Digressions are the Soul of Literature

With Orwell's new literary language came the new fiction: direct, no-nonsense and almost formulaic. Like a Hollywood blockbuster, anything that didn't contribute to the Plot was discarded. And so writers were presented with a solid theory on book-writing: use gripping plots, eye-catching stories and memorable characters. All writers needed was an assembly line of original ideas, and the literary factory was complete. The final blow to classic fiction came with Orion's abridged nineteenth-century classics. This series cut a handful of large classics (Moby Dick, Ana Karenina) in half. It marks a milestone and raises a little flag of caution: even though there have always been abridged versions of (and radical messing-about with) books, this series actually proposed their bastardized books as a virtue. Books should not be formulaic and under strict control; publishers should help foster creativity by loosening their tight editing leash.

The editing process strangles creativity

Writing has long since edged away from being a personal process; it now involves a whole set of people, specialized in their trade. And with this highly specialized new world of publishing leviathans came the loss of digression, making novels a form of fictional journalism or written film, where language is torn to the bare minimum and every artistic voice becomes indiscernible from the other. It has made literature some kind of ready-for-the-filming pulp. What most often stands out in modern literature is the clever idea, even the title, but not the way it is brought forth.

An artist must have the right to stick to his own art to become successful. Books that quickly come to mind are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain is too often criticized for the third part, where Huck ends up with Tom Sawyer and experiences a lack of theme) and Clockwork Orange (from which the last chapter was devilishly stripped in the American edition and the novel henceforth lost its original meaning). Writers are artists, and it should be up to them to remove inconsequential chunks of their work; editors should not act like the standard Creative Writing 101 teacher.

The literary world must, sadly, compete with the huge worlds of film and television. But last time we checked, the most famous novels were not written in the last twenty years, when the formulaic style was finally perfected. Give writers their books back, and the literary world will flourish once more. A prime example is the self-publishing world of fan-zines. Read by many, these zines fostered creativity through a non-conformist attitude. They had no creative guidance, and no one corrected their rough compilations. A similar trend of creativity came from the now-huge self-publishing network (often, sadly, called “vanity press”), where writers bypass greedy editors to produce their original pieces. Editors should have observed the increase in creativity after this phenomenon, but they merely kept on administering strict control of publishable works, thereby strangling the ingenious drive that writers possess.

The essence of art and why digression is essential

When we read, we want to escape from real life. Good fiction provides themes and plot, which our life essentially lacks. Our life is one digression after the other; we are bombarded by our senses and thoughts. Art redeems us, it is born from our reality but attempts to instil even more form. Where do digressions, then, belong in art? Should abridgement not create enrichment, when art values form over reality? No, not necessarily. Art is actually another form of digression, and it is inevitable that digressions appear in it. Art cannot be a mere straight line; it must be a scatter-plot, mimicking or mocking reality rather than attempting to rise above it. When art becomes immodest and attempts to rise above itself, then no one will be able to identify with it. Digressions in literature give us a sense of reality, and are a good tool for connecting the narration with the reader. There has never been a good story teller that does not digress: the art of camp-fire tales lies in by-the-ways.

It is true that sometimes an editor has better judgement than a writer. Writers are, after all, often stereotyped as introverted sociopaths, unable to judge the public reaction. But an editor should not be culling art for the public; he should be fostering it, with constant respect to the artist. In the abridged Orion classics, the art may be turned into a twenty-first century formulaic novel, editorially snappy and sound, but that's not the point, is it? When, in half a century, they remove all the digressions from One Hundred Years of Solitude, they will have nothing left.