“For Sale-Baby Shoes-Never Worn”
Ernest Hemingway, so the story goes, was challenged to write a story in the fewest words possible. His opus, above, is the result of the challenge.
Just as visual art requires something of the viewer, literature requires something of the reader.
Pathos is the most common reaction to the (very) short story above, not because we have been told a sad story, but a door to a story has been opened and were are invited to walk through. A “For Sale” sign rarely elicits emotion on its own. Using it here amplifies that something normally representative of hope and innocence and often saved for posterity is now sold to any stranger who has money and a need of baby shoes. But the most telling aspect is, none of that is stated, it is reliant on the reader to fill in the story that has been artfully framed to suggest a pathetic story without being so crass (or wordy) as to say it.
Like the “Sounds of Silence” performance by Disturbed on the Conan OBrien show, (see previous blogpost) the audience is required to fill in a story that the writer and performer merely hint at. The value is that a different story is produced every time someone reads it; its value multiplied by ambiguity. Perhaps the most satisfying story readers can enjoy is one they wrote themselves.
Literature may have an advantage over the visual artisan employing ambiguity because it, like Film, Theater, Architecture and Music, necessarily unspools over time.
Murder mysteries are prime domain of ambiguity in literature. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes provide a series of mysteries where clues are often placed in the readers field of vision, but it is only through the keen insight of the great detective that they are revealed as damning evidence, while we, like Dr. Watson, are left dumbfounded by our failure to see the obvious.
But the ambiguity plays a pivotal role and proper resolution is required. Imagine a murder mystery where the murder occurs, the detective investigates, suspects are questioned then excused until finally the detective exclaims that-the butler did it! But there was no butler in story.
At first glance, it may seem difficult to for written text to appear in any other format, but journalism provides an inverse to the typical fiction structure. In newspaper articles, the most important information is presented at the beginning of the piece and continues with information of decreasing importance. The reason is that editors may need to shorten the piece to fit in the layout for that day (when that was a ‘thing’) which would be done by cutting from the end. It also provides the reader the opportunity to decide when to stop reading an article when they have all the information they desire and are ready to move on.
The Washington Post, in recent years, has offered a recurring series of ‘medical mystery’ pieces, written in novel format, opening with symptoms and mis-diagnoses that only resolve at the end, a novel approach in a journalistic milieu.
The ‘top level’ divide in libraries and publishing is ‘fiction’ vs. ‘non-fiction where fiction strives for art, non-fiction for factual information.
There’s no benefit to ‘skipping to the end’ for non-fiction, but it’s a common ‘cheat’ for fiction - but avoiding the ambiguity that gives flavor to a work can rob the ‘reveal’ of its power; much like opening presents before Christmas, the curiosity is satisfied at the expense of the excitement of wonder that precedes it.
(It probably wasn’t Hemingway, but that is how I first heard the story. I’m sure it was his penchant for spare prose that pinned the honor on him.)
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