Topical Guide 408
Mark Dorset
Author and Character, Relationships Between
I HADN’T FOUND Matthew, but I had developed a feeling for the kind of life he might be living there in Boston and I think that, as a result, I understood him better. Of course, there was still much more I wanted to know. I wanted to know how he spent his time, day to day, minute to minute. I would stand in my workroom looking out into the fog on the bay and ask myself, “What will become of him? What is he doing right now? What watchwords does he live by? What are his favorite foods?” Wanting to know those things led me to the writing of this book.
Every book is a means of discovery. I discovered things that I would just as soon have left hidden …Reservations Recommended, Preface
I invite you to substitute “represent a character” for “reproduce an object” in the second paragraph of the following:
What I want to show in my work is the idea that hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking the bridge from the visible to the invisible. . . . It may sound paradoxical, but it is, in fact, reality which forms the mystery of our existence. . . . One of my problems is to find the self, which has only one form and is immortal. . . . Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement; for transfiguration, not for the sense of play. It is the quest of our self that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make. …
If you want to reproduce an object, two elements are required: first, the identification with the object must be perfect; and second, it should contain, in addition, something quite different. This second element is difficult to explain. Almost as difficult as to discover one’s self. In fact, it is just this element of your own self that we are all in search of.Max Beckman, Self-Portrait in Words: Collected Writings and Statements, 1903–1950
The first paragraph is from remarks delivered before an English audience in 1938. The second is from remarks delivered to his first art class in the US in 1947. Both passages were quoted by John Updike in “Bridges to the Invisible” in The New York Review of Books, November 28, 1996.
Satire and the Satirist
OFTEN, while I was writing, I felt that I was struggling with Matthew, trying to pull him in a direction he didn’t want to go, and finally I gave up and let him go his own way, just as I had had to do those many years before, in the episode I mentioned earlier. … Matthew played victim to my lifesaver. … He fought me with a furious irrationality that I couldn’t tell from the real thing. … A maniacal fire flamed in Matthew’s eyes …. I turned away from him and swam back to shore.
Reservations Recommended, Preface
I wonder if any of you have ever noticed that it is sometimes those who find most pleasure and amusement in their fellow man, and have most hope in his goodness, who get the reputation of being his most carping critics. Maybe it is that the satirist is so full of the possibilities of humankind in general, that he tends to draw a dark and garish picture when he tries to depict people as they are at any particular moment. The satirist is usually a pretty unpopular fellow. The only time he attains even fleeting popularity is when his works can be used by some political faction as a stick to beat out the brains of their opponents. Satirical writing is by definition unpopular writing. Its aim is to prod people into thinking. Thinking hurts.
John Dos Passos (upon accepting the medal for Eminence in Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters)
See also: Character as Uncontrollable Creation TG 117
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