Writing as Illusion

Daryll Anderson

Traditional literary aesthetics can clarify the murky status of originality and honesty in nonfiction. Analyses that specifically apply to poetry and fiction apply equally well to ordinary expository prose, though people rarely apply them. Many aids to writing recommend originality and honesty in essays, and many readers try to evaluate essays by these criteria, but true originality and honesty do not fit in good writing. At the same time, writing must appear original and honest. This illusion the writer controls through a conventional literary persona.

Critics of writing often perceive honesty and originality in excellent writing and dishonesty and triteness in shabby writing, but honesty and originality only very imprecisely describe the qualities in question, which more properly are the appearance of honesty and the appearance of originality. While a writer's simple truthfulness fails to charm because of (true) inconsistencies in the persona and the information, good writers create satisfactory illusions when they present consistent and partial information through a persona, a consistent and partial personality. Originality, too, misleads as a criterion: educating is largely acquainting with cliches—more charitably called conventions, traditions, common knowledge—and the appearance of originality is actually sophistication with cliches. The civilizing effect of education, if any, comes from learning about the common patterns of one's world, and, in writing, thinking for oneself usually means estimating accurately how many people will agree with one's ideas. To appear original, ideas need not be now, but they must not be presented as more new than they are. Writers of nonfiction, just like writers of fiction, tend an illusion, and nothing kills illusion so quickly as belief in literal truth and the novelty of one's ideas. Realizing that writing always presents an illusion and cultivating the illusion through a persona eliminate wasting time on the fraudulent criteria of honesty and originality.

Absolutely honest self-expression is impossible in writing, for every sentence, every word, every temporal and logical arrangement compromise the whole, true self and subject a little more. Good writers solve this problem by developing a persona, a public personality with fixed options, so that all their remarks come from the same place, from a personality whose characteristics they more or less deliberately choose. The writer's profession, purpose, and audience decide some characteristics of the persona: music reviewers wishing to appear judicious mix praise and complaints, finding something wrong with the best performances and something right about the worst. One convention of honesty is that a mixed opinion gives an impression of honesty and candor even when it’s obviously rubbish.

Conventions of honesty are the conventions that people of a time and place may accept as honesty, so readers who perceive dishonesty often react to a misuse of conventions. Students wishing to be honest write, "of course, I don't know a thing about it," mistaking candor and accuracy for honesty. Teachers may quibble hopefully, telling them to search their minds and find that they do indeed know something, that they aren't using their ideas, but such students probably do not lie. They misuse a convention and, like students who qualify with "I feel," "in my opinion," and "I am only a student, but," they justify their prose by explaining that they don't respect their feelings, opinions, or status and have no right to ask others to. Such humulity conflicts with the basic arrogance of writing any- thing. Modesty in writing, like judiciousness, works by conventions, so pure modesty looks like false modesty, and false modesty works only in satire. We like a narrator who pretends to know nothing only when we disbelieve him. When poor writers claim to know nothing we believe them.

People measure or try to measure nonfiction by its verifiable accuracy and fiction intuitively or metaphorically. While this distinction theoretically rules out as untrue essays based on flawed data, good nonfiction, like good fiction, rises above trivial inaccuracy. In "To Err Is Human" (The Medusa and the Snail), Lewis Thomas mentions the infallibility of cats, dogs, and fish, which strikes me as ludicrous, but I don't discount his thesis for this reason. The larger statements of nonfiction are frequently no more testable than the statements of fiction. The appearance of accuracy and truth helps an argument more than any verifiable data, and a charmed reader can temporarily ignore, or simply fail to notice, even conspicuous inaccuracies, while an uncharmed reader won't want to agree with something he/she already believes. Accuracy and truth may serve well as supports to good writing but they do not create its compelling power. Andrew J. Reck describes this paradox in philosophy: "Sometimes philosophies win their adherents as much, if not more, by virtue of the aesthetic power of their language and their architectonic as by the truths they express. An interesting but false doctrine, because of its aesthetic delightfulness, often wins over a true but dull one."1 Nonfiction is no more literally true than fiction.

Verisimilitude is the appearance of truth, regardless of accuracy. It can cover the tracks of unretouched reality, which, ironically, does not necessarily look real. Contriving verisimilitude means adjusting truth. Writing students, encouraged to adjust their knowledge to the task at hand, often point out how small their samples are, cite less-than-respectable sources, use television characters as real people. Even hopeless-looking specks of data can illustrate carefully chosen points with correct emphasis, but only when the writer treats truth lightly, sometimes partly suppressing it, sometimes mentioning but discounting it.

Georges de Scudery describes the relation of true and false necessary for verisimilitude: "when truth and falsehood are confounded by a skillful hand, the mind has difficulty in distinguishing them . . . .when falsehood is easily discoverable, the great untruth makes no impression upon the soul and gives no pleasure."2 In nonfiction, as in fiction, the great untruth imparts meaning better than the literal truth. Not exactly opposed to truth, technical untruth may be the only vehicle that can convey truth.

A useful attitude toward truth in essays is that one offers an idea for consideration, presents it in the best possible light, yet realizes that other views might be as appealing and as consistent within themselves and with the data. Ideas are conspicuously unprovable, and one can argue for or against them or use them as evidence without ever forming a firm opinion about their truth. In fact, while a firm belief in a point of view or argument probably hinders good writing, less conviction makes the task easier. Writing teachers can probably predict quite accurately the dismal essays most students write when guided by the compelling light of truth. People have written well by this light—Milton's "Areopagitica" is a fine instance, as is Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail," but a firm commitment to one's thesis is not necessary in a good essay, and being able to experiment with an idea rather than definitively supporting one's belief serves writers well.

Proof of ideas is hard to come by. Philip Sidney excused poets from evaluation by truth by saying that because poets affirm nothing, they cannot be accused of affirming untruths. Poets, of course, do affirm something. They affirm ideas even if they do not affirm that the ideas are true literally. Ideas in nonfiction similarly appear to affirm truth, but need not actually do so, perhaps even should not. The more passionately a writer declares that his/her ideas are true, the more disagreeable both the ideas and the writing become. Striving for verisimilitude rather than truth allows other ideas to exist in the same world and protects the writer from a possessive attitude towards ideas.

Striving for verisimilitude rather than literal truth creates a problem for writers who know truth and wish to express it. People who know truth must also run into trouble reading because even the most banal nonfiction is exempt from truth in some ways. Newspapers and annual reports may at best be accurate. They are never true and complete, and only an unwise reader reads without caution. People who believe that truth is truth and everything else is lies may object to what is in that system a method for lying without being caught, but the same method works equally well for those who intend to deceive and those who do not, while simple truthfulness fails to communicate for either camp. Besides, readers can enjoy an idea that appears true without believing it if the writer permits this option. They can far more easily reject ideas presented as literally true. Thinking of constructing nonfiction as like constructing fiction may help. Though Plato and some followers find poetic lying disturbing, many other critics have noted that illusions please people, even that people enjoy being deceived, that while at some level they are aware of being deceived, they suppress that awareness to enjoy the spectacle. Under the surface of literal falsehood, a more abstract truth prevails. The responsible writer presents an idea well so that the reader can deceive him/herself, yet realize that the issue is not literal truth. In "A Modest Proposal," for example, Jonathan Swift balances feigned and underlying truth most deftly, allowing readers to enjoy both being deceived and uncovering the deception.

The illusion of honesty in writing, no more dishonest than perspective in painting, is meant both to deceive and to be found out. Andrea Pozzo's dome painted on a flat ceiling can deceive only when one stands on a marked spot on the floor. The conventions of honesty in writing, like the spot on the floor, guide the reader and make the pleasure of illusion possible. Readers with tiresome interest in literal truth will find illusions inaccessible, but, though the view sounds morally defensible, any appreciation of any art requires susceptibility to illusion, and certainly an accomplished artist in any medium understands something of illusion, whether consciously or not. R. L. Colie describes learning to deal with illusions in art: "By the time we come to look at pictures, to attend plays, to read poems, we think we know what we are doing—not many of us try to brush the fly off the Metropolitan's Petrus Christus. We have learned to make allowances, to look from a certain point of view. . . . We have, by the time we come to take the arts seriously, put behind us, or put aside, all distracting considerations of truth and falsehood exactly so that we can carry on.”3 Good nonfiction has a large measure of art, and creating illusions well and efficiently is lying only in an extremely narrow sense.

Even in the lowly art of expository prose, a contrived persona controls the illusion, and since a persona will appear in a writing, against the author's will if necessary, one might as well choose its qualities. The persona can establish policies for some of the myriad choices in writing, unifying and organizing the evidence and dictating style, as Walker Gibson illustrates. Fred Leeman's description of perspective in painting applies to the illusion-creating persona: "Perspective not only is a way of organizing a picture internally; it also offers a means of coordinating it with the position of the viewer."4 The persona differs from the writer in being an invention of the writer: the goal is not true, original, honest self-expression, but an illusion carefully contrived for effect, a work of art.

A truly consistent argument is possible only from a point of view, and any consistent argument suppresses hundreds of pertinent remarks that might interfere with the point. As Horace says of Homer, “What he despairs of illuminating with his truth he omits; and so employs fiction, so blends false with true, that beginning, middle, and end all strike the same note."5 Because a consistent argument at best torments truth and accuracy into a single line, a rigid attitude toward honesty creates more problems in selection and organization than it solves. Treating nonfiction as art permits a persona to take care of such tasks. Any consistent statement has bizarre emphasis compared to truth, if for no other reason because it can cover only a small portion. Any statement from only one point of view necessarily presents an illusion. As modern science shows, perceiving reality requires (in our century, at least) many simultaneous points of view.

Originality, much like honesty, appears in writing as a convention. One need not be original, but one must appear original. Originality varies with circumstance, according to background and experience so that what appears new to one reader may appear a restatement of a commonplace to another. Thus, though George Steiner, in In Bluebeard's Castle, restates some of Freud's ideas on monotheism, he enlarges rather than diminishes his argument by using them. In contrast, I find that Clarence Darrow, in 'Why I am an Agnostic," addresses the issue of religious truth by a trivial and materialistic route, yet I have seen students, considering the subject for the first time, illuminated by his argument and delighted by his new point of view. One's estimate of the writer alters one's estimate of originality, and any assessment of originality is a guess, for even the writer may not know the source of an idea, and an independent idea need not be new.

The introduction to a book of children's pictures of Jerusalem mentions that few winning pictures showed any originality. The judges almost certainly weeded out of the 150,000 pictures any truly original treatments as inappropriate, more impressed by children's ability to use conventional symbols. Like these children, writing students are handicapped by teachers' low estimate of their skill, and writing teachers cross out originality as mistakes. I do not quarrel with evaluating writing by traditional standards, but one ought not also ask for originality.

Not all originality, either independence or newness, works in writing. The appearance of originality improves writing, but it does not correspond well with true originality. The appearance of originality is a kind of sophistication with cliches. At the same time that there is nothing new under the sun, for each person everything under the sun is new. The schemata of memory become civilized and conventionalized, and most people give up noticing new things by the time they speak competently.6 Civilizing is learning cliches, and, as writing is saying things others can understand, good writing requires competence with cliches. This task is not as limiting as it sounds. Conventional wisdom is conventional because it applies to everything and every proverb has its opposite.

Pope defined true wit as "What oft was Thought, but ne'er so well Exprest," and anyone tempted to dismiss his definition as typical of unimaginative neoclassicists and antithetical to true self-expression should remember that Young and Goethe likewise discount originality. According to Young, Latin classical writers other than Homer, Pindar, and Anacreon are imitators, and the originals are originals only because their originals are lost. Now, enough books exist that "Very late must a modern imitator’s fame arrive if it waits for their decease."7 Young recommends imitation because the other route is a dead end. Goethe similarly notes that "the world is now so old, so many eminent men have lived and thought for thousands of years, that there is little new to be discovered or expressed," so repeating ideas is acceptable: "The truth must be repeated over and over again, because error is repeatedly preached among us."8 Originality is neither desirable nor possible: "As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us, and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own except energy, strength, and will? ... It is almost impossible in the present day to find a situation which is thoroughly new. It is merely the manner of looking at it, the art of treating and representing it, which can be new."9

Originality in writing is a misnomer, and knowledge of traditions is the only antidote for problems with triteness. Many students discover with pleasure the role of iconoclast because they hear themselves speaking above the roar of the commonplace, though iconoclasm is not in any way original. The persona of essays works this transcending the obvious, this appearance of newness and independence.

Nonfiction presents as elaborate an illusion as fiction. Information, data, statistics are no more real than events in the lives of imaginary people, and arguments are no more true than the broad meanings of stories. Just as one does not expect to discover a brand new varietyof human nature in a novel, one cannot hope for a brand new analysis of an idea in an essay. Parallels and antecedents occur readily to experienced readers.

Most composition books recommend a persona that is a flexible true self. Maxine Hairston's Successful Writing is a good example. I think the persona does not need this restraint. Being able to argue coherently for theses that one does not believe or that one cannot decide about or just about topics that inspire only disinterest would be handy for writing students, and I doubt that writing such essays damages people's true selves. Harlan Ellison, in "all the sounds of fear," a story in Ellison Wonderland, describes a very good actor who regresses through all the roles he ever played and, at the end, has no face at all. Composition writers seem to fear that people who are careless with their personae will end up with no faces. Walker Gibson, in Persona, while advising students to expand their repertory, warns against always pretending.10 Especially in classes where students must produce essays on demand, I think it unfair to insist that students form opinions. A person who finishes an essay should not feel as if the subject therefore requires no further thought, especially if the person has considered the subject only briefly to meet a deadline. A persona more flexible than a flexible true self allows people to investigate ideas as hypotheses, and the essay then reports the investigation rather than only its results.

Goals of truth and originality hinder writers, but, at the same time, consistent and interesting writing must appear true and original. In nonfiction, as in fiction, the persona creates the illusion, compressing literal truth and expanding ideas to fit it, adopting a point of view that permits even a tired topic to seem unusual. Writing hypothetically (as if I were this persona), entertaining without believing ideas, and simply knowing enough about triteness to choose appropriate treatment spare writers the obligations of honesty and originality and permit creating a satisfying illusion.

University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky

NOTES

1 Andrew J. Reck, Speculative Philosophy (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972), p. 245.

2 Georges de Scudéry, "The Preface to Ibrahim" (1641), in Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden, ed. Allan Gilbert (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962), p. 582.

3 R.L. Colie, "Some Paradoxes in the Language of Things," in Reason and the Imagination, ed.J. A. Mazzeo (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), p. 97.

4 Fred Leeman, Hidden Images (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1976), p. 47.

5 Horace, "The Art of Poetry," in Literary Criticism: P1ato to Dryden, ed. Allan Gilbert (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962), p. 133.

6 Ernest G. Schachtel, Metamorphosis (New York: Basic Books, 1959), p. 295.

7 Edward Young "Conjectures on Original Composition" (1759), in Literary Criticism: Pope to Croce, ed. Gay Allen and Harry Clark (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962), p. 104.

8 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Conversations with Eckermann" (1836-48), in Literary Criticism: Pope to Croce, ed. Gay Allen and Harry Clark (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962), p. 140.

9 Goethe, pp. 140-141.

10 Walker Gibson, Persona: A Style Study for Readers and Writers (New York: Random House, 1969), p. 51.