We misunderstand literature if we consider the construction of plot, the elaboration of thematic interplay, variations on motifs, and persistent symbolism to be literary devices. To so call them is to suggest that they are elements of form, when in fact they are elements of the natural universe as constant as the laws of physics; indeed, the remarkable connectedness of the themes of our lives is the source of literary devices: they reflect, rather than obscure, reality.
Two examples of this occurred to me today; here is the first.
In his book Awareness, the Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello tangentially mentions an old joke:
I remember hearing about a man who asks his friend, “Are you planning to vote Republican?” The friend says, “No, I’m planning to vote Democratic. My father was a Democrat, my grandfather was a Democrat, and my great-grandfather was a Democrat.” The man says, “That is crazy logic. I mean, if your father was a horse thief, your grandfather was a horse thief, and your great-grandfather was a horse thief, what would you be?” “Ah,” the friend answered, “then I’d be a Republican.”
You may recall that I previously linked to and discussed the remarkable articles on George W. Bush’s Oval Office painting, which he thought depicted a brave Methodist missionary but which in fact depicted a horse thief. In that post, I commented that “…if Bush’s presidency were the fiction of a novelist and he included such an overt illustration of its nature, we’d criticize him for being too neat, too heavy-handed.”
At the time, I’d never heard the joke quoted above; how much more thematically rich it now seems! Indeed, Anthony de Mello uttered it before his death in 1987, and I’ve now found references to this joke from as early as 1955, meaning that for almost fifty years the theme of the Republicans and horse-thieves has been lying in wait for Bush!
And what an implementation of the theme! Not only does this symbolize what his critics feel are the mistakes Bush made –confusing democratic missionary zeal with basic international criminality, for example- it even refers to previously-extant and popular memes! This is quite a good novel, one which may require a companion piece: a professor will pedantically explain (as I do now!) that “The character of President Bush is based on several humous themes that would have been intelligible to contemporary readers, etc.”
But again: it is not just that Bush comically mistook a horse thief for a missionary: it is that in doing so he reminds us of misunderstanding war for the promotion of peace, misunderstanding arrogance for “strength of conviction,” misunderstanding cronyism for loyalty; he reminds us of how error corrodes intentionality and transforms sincere morality into so much dross on the dead.
In other words: in this painting was a comic metaphor for the tragic confusion of the ethical with its antithesis; the whole affair seems to encapsulate Bush’s story in such a literary way that it almost seems impossible, constructed, authored.
When we say of an event that it was “just like in the movies,” we usually mean that it was unrealistic and had a saccharine, unlikely outcome. When we say that a story seems almost literary, on the other hand, we mean that it seems to weave into itself reflections of its own narrative, variations on its ideas, referential imagery, and so on.
But we are wrong to place such stories in opposition to reality; good literature is simply more realistic than our understanding of reality. It surprises us with thematic connections and resonances which we miss in our own lives.
(Please understand that I offer here only a reading; I do not intend it as a political statement. By which I mean: this is one novel; another could be written and read).
