Readers, writers and transcendence: Toni Morrison’s perspective
A seven-week writers’ workshop recently ended in Provincetown, and I can't stop thinking about what I learned as a neophyte participant. Meant to help Cape Codders get through long, blustery winter evenings and weeks, it brought together 13 strangers varied in age, town of residence, occupation, background in writing, and personal history. An instructor assigned several readings each week that included short stories, essays on the writing craft, and student work, and in class lightly framed the lessons to be absorbed. It was the student work that was most remarkable, as varied as the participants. Some examples: one student's story delved deeply into whales, oil drilling and grief; another, a gay romance entertained; a third, a young, single mother living with her parents vented frustration; and a 1970's international-touring show dancer recalled adventure. Class discussion gave the floor to all, equitably, and was generously supportive. Within this simple structure, I think all participants left the group transformed, including me.
One of the essays on writing was by Toni Morrison (Mouth Full of Blood, "The Writer before the Page"), one of the great American writers and also one with whom I was not very familiar. In it she says,
"What I want in my fiction is to urge the reader into active participation in the nonnarrative, nonliterary experience of the text."
She continues to say, as in a piece of writing, music or a painting, "..the experience of looking is deeper that the data accumulated in viewing it."
More than the assembly of words, or musical notes, or blotches of color, the amalgamation of an entire piece unveils new meaning and becomes a transformative experience for the reader/viewer/listener, or, at least that is the intention. Think of Morrison's application of "active participation" onto the reader. These quotes from the essay refers to a preceding paragraph in which her book Sula is described, beyond the words on the page, as being about forgiveness among women - the things they forgive, the "nature and quality" of that forgiveness - and that is really about friendship among women. It is a whole lot for a story and words on a page to convey, making it easy to imagine reading Sula as a transformative experience. When I say transformative, I suggest the transcendent.
From another angle, I highly recommend a documentary on Morrison, The Pieces I Am, on both PBS American Masters and Netflix. In it, David Carrasco says,
"There's something about her skills with language so that not only do the readers feel that she is talking to them and they can talk back, they are finding in Morrison a new language about themselves, about the condition they live in, and that discovery gives them a sense of transcendence."
Her words reframe the context of lives, and the reframing brings an avenue of transcendence.
What a goal for a writer to strive for! And yet, in hearing short pieces from 13 fellow workshoppers, I realized how realistic a goal it may be. Going in, I'd thought that perhaps it would be difficult for every participant to generate something "interesting", and that I was as much at risk of coming up short as any. In truth, every piece I heard was fascinating. Every writer and every piece have a few things going for them:
newness - a new story or idea or voice will always make people curious
language and composition - every person tells a story differently: choice of words, turns of phrase, assembly of sentences and paragraphs, the rhythm, texture and pace of the story.
the story itself - every person has a different story they are driven to tell: fiction, history, memoir, essay, journalism; new places, cultures, personalities, and experiences; its viewpoint, perspective, and values.
universality - each story managed to tug at the thread of what it means to be a human, alive, in ways the reader may recognize.
evolution - characters, fictional or actual, learn and grow. They come through a crisis or conflict to the other side stronger and wiser, and bring the reader along with them to either recognize the parallels in their own experience, or to learn and grow vicariously.
A key lesson here is, even with those advantages from the beginning, a writer cannot know what meaning a reader will take from their work; despite any intention from the writer, the communication received by a given reader is a shot in the dark. I learned that in the discussion of the student short pieces: it was the exception when two readers even saw a portion of a story the same way, and the wide range of interpretations were both unimaginable and compelling to me. And in every case, the reader was deriving value.
So the mission from here is to retreat from the precipice of overwhelming written complexity, suggested by all of the techniques that are available, and to simply focus on crafting a story to convey a more important understanding that is not on the page, with a goal of transcendence for the reader (and the writer as well). Simple, not easy, and a worthy challenge.
