If you say the author has no obligation to be clear, you are correct. But that author is deliberately limiting his readership.
From my perspective, if you cannot tell me the story you want to tell, and be understood, then you have failed as a storyteller.
Is this where I start brandishing my MA thesis on experimental practice in the post-war Modernist novel?
I know you’re not claiming as much – at least, I don’t think you are; I may have misunderstood – but it is worth emphasising that just as no author has an obligation to leave their potential audience as wide open as it can possibly be, so too can
not limiting one’s readership compromise one’s literary–artistic vision. At the risk of restating a truism: it’s far easier, in attempting to offer something to everyone, to end up offering nothing to no-one. That which aspires to the unlimited readership must, by definition, be that which offends the sensibilities of the fewest people. And given that, as we’ve seen, it’s hard enough even to get three or four people contributing to an obscure thread on an arguably superannuated specialist writing forum – united in their interests by, of all things, the unusual hobby of writing self-published fan fiction on the subject of niche computer games – to agree unanimously with one another… Well, let’s just say that I’m not exactly on tenterhooks to read a work that we could theoretically all agree is basically tolerable.
In a way, I agree with your second formulation – about clarity and failure. (That aforementioned MA thesis was even
about failure.) But I take issue with the assumption that
writing=storytelling, or that the implied singular function of writing is to tell stories in the most literal sense (with the optional addendum: to the most people possible). The possibilities opened by the writing art are limitless; in its most basic guise, it is the arena for the construction and reconstruction of what it means to
mean, to think, to live, to experience. That middle clause has it right: if you can’t tell the story that
you want to tell, then we can start talking about failure. In a way, the next premise, about being understood, is immaterial; if you are true to yourself (and more importantly, if you take yourself seriously while being so) people will respond in kind. Miles’s audience may have been smaller than, say, Kenny Ball’s, but is anyone seriously going to suggest that Ball is the more important artist? Perhaps – if ‘important’ is taken to mean ‘reached more people in their day’. All I’d say to that is that I was born seven years after Miles died, near enough to the day, and the only reason I know anything about the work of Kenny Ball is that I’m a nerd who writes alt-historical glosses of mid-century popular British music for half a dozen strangers on an unloved corner of a gaming forum.
Which actually brings me to my main point: that artistic individualism and popular acclaim (‘being understood’) are hardly incompatible. Immediate gratification may be harder to come by in that regard, no doubt, but for my money I’d rather take longevity. And in my experience there is little better guarantee of longevity than staying true to your principles and being patient and committed in your work. Case in point: I started writing my current AAR in 2019 for an audience of about two people, one of whom was the then-indefatigable
@stnylan. Five years later that work has just won its second History Book of the Year YAYA in a row, and at its last eligible ACAs showing took home the top spot in its category with more raw votes than any other AAR nominated in
any category. This, too, following a period in which I’ve doubled down on everything in the work that makes it personal to me and my particular literary vision, and when by all rights it should be the least accessible it has ever been. My feeling is that a lot of this is because, after a lot of experimenting, I have finally hit upon the right form to express what I have wanted to express all along. And often this counts for just as much, if not more, than expressing thoughts too obviously, or in a manner which works for someone else but not for you. [Addendum: Kurt Weill had it right: it’s not the rules that matter, so much as the breaking of them. Just as long as you know why and how you are going to do it (but that’s another matter entirely…)]
After all,
Ulysses was censored when it was first published – in a specialist (read: elitist) Modernist quarterly in the US. In the years since it has been held up and pilloried as the ur-text of impenetrable Modernism. As recently as 2016, one much-maligned British political figure was lambasted as pretentious and out of touch, and even accused outright of lying, for daring to suggest that it was his favourite book. Meanwhile the Irish give it a whole day of its own as a festival in the yearly calendar. And if that’s not success, or being understood, then I really don’t know what is. Sláinte!
