sylvia pimentalSmug Voice of the Author
April 29th 2008 06:54
In a previous post I mentioned my “Petty-Reasons-Why-I-Will-Thr ow-This-Book-Out-The-Window” list, and I bring it up again because the topic of this post is yet another thing I find extremely annoying; the conceited, or smug, voice of the author. I’m not sure if I’m right here, but I think it is generally preferable for the author’s voice to be quieter than the voice of the characters, or the story. Maybe I should make myself clearer. I think that the reader should be so absorbed in the story, that they cannot hear the voice of the author saying, in the background, “I put this here, because I thought it would make the scene poignant”, or “I put that part in because I want to hector you about a topic I am passionate about:” I don’t want to see the scaffolding behind the story, I want to believe that the story is real and complete and not at all contrived, though, of course, I know that someone, somewhere, thought it all up and put it on the page. The same goes for characters- I want to believe that the characters are real people, I don’t want to think of them as ventriloquist dummies through which the author is telling me things.
Not every book can be perfectly absorbing so that you forget you are reading something an author wrote down, and not every character can be so believable that you forget their dialogue and inner monologue is scripted by some guy sitting at a desk thinking “how do I make this point?” As readers, we learn to accept this. And for the most part even someone as irritable as me can accept this. But there’s something about a smug authorial voice that really grates on my nerves.
By a smug authorial voice, I mean that the author’s voice and intent is clearly present behind the story, but this is more irritating than normal. I am reading a passage, and I am acutely aware that there was a guy sitting at a desk thinking “yeah, yeah, magic castle- and now I’m going to write about just how absolutely fantastic this magic castle WHICH I INVENTED FROM SCRATCH is. Wow, I am so incredibly imaginative and brilliant!” This is how it feels reading some books- like the author is quite up themselves, and it bleeds through from real life into the story.
Of course, the impression of ego which the smug voice conveys might not be true. The author might really be a mild and modest person, I suppose. On reflection, it’s probably quite likely that I have a smug voice as I write this blog, which would make you think that I am a confident, self-satisfied kind of person who always thinks they’re right. I don’t believe that’s true, but that is possibly how it sounds. For the record, it is excusable for me to have a smug authorial voice for two reasons. One, I am not a professional writer, and two, with a blog you are laying your own opinions down, whereas when you are writing fiction, you are meant to convey all your meaning through the story and the characters. Not shouting it out louder than the story and characters.
I think that fantasy novels particularly suffer from Smug Authorial Voice Disease. Fiction authors play god- they create people and lives, and can do what they want with them, which perhaps accounts for the smug voice. Authors of speculative fiction take this even further- they not only created characters, but whole worlds and universes with rules of their own. The guy at the desk is sitting there saying “I have every right to be smug and know-it-allish about Magic Castle Land, because I created it all. I understand it perfectly from inside out, unlike the reader who is necessarily ignorant of this strange place.” That is an explanation for why authors might sounds smug as they write, but I don’t think it is an excuse. Their job as an author is to calm down, stop congratulating themselves on being great, and find a way to make Magic Castle Land as accessible to the reader as possible, so that they understand and appreciate it as much as the author does.
That’s what irritates me- a know-it-all author who won’t share their creation properly with the reader, and instead you can hear them in the background saying “nah, nah, I know all about this, and you don’t.” In my last post I spoke about one of my favourite books, Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. Now I want to talk about one of my least favourite books, by way of illustrating my point.
Who has read Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea? And who actually enjoyed it? Congratulations, if you did, it was a feat I could not achieve. That book had all the elements of a book I should have liked reading- the strange archipelagic world, the village boy turned powerful wizard and his quest against the darkness in his soul, and we all know how popular stories about boys learning to become wizards can be. But the book left me completely cold on all points, and I blame Ursula Le Guin for sitting at her desk and saying “nah, nah, Sparrowhawk is my best friend, I have spent years travelling through the islands of Earthsea, I have accompanied Sparrowhawk on his terrifying quest and seen magic before my eyes. But this is all I’m going to share with you about it.” Throughout the whole thing, I felt as though Le Guin was in a room telling the story to herself, and I was only catching bits of it listening at the door. I could not relate to the characters at all; it was just a thoroughly conceited guy named Sparrowhawk who travelled from this island, to that island, and talked in a very pompous and angsty way. I could not appreciate the fantasy world, either, because I was just told the names of islands, and given a cursory glimpse into the culture of those places, without ever being immersed in it. Sparrowhawk’s quest was never of any interest as a plot, because it was just the inaccessible character travelling to inaccessible places, and making long-winded speeches about things.
But most of all, the thing that made the book annoying, rather than just boring, was the smug voice of the author. Because she had envisioned the world clearly, but not shared it with the reader. And instead, you are reading an ego-driven account of all the wonderful things she has invented, that you can’t access to appreciate. I don’t know if I have made my point clearly in this post, but if you want to know what I mean about the smugness, then just read A Wizard of Earthsea and come to your own conclusions.
Not every book can be perfectly absorbing so that you forget you are reading something an author wrote down, and not every character can be so believable that you forget their dialogue and inner monologue is scripted by some guy sitting at a desk thinking “how do I make this point?” As readers, we learn to accept this. And for the most part even someone as irritable as me can accept this. But there’s something about a smug authorial voice that really grates on my nerves.
By a smug authorial voice, I mean that the author’s voice and intent is clearly present behind the story, but this is more irritating than normal. I am reading a passage, and I am acutely aware that there was a guy sitting at a desk thinking “yeah, yeah, magic castle- and now I’m going to write about just how absolutely fantastic this magic castle WHICH I INVENTED FROM SCRATCH is. Wow, I am so incredibly imaginative and brilliant!” This is how it feels reading some books- like the author is quite up themselves, and it bleeds through from real life into the story.
Of course, the impression of ego which the smug voice conveys might not be true. The author might really be a mild and modest person, I suppose. On reflection, it’s probably quite likely that I have a smug voice as I write this blog, which would make you think that I am a confident, self-satisfied kind of person who always thinks they’re right. I don’t believe that’s true, but that is possibly how it sounds. For the record, it is excusable for me to have a smug authorial voice for two reasons. One, I am not a professional writer, and two, with a blog you are laying your own opinions down, whereas when you are writing fiction, you are meant to convey all your meaning through the story and the characters. Not shouting it out louder than the story and characters.
I think that fantasy novels particularly suffer from Smug Authorial Voice Disease. Fiction authors play god- they create people and lives, and can do what they want with them, which perhaps accounts for the smug voice. Authors of speculative fiction take this even further- they not only created characters, but whole worlds and universes with rules of their own. The guy at the desk is sitting there saying “I have every right to be smug and know-it-allish about Magic Castle Land, because I created it all. I understand it perfectly from inside out, unlike the reader who is necessarily ignorant of this strange place.” That is an explanation for why authors might sounds smug as they write, but I don’t think it is an excuse. Their job as an author is to calm down, stop congratulating themselves on being great, and find a way to make Magic Castle Land as accessible to the reader as possible, so that they understand and appreciate it as much as the author does.
That’s what irritates me- a know-it-all author who won’t share their creation properly with the reader, and instead you can hear them in the background saying “nah, nah, I know all about this, and you don’t.” In my last post I spoke about one of my favourite books, Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. Now I want to talk about one of my least favourite books, by way of illustrating my point.
Who has read Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea? And who actually enjoyed it? Congratulations, if you did, it was a feat I could not achieve. That book had all the elements of a book I should have liked reading- the strange archipelagic world, the village boy turned powerful wizard and his quest against the darkness in his soul, and we all know how popular stories about boys learning to become wizards can be. But the book left me completely cold on all points, and I blame Ursula Le Guin for sitting at her desk and saying “nah, nah, Sparrowhawk is my best friend, I have spent years travelling through the islands of Earthsea, I have accompanied Sparrowhawk on his terrifying quest and seen magic before my eyes. But this is all I’m going to share with you about it.” Throughout the whole thing, I felt as though Le Guin was in a room telling the story to herself, and I was only catching bits of it listening at the door. I could not relate to the characters at all; it was just a thoroughly conceited guy named Sparrowhawk who travelled from this island, to that island, and talked in a very pompous and angsty way. I could not appreciate the fantasy world, either, because I was just told the names of islands, and given a cursory glimpse into the culture of those places, without ever being immersed in it. Sparrowhawk’s quest was never of any interest as a plot, because it was just the inaccessible character travelling to inaccessible places, and making long-winded speeches about things.
But most of all, the thing that made the book annoying, rather than just boring, was the smug voice of the author. Because she had envisioned the world clearly, but not shared it with the reader. And instead, you are reading an ego-driven account of all the wonderful things she has invented, that you can’t access to appreciate. I don’t know if I have made my point clearly in this post, but if you want to know what I mean about the smugness, then just read A Wizard of Earthsea and come to your own conclusions.
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