suggesting the exact opposite, and promoting friendly discussion and theory on the transitory process between inspiration and the art that eventually comes out of it.

[minstrelbard]

Warsaw1965, can you be a little more clear? I don't know what you mean by "books especially are most blatantly reproductions." Reproductions of what? And what do you mean by the "macro level"?

[Warsaw1965]

Sure thing. I'm trying to say that all art is a reproduction of the original thing that inspired the artist, but that books are most obviously reproductions because they are stories, and telling a story implies that it has happened in the past. Reproduction, or retelling, IS the art form of storytelling.
The macro level is the observation of the book form in a way that is void of any intellectual preparation or interest. For example, a small child reads The Old Man and The Sea and sees it as a story about a man trying and failing to catch a very large marlin. That is the macro level because the child is not looking for anything deeper. The micro level would be an English major analyzing the little details of the story in order to come to some sort of conclusion that is of importance to humanity. Do you know what I mean? Discovering the hidden meanings in novels has always meant "looking closer" to me, and thinking everyone felt about it that way, I thought that by applying a macro-micro scale to the intensity of novel scrutiny would be intuitive.

Basically, I tried to express my thoughts more clearly and, evidently, achieved the exact opposite :P

[minstrelbard]

Thanks for the explanation, Warsaw.
It may be true that most literature consists of retelling old stories. There may be totally original stories out there, but they probably tend to be rather bizarre.
Still, a story isn’t much use if one can’t see it properly. I tend to be distrustful of analogies, but they are very useful if not pushed too far, and one I like in this context is that literature is a telescope. The celestial bodies are stories, but most of them can’t be seen in any detail from here on Earth and so they look like nothing more than points of light. Saturn is a point of light, almost indistinguishable from a star. “But,” the writer says, “look at Saturn through my telescope. See the beautiful rings you couldn’t see before? Isn’t that wonderful?” Different writers provide different telescopes: this one here has greater magnification; that one there has a color filter system; that one over there takes photos in infrared; that one on the mountaintop has a clearer view due to the thinner atmosphere. They provide different views of the same celestial object, each showing aspects that could not have been seen before, clarifying features that had never been so clear before. Some of these views can be very beautiful, and what had seemed a mere point of light has become a work of art. Or many individual works of art.
And when the telescopes give way to actual space probes that fly by the planets, we get close-up views, and views of the moons of the planets, and reams of scientific data about every aspect of the planet. It is now far more than a point of light; one can spend a lifetime studying it and not exhaust its wonder.
And when the probe flies past the planet and turns its telescopes back, we can see the planet from a whole new angle, maybe even one that includes the Earth. We can get pictures like the ones the Apollo 8 astronauts took of the Earth rising over the moon – a view nobody had ever seen before, but one which was, and is, awesome to contemplate.
I may have pushed the analogy too far already, but it works for me. Literature does for stories what the telescopes and space probes and cameras do for planets and other celestial objects.

[Iwanuschka]

Well, even the most original story needs to have an origin in something the author perceived empirically in his lifetime, so the notion of retelling isn't that faulty. However, every author combines his experiences and views in unique ways, thus creating something which is different (and "more") than the sum of its basic, original parts. All the decision an author needs to make during the writing process (choosing the right words and metaphors, elaborating the characters etc.) further allow the author to influence his work on a micro level, to coin your term.
This recombination of ideas and addition of minute details is what the art of writing consists of, in my spontaneously uttered opinion.

[Warsaw1965]

Thanks Iwanuschka. Your summery of the writing process, in my opinion, is accurate and also quite appealing; the weaving of cerebral and emotional processes prompts beautiful images in the mind. Where do you think inspiration comes from? Do you believe it to be purely derived from experiences, or is there something more? Is there a practical use to art? Is inspiration a force meant for practical things (ie, rallying the tribe, wooing the opposite sex) but is misused in the form of expression?

Why do we write novels?

James Chapman's answer:

It's just us wanting to make a mark in the clay, wanting to express our awareness of whatever moves us—small gestures, beauty of the insane human attempt to exist for a short time. A book is like us, it wants to exist, it wants to record existence. It's an illusion, but it's kind of holy, a basic instinct, and you do it by writing in personal sentences that are like yourself somehow, brush-strokes, like when you look at a line in the drawing on the inside of a pyramid, and you see the waver in the hand that held the brush 5000 years ago.

Thoughts? These questions are open to anyone interested.