The (Re)turn of the Screw

[marycatelli]

What exactly is happening in this story?

The Readercon blurb talks of "stories in which its unclear whether the fantastic element is real or imagined by the characters".  Personally, I find that one of the less satisfactory forms of ambiguity.  For one reason, it's hard to tell whether the ambiguity is real or imagined by the reader.  Take, for instance, The Return of the Screw.  No one thought there was any doubt about whether the ghosts were real for decades (and suspicious minds will note that the critic who first doubted it was Edmund Wilson, whom you may also know as the man who reviewed The Lord of the Rings, and the review was titled "Oo, Those Awful Orcs"). 

Or Neverwhere, which the blurb cites.  There there is more evidence -- Richard is explicitly told that he is having a nervous breakdown at one point and that all he is seeing is a hallucination.  On the other hand, this is while he undergoes an ordeal. . . but the point that I think the ambiguity founders on is that when he returns to his normal life, he's received a promotion.  Not something that a nervous breakdown would explain.

And worst of all, I was in a bookstore shortly after the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, two clerks were talking about the scene where Umbridge falls afoul of the centaurs, and one customer said that she believed that the last book would reveal that the entire series had been a fantasy of an abused boy.

Which is why I cast a jaundiced eye on such interpretations unless there is evidence of their accuracy.  Then, for the writer, that gets really fun.  How do you make it clear in the book that things really are ambiguous?

My own favored form of ambiguity is where the characters as well as the readers are uncertain.  One character thinks it can't be chance that he met another (preferably early in the book, to avoid annoying the reader), and the other is contemptuous of the notion.  A magical item is supposed to produce an effect, and the effect happens, but to all appearances, naturally.  Things fall off shelves, but only when they were already near the edge, so there's no absolute need to invoke a ghost.  For one thing, it's much easier to make ambiguity clear when your characters can argue over it. . . .

part of bittercon 

Comments

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The latter type of ambiguity is too prone in my experience to having the characters who represent the "it has a scientific explanation" and the characters who represent the "it's magic" camps become flat or mutually dogmatic, showing Scully Syndrome: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScullySyndrome Arbitrary Skepticism: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArbitrarySkepticism and If Jesus then Aliens: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IfJesusThenAliens all of which annoy the crap out of me.

[marycatelli]

In the works I've read, it tends to get tabled as not relevant to the action. Which works better.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

This is true. It's only when the work becomes about "is it real?" that the problems tend to show up.

[marycatelli]

Ambiguity is often better if the writer accepts it as such.

Not always, though, which is what makes a writer's life hard. G. K. Chesterton's Magic would not have been better if the matter were kept ambiguous.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

All things can work if the writing is good, in other words.

[marycatelli]

That's what keeps writers on their toes.

[aberwyn.livejournal.com]

There's also the related issue of the Unreliable Narrator, whether the entire book is first person or not. Characters in a 3rd person book may be lying about certain crucial things, or else simply not know or understand them. If the reader takes what they say at face value, they'll end up confused. With a first person Narrator, the temptation to believe everything a sympathetic voice says is really strong, even when it's untrue or inaccurate.

[marycatelli]

Also, it's one of the conventions of fiction that non-omniscient narrators can be prodigies of memory and honesty, because a lot of stories can't be told without it, and so we need clues that they are not honest.

Personally, I find first-person unreliable narrators to be cheating unless the story has hintings that the character is consciously telling the story.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

It's pretty obvious that Harry Potter is being abused at the beginning of the series, and one of the themes running though the series is of abuse, redemption, and forgiveness. But stretching that to say the whole thing is the fantasy of an abused child is, on the face of it, ridiculous.

You could as easily make the same argument about Narnia.

It is a truth which should be universally acknowledged, that a critic seeking a good fortune must be in want of ambiguity.

[marycatelli]

Well, you don't expect those papers and hours in the classroom to fill themselves. . . and if the works that have things you can babble about are a played-out vein, obviously you must use works you can feign have things to babble about.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I rather like ambiguity, as long as it is intended by the writer and it's done well. A fairly recent British TV example was "Life on Mars" and "Ashes to Ashes". Actually everything is explained at the very end of the third series, but the, "Has he travelled in time, is he mad?" question is left unresolved throughout the series, leaving the reader to decide which it is.

In fiction, the example that springs to mind is Kelly Link's "Faery Handbag".

I will admit to a possible bias here. I recently did a creative writing diploma with the Open University and these things are not terribly genre friendly (though it can depend on which tutor you get). They really expect litfic which I have no interest in writing, so I tried exploring the boundary between the mundane and the fantastic and wrote a couple of stories that (I hope!) managed to keep the ambiguity going, leaving it up to the reader to decide which way they wanted to take it.

[marycatelli]

It can be fun.

[ejmam.livejournal.com]

Jo Walton's _Among Others_ handles this beautifully. The magic manifests in ways that also happen in mundane ways. Even the people casting the magic acknowledge that there is no way of knowing what exactly it did. The author and the castors are sure it is real, but the reader can make her own decisions.

And of course, it's written in first person, so there's the Unreliable Narrator thing, which is not as interesting (to me).

[marycatelli]

Yes, that's lovely.

My favorite magic item ever is the ring in Castle Roogna. It claims to be a wishing ring. (To Dor, who can talk to inanimate objects.) He wishes for an escape. It says it's working on it. He escapes. It says -- see?

Except that every single wish made on it does in fact come true. . . .