Over in Peer Review, Bluebottle has been writing about Charlotte Yonge, the popular Victorian High Church lady novelist. He quotes her biographer as saying,

Charlotte can paint the accidents of the historical scene vividly enough, but the substance forever eludes her because she cannot comprehend any way of life that is fundamentally different from her own.

Georgina Battiscombe

I've been writing about Janet Greene, the conservative folk singer of the 1960s who wrote her songs by paraphrasing the lectures of that soporific Red-baiter, Dr Fred Schwarz. What makes these two writers different, besides their subject matter? Charlotte Yonge could only write from her own viewpoint: her characters were chaste and finicky. Janet Greene could, and did, write from a viewpoint not her own. Not only did she sum up the views of Dr Schwarz, but she composed songs like Comrade's Lament, which describes the dilemma of unhappy US Communists. That took imagination.

Today I stumbled across an article from a website called Breitbart News, making suggestions for who to send to Mars. (In case you don't know, NASA is recruiting.) I had vaguely heard of this Breitbart News, and my suspicion that the writers are extremely right-wing was confirmed by their suggestions, which included several Democratic presidential candidates. (Mind you, sending Donald Trump sounds like a good idea on a number of levels, and I suspect he might enjoy it – probably more than his fellow passengers.) The problem was, I couldn't 'get' many of the 'jokes', due to having absolutely no idea who these people were. I obviously don't read the right gossip sites. I did get the dumb joke about Ann Coulter, whom I vaguely recognise as some sort of right-wing pundit. They were going to send her, but give her all the 'guns and supplies'. Wait, I thought, They think NASA is going to send astronauts to Mars with guns ? What planet are they living on?

So, if I were to try to write from the point of view of one of these people, I wouldn't have a clue. I might find myself in the position of Charlotte Yonge.

On the other hand, there is the heroine of O Henry's great short story, 'A Municipal Report'. There is a writer who so impresses a New York publishing house that they send a literary agent down to sleepy Nashville, Tennessee, to sign him up, pronto. The agent is shocked to find that the brilliant writer is, in fact, a genteel Southern lady in the post-hoop skirt era. He wants to know how she knows so much about human nature, and this is what O Henry tells us:

"On the surface," said Azalea Adair. "I have traveled many times around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings – print and dreams. I have seen (on one of my imaginary tours) the Sultan of Turkey bowstring with his own hands one of his wives who had uncovered her face in public. I have seen a man in Nashville tear up his theatre tickets because his wife was going out with her face covered - with rice powder. In San Francisco's Chinatown I saw the slave girl Sing Yee dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling almond oil to make her swear she would never see her American lover again. She gave in when the boiling oil had reached three inches above her knee. At a euchre party in East Nashville the other night I saw Kitty Morgan cut dead by seven of her schoolmates and lifelong friends because she had married a house painter. The boiling oil was sizzling as high as her heart; but I wish you could have seen the fine little smile that she carried from table to table. Oh, yes, it is a humdrum town. Just a few miles of red brick houses and mud and lumber yards."

Now what's he telling us? That the ability to put yourself in the position of another is a matter of two things: imagination and observation. Azalea Adair could see the reality behind the ordinary – and so could O Henry. He also saw the commonalities in experiences as varied as those of New York City shopgirls, hoboes riding the rails, outlaws in Texas, and ex-pats in Central America. That's what makes his work come alive, even after 100 years. And that's also what draws us to his writing, even after such a long time. And even though he hasn't read the latest gossip websites.

But I would really like to have seen what O Henry made of these right-wing website people. It might have been amusing.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

23.11.15 Front Page

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