Around to the Carrier Bag again
Jun. 26th, 2005 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootSpinning off from Resonant8’s entry on character making, and the discussion following, I find myself wandering in thought toward the writers of the Endicott Studio, toward Ursula K. Le Guin and her “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, and toward Lois McMaster Bujold and her Vorkosigan books.
At first glance, one of these things is not like the others.
The Endicott writers such as Emma Bull, Charles Delint, Terri Windling and all her proteges have, I think, an obvious resonance with Le Guin. As Le Guin points out, the story of the Hero and his linear conflict with, not uncommonly, most of the rest of the world, is the most valorized literary model of Western storytelling. There are, however, other ways of telling a story, and other stories worth telling. Those other stories are often the ones that the Endicott writers focus on. The world of their stories does not make sense (as per Mr. Clemens’ dictum); what we see instead is the characters attempting to make sense of their world–not always successfully and certainly never completely. Their stories and characters wander, picking up as they go things that seem meaningful or interesting to stow in the bag of the story. Some of those things prove not to be meaningful to the immediate story, after all, and, in a proper Hero story, would have been snipped out in the telling… or, at least, in the editing. Here, they are not, but rather left in the bag to puzzle everyone with their presence. “Secondary” characters have just as full a life and existence as “primary” ones, only we see far less of those lives, often leaving us wondering what was left untold. We are not directed to the triumphant or tragic end of the story, but rather tempted toward the outskirts and down side alleys. This is especially obvious in the Bordertown anthologies, in which the writers shared their characters back and forth, pulled them into each other’s stories and chucked them out again, willy nilly and with no enlightenment to show for it. The conflict that the characters think they are in often turns out to be a mistaken perception.
This is Carrier Bag writing.
And that brings me to Bujold. Because one of the more consistent themes in the Miles Vorkosigan books is that Miles throws himself into the conflicts in his life with every ounce of energy and spirit that is in him… only to find that the conflict is a mirage and his hands pass through it and he lands in an ungraceful heap in the middle of another situation entirely. By all rights of character, Miles should be a Hero. And sometimes he is. But those times are, as he puts it, matters of “forward momentum”, of running full tilt along a highwire, because if he stops he’ll waver and fall. Exciting. Desperate. Unsustainable.
Is that not the essence of the Hero story?
Recently, and, tellingly, as Miles gets older, Miles comes to reject that model. He is still the Hero, at times. But now, instead of running, he stands still. Instead of his military career he embraces a political one–and not the politics of conflict but the politics of family, of kitchen negotiation, of cultivation. Instead of the stories of the bag-carriers being subordinated to The Story of The Spear-carrier, it happens the other way around. Miles is the Hero in the service, not of Accomplishment, but of Existence–not the linear, or even the circular, but the still and the wandering.
Bujold has put the Hero in the Carrier Bag.
I find this delightful, but it is true that such departures often fail to endear a story to an audience grown to expect Heroes with spears and without bags, and nicely spun yarns that don’t snarl. I suspect that the presence of the Hero, despite his Bagging, is one of the reasons Bujold has better sales, and considerably better market staying power than the Bordertown books. By the same token, I suspect Bujold’s tendency toward bag-narrative is a significant part of why she has a smaller following than, say, Mercedes Lackey.
Jumbled up bags are fascinating, but they are not quick.
These, then, are my own models of character building (and, indeed, world building). The guiding concept I have taken from these stories is not to select a specific conflict to motivate my characters, but rather to elaborate wildly and somewhat omni-directionally on my characters’ potential lives and then choose a handful of threads from that tapestry (or snarl) to tell about in a given moment. The choice of threads narrows the scope of what is told. But my most favorite stories are the ones that tell, one way or another, everything that the chosen viewpoint can see in that swatch.
At first glance, one of these things is not like the others.
The Endicott writers such as Emma Bull, Charles Delint, Terri Windling and all her proteges have, I think, an obvious resonance with Le Guin. As Le Guin points out, the story of the Hero and his linear conflict with, not uncommonly, most of the rest of the world, is the most valorized literary model of Western storytelling. There are, however, other ways of telling a story, and other stories worth telling. Those other stories are often the ones that the Endicott writers focus on. The world of their stories does not make sense (as per Mr. Clemens’ dictum); what we see instead is the characters attempting to make sense of their world–not always successfully and certainly never completely. Their stories and characters wander, picking up as they go things that seem meaningful or interesting to stow in the bag of the story. Some of those things prove not to be meaningful to the immediate story, after all, and, in a proper Hero story, would have been snipped out in the telling… or, at least, in the editing. Here, they are not, but rather left in the bag to puzzle everyone with their presence. “Secondary” characters have just as full a life and existence as “primary” ones, only we see far less of those lives, often leaving us wondering what was left untold. We are not directed to the triumphant or tragic end of the story, but rather tempted toward the outskirts and down side alleys. This is especially obvious in the Bordertown anthologies, in which the writers shared their characters back and forth, pulled them into each other’s stories and chucked them out again, willy nilly and with no enlightenment to show for it. The conflict that the characters think they are in often turns out to be a mistaken perception.
This is Carrier Bag writing.
And that brings me to Bujold. Because one of the more consistent themes in the Miles Vorkosigan books is that Miles throws himself into the conflicts in his life with every ounce of energy and spirit that is in him… only to find that the conflict is a mirage and his hands pass through it and he lands in an ungraceful heap in the middle of another situation entirely. By all rights of character, Miles should be a Hero. And sometimes he is. But those times are, as he puts it, matters of “forward momentum”, of running full tilt along a highwire, because if he stops he’ll waver and fall. Exciting. Desperate. Unsustainable.
Is that not the essence of the Hero story?
Recently, and, tellingly, as Miles gets older, Miles comes to reject that model. He is still the Hero, at times. But now, instead of running, he stands still. Instead of his military career he embraces a political one–and not the politics of conflict but the politics of family, of kitchen negotiation, of cultivation. Instead of the stories of the bag-carriers being subordinated to The Story of The Spear-carrier, it happens the other way around. Miles is the Hero in the service, not of Accomplishment, but of Existence–not the linear, or even the circular, but the still and the wandering.
Bujold has put the Hero in the Carrier Bag.
I find this delightful, but it is true that such departures often fail to endear a story to an audience grown to expect Heroes with spears and without bags, and nicely spun yarns that don’t snarl. I suspect that the presence of the Hero, despite his Bagging, is one of the reasons Bujold has better sales, and considerably better market staying power than the Bordertown books. By the same token, I suspect Bujold’s tendency toward bag-narrative is a significant part of why she has a smaller following than, say, Mercedes Lackey.
Jumbled up bags are fascinating, but they are not quick.
These, then, are my own models of character building (and, indeed, world building). The guiding concept I have taken from these stories is not to select a specific conflict to motivate my characters, but rather to elaborate wildly and somewhat omni-directionally on my characters’ potential lives and then choose a handful of threads from that tapestry (or snarl) to tell about in a given moment. The choice of threads narrows the scope of what is told. But my most favorite stories are the ones that tell, one way or another, everything that the chosen viewpoint can see in that swatch.
