Friday Column: Style Over Substance

In this post, Dan Green takes critic Laura Miller to task for her critique of "beautifully written books that have nothing to say." This critique is made in context of the style versus substance debate. Miller is arguing against books that she says exhibit very artistic style but that have very little substance.

I'm sorry, but to my ears Miller's argument sounds like gibberish. To me, it sounds like she's arguing against books that have something interesting to say becaue she prefers to read books that have something interesting to say.

Miller calls out the scores of beautifully written but empty books that fill our bookstores. It's arguable whether or not our bookstores are filled with beautifully written books, but Miller is flat wrong when she equates beautiful writing with an original, interesting style. Beautiful writing may be a component of high style, but it's hardly enough to comprise it.

My point here is that it's non-sensical to say that a book with artistic style isn't making an interesting statement. The two are inextricable. If a book exhibits artistic style, then, by definition, it's substantive. In literature, you can't separate style from substance.

When I think of the most stylistically interesting books I've read, I think of books like Pale Fire, Hopscotch, The Rings of Saturn, Lost in the Funhouse. In these books, the medium is the message. Pale Fire's 999-line annotated poem isn't clever packaging--it's a groundbreaking format that interacts in interesting ways with the novel's protaginists and themes. The meandering thoughts of The Rings of Saturn's narrator aren't there just so Sebald could write beautiful prose that mimics the working of memory--they're part of the book's ideas and they influence my interepations of the action on the page in provocative ways.

To put it another way. If you have a can of Coke, it's pretty easy to searate the packaging from the substance. The red can with the writing on it is the package, and the brown stuff inside is what you paid to drink. Coke may taste beautiful to you, but we can probably agree that it's empty calories. Books, or at least the ones that manage to become literature, aren't like that. It's as though the Coke can is affecting your enjoyment of the tasty beverage, interacting with the contents in ways that stimulate your taste buds toward new and exciting sensations.

Miller does a disservice to literature when she equates style with merely beautiful writing. She turns style into nothing but packaging, a clever trade that most competent artisans can learn with a little practice. I would argue the opposite, that an ability to write the clever plots that so dazzle Miller is aspects of writing more easily taught and acquired by those that are not true artists.

Style--authentic, original, interesting style--is something of a devalued commodity in literature these days, and with critics like Miller it's not hard to see why. The hacks who wouldn't know style if it beat them over the head with a spiked mallet, but who write so-so plots that are said to "wrestle with ideas," are the ones that score all the attention in places like the New York Times Book Review and Time magazine. These competent artisans get the bulk of the review attention while the authors with legitimately artistic style (the ones who in fact are really engaging interesting ideas in their novels) languish in the ghettoes of literary fiction.

Style isn't valued, apparently not even "beautiful writing" either. What's valued--if Miller is our guide--are the page-turning plots that have "something to say." If this is really what critics like Miller prefer to style, then it's no surprise that I rarely give themt he time of day.

Comments

[Jay]

Excellent stuff. I wonder if Laura Miller will read this and the other reply to her contention.

[Kirby Gann]

Thoughtful, well-executed post, Scott. I agree wholeheartedly, and would like to add, too, that a novelist's style IS his/her vision--what else should the author be required to "say"?

You know, Nabokov dealt with such criticisms all his life; that all his books are still in print, and revered by many, kind of proves Miller's wrong-headedness by example.

[fairest]

Tippett's String Quartets? That makes you and Tippett's mom. Hindemith up next? Talk about having little to say!

This is the Dostoyevsky v. Turgenev question.

Don't only two of Nabakov's book have anything left, though? PF and Lolita. And they also happen to be the ones with something to say. What it means to be a privileged immigrant.

I just read M. Gaitskill's "Veronica" and that was written beautifully and had nothing to say. But it was also about people with nothing to say, fashion models, so I'm not so sure that wasn't the point. Did L. Miller like it?

[Scott]

fairest,

I actually have a CD of choral music by Himdemith, so . . .

Anyway about Nabokov, no. Try: Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, Ada, The Defense, Pnin, for a start.

[Jay]

(((Don't only two of Nabakov's book have anything left, though? PF and Lolita. And they also happen to be the ones with something to say. What it means to be a privileged immigrant.)))

You have seriously misread Pale Fire and Lolita if you think that what they 'have to say' is anything to do with being 'a priveliged immigrant'. And besides, Nabokov was not priveliged. He came from an aristocratic family that lost everything in the revolution and had to work all his life, and until the sales of Lolita allowed him a comfortable retirement when he was in his late fifties, he worked hard to pay his way.