There's a tension at the heart of most fiction that I want to dig into. In some way, this tension is borne out into different schools of thought in art: the Naturalists vs. the Romantics. But that difference doesn't quite capture what I'm getting at, as I'll demonstrate, there is room within both schools of art for portrayals of the Ordinary and the Ideal. But I think both schools get it wrong in certain ways.
First, the easy case: Naturalism. It's kind of odd to start with Naturalism because in many ways it is itself a rejection of Romanticism. But it's not entirely correct, either, to summarize Naturalism as a reaction to Romanticism. The situation is more complex than that, as Naturalism is tied up in notions of determinism and "realism" that predate both what is considered to be the dawn of the Naturalistic movement (the 19th Century continuing its influence into the 20th Century, John Steinbeck being a major 20th century figure whose style of pitting his characters up against seemingly insurmountable environmental/situational obstacles which seemed to inevitably end in tragedy). But I digress. Naturalism very much aligns itself with the Ordinary over the ideal. In this tradition, depictions of the "common man" and "real life" were placed at the forefront. These depictions are unapologetically unromantic, leading to stories showcasing anything and everything whether relevant to the plot or not. Often, bodily functions (urination, defecation, etc…) get their time to shine as they are sort of emblematic of things everybody deals with but doesn’t normally talk about (for good reason, I'd offer, not because they are things to be embarrassed/ashamed of but rather since they are just not interesting and relevant to most things we care about. We read Sherlock Holmes because he’s interesting. If he ended each book by taking a huge crap then what would be the point of that. We all know Sherlock poops. And we all know we all know Sherlock poops. It's not interesting to show us this.)
This is how Naturalism gets its (probably deserved) reputation for being depressing, distasteful, and dull. Characters in these kinds of stories often fail to have much volition, or whatever volition they do have is dwarfed by the insurmountable/inevitable situation they find themselves in. Now, the best writers can get past these kinds of issues and still write compelling characters, but compelling plots can be more of a challenge because of the whole inevitability thing. And when you get past the very cream of the crop, you quickly find yourself in a morass of depressing and drab depictions of "real life". Downtrodden folks with no hope who drift through life on a slow march toward the grave. One example I can think of is the film Nomadland, which, I kid you not, begins with the main character pissing on a fence on the side of a middle-of-nowhere road, just before the title card comes in. It's so on the nose it almost seems like a parody of naturalism. Also, in a separate scene, the main character shits diarrhea into a bucket. So the writer of the script clearly wanted to give both narrative importance and screen time to the excretory functions of its main character.
I've been using scare quotes a lot because, and this betrays some of my bias on this issue (though I believe it is justified). Summing up, as is often done, life as the lowest-common-denominator or the average or whatever is not all that life is. Perhaps, statistically this is true (though sometimes that isn't quite it either, Naturalists seem to often focus on the worst of the worst, not merely satisfied to be reporters on whatever they happen to see around them), but there are wonderful, enrapturing, beautiful things in the world, and Naturalists refuse to focus on these things. That is the domain of Romanticism.
Quick side note on determinism: this is the idea that I was referring to when I mentioned that some elements of Naturalism predate its traditional art-history beginnings in the 19th century. The idea of determinism is very old indeed and is at the heart of the earliest dramas in human history (going all the way back to Greek playwrights like Aeschylus and Sophocles) as well the most famous ones (Shakespeare's plays). Shakespeare's plays are a particularly interesting topic in my opinion because of how ubiquitous they have become in the realm of art history and the history of drama. Extremely influential. And yet, 100% deterministic. This comes in different flavors. Hamlet flirts more with the notion of volition/will ("to be or not to be" seems to presuppose there is such a choice) whereas Othello is startlingly fatalistic since the title character seems to show almost no ability to avoid the tragic end as Iago feeds him more and more lies. But in all of his plays Shakespeare's characters have no volition to change the endings. It's mapped out in the stars for them. In Julius Caesar when Cassius says, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars; But in ourselves," he is either wrong (see "The Fault in Our Stars" for a brilliant literary critique of this line in the form of a young adult novel) or just not genre savvy enough to understand that he lives in a world where the characters cannot change their fates.
Quick side note on the side note: "The Fault in Our Stars" also interplays with another of my favorite literary philosophy topics: The Death of the Author. A topic for another time, but when I do get to it someday I'll link it here.
Back to the topic at hand. There's an interesting philosophical discussion to be had at this intersection. What power do we have, as human beings, to shape our own destiny? Are we adrift on waves we cannot control? Or are we directing a ship that has the power to thwart the direction the winds and waves send us? This deep discussion of volition is at the heart of most artist's sense of life (whether they acknowledge it or not) and is part of why Naturalism vs. Romanticism is such an interesting and aesthetically important decision. This question is also at the heart of the novel I’m currently working on (Working title: Dice Control) which uses themes like inheritance, luck, and suicide to probe this question.
Before we move on to Romanticism, let me clearly put the point in Naturalism that it certainly sides with the Ordinary over the Ideal. The ideal is scoffed at, usually through its omission but sometimes more explicitly than that. The Ordinary is the focus, and thus it should be, as it is what most people experience. While I think this is mostly misguided, there is one sense in which this is absolutely correct. It's true that if you zoom out and look at people statistically, most people are ordinary. This is basically a tautology: it's like saying "most people are like most people." Most people aren’t the smartest 1%, or the most ambitious 1%, or the most daring 1%, or the most brave 1%. By definition, those people are outliers. They are unusual. It’s true that at this very moment, a huge number of people are pooping right now. (Apologies for all the scatology in this post, but it's kinda on-topic). Now I said that a bit acerbically, but I really do mean this: if your goal is to talk to people where they’re at right now, show them the actual instead of the ideal, naturalism has got you covered.
Romantics, on the other hand, would say "what’s the point in that?" People already know the actual. It’s our job as artists to work at the abstract level and from there derive the particulars. What is possible. Not what is current. Just as Naturalists are sometimes described as depressing or dull, Romantics often get labeled fantastical or escapist, because they don’t focus on what is but what might be, usually in a moral or evaluative sense. This is not usual but it is good. This is who you could be! It’s hard to think of a better example of this than the novels of Ayn Rand. Unapologetically Romantic, she depicts many great men (usually men (though Dagny Taggart from Atlas Shrugged is an interesting and singular counterexample), and that’s basically my one major disagreement with Rand—I believe her views on sex and gender are wrong) in her novels who are ambitious and sometimes seem superhuman in their adherence to their individual values. These depictions are no doubt more energizing for people who have a positive sense of life. They impart feelings of awe. "This is what I could be!". They act as archetypes for what to look up to, and benchmarks for you to measure yourself against "What would Howard Roarke do in this situation" becomes a valuable tool for thinking about how to be true to your own ideals instead of caving, as many a Naturalist protagonist would do, to the environmental and interpersonal struggles that may stand in the way.
This creates a bit of a conundrum for the Romantic writer. How to show the ideals they want to show without being too alienating? After all, if your goal is to show people what people and life could be like, but that vision is so different from the ordinary that it seems unrealistic, then it can have the opposite of the intended effect. Instead of showing what is possible it comes off as fantastical and, well, idealistic (in the negative connotation sense). This is a common criticism of Rand, and indeed, where a lot of the Naturalistic movement comes from (though not a reaction to Rand, since she came later, a reaction to the Romantic senses of life espoused by 19th century writers like Victor Hugo). Her characters are often seen as "cardboard cutouts" or "wooden" or "Randian supermen" that don’t resemble real human beings very much at all. And while I do think these criticisms are usually overblown (Rand’s characters come in many varieties and do show the ability to make decisions and changes to themselves), honestly, I can see where they are coming from. Rand's heroes are so competent it sometimes seems like they're just totally unrealistic. Howard Roarke is totally unwavering in his pursuit of his goal to bring his architectural visions to life, to the point when, about 25% of the way through the novel, when he discovers that he won't be able to build his buildings they way he wants, he'd rather work in a quarry for subsistence wage than compromise on his ideals. Of course, this is very admirable in certain ways. But looked at in another light it also seems pointlessly dumb? Why can't he compromise on his buildings early in his career and work up to the level of notoriety that would allow him to achieve his visions just as he wanted? As becomes clear later in the novel when he dynamites his own architectural design rather than seeing it defaced by the committee-led decisions that change it from his vision, it's simply not in his character to compromise in this way. To him, it'd be like permitting a smudge to sit on the face of the Mona Lisa, more offensive than anything. But just because he doesn't like it doesn't mean that's how he ought to act. He doesn't like being a quarry worker either rather than an architect but he does that. If I were him, I'd take a more pragmatic approach and try to work my way up and then institute the changes that I want when I gain the power. There's an honesty to Roarke's way that's no doubt admirable. And I guess you could call my way a bit more Machiavellian or dishonest. But I don't really see it that way. I'm not lying when I tell people my preferences but get overruled. If I didn't want my name on a product then I wouldn't put it there. Go by an alias or whatever if you don't want to be associated with something because it doesn't represent who you are. I get that. But I'm not lying either if I put my name alongside a group of others names and say we collectively built this product, and this product is the result of that collective vision. Sure, there's reasons to believe that individual accomplishments are more valuable than collective ones, and. There seems to be this disconnect, this reality/idealistic bifurcation that comes up when we really contemplate the Randian superman's way of doing things. I'm not Howard Roarke, and I don't act like him, and it seems like I'd be stupid to act like him in all situations. Are there good things about acting Roarke-like in some situations? Sure. In most, even, I'd offer. But acting like Roarke always seems silly. I think acting more strategically in the face of the imperfect world we live in is warranted in many cases.
And all this does is bolster the Naturalist's argument against Romanticism! Hey Rand, they say, see the problem with your ideal depictions! They just dont reflect reality. They’re not pragmatic. They're alienating! And I get that criticism.
(As a side note, I prefer Atlas Shrugged over the Fountainhead, both for its more full-throated presentation of its ideology and its more three-dimensional characters that seem more like people and less like archetypes).
So, as we can see, romanticism clearly resides on the idealistic side. Its depictions of the Ordinary, when they happen, are much more disdainful.
So where does my sense of life reside? It’s a little bit complicated. I definitely gravitate more toward the Romantic side of things. I think the individualistic and idealistic presentation of life is both realistic (as in, people can be like this) and moral (as in, it's good for people to be like this: motivated and productive and full of integrity) and beautiful (as in, it’s wonderful to witness the great things people can create, things that are anything but ordinary, rather than watching someone shit in a bucket). However, I temper this only slightly toward the ordinary by saying this: If you go too far on the idealistic side of things, you end up working against your own goal, and the things you wanted to portray as possible start coming off as idealistic to the point of impossibility and ultimately alienating. When I write, my goal is to be idealistic and show those amazing beautiful things, but also ground them in a reality to the point where people don’t think "this is great but not realistic" but instead think "this is great and it's talking to me, like secret whisper from an alleyway. 'Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you,' it said to me. The me right here reading this book. I could be great."
My next post when I return to this topic will be about my favorite works of art/artists* (i.e., not Rand--she's good but... not my favorite), how they make me feel, and how I think about them in the context of my own creative work.
* The line at the end of the penultimate paragraph is a hint to one of them.