Writing Without Reading

Thank goodness for Rachel Cusk

What book did you just finish? Or did you finish it?

These questions are connected to something that’s been troubling me, both personally and professionally for a while, and of which I was reminded recently. A lot of people want to write creatively. Seems like more and more every year. But reading is in decline. I’m sure most of you have heard of the article by Rose Horwitch in the new Atlantic, titled, “The End of Reading Is Here.”

In a recent post, Sam Kahn mentioned how people can’t bring themselves to read a short piece of fiction on Substack but have no problem reading a lengthy article about what’s wrong with fiction.

I’ll admit that I am sometimes one of those people.

One of the first things you learn in a beginning fiction class is to read a lot of fiction if you want to be a writer of fiction.

How can I write well if I don’t like much of what I read?

Maybe part of the problem is that writing has become, in popular culture, a form of personal expression. But if you consider what great writers throughout history say about their work, I think you’d have a tough time finding many who thought of it that way. More likely those writers would say something like their work was an attempt to understand what it is to be human. Those two concepts are in opposition. It’s impossible to get a better understanding about humanity if you’re primarily concerned with expressing yourself. In fact, it’s impossible to get a better understanding about yourself without understanding others, especially those unlike yourself, which is what the best novels offer. A good writer loses him or herself while writing about others. The story idea may have its genesis in the writer’s personal experience, but it should soon break free from that limitation and seek to find common ground with others.

I’ve edited two literary journals in my writing career, and I’ve noticed the change in the approach to fiction. At least half of the submissions we received at those journals were immediate declines (for me) because it was so obvious that the writer was too self-absorbed to offer anything of value to readers. Call it the effect of social media or the failure of the American education system, but the result was the same: too many people are writing fiction for themselves without keeping their readers in mind. I couldn’t help wondering what, if anything, those writers were reading in preparation for their own writing. If Kahn is correct, maybe they were only reading articles about writing, and not the writing itself.

And then there’s the level of the writing. I’m not the only person who’s noticed that what’s popular and successful these days is very often written in a didactic, explanatory style, as if readers are incapable of understanding anything of complexity. They call it handholding. But to me it’s more like a lecture delivered to children. I don’t want to be treated like a child when I read, and a lot of other people don’t either. But there are far more who need that kind of dumbed down writing to make sense of stories¹, and corporate publishing has recognized that it’s their best chance at profit, and changed their product to take advantage of it.

I’d say that I don’t finish about half the books I purchase. It’s not just the issues I mentioned above. Sometimes I start reading a novel and am interested for a few chapters. But that interest wanes as the tension refuses to rise. Sometimes the writing becomes repetitive, or the characters become flat, or the plot becomes predictable, or it seems that the writer ran out of ideas before the book was done. Or something. Others (typically assigned to me by a book club) are so poorly written that I can’t get past more than a few pages.

Some years ago I attended a writing conference during which I had the opportunity to have my novel in progress reviewed by a published author. I use the word “opportunity” facetiously. In reviewing my sample the author couldn’t understand why I hadn’t stated the name of my main character in the first sentence. Not the first chapter, not the first page or the first paragraph. The first sentence. He stressed how important it was for readers to understand exactly who you were talking about. After I stopped laughing and fought back we argued about virtually every aspect of writing. I walked out before he could finish his “critique.”

I understand that this “author” (read: hack) is an extreme case, but I still find him symptomatic of the people who now dominate our industry, people who have transformed what used to be an entertaining adventure into mindless, boring drivel.

Maybe a better question is, where can I find the kind of fiction that I enjoy reading all the way through?

That’s why I’m so grateful Rachel Cusk is still being published. I’m currently about three quarters through her latest novel, Parade. I still don’t know the name of the main character, who is referred to only as G. And G is not really the main character, only the one who is mentioned most often. There really is no main character, but there is a main thread that weaves its way through the narrative, which explores the nature of art and artists, and the people who surround them, support them, try to make money from their associations with them, and sometimes abuse them.

Sounds like an exploration into the nature of humanity. Other people. What a concept.

Perhaps what I like most about Cusk’s writing is her spectacular use of subtext to explore the intricacies of human behavior in an understated, selfless style, a style that appears to be largely lost in the sea of young adult pabulum that passes for adult fiction. She’ll never tell you what she’s writing about; she just writes it through the people who populate her work. I hesitate to refer to them as characters, because they are not characters in the conventional sense, but mostly people talking about their lives in the way they would if you knew them personally.

Reading a book like that requires the kind of life experience that allows other people to be who they are. It requires tolerance, which is in short supply if media reports are correct. It also requires, obviously, a lot of patience on the reader’s part, which apparently is also in short supply among the reading public. Horwitch mentions a UC Irvine psychologist who reported that the average attention span for people looking at a screen is down to 47 seconds.

And Cusk does all of this without relying on the sentimentality that is rampant in mainstream fiction. Her words and ideas speak for themselves. She never resorts to syrupy adverbs or scenes loaded with the feel-good tropes of pop culture. Her world is the real world, and she’s not afraid to examine it in depth. She challenges readers to decide how to interpret her work.

Cusk’s writing receives critical praise for its intelligence and honesty, but apparently not enough to inspire other writers to seek a similar style. It’s not for everyone.

But that’s just me, a single reader in an ocean of literary tastes. I’m not trying to impose my aesthetic on the reading public. But I wish there were more like it out there. At least then I wouldn’t throw so much money down the drain on books I never finish.

So back to my original questions. What book did you just finish? Or did you finish it?

I’m curious to know how it works for you. I promise I won’t judge.

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What else I’m reading: Liza Libes has some similar thoughts in Why Modern Fiction Stopped Producing Great Characters.

1. Horwitch’s article has some amazing examples of the lack of reading comprehension among university students. In one study a student reading the opening to Dickens’s Bleak House thought he was writing about a cat.