Why do authors do this? (stray away from the topic)

Cafe Society
1

I just finished the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Don’t read on if you haven’t read this little book, and plan to read it at some point.

Anyway, it’s a great book. Everyone dies at the end, which I was a little surprised at - I expected most of the major characters to die, but they all died, and even some secondary ones. But I did love the story.

But what really confused me is every couple of chapters, the author would stop dead in his tracks and begin discussing the architecture of the period. What?! They’d be banging down the doors of Notre Dame, and we would leave that tension-filled moment and wander through the streets of old France, talking about this building or that building.

Tolkien was guilty of this too, and Hawthorne spends most of his time moralizing. Why do authors do this? I can only conclude that their real point was not the story and the characters, but that they are only using them as a vessel for their real drive: the architecture, or the morals, or in Tolkien’s case, seemingly the food. :smiley:

Thoughts? Oh, and I do highly recommend Hunchback. Not Disney, but *very * good.

2

And Oscar Wilde, in the middle of The Picture of Dorian Gray, interrupts the narrative while he spends a whole chapter detailing all the crap Dorian bought. I don’t get it either :S

3

My favourite is the whole chapter on “The Whiteness of the Whale” in Moby Dick, page after page about white.

4

I don’t think the authors in question think of it as straying from the topic. It’s more that they disagree with you as to what the topic is. Taking Tolkien, for instance: I seriously doubt he thought of LOTR as an adventure story as the Hobbit (which has far fewer digressions and a considerably more straight-ahead narrative) certainly is. Tolkien might, from time to time, spend many words describing the landscape, or have the characters start spouting poetry; but both of those were part of his attempt (successful, in my view) to evoke a much older and now extinct culture, to make Middle-Earth seem real to us. Yes, the Three Hunters pausing to sing a song for Boromir before pursuing the Orcs who’d abducted Merry & Pippin seems unrealistic to US; but we’re not Dunadain, or Dwarves, or Elves.

(And, by the way, the Boromy elegy is my single favorite part of the book…beautifully sad.)

5

Because it’s fun.
There’s plenty of digression in Moby Dick – Melville talks at length about details of whaling that are irrelevant to the plot. Heck, at one point he steps out of his role as omniscient narrator or Ishmael and talks to the reader about the piece of isinglass on his desk.

6

I think the best answer is “there weren’t as many editors back then.”

7

Actually Fabulous Creature, it wasn’t the songs, etc. I was thinking of in Tolkien. It was more the exquisite and lavish descriptions of the food! During crisis situations, we’d be treated to a three-page description of everything there was to eat.

And csharpmajor, I didn’t much like The Picture of Dorian Gray because the whole thing seemed one excessive hijack. But you’re right, I see what you’re talking about.

It seems that for the first time I’m beginning to understand the irony behind William Goldman’s Princess Bride, the supposed re-writing of Morgenstern’s classic. I never read many of these classics as a teen or young adult, beyond what they made me read, mostly I read sci-fi. I am strating to “get” what he meant by that little project! These classics authors can’t stay on topic!

8

Weren’t most classics written as serials? Maybe they had a few tangent chapters put aside for when they needed a week off. I think cartoonists do that now a-days.

9

They were paid by the word?

10

If you were reading Hunchback when it was hot off the presses, that was the source material for your understanding of Paris. You would not have seen a hundred movies filmed on location in Paris. If you were an average American, it’s possible that you had never been to Paris, nor would you ever go to Paris, nor that anyone you knew had ever been or would go to Paris. This would be new and interesting information for you.

Of course I can’t think of a good example right now, but there are contemporary novels that are well-regarded for their ability to evoke the atmosphere of a certain place. American Psycho and New York City, I guess. But we forget how much of the book’s ability to remind us of NYC comes from the fact that readers are already very familiar with NYC (if not in person, from television, movies, and other books) so Bret Easton Ellis has the luxury of being more subtle.

I agree that Tolkien might well have been writing all about the food (and hey, I’m a big supporter of delicious food). I’ve read that Laura Ingalls Wilder said that she wrote very detailed descriptions of food in the Little House books because she was sort of fixated on it, even as an adult, given that there had been so many shortages of food during her childhood. I once heard someone mention that many English novels written during the war include a lot of food descriptions because of the rationing, or more to the point, the nostalgia about food from the days prior to rationing. They weren’t talking about Tolkien in particular, but it made me wonder if maybe that came into play.

11

I have no idea if Umberto Eco is guilty of this. I never got far enough into The Name of the Rose to find out. Twenty pages into a description of a door, I lost interest.

12

I don’t see it as digression. Regardless of what interpretation you favor, whales and whaling are central to the story. Melville put in digressions about life on whaling ships so that readers would better understand the setting. He put in digressions about whales for the same reason, and to draw the audience in more deeply, and to give the whales a mythic quality. There are OTTOMH chapters on the different species of whales, dolphins and porpoises, a chapter on the whale’s tail, a chapter on oil, a chapter reinterpreting myths as being about whaling, and the aformentioned chapter on whale skin. But all this is to change the reader’s view of whales from “big fish, we hunt them for oil, baleen, and sometimes sailors make scrimshaw from their teeth” to “Like Leviathan, strange and vast being who fight monsters in the lightless depths, turn to the sun as they die, and who will endure long after the cities of man have fallen to ruins”

13

Clearly you haven’t read Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon).

I don’t think there is one specific answer to this question. In some cases, like Melville, the divergence is for a reason; Melville is establishing a metaphor (albeit one that may be oblique to an audience that doesn’t know his intent.) With someone like Joyce, divergences were just a part of his style; indeed, he was little interested in plot or traditional character development. Burroughs went even further, dismissing any kind of linearity or coherence in plot; his postmodernist prose was trying to recreate the kind of confusion and disorientation that he experienced. And Faulkner…well, he was interested in seeing just how many adjectives, adverbs, and recursive prepositions he could stuff into a sentance. Sometimes you start to wonder if he was interested in the nominal topic at all.

I’d say often enough this is done to create a mood, or describe a time period/manner of behavior/technology/et cetera that the reader may not be familiar with. Other times it is to break the tension, or create alternate plotlines that may not be readily apparent. And sometimes it is done just because, well, because the author was just interested in the topic, assumed the reader would be to, and had a lazy, careless, or cowed editor that refused to trim it out. When this is done poorly it comes off like bad voice-over use in a movie; unnecessarily expository or insultingly patronizing. When it is done well–the best example I can think of are the Guide entries in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy–it works to amuse the reader, inform on the topic at hand, or presage the next plot development.

Not to suggest that every writer who does this has some deeper meaning or is a champion of his or her art, but becoming a more accomplished reader (i.e. capable of identifying the fundamental themes, symbolism, metaphor, et cetera) in literature often involves moving past an obsession with linear plotting and “logical” character development. The often-lofted complaint at, say, Heller’s Catch-22 is that a) nothing happens, and b) it keeps happening over and over again; while I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that nothing happens, the repetitiveness, the nonlinear and disorienting chronology, and the general sense of confusion and lack of movement is quite deliberate on Heller’s part; it’s a stylistic choice which draws the reader into Yossarian’s plight, the inescapable, utterly maddening tautology of Catch-22. (“That’s a good catch, that Catch-22.” “It’s the best there is.”) If the text is frusturating to read then you are getting the point; the sense of frustration of a frightened, bewildered bombadier who just wants to complete his requirements and get the hell out, for whom abstract appeals to patriotism and justice have less draw than his perfectly rational paranoid delusion that everyone is trying to kill him.

Ditto with just about everything written by Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow), and even earlier, more plot-driven writers like John Steinbeck do this considerably; in The Grapes of Wrath, for instance, Steinbeck diverges several times to complain of the banks, the gentlemen farmers who exploit the immigrant Okies, the police and politicians, et cetera. He was taken to task many times for his blunt interjection of social criticism into the text, rather than moralizing within the text of the story, a la Upton Sinclair or H.G. Wells, but in fact it (IMHO) it makes his stories stronger to seperate the social criticism which underlies them from the story itself; it prevents him from having to insert a bald morality play into the story (as he did in some of his lesser stories, like Tortilla Flat or Cannery Row) and letting the action take place in an unforced manner.

This is not to say that a “great novel” has to have all kinds of elaborate subtext, symbolism, and so forth in order to be great; Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is a straightforward semiautobiographical reminiscence of Lee’s childhood. It’s a powerful story which neither needs or would be served by any artificially-inserted metaphor or moral, and is all the more thematically complex for its narrative simplicity; a simple aside about her brother hacking down the flowers of a foul-mannered, bigotted neighbor, and the pennance he is required to pay to make up for his actions says volumes without having to force any symbolism at all.

I’ve not read The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and it’s not even on the extensive backlog of books I have to read, so I can’t speak to the specifics, but I’m guessing that Hugo probably had some purpose in mind when drafting the divergence in question. What it means…well, that’s up to you.

Stranger

14

Clearly you haven’t read Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon).

I don’t think there is one specific answer to this question. In some cases, like Melville, the divergence is for a reason; Melville is establishing a metaphor (albeit one that may be oblique to an audience that doesn’t know his intent.) With someone like Joyce, divergences were just a part of his style; indeed, he was little interested in plot or traditional character development. Burroughs went even further, dismissing any kind of linearity or coherence in plot; his postmodernist prose was trying to recreate the kind of confusion and disorientation that he experienced. And Faulkner…well, he was interested in seeing just how many adjectives, adverbs, and recursive prepositions he could stuff into a sentance. Sometimes you start to wonder if he was interested in the nominal topic at all.

I’d say often enough this is done to create a mood, or describe a time period/manner of behavior/technology/et cetera that the reader may not be familiar with. Other times it is to break the tension, or create alternate plotlines that may not be readily apparent. And sometimes it is done just because, well, because the author was just interested in the topic, assumed the reader would be to, and had a lazy, careless, or cowed editor that refused to trim it out. When this is done poorly it comes off like bad voice-over use in a movie; unnecessarily expository or insultingly patronizing. When it is done well–the best example I can think of are the Guide entries in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy–it works to amuse the reader, inform on the topic at hand, or presage the next plot development.

Not to suggest that every writer who does this has some deeper meaning or is a champion of his or her art, but becoming a more accomplished reader (i.e. capable of identifying the fundamental themes, symbolism, metaphor, et cetera) in literature often involves moving past an obsession with linear plotting and “logical” character development. The often-lofted complaint at, say, Heller’s Catch-22 is that a) nothing happens, and b) it keeps happening over and over again; while I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that nothing happens, the repetitiveness, the nonlinear and disorienting chronology, and the general sense of confusion and lack of movement is quite deliberate on Heller’s part; it’s a stylistic choice which draws the reader into Yossarian’s plight, the inescapable, utterly maddening tautology of Catch-22. (“That’s a good catch, that Catch-22.” “It’s the best there is.”) If the text is frusturating to read then you are getting the point; the sense of frustration of a frightened, bewildered bombadier who just wants to complete his requirements and get the hell out, for whom abstract appeals to patriotism and justice have less draw than his perfectly rational paranoid delusion that everyone is trying to kill him.

Ditto with just about everything written by Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow), and even earlier, more plot-driven writers like John Steinbeck do this considerably; in The Grapes of Wrath, for instance, Steinbeck diverges several times to complain of the banks, the gentlemen farmers who exploit the immigrant Okies, the police and politicians, et cetera. He was taken to task many times for his blunt interjection of social criticism into the text, rather than moralizing within the text of the story, a la Upton Sinclair or H.G. Wells, but in fact it (IMHO) it makes his stories stronger to seperate the social criticism which underlies them from the story itself; it prevents him from having to insert a bald morality play into the story (as he did in some of his lesser stories, like Tortilla Flat or Cannery Row) and letting the action take place in an unforced manner.

This is not to say that a “great novel” has to have all kinds of elaborate subtext, symbolism, and so forth in order to be great; Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is a straightforward semiautobiographical reminiscence of Lee’s childhood. It’s a powerful story which neither needs or would be served by any artificially-inserted metaphor or moral, and is all the more thematically complex for its narrative simplicity; a simple aside about her brother hacking down the flowers of a foul-mannered, bigotted neighbor, and the pennance he is required to pay to make up for his actions says volumes without having to force any symbolism at all.

I’ve not read The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and it’s not even on the extensive backlog of books I have to read, so I can’t speak to the specifics, but I’m guessing that Hugo probably had some purpose in mind when drafting the divergence in question. What it means…well, that’s up to you.

Stranger

15

Clearly you haven’t read Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon).

I don’t think there is one specific answer to this question. In some cases, like Melville, the divergence is for a reason; Melville is establishing a metaphor (albeit one that may be oblique to an audience that doesn’t know his intent.) With someone like Joyce, divergences were just a part of his style; indeed, he was little interested in plot or traditional character development. Burroughs went even further, dismissing any kind of linearity or coherence in plot; his postmodernist prose was trying to recreate the kind of confusion and disorientation that he experienced. And Faulkner…well, he was interested in seeing just how many adjectives, adverbs, and recursive prepositions he could stuff into a sentance. Sometimes you start to wonder if he was interested in the nominal topic at all.

I’d say often enough this is done to create a mood, or describe a time period/manner of behavior/technology/et cetera that the reader may not be familiar with. Other times it is to break the tension, or create alternate plotlines that may not be readily apparent. And sometimes it is done just because, well, because the author was just interested in the topic, assumed the reader would be to, and had a lazy, careless, or cowed editor that refused to trim it out. When this is done poorly it comes off like bad voice-over use in a movie; unnecessarily expository or insultingly patronizing. When it is done well–the best example I can think of are the Guide entries in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy–it works to amuse the reader, inform on the topic at hand, or presage the next plot development.

Not to suggest that every writer who does this has some deeper meaning or is a champion of his or her art, but becoming a more accomplished reader (i.e. capable of identifying the fundamental themes, symbolism, metaphor, et cetera) in literature often involves moving past an obsession with linear plotting and “logical” character development. The often-lofted complaint at, say, Heller’s Catch-22 is that a) nothing happens, and b) it keeps happening over and over again; while I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that nothing happens, the repetitiveness, the nonlinear and disorienting chronology, and the general sense of confusion and lack of movement is quite deliberate on Heller’s part; it’s a stylistic choice which draws the reader into Yossarian’s plight, the inescapable, utterly maddening tautology of Catch-22. (“That’s a good catch, that Catch-22.” “It’s the best there is.”) If the text is frusturating to read then you are getting the point; the sense of frustration of a frightened, bewildered bombadier who just wants to complete his requirements and get the hell out, for whom abstract appeals to patriotism and justice have less draw than his perfectly rational paranoid delusion that everyone is trying to kill him.

Ditto with just about everything written by Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow), and even earlier, more plot-driven writers like John Steinbeck do this considerably; in The Grapes of Wrath, for instance, Steinbeck diverges several times to complain of the banks, the gentlemen farmers who exploit the immigrant Okies, the police and politicians, et cetera. He was taken to task many times for his blunt interjection of social criticism into the text, rather than moralizing within the text of the story, a la Upton Sinclair or H.G. Wells, but in fact it (IMHO) it makes his stories stronger to seperate the social criticism which underlies them from the story itself; it prevents him from having to insert a bald morality play into the story (as he did in some of his lesser stories, like Tortilla Flat or Cannery Row) and letting the action take place in an unforced manner.

This is not to say that a “great novel” has to have all kinds of elaborate subtext, symbolism, and so forth in order to be great; Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is a straightforward semiautobiographical reminiscence of Lee’s childhood. It’s a powerful story which neither needs or would be served by any artificially-inserted metaphor or moral, and is all the more thematically complex for its narrative simplicity; a simple aside about her brother hacking down the flowers of a foul-mannered, bigotted neighbor, and the pennance he is required to pay to make up for his actions says volumes without having to force any symbolism at all.

I’ve not read The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and it’s not even on the extensive backlog of books I have to read, so I can’t speak to the specifics, but I’m guessing that Hugo probably had some purpose in mind when drafting the divergence in question. What it means…well, that’s up to you.

Stranger

16

LOTR (and The Hobbit, natch) was ultimately about hobbits. And there’s nothing more important to a hobbit than food.

17

His main point - which I find amusing for a reason I will explain later - was that the true “beauty” of architecture is dead. It has been destroyed by the printed word.

What he means is, as far as I could tell, that once humans expressed themselves through their architecture. We built buildings to pass down our culture & stories, and once the printed - not written or oral stories - word came into play, we started making drab & plain buildings, with no soul or heart.

Why do I find this amusing? Like the Communist Manifesto which was written in a free country, the book deplores the printed word while at the same time making use of the printed word to make its point.

18

Gah…my apologies for the triple-post. Stupid firewall problems.

Stranger

19

Ah, yes, Anaamika – but have you read Neal Stephenson?

For Hugo (one of the worst literary “digressors” in the sense of straying away from plot to describe background/history), and especially for The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, it helps to remember that the original French title was Notre-Dame de Paris. The titular character wasn’t Quasimodo, but the cathedral itself. I agree with Fabulous Creature’s comment that the reader and the author sometimes have different ideas of what the “topic” is, and if Hugo thinks 74 pages on Napoleon’s strategies and defeat are important to the story, they…probably are.

20

He did the same thing in Les Miserables, I remeber skipping a couple chapters that were nothing more than a discourse on the Parisian sewer system. They popped up in the middle of some suspense and action, and I just wanted to get on with the action, dangit. I blame TV and commercials.