the two poles of fiction: pop and serious
All fiction lives on disequilibrium, an imbalance that needs to
be set right. Pop fiction (also called formula fiction or slick
fiction) tends to begin in that need—the heroine of a romance
is rejected by her hero; the detective in a mystery is faced with
an unresolved crime—and proceed through a series of complications
to its resolution: the need satisfied. This mode of fiction leads
toward escape. It can be satisfying, but what it generally satisfies
is a formula.
On the other hand, serious fiction, as its name implies, takes seriously
the dilemmas faced by its characters. Instead of opening an escape
hatch in the end, it explores those dilemmas, thus facing us into
whatever chilling blasts of experience are involved, and finally
concludes in terms of the realities it has set in motion.
This brief discussion simplifies, of course, by seeming to counter
the trivial against the meaningful. But the literature of escape
is not necessarily trivial. When it uses its formulas to turn them
on their heads, to defy them, it can be telling.. Even when it sticks
to its escape hatches, if it’s clever enough—downright
witty in its dialogue, for instance, as in Oscar Wilde’s play
“The Importance of Being Earnest”—it can transcend
its own formulas and break through its category—which only
goes to show that categories, too rigidly applied, can be falsifying.
|
|
