Since my most recent article here a week ago which revealed (in the comments) the release of an academic book on Tolkein, I drank down said item, wishing it had existed when I tried to major in such activities in college decades ago. (Strong recommendation.)
It has made me think about a great many of the effects achieved by Tolkien, his intents, how they are constructed, how they work… from a sympathetic academic literary analysis, something which didn’t exist for a long time when the Tolkien phenom first blossomed — the literary world was not at the time sympathetic, by and large, to hobbits and magic rings.
It interested me to observe a validation of all the effects discussed which I well remember inspiring me when I first encountered them, enough to make me seek out their original inspirational materials (and languages thereof). To see those effects echoed in the understanding and eyes of a well-qualified academic “other” was fascinating in its own right — a validation in the “eyes of others”, so to speak.
There is always a great desire to discover a “sympathetic” person, who sees what you do (and vice-versa) in a topic of fascination, or a field of study, or a product of art. Here I’m talking about the mechanics of producing literature of a particular type and how it works. But I also find that I’m suddenly thinking about my own fictional constructs, as well, looking at them with a changed perspective, with new eyes, with (as it were) the eyes of unspecified others (or at least views new to me).
It makes me think about what I’m writing with a modified seriousness, wondering what a study of my own unworthy products might consider, what it might see… would I agree with them? Could I have done better? (doubtless). Even if that’s only a judgment in my own eyes, rather than a hypothetical other, it’s sobering. On the one hand, nothing wrong with light or inconsequential fiction that professionally entertains, but on the other hand, one wants to strive for worthiness, at least on a level I recognize and respect, even if I’m the only one who cares.
Some of this is surely an echo of the problem of playing God when one creates and manipulates imaginary moral entities — the risks of grandiosity or of unseriousness. But it’s there… I can feel it. And if I can feel it, then it’s real, at least to me.
How do the metaphysics of this work for you? How do you balance creating worlds for amusement vs works for serious contemplation, or do you see any necessary distinction? I’m not sure I do, but I’m not sure I don’t, either.
Mad Genius Club 
4 responses to “The eyes of others”
It is easy to separate my academic non-fiction from my fiction. When the reviewer for the primary journal in my field praised my book and said that it would a very good classroom resource, I was on cloud nine for several days. That was my intention – to write a professional, and readable, book on the subject.
Fiction … My most “literary” books are accidents. I did not set out to write them as literature, but genre fiction. Either the scope of the book, or the style, or something set them apart, and had readers saying that they were literature (in the good sense). I write to entertain, and to tell stories that leave the world a little better than when I found it (good wins, evil loses in the end). Since I’ve never written fiction for market (no publisher or NYT Best Seller dreams), I’m not certain I ever think about “How will people consider my works eighty years from now.”
The sad part is that you can labor over the deep questions and never encounter a reader who notices.
>How do the metaphysics of this work for you?
I need a few people to die in a battle. I don’t want them to be Guard 1 and Guard 2. I want them to be at least named people. It’s too early to kill off any of the existing named characters. Therefore, I need to backfill a couple/few people just so I can kill them off later.
I felt bad about pulling people into my story just so that I could kill them off later.
Then I realized that Putin has done this to well over a million Russians in the real world. Those soldiers only existed – from his perspective – to die for his cause.
My bad feelings immediately evaporated. It’s fiction. I’m not treating real people like that – and some people do.
I’m mostly focused on telling a story as well as I can. Thematic stuff is mostly emergent. My main concession to the idea that people might care about my stuff at the level you describe is trying to do a lot of my preliminary brainstorming in attractive, well-indexed notebooks, in case someone (it would be a sibling or a fan or a collateral descendent in this case) has to go all Christopher Tolkien on it a few decades. Handwriting is still terrible though. But most likely the hoard of completed notebooks will end up in the garbage dump, or peered at by some family or town historian who quietly curses me for not paying more attention to other people. 😀