Ong states that the "reader has to play the role in which the author has cast him" (12). This is obviously true, or else how could someone reading say Crime and Punishment relate to Raskolnikov without first placing themselves in 19th century Russia. The reader is constantly forced to "play the game of being a member of an audience that 'really' doesn't exist" (12). But mustn't the writer play this same game? Mustn't too the writer fictionalize himself as the speaker in an audience that doesn't really exist?
Writers must adopt the voice of their narrator, it must become their voice for the span of the book. For Gage, this meant narrating Truth's speech in the voice of a stereotypical black slave. As opposed to a plain narration of the speech, which would only attest to Truth's wit and speaking skills, Gage's adaptation becomes a "vehicle" for a meaning much more important and effective. "The stereotypes that gave rise to penning the speech in this demeaning argot ironically give the text special force" (14).
Often writer fictionalization is necessary for the piece to be effective. It gives the text that"special force". And if the reader is assumed to be a fiction then the writer should assume this same fiction to create a better writer-reader companionship of which Ong stresses. The Truth speech is a great example of this. Through this fictionalization, Truth becomes not the voice of herself but more importantly "the experiences and history she most embodied, that are rendered more perfectly in language that expresses so painfully the terrible costs of slavery" (14). Gage's rendition is necessary for the reader to experience this "loss". The writer must fictionalize himself in the act of writing to create a work worthy of and effective in reader fictionalization.
It is very interesting how you connect Sojourner Truth's speech to what Ong says about authors casting their audience, especially since I was more attracted to the Campbell version of the speech. Your post made me think about the effectiveness of both Gage's version and Campbell's version.
ReplyDeleteGage as you stated wanted his audience to "experience this 'loss' of slavery." Perhaps Campbell simply cast a different role for his audience. It seems as if Campbell didn't want his audience to take in the context, but instead to focus on the actual words that Truth was speaking. Gage wanted his audience to take note of the time and the situation, and he directed them to do so by not only writing down her words but taking a literary photograph of this moment in history.
Its interesting to think about how much fictionalization is actually needed in order to make the reader interested in a completely true event. It somewhat speaks to what might be seen as the limitations of writing and reading that are especially evident in the digital era that we live in today and have become so accustomed to. People can't just read the words that Truth said and really understand the problem she was trying to convey, there needs to be that deeper aspect of dramatization to take the reader to that next dimension of being a part of that moment. No matter how true the subject is that someone is writing about, fictionalization will always play a huge role in deciding whether or not it is any good. A writer must fictionalize a true event in order to make it more realistic. If you think about it, the role of a writer is extremely difficult in a lot of respects if the writer wishes to find success.
ReplyDeleteQuintin, when you asked:
ReplyDelete"But mustn't the writer play this same game? Mustn't too the writer fictionalize himself as the speaker in an audience that doesn't really exist?"
I imagine Ong would say "yes, and that's why antecedent genres are so important." In other words, I imagined that one of the reasons why Ong chose to trace the development of the authorial role throughout literary history was to show that writers were fictionalizing audiences that were known to them at that time.
In a way, Gage's decisions to portray Truth the way she did may have been motivated by what she thought would be believable in that rhetorical context (and, hence, would lend Truth more legitimacy). At least, that's how Campbell justifies it in order to persuade us that this move could potentially be harmful, even as it was well intended.
-Prof. Graban