[LMB] [OT] STD/fanfic

[Marna Nightingale]

Auden:

>>> He suggests at one point that to the degree a writer
>>> is related to the world, their role is that of a witness, and the 
>>> only crime a witness can commit is perjury.

Me:

>>> I am contemplating this. It SOUNDS right to me. I therefore offer it 
>>> for discussion.

Elizabeth Holden:
>> It sounds right to me. And what I am trying to do in
>> all my fic is to tell the truth, and the whole truth.
>> As I see it.

Victoria:
> I'd say it's a good premise, but far too limiting. 

I didn't take it the way you did: I took it that his statement is meant 
(and possibly I ought to transcribe more of the essay) to explicitly 
limit the writer's responsibility, not their scope.

He is in general arguing against loading moral responsibility onto 
writers, as well as against writers presuming to be moral guides, so.

Ah, here we go, with apologies for previous unclarity:

"It is not the duty of a witness to pass moral judgment on the evidence 
he has to give, but to give it clearly and accurately; the only crime of 
which a witness can be guilty is perjury. . . . "

>>> This implies, of course, that you can't 
>>> lay down terms in advance for what a writer says, but you can on examining the 
>>> product afterwards, conclude that they have been dishonest to their own
>>> vision. [snipped]

> Me:
> I'll argue with that implication, too.  First of all, how would the 
> reader know and/or be able to judge what the writer wanted to do?

That is why I said it's tricky. But in my experience, long complex 
dishonesties tend to betray themselves via lack of internal consistency 
and/or evidence of handwaving (one of the more popular handwaves in SF/F 
is 'this system I have set up and am a-critically treating as a good 
will, in the end, lead to hideous tyrrany and suffering, but I'm ending 
the story before that happens, and nobody will bother to reason it out) 
so I'd argue that in a lot of cases is it possible to say, at least, 
"either they know better or they bloody well ought to".

Which, as I said, I think is a valid and reasonable criticism of a 
writer. Not of the writer as a human person, necessarily, but of a 
writer qua writer.

Marna.