Breathing space
I was looking through my shelves the other day, wanting something deeply immersive to read, and I was pleased to find a book by Mary Renault that I hadn’t yet read, The Last of the Wine. It was exactly what I wanted – a story I could fully lose myself in while reading. Her writing tends to be like that for me, so rich that the everyday doesn’t intrude.
I was thinking about why that is and I realized that some of it is that she expects the reader to keep up with her. Her worlds feel very much like they exist before the story starts (the ones I have read most recently were all set in ancient Greece, which as we know, very much did exist) and because the stories are often narrated by characters looking back on their lives, there is a sense of continuation as well – we are seeing a specific piece of a lived life, and so we are mades as part of that as her first person narrators are.
But more than that, she doesn’t slow down the story when she introduces things or pause to explain what is obvious to the narrator. I don’t mean that there’s no context, or that things feel thin, or don’t make sense, but that she writes at the pace and context and level of understanding of the person telling the story - the person living that life, in that world. All of the development feels completely organic. And if there are things that you don’t know as a reader, because you didn’t live in or study ancient Greece, and you want to know what those are, well, she trusts that you can look them up for yourself. It’s not her job to hold your hand and explain it to you.
Perhaps some people wouldn’t like this, or feel that it would pull them out of the story (“how is it immersive if you have to pause and look things up?”). But for me, it feels more immersive because I feel like there is a place for me to do my part in the story.
Let me explain. I believe that each reader brings themself to a book. Who they are, what they know, the way they experience emotions, the jokes they do or don’t get, the nuances with which they parse words. The more a writer explains, the less space there is for a reader to interpret. And, for me, the less space for me to immerse myself in.
This was a new realization for me. I’ve always like books where I felt like the author trusted me to figure things out on my own, I’ve always like books where I’ve felt immersed in the story when reading. I just hadn’t put the two things together, or thought about the why of that liking. And like anything, it doesn’t always work – I have to trust the writer enough to feel that they know what they’re doing with what they leave out as well as what they put in, that what I am feeling is air in the story, not just blank space. But if that space is air, is oxygen, then for me, that gives the story life, and me, as reader, as space to live in it.
A couple of potentially interesting things:
Writer Cari Luna is running a sort of group reading/ book club of Doris Lessing’s The Summer Before the Dark. Lessing has long been on my list of writers I mean to read, so I am taking the opportunity and joining in Cari’s June project. You all seem like the sort of people who might also enjoy that, so I wanted to pass the information along.
One of the ways I support my writing is by working with other writers and editing their manuscripts. I had a couple of projects reschedule, and so I have space in my calendar, including immediate openings. If you, or anyone you know, might be interested, you can find more information here.
The above link is an affiliate one, which means if you buy the book through it, I may receive a small amount of money.