By contrast:

Episodics do seem to have a firmer grasp of reality’s fluid nature. Rather than experiencing life as a continuous thread of related experiences, Episodics consider their “self” to be in a state of continuous flux. What happened to them a year ago happened to a different person than the person they are now—the past has no bearing on present experience. (“I actually said that? I couldn’t have!”) In this view, Episodics are sober, disenchanted beings, alive to the principle of ceaseless change that drives human existence.

Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that the episodic has not left American life, but simply relocated from the novel to films, television series, manga/comics, fan fiction and roleplaying games. Let’s also set aside for a moment the snarky response that it is precisely the episodic approach to life, the misadventures of picaresque-esque bankers, traders, politicians, etc. that got us in to the current financial mess. There are several problems with setting up this dichotomy and even more so with the literary criticism that is sloppily used to bolster it. The few that I see right away:

• The point of Huckleberry Finn isn’t Huck at all. It’s Jim. And there’s a narrative to that.
• I know that white males of a certain age love Augie March, but I’ve read it, and it’s not a great novel. In fact, it’s at its best in the first half where it more of a bildungrsoman. The later picaresque stuff is actually not that picaresque — it’s dabbling around in trying to say something about masculinity and freedom and women and America, and it has not aged well at all.
• Most of his examples — Augie March, Catcher in the Rye, On the Road — are adolescent fantasies that are also straining too hard to make a point. You want real picaresque? Something that really deals with random tragedies and joys of reality? Try Simplicius Simplicissimus.
• The real culprit (naturally) of the Narrative is religion and the real symptom is happy endings. And the big example of this is Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. He writes: “Not only does she tell the story of her hero—John Ames, a 77-year-old Congregationalist minister—in a simple, straightforward manner in which every one of the novel’s events fits like a puzzle into the novel’s overall pattern of meaning. Her story is also a story of growing spiritual evolution. It is a religious story, and religion is the strongest bastion of the Narratives.” Here’s the thing, though. Gilead is narrative in a minor key. The patterns actually aren’t all that strong and the puzzle is unraveling in a hundred places. It’s a subtle narrative — unlike the Big Themes that often underlay the picaresque-lite novels of the 20th century that Siegel points to as Episodic.
• The beauty of narrative is that it creates the possibility of strong characters. I actually agree with Siegel that a little loosening of the narrative, a little less heavily clockwork approach is good for writers and readers at times. But one major weakness of the Episodic is that the authors tend to push the characters around too much, puts them in to situations just for the fun of it or the meaning of it or the shockingness of it. Strong narrative characters push back against the author and the reader and are actually less confined than
• If you are going to talk about episodic novels of the 20th century and especially bring up Huckleberry Finn, then you best bring up Oxhering Tale by Charles Johnson.
• This is bizarre: “Episodics say, Grow up! Living means living freely, away from any story, Freudian or otherwise, society or anyone else wants to impose on you. A convincing narrative, not truth, can convict an innocent person at a trial. Politicians weave grand tales about themselves to pull the wool over voters’ eyes. Anyone foolish or egotistical to believe that he is living out his own story is complicit with these different degrees of mendacity.” And it’s undermined by the focus on episodic/picaresque tales, where the protagonist so often does not live freely at all, but rather is always falling in to the clutches of those who can spin a convincing narrative and rather than resisting that narrative either runs away from it or undermines it through sheer randomness. And who in the end, don’t really experience much of anything because of their either unreflective or self-absorbed nature.
• Siegel ends with this: “Now that we have protected and extended life to an unprecedented degree, perhaps we can dispense with narrative’s protective shield and open ourselves more honestly to life’s inherent discontinuity. Like the stoics of yore, we might even find that life, if we are lucky enough to live it out to its fullest portion, is easier to bid farewell to if it signifies nothing but the beauty and the miracle of being alive, minute by meaningless minute.” Not a particularly bad or for that matter, profound, sentiment. But one that doesn’t follow from the episodic literature, which even when it is at its most random and, well, episodic, even when its main character changes not one whit, still tends to have some point, some pattern, some message, some pose. Authors just can’t help it. And from that comes a narrative stance that signals what the whole point of the episodic is supposed to be.
• Also: it seems to me that the most joyous, full approach to reality is to play around with all the narratives and the episodes. To be both Huck and Ames and Augie March and Holden Caufield and Olive Kitteridge as it were. Yes, narrative thinking is powerful, but narratives are in competition and seeing a narrative arc to one’s life generally is so much broader and also disjointed but also useful and pleasurable than Siegel suggests.
• Finally, the episodic works best when it is funny.

Now, all that said, I do think that there is a bit of an overemphasis on Neat Narratives in our society, particularly in ones that are adolescent — too much bildungsroman rather than the harder to portray and yet more interesting stories of what comes after one becomes educated, or what happens when ones powers are diminishing rather than growing. In addition, I certainly wouldn’t object to seeing more of the picaresque in modern fiction, especially if it can be done without engaging in postmodern self-consciousness  about the episodic. And, in particular, it would seem strange that there isn’t yet a rollicking, humorous, episodic LDS missionary novel.  This has all been hastily written so I’m sure that there are holes to be poked as well as better critiques to be made. So have at it.

This line of thinking also comes out of some of the high profile author meltdowns of late (one of note is detailed at Gawker) over bad (or even simply mixed) reviews. Look. Writing fiction is a tough business. It’s a lonely often emotionally wrenching and exhausting enterprise; the sweat equity is rarely worth it; the criticism generally outweighs the acclaim and the acclaim is, in the end, fleeting and not very emotionally satisfying long term.  Which means that healthy egos and thin skins are not all that unusual. And the thing gets messier when fiction authors write criticism (or literary critics try their hand at fiction) because envy — the companion of pride — often comes in to play. And even if the critic/author isn’t reviewing out of a place of envy, that’s often what the perception is and when that is how the review/piece of criticism is responded to (and it’s remarkable how many ways writers can hint that a bad review is because its author is just jealous) then pride gets wounded on both sides and the rhetoric often escalates.

So how does pride manifest itself in literary criticism? What do authors do to cope with the collision of literary ambition/pride and criticism. Here’s what I’ve been able to come up with:

• One maintains a proud silence and refuses to engage. This is probably the best solution, but, on the other hand it is can still be a form of pride. One thinks of the haughty “I don’t read reviews” (with the undertone of my work is above criticism) or the fragile “I don’t read reviews” (with the undertone that I’m such a fragile, creative flower that I would wilt under such harsh, coarse treatment of my work  — a sort of false humility).
• One only reviews and engages with work you like (especially work by friends). Also an understandable solution, but it sometimes brings with it the pride of cliquishness and the pride of placing yourself above the works you won’t touch.
• One enters the fray — literary pugilism. Also a valid choice, and the one most conventionally pointed to as a manifestation of pride. This is the world of snarky reviews and literary tempests and using the power of the pen to demean, punish, vigorously defend, dismiss, whine, overpraise, etc.
• One enters the fray but remains abstract. This is the approach of generalizations and manifestos and abstract assertions and rules and preferences (that also sometimes take a shot at another author or authors in a coded way). This is a sniffing at genres and generations and schools and The Bad State of Things These Days. The pride inherent here should be obvious — it is again the pride of being above the fray; the pride of self-importance; the pride of sweeping across the field with your critical eye and summing it all up.

President Benson said that the “central feature of pride is enmity.” I am of the opinion that all four coping methods above can and often arise out of enmity — or if not enmity, at the very least reproachful feelings. Am I wrong here?

And if I am not wrong, then what does criticism look like when it is engaged in with humility — without enmity, envy or pride?

1. We’re totally snubbing you/it/him/her/them.
2. All of us our way too busy to turn our precious attention to The Thing (whatever it may be at the moment).
3. We’re working on something — may even have it written — but we’re waiting to post it so that we can have the final word.
4. The rest of the Bloggernacle and entire interWebs have hashed the thing to death and even our amazing mastery of discourse(s) has no power to resuscitate.
5. We’re not only snubbing, we’re making a pointed, utterly devestating statement with our silence. Of course, there is a slim possibility that we just aren’t aware of you/it/him/her/them/whatever/The Thing/The Big Deal/Crazy Stuff so you’ll just have to use your best judgment about what’s going on. Of course, whatever you decide is probably wrong. Just so you know.
6. Each of us co-bloggers is waiting for the other co-blogger to post something. It’s like a game of chicken. Shawn lost the last round.
7. We just totally, utterly, with every fiber of our being and beyond a shadow of a doubt couldn’t care less.

Please note that I’m speaking fully for myself here and not for any of my co-bloggers with whom I haven’t discussed this post nor anything else that this may or may not be apropos of. Somehow we never got the big AMV back channel going where we have heated discussions about all this stuff. Usually it’s just — “Hey, I’m going to be at the AML conference — anyone else going to be there?” or “Hey, I’m going to do some poetry month posts — anybody else in?” or “Hey, what’s the latest on the planning for the coup d’ état of William?” etc. etc.

Edited 3/16/09: Fixed a couple of grammar mistakes and changed “without” to “beyond.”