Writer’s Corner: John Gardner, The Art of Fiction, First Chapter

Chapter One: Aesthetic Law and Artistic Mystery

In this first chapter Gardner begins be declaring the beginning the writer wants rules on how to write, but there are none. There are principles that the beginning writer needs to know and a few warnings. But no hard and fast rules. He says once you begin to believe there are certain things you cannot and should not do in fiction, your intuition becomes paralyzed. He says art needs to be judged on its own merits, by its own laws, and if a work violates its own laws or if they are weak, the work will fail.

As an example, he says a general principle is that all the questions raised by a work must answered for it to be satisfactory and if it doesn’t, that’s a loose end. Like all principles, this is generally true, but may be broken on occasion. Such as when we never really know if Achilles really loves Briseus or just thinks of her as his rightful prize. Or how Hamlet becomes decisive with his enemies and less decisive with everything else.

After all that he says that the first and last writer is that there are no real rules for fiction. There might be formulas for easily published fiction. There are common mistakes (such as following formulas?) and things writers need to think about, but no rules.

He says the beginning writer needs mastery, not rules. In particular, mastery of breaking rules (that don’t exist!). He says that the value of any work has to do with the writer’s character and personality. I find that odd, because I am not reading the writer when I read something but the work itself. Personally, when I read something, I would rather know nothing about the writer until after I finish and sometimes even then I don’t care to know anything about the writer. Then he implies personality and character are the writer’s instincts, knowledge of art and the world. It isn’t. One is craft, the other is how the writer is and the two are only tenuously connected. A writer can be greedy, generous, kind, ruthless and it doesn’t affect the writer’s craft. The writer’s attitudes and experiences will undoubtedly slant the work toward one thing or another, but that’s not the same thing as craft either.

He also says one needs a certain mastery in order to read well, to know if something is boring, juvenile and simple minded. I find this mildly offensive. If something is boring, it is boring and no matter how much you read, a boring book is going to stay boring (unless your tastes change, but if they do, than other previously interesting books can become boring). It’s a matter of taste. As for the rest – there are stories that were positively fascinating when I was younger and that I can hardly read now. But that’s because it is easier to see the flaws now and also because I am not the same person I was when 14. I don’t call that mastery.