All Fiction is Message Fiction
Postmodernism is nonsense. Here’s the pop version of it: Through the lens of pomo (what the “cool” people call it), a given thing only has the meaning an individual ascribes to it.
That’s it.
You just read a book. What does it mean? What does the author say it means? What do the words on the page mean? Who cares? What do you think it means? What is your lived experience? Your truth?
What is truth?
The postmodernist would say “whatever a given person feels at a given time,” or something stupid like that. I don’t know. Maybe I’m ascribing my own meaning of “postmodernism” to “postmodernism.” How very postmodern of me.
Nothing means anything. None of this matters. Who cares?
Wait, that’s nihilism.
The point is this: are you a postmodernist (pomoist (Gross! That says “po-moist”!)? Does what you do have an intended meaning, or is all just whatever somebody decides it means? If scholars decades after the fact tell J.R.R. Tolkien that The Lord of the Rings is an allegory for World War II (I mean, what isn’t these days?) even though J.R.R. Tolkien, the writer of The Lord of the Rings, says that it is not an allegory for World War II, who is right? Who is wrong? Who cares? Nothing has any meaning.
Or how about this:
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work . . .
J.R.R. Tolkien
LOL no it’s not!
The Internet
Who is right? Who is wrong?
Who cares? It’s all absurd.
Wait, that’s dadaism.
* * *
Put yourself in my shoes for a moment. You’re a person who writes novels and publishes them. You write blog posts, essays, and short stories. When you sit down to write one of these things, you have a point you are trying to convey, a message you are trying to get across. There are certain things that you want your reader to think about, to feel. “To affect the quality of the day,” said Henry David Thoreau, “that is the highest of arts.” He goes on to say “Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.”
This is no great revelation, but I think Thoreau words it well.
So what does he mean?
Hell if I know. I interpret it to mean that everything we do is imbued with a meaning beyond its ordinary trappings. This could be cooking a meal for someone, doing a menial task, or, I don’t know, writing a book.
I know this comes across very pomo of me, thinking I know exactly what Thoreau meant without researching it further, but there’s a crucial difference: I am interpreting the words on the page. I am not making up my own meaning of them, or doing that lawyer thing where plain language, even the words “it” and “the,” get reinterpreted into meaninglessness dependent on the argument that the lawyer wants to win.
I think that my interpretation is logically sound, but if I encounter anything that Thoreau had written about this sentiment himself that contradicts my interpretation, I would change my opinion about the statement’s meaning.
Back to my example. Let’s say you are, like me, a writer. When you craft your narrative, you obviously have to follow a certain story structure, if you write the kinds of stories I do. There are elements to a compelling novel: tension, conflict, but and therefore instead of and then, a rise, a climax, a resolution, and so on.
In other words, stuff happens.
But then there is all of the stuff inside of the action, the stuff below the surface that some call subtext—oh, how I hated that word in English class, looking for the meaning below the plain language. Now as an adult, I appreciate what my high-school English teachers tried to teach me about symbolism and all of that. It turns out my freshman year teacher was correct about all of that stuff in A Tale of Two Cities, stuff I didn’t appreciate until I read the book decades later.
This is the stuff that an author puts into his work. This is the meaning, the point, the message.
All fiction is message fiction.
I’ll say it again: all fiction is message fiction.
There is a point the author wants the reader to walk away with. This does not have to be contemporary partisan politics, sledgehammer messaging, or anything glaringly offensive. It does not even have to be a singular discrete point like “greed is bad” or “Christianity is good” or “this ideology is what you should follow, and not that ideology.” Something as relatively simple as “good is worth fighting for,” “the hero saves the day and gets the girl” or “sacrificing oneself for one’s friends is a worthy endeavor” is also a message.
Now, how does this make you feel? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Are you violently opposed to “message fiction” that you would not consider those things messages or points? What would you call them then? Themes?
What’s the difference?
Before I get dozens of pedantic comments, yes, I’m sure there is a technical difference. But practically? If your theme is, say “the hero saves the day and gets the girl,” that’s still the message of your book. If the hero did not save the day and did not get the girl, that would be sending a very different message. That doesn’t make the inverse any less of a message. Get the picture?
I harp on this because, if you don’t think a story has a message or a point, and you don’t write it as such, you’re not much different than a postmodernist. You are, I guess, leaving it up to the reader to decide what the point of your story is. In a medium like writing, where you’re dealing with words on a page, words, which have specific meanings given the context around them, it’s difficult to leave all that much up to interpretation the way you could in purely instrumental music. A book could be intentionally vague, but then you’re left with less narrative and more impressions. But if you’re writing a novel, a form of writing where plot is paramount, there is clearly more at work than just saying “Stuff happened, and then more stuff happened, the end.” And even that has a message.
There is a purpose to your writing. You imbue your writing with a piece of your thought, your worldview, your soul. If you write a “hero beats the bad guy and saves the girl” narrative, and critics think your story means “heroism is futile and love is fake,” would that make you happy?
Would you argue? Or would you shrug your shoulders and say, “Ah, whatever. I don’t write message fiction.”
I think I know the answer.
– Alexander
My books have meaning. The Final Home, the concluding volume in my trilogy The Swordbringer has all kinds of meaning. Back the Kickstarter campaign here!