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Why must books have structure?
A SUBJECT was brought up not so long ago by a member of the Grantham Writer's Club.
A SUBJECT was brought up not so long ago by a member of the Grantham Writer's Club.Somebody said that novels and books aught to be governed by structure and that a story should have "a beginning, middle and an end."
Doubtless this belief is shared by most literary circles and is very rarely contested. But, many people forget that certain books of the past were not so well structured and, consequently, reached the public with much interest.
I could invoke so many names here in this connection. The surrealists at the start of the twentieth century were a prime example. Such people were not interested in structure or order of any kind. They believed in the deconstruction of thought and dream, a state of mind which most people experience when they are asleep and dreaming.
But many of these authors, or Dadaists, had the power to provoke their readers, to stimulate their thoughts. Poets like Kenneth Patchen for example; his book entitled, The Journal of Albion Moonlight had a "cold water" effect on the mind of its readers. It manipulated certain responses by holding a mirror up and begged the reader to question the many things taken for granted. Okay, so what if the style was unpredictable and the layout messy and chaotic?
This is not the time we should be quibbling over structure. It is a time for action! It is a time for honesty and courage. We have many other art mediums today where images and narratives start with a beginning and then tail off tangentially into other images, distorting, bending, and weaving in and out like a paradox of words and phrases, before ending exactly where the story began. We see music videos pull this kind of stunt all the time. So why can't we accept this sort of untidy, tangential method in our works of literature?
Granted, television, pop music and fleeting images are a lot more immediate to the eye. Due to the swiftly diminishing attention spans of the people, such an outcome is hardly surprising. And I think that most people would much sooner have their sleep undaunted by dreams.
I remember reading the stories of The Thousand and One Nights when I was younger. It is a story that begins with a woman named Shaharazade who every night sits with her husband and sister. She tells stories to prolong her life. She keeps the king, her husband, riveted to her every word, spinning yarns that begin and venture off laterally. Each story runs into another, seemingly without end. She invokes a story like a dream, each dream more interesting than the last.
Story structure wasn't that important back in those days and I am left wondering why people place too much importance on it today.
Have you written a poem, story or novel? Send it to us at: comment@granthamjournal.co.uk
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Saturday 04 February 2012
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