In the attempt to capture truth in writing, writers and readers alike are cognisant of the artifice that occurs in the process of writing. This oxymoron; that truth and authenticity can result from artifice is the basis of the conflict that occurs between concepts of reality, truth and literary realism. The nature of fiction itself presents tension between truth and artifice: writers abide by the facets of literary realism, which has a “fidelity to the truth” (M.H. Abrams), and must create artifices to deliver meaning and create truth, utilising techniques of fiction such as metaphor, figures, imagery and dialogue which aren’t necessarily true. In order to create a sense of authenticity, Nam Le abides by verisimilitude in his short stories “Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” and “Tehran Calling” in his collection The Boat.
Using Formalism to interpret cannot be effective because the readers need to understand the background information. Without the background, the story becomes comparable to a pound cake with no toppings, bland and uninviting. Formalism ignores the cultural context, the author intentions, and how the story affects the reader personally. Formalism by definition ignores specifics such as what the author’s intentions were in the story. Fast’s intentions turn out to be an attempt to describe human nature.
So that when he does, he can understand the book better. That is one of the things that Their Eyes were Watching God lacked, making it a good story, but not a great book. One instance proven by Wright is when he says, “Turpin’s faults as a writer are those of an honest man trying desperately to say something; but Zora Neale Hurston lacks even that excuse. The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought”( ¶ #5). When he says there is “no thought” he means that there is nothing in the book that makes the reader think.
The Most Dangerous Game is a great example of this type of literature because it lacks organic unity. This narrative, written by Richard Connell, has no theme. It is merely a good hunting story meant to entertain an audience and nothing else. Both, literary and commercial fiction, have major similarities and differences. Both types of literature are also types of art.
By calling into question the truth of his stories, he disorients readers who are expecting to read a standard fiction, where the events are undoubtably false. He also shows readers why reinventing a story may be more important than telling the story just as it is remembered. Norman Bowker disapproves of O’Brien’s first attempt to describe a horrific battle, and, therefore, O’Brien feels the need to rewrite the story. Essentially, O’Brien must remember the event in a new way that makes the story more real for Bowker and other readers. Finally, O’Brien explains to readers why stories must be told, even with the risk telling the story the “wrong” way.
Addie's genuine character as a living human will be a mystery; a few may view her as someone who was playing with the devil and others might see her as someone with admiration because she was one to believe that actions speak louder than words. The different characters throughout the novel and the difficulty stream-of-consciousness method all work together to create a novel that is open-ended and a matter of understanding. There is no intent truth to the narrative any more than there is any ideal certainty to the events that happen in it. The way that Faulkner uses the multiple narrators serves the purpose of trying to figure out what is the truth of these events that took place throughout the story and this is what makes this novel such a success. Faulkner desires to enchant his audience and grasp their mind.
Readers Response is a school of literary criticism that ignores both the author and the text’s contents, confining analysis to the reader’s experience when reading a particular work. From a psychological point of view, all the readers receive a textual threat to their psychological equilibrium and in order to restore that equilibrium the reader must construe text in the way that will lead to fulfillment of psychological need and desire. Interpretation is thus a psychological process rather than an intellectual one. Literary interpretation may or may not reveal the meaning of the text, but to a discerning eye it always reveals the psychology of the reader. Psychological Dimension of our interpretations is not readily apparent to ourselves and others because we unconsciously couch it in aesthetic, intellectual, social, or moral abstractions to relieve the anxiety and guilt our projections arouse in us.
Guterson himself says, "Post-modernism is dead because it didn't address human needs. The conventional story endures because it does. I'm interested in themes that endure from generation to generation" (qtd. in Kanner). This book is a conventional story, a simple story about the internal battle of Ishmael Chambers as he struggles with himself.
Another is that the contemporary essay has for some time now been gaining energy as an escape from, or rival to, the perceived conservatism of much mainstream fiction. Geoff Dyer puts this adversarial relationship well in “Out of Sheer Rage,” his book about, around, and through D. H. Lawrence, in which he makes an argument against general cirrhosis of the novel, and in favor of the healthy freedom of the
While most works of fiction follow a prescribed plot, exploring each idea on a chronological path, Virginia Woolf's "The Mark on the Wall" articulates, instead of action, an internal monologue. Human thought is not linear; in moments of introspection we jump from topic to topic, follow connections ignited by memory, logic or external input. Some critics call this essay a work of fancy, while others consider it a demonstration of control. The question of whether it is a work of subjectivism or skepticism is also a prominent debate. I prefer to view "The Mark on the Wall" as an analysis of the patterns of human thought - including both subjectivist thought and skepticist thought - distinguishing the chaos of introspection from organized writing.