A Resonating Aptitude, Or Something

I think it’s fair to say that, as readers, we have certain aptitudes toward certain types of literature. This is probably a duh! sort of revelation to some readers, but let me explain what I mean a little more. Certain writers draw us in—individually—more than others. Their words have a stronger gravitational pull on us. It’s the reason why some people love Twilight with an uncannily fierce rabidity; there’s just something about the writing (setting aside the narrative and plot for now) that speaks to them. Like Potter Stewart once said about concretely defining pornography, “I’ll know it when I see it.” The same is true for literature that really resonates with us: aside from the storyline, we know when we see a kindred spirit on the page.

However, in this column, I’m trying to differentiate between preference and aptitude. And when I say aptitude, I don’t mean to dismissively declare fans of Stephanie Meyer intellectually inferior to fans of, say, William Gaddis (although other folks in the literary community have no problem making this claim), I simply mean that the way the words are communicated from author to reader strikes a certain chord with each of us, differently.

I liken this aptitude to academics in general. Some kids, early on, discover that they love math; others love science or history. Typically, the reason for this preference is how easily a given subject comes to the student. This also prompts a range of incorrect personal assumptions of ability with respect to subjects kids find challenging. Phrases such as, “I suck at math,” or “I hate English,” are not at all uncommon, even early on in a student’s life.

I give James Joyce a hard time because so few people out there really “get” what’s going on in Finnegan’s Wake. But I’ve got to believe that somewhere, at some point since that book’s publication, at least one reader has picked up that fucking book and said, “Holy, shit! It’s like Joyce was in my goddamn head when he wrote this!” Which then, of course, led to Finnegan’s Wake becoming that particular reader’s favorite book of all time, etc. And if they were/are a writer [then (insert deity of your choice here: ______ ) help them], their prose probably started to pick up some of the (arguably nonsensical) traits of Joyce’s work. And I’d argue that it’s not completely out of flattery or a desire to mimic the author (i.e Joyce) that they (i.e. the Joyce reader) are doing this, but rather that it’s because they finally realized that they could write like that, that they were allowed to.

The idea of writing a certain way—the “correct” way—is ingrained in us from a very early age. We are taught the rules of spelling and grammar from elementary school on and are warned that never, under any circumstances, are we ever to break these rules. Later on we learn (and I submit I’m paraphrasing here) that, well, all right, it’s probably OK to break some of the rules as long as you understand them beforehand. But like junk food on the dietary pyramid, the consensus about breaking the rules of grammar is the same: use sparingly.

One of the first stylistic devices I started using because I’d finally learned that I could was footnoting. Until I read Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, I’d never seen footnotes outside of academia. That isn’t to say writers weren’t using them, but they were by no means mainstream or de jour. What attracted me to footnotes were their digressive qualities. Footnotes allowed for a digression, mid-scene, without losing the flow of the narrative. Or they could be used specifically to break up the narrative flow, similar to how people talk to each other in real life (IRL). People often digress from a story they are telling to fill in some important fact or another that is necessary for the rest of the story they are telling to make sense. Em-dashes[1] can be used in a similar fashion, breaking up a sentence with an aside.

Similarly, David Foster Wallace taught me that mixing vernacular with complexly layered descriptions was OK (and likewise, Hunter S. Thompson taught me that it was OK to type “OK,” rather than “okay”). These were all elements that seemed natural to me but went against many of the rules I was taught in classes ranging from Language Arts to English Comp. Sometimes it just takes someone giving you a nudge in the right direction to simply do what comes most naturally to you.

I personally think in a fragmented way and, as a consequence, I tend to write fragmentedly. This probably stems from a severe case of ADD that even most medications are ill-equipped to treat. I’m a very scattered and disorganized person most of the time and I think those traits are two of many that make me predisposed toward favoring stream-of-consciousness (type) writing. I like writing that jumps around a lot, from minimalist, vernacular-inspired dialog to more drawn-out and layered expository, internal monologues and/or descriptions. I absolutely adore complexity, especially when it masquerades as simplicity (e.g. Amy Hempel’s short stories).

Going back then to what I said about aptitude—and because I think in a similar fashion to the way a lot of the writers I admire write—I might have more of an aptitude for their writing. I find it much harder, for example, to read long, linear epics with pages upon pages of scene description or exposition (I’m looking at you, Tolstoy!), than I do to read something more complex[2] that plays with syntax and rhythm and also forces you to flip back and forth between endnotes and the original body of the text. I think the breaks are what keep me engaged. I’ll have a mental checkpoint to reach before I put the book down.

Conversely, one of my favorite books of all time, Jane Smiley’s The Greenlanders—stylistically reminiscent of the epic Icelandic sagas in both the writing and subject matter—has very little in the way of breaks at all: no chapters, no footnotes, nothing. White space comes at a premium. The Greenlanders is just page after page of (mostly) expository-type prose.[3]

So, as The Greenlanders shows, the whole aptitude theory is ostensibly a rule with room for exceptions. So what do you think? Perhaps this phenomenon is why a lot of readers ultimately like many of the same authors as their peers, but each individual’s absolute favorite author is more obscure and less of a consensus favorite. Like math geeks and science nerds—terms I use with the utmost endearment—readers have a certain aptitude for certain styles. Though it probably all, unfortunately, “just depends” in the end.

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