Plot? What plot? Point Counter Point---goes out to Morris

[Mark Kohut]

in our recent discussion, I argued for the inevitability of plot in
fiction. Even just barely and
articulated only after the fact of reading an episodic, digressive story.

Since then, I've kept Morris's undertow [to me] argument in mind. Which
might be summarized as a story, a novel is "just one damn thing after
another" just the author's intention as stated below.  [correct if
necessary, David}  And have seen, seemingly,
examples that might refute me. And relooked at the whole concept.

One blow, as happened to Quixote when he fought imaginarily, is in reading
Tristram Shandy, yes for the first time.
All digression, it seems, even centuries later. Digression as life itself
must be a kind of theme. His notion of Hobby-Horses,
kinda brilliant, concatenations of ..well, imaginative feelings, interests,
thoughts occasioned, etc. as a large part of what we are.
 Promising an autobiography at the start of the book, we don't get THAT at
all, but we do get one of the most extended presentation of mental
associations written. Partly, says an intro to poke fun at Locke's (and
maybe Descartes') overly logical rationalism.
Logic is a plot, so to speak, and vice versa.
Tristram Shandy IS 'essentially and almost only, the author's intention" on
the page...written with ellipses up the wazoo...short remarks....."Great
wit must jump", a nice aphorism and which he does with extended similes to
smile at and follow interestingly.

Then in a collection of stories I have for a course, I find Sherwood
Anderson, of all folks, having written on how he had abandoned plot.
(I could quote but will save space).I once loved Winesburg, Ohio to the
skies. And, of course it is far from O. Henry-like but I was already too
much swimming in modern stories that I hardly noticed.

And two newer books, one by Knausgaard and one by Ali Smith, both the same
series idea, Winter, Summer, etc.....which are plotless
imaginative reflections,  which way of writing--as Sterne sez, writing is
just conversation-- and books I like a lot. (Read one each so far).

So, a Schrodinger's Cat kind of belief about plot in me now.

PS. Does seem, of course, that later Sterne scholar-readers DID 'find' a
thematic progressions kind of plot. Of course.







On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 8:27 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Your Ari plot is a hero's quest.  Joyce's U comes to mind.
>
> I think a "plot" is essentially the author's intention, which might be
> very other than a character's journey.  I think the author has the
> intention of leading the reader on a journey, even if the author is the
> only person ever to read the text.  That intention might be unclear even to
> the author.  We are all confused, so authors too.  But the plot might be
> the author's attempt to make the reader into a partaker of a quest.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 6:37 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Well. since my depth charges--thanks, David---come from channeling
>> geniuses with a
>> little recombinatory spin, let me continue.
>>
>> I'm not looking anything up for exactitude here until I am back at home,
>> but here's
>> me remembering Aristotle with kaleidoscopic spin. (If i get it wrong,
>> then it's just me and either way worth
>> talking about, refining or differing with).
>>
>> Ari: Plot is a protagonist in action. The action is toward some kind of
>> goal often because a contented safe life
>> is upended.  Desire to understand, to get back to normal
>> drives the Protagonist. For Ari with his greek models, there was little
>> self-reflection, lots of problem-solving.
>> The overarching artist gave us HIS self-reflection on humanity via his
>> vision.
>>
>> The protagonist(s) encounter unexpected situations ( in general)
>> and inconvenient others---obstacles--to achieving the goal. They reveal
>> their character
>> in handling, dispatching, the obstacles. Or not.
>>
>> Plot keeps us hooked with something we must call surprises--by the
>> protagonist's reactions and
>> in what the world throws at him and makes him react against.
>>
>> Surprises are such because they hold mysteries. We readers LIKE to not
>> know but want to find out.
>> This is what page-turning means, in one sense. (I have always been immune
>> to page-turningness
>> but I am not typical and I don't say this as though it is a good thing.
>> Mixed at best, a sign of something
>> probably lacking under the common sense lens.)
>>
>> An epistemological teasing 'mystery'. One reason the detective/mystery
>> genre is in our time the purest embodiment
>> in general of plot: good, OK, or great. (The Mousetrap or Murder on the
>> Orient Express exemplary examples of the turn and
>> turn of the screw of mystery to full mind-reaching surprise. Chandler in
>> his believable complexity and others in more modern examples).
>> Donna Tartt as a current writer is one who builds an old-fashioned
>> plot...ending chapters on little cliffhangers, little "how will he choose"
>> "what will he run into next",  type of thing.
>>
>> Digressions are defined, in the major sense, as sideways/superfluous
>> scenes which do not move *the action *forward on the surface.
>>
>> Once modernism meant that everything around the plot meant as much or
>> more than that plot (rooted before modernism in books such as
>> *Tristam Shandy, even Hamlet, *even aspects of the "first" novel *Don
>> Quixote) *then plot perhaps had to redefine itself. When
>> self-reflection,
>> thinking on the page took over, pure plot had a problem. For one reason,
>> the mystery leaks away since the protagonist-thinker we might identify with
>> keeps us informed, so that protagonist-thinker has to be overcome with
>> more surprise notions than we expect.
>>
>> Tidbit I once learned: When *Lost* debuted on TV, the suits were in
>> consensual confusion over whether audiences would "like" it. They hired
>> some consulting info-gathering company to ask questions of early viewers.
>> The answers revealed that the overall mystery of wtf is this about?
>> and the internal allusive mysteries engaged minds and they wanted more.
>> The Plot hooked. A decent modern example.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 10:30 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Mark,
>>>
>>> Your response has depth.  A literary plot is a plan conceived by an
>>> author.  Some authors are revered as sages.  Long ago a P-lister repeated
>>> called Pynchon a "modern mystic."  So, an author as a god who subverts his
>>> own creation with an alt-story as a heresy is pretty wild.  It all feels a
>>> little SciFi.
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 4:50 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Here is a relevant, I hope, Dantean-inspired thought. Late in Paradiso,
>>>> the question of the progression of "the straight path" comes up. A
>>>> digression
>>>> from the path, the plot in the case of Commedia, is a wrong step, a
>>>> morally wrong
>>>> step.
>>>>
>>>> For Dante, a certain plot is necessary, teleological.
>>>>
>>>> And digression shows you are on the wrong path...
>>>>
>>>> So, one might say, fictional digression, fictional "plotlessness' later
>>>> in literary history
>>>> is almost a blasphemous act; a blow against the divine truth of
>>>> history. A throw down of
>>>> secularism.
>>>>
>>>> So to speak.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 9:09 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Watching "In Search of Fellini," and some characters say his movies
>>>>> don't
>>>>> have a "plot," a subject briefly discussed here recently, re. ATD.
>>>>>
>>>>> Presumably a plot implies more than a chance series of events.  But
>>>>> writing
>>>>> anything, especially fiction, is always a choice.  It doesn't write
>>>>> itself.  Writing is a choice to express SOMETHING.  Is that a plot?
>>>>>
>>>>> The word "plot" implies a plan, a secret motive or message.  But plots
>>>>> are
>>>>> often best when they don't know conclusions, foster debate.  Or just
>>>>> foster
>>>>> any range of emotions.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> David Morris
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>>
>>>>
>>