Monet, Hemingway, and Wong Kar-Wai: Sky with no ceiling
Do I write good short stories? Depends on who you ask, but I would say that they aren’t special yet. Some might say that comparing them to some of the leading artists of the twentieth-century would be to elevate them to a place where they are not, or tantamount to blasphemy. Yet there is a common thread I see among these artists, some of my favourite artists, working across various media which I think influences my fiction. Perhaps the theme is obvious enough that it requires no argument, or that it’s in fact a blatant misreading. The appeal of my favourite artists is that their art doesn’t tell a story, but instead leaves a sentiment, a mouthfeel. The aim is not to accurately capture a possible reality, but to empathetically share a distinct feeling.
Monet is the easiest example of this. Visual art had long played on the edge of a blade dividing representativeness and sentiment. Since the Renaissance, European art had started becoming more and more realistic, from Italy to Van Eyck, Vermeer, and Valasquez. But the delicate balance remained: did this actually happen, or was it a biblical scene? Were there any extemporary embellishments or jewelry painted on? French Romanticism looks real, but the skill of the painters wasn’t in how they drew eyes or noses, but in the feelings that Lady Liberty roused and Napoleon inspired. The art movement named Realism was in fact a movement focused on the depiction of the working class; it was as political as it could get while still remaining art. Though the usual focus on beauty was no longer there, there was an added emphasis on poverty and sweat.
Impressionism was born out of that break with traditional subject matter, but also broke with traditional technique. The focus was on capturing light, the fleeting feeling that exists in landscapes. It’s been joked that the Impressionists were merely myopic, but it’s true that visual detail is simply unnecessary for the feeling that is needed for expression in that art form. Monet’s paintings are still representative, but it’s not necessary for the moment to be depicted with photorealism to capture the sentiments. With the eventual advent of the post-Impressionists, the Cubists, and the Surrealists, people began to criticize Monet’s work for being boring. There is only so much sentiment and expression that can be divined from a landscape after all. But the point is that he did manage to share that, all from a landscape.
As humans, much art analysis is narrative driven: Who is that lady? Why is she smiling so mysteriously? What are these people doing here? In fairness, landscapes raise fewer questions, but more traditional landscapes often featured some people, or an impending storm. For Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, and their derivatives, the style was the substance. The flurry of colours and the interplay between light and shadow drawing viewers and defining the artists. This is the birth of modernism, defined by its subjectivity and abstraction.
Modern literature goes through a similar progression, particularly by authors whose works I can’t profess to understand such as Joyce and Woolf. In Hemingway, I find a companion. Bucking with nearly a century of literary analysis, I suggest that nothing really happens in many of Hemingway’s novels either. Perhaps I should put him into the bucket of authors I don’t understand, but it would be uncontroversial to argue that many of his novels and short stories don’t follow a traditional plot structure. Stories where the central conflict is internal, but Hemingway doesn’t believe in superfluous detail, including thoughts and feelings? Frankly a bit ridiculous, yet it works. Nothing really happens in the best Hemingway short stories and novels, and even when it does, it’s not really about the war, the fish, or the bullfight. Well, sometimes it is about the war.
Many authors follow in a similar vein, and because of his stature within the literary tradition, it’s hard to discern who was influenced by Hemingway or just following contemporary trends. It would be foolish to say that Hemingway is style over substance when he was the one who eschewed flair and frills for what he deemed truth. Yet, the break with the established focus on external conflict and dramatic narrative is the thread I was looking for. After all, what happens in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place? Perhaps a poor example since some of the analysis I find online references nihilism, but even without a thorough analysis or a strong literary background, the feeling within his writing is undeniable. That is why I read Hemingway, after all.
The last artist I want to address in this tradition is Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai. Skipping straight to Wong Kar-wai and skipping over the innovations of the French New Wave, Antonioni, or any of his other antecedents is a decision I made because I like Wong Kar-Wai, and his use of tone and atmosphere aligns well with the themes of this essay. Much like Monet, Wong Kar-Wai’s style is his substance. The films have been described by some as boring, confusing, and even epileptic, as per one of my friends. Most of them have a plot, but the innovation does not lie therein. The feelings communicated through the burst of colour and music entrance the audience, weaving a tapestry of nostalgia and sentimentality. The stories he tells are simple, but it is through slow-motion and close-ups, disjointed and blurry editing, and a creative but almost jarring blend of songs.
In a way, Wong Kar-wai is Monet’s spiritual successor through his conveyance of emotion without adherence to form, but with strong reliance on vibrant colour and lustrous imagery. To compare my short stories to convention-defying art is audacious, but I’d like to draw parallels all the same. I think I write two different types of short stories: those I consider traditional short stories with a kick or a twist at the end, and those I privately consider vignettes. They don’t have a kick at the end, or any kick at all. Perhaps it’s just that I’m still not great at expressing internal conflict. Since I chose to keep my vignettes so short however, I usually don’t have the time to resolve the conflict, or even fully flesh it out. The intention then is just to leave the reader with a feeling, to transmit a mood. There’s no character development or plot progression. Just a snapshot of a feeling that I might have had one day.
I’m not sure if this is immature, lazy, or simply bad. This is as much navel-gazing as I’m willing to do anyways, and I’m going to continue writing my vignettes. In a way, I feel like I’ve created a list of my creative influences: not a bad list to have, though I feel like I’ve devoted an outsized amount of space to Monet, who I like the least amongst the three. Yet he represents one of the most famous and earliest breaks with art since the Renaissance and art from then on didn’t have to be realistic or even representational. Art was and could be abstract and conceptual. All it has to do, is convey a feeling.
An addendum: when you’ve made a habit of it, writing is pretty easy to do. And it’s very easy to do without a conscious effort to improve. Recently, a good friend of mine recommended I read George Saunder’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which I’m halfway through at the time of publishing. My main takeaway is that even if I just want to convey a feeling, I can do a better job of it. Onwards and upwards. Hopefully the new year brings more thoughtful writing.
