I don't know if it's just the books I happen to read but I'm starting to think great writing is all about incredibly selfish people. This leads me to believe everyone is an incredibly selfish person and great writing is partially about exploring that.
Though I've no real evidence to support this assertion I do have a few yet to be thought out ideas on the subject. I should warn, I came about this discovery while listening to Coldplay's new single Violet Hill. As surprising as it may seem, I haven't listened to all that much Coldplay in my life, but this song doesn't seem as young as the tunes I remember being used as a back drop for MTV's real world when I was in high school (maybe earlier). The tone is different -- I don't know enough about music to really do this justice but, as I am a writer, I like to pretend I know about almost everything -- and the subject seems ... broader? Their earlier songs felt like most band's early songs (save for Weezer whose songs have always been and always will be about not being twenty years old yet) which is to say about a single thought, or in Coldplay's case, a single emotion. I think their early strength was in capturing a tone and using the song as an exploration of that feeling.
But now it sounds more complicated, which isn't to say the actual music is more complex, it's just something about the scope of the song. I don't want to say there's an intellectual depth (mostly because I can't decipher the words to anything but the chorus -- and frankly I don't feel I have to) but this song doesn't offer a delusionaly simple solution (the truth is we need much more than love) or content to explore the seemingly genuine profundity of some post coital, drunk on endorphin, carefree oneness with the universe (I'm looking at you Hey Ya).
I think I may be focusing entirely too much on Coldplay. I've noticed this in books recently, but the more engaging literature is about larger issues than falling in love with people or saving the world can fulfill, which isn't to say these aren't themes in great works, but they aren't the end that is to be reached by the final reel. There has to be something more than just plot to make a story captivating, no matter how convoluted that plot may be (Matrix Revolutions) and I'm sure anyone reading this knows the other half of the equation is character, but it's more than writing characters who are earnest or quirky.
I think great writing for a young man is to be very honest; young people are concerned with finding truth. But older writers seem to go beyond that. I don't know if it's just adding complexity to the character, letting them feel conflicting emotions, making them self aware... something like that, or if it's about unsticking their characters in time (not in the Vonnegut sense). Maybe great writing is about losing sight of what is true always, and accepting that truth fluctuates for characters as time passes. I don't want to sound like a White House Press Official (did you guys hear about that book; Bush authorized the leaking of a CIA agent's identity -- I remember when that was going on and everyone was terrified to accuse him because that's like literally treason... anyway) but there's something to this "getting caught in something larger" idea.
Maybe it's just my writing, but I know I've always intended to be conscious of whether a character was acting in character or betraying some "true nature," having conflict when the character was acting unlike themself and celebrating a character's self awareness when they find some genuine and simple expression of that self. I'm starting to feel that this might be too simple. Maybe characters become what they are doing (Sartre... always back to Sartre). This isn't to say the character can't be "living a lie" and eventually repent, but I think I've been too quick to attribute this revelatory state to a return to the self rather than the continuation of the character. I think when we embrace a simple idea we feel we've left the older distractions and complications behind, purified ourselves somehow, but that doesn't seem right. I think great literature understands that we are just as true to ourselves when we are aimless and complicated as when we are focused and purified.
I've come this far and I think I may have forgotten all about that selfish idea in the beginning. Maybe I just meant focussed on the self... or highly aware of the self. I don't know if this is a result of becoming more confident as a writer and thus more able to explore larger ideas or maybe it's remembering to be engaged in character (I think television suffers from this problem most notably -- the Simpsons used to be engaging, there was an understanding of the motivations for the characters, but with confidence the writers seem to have become comfortable and with comfort seems to come the assumption that the character is being written "in character" which results in less exploration into the character and more cartoonish ideas represented by a vehicle named Homer Simposon).
I'm going to go read some Proust and see if I can't change my mind entirely by the end of the day.
