The Wistful Author

I'm not sure if it's just the authors I have been reading, but beneath all of the stories there seems to be an underlying tone of melancholy integrated into each sentence. I went to a museum of art yesterday with my father and stepmother and we took a small tour in which they explained how they used an x-ray to authenticate each painting. By scanning through each layer, you can see how the painting was produced, step by step. By doing this you can better imagine what the artist was thinking while they worked. The first layer of one painting contained a sketch of a woman's face, and the complete product was that of a flower garden.

If only this were possible with literature. I remember watching an interview on television of an author of a book about her family. The interviewer brought up that while reading her book, even though it wasn't written from a third person perspective, he felt as if she was doing just that. Mind you this was several years ago, so I'm not exactly sure what they said. But when he questioned her about how he felt that her writing seemed to be somewhat detached, she didn't wholly refute it. He then asked her if she felt that most authors were introverts and actually prefer to observe and write about their surroundings instead of actually being involved. A few details aside, I believe she agreed with his assertion. From her tone of voice and body language, she was a little hesitant in admitting it, but you could tell that's how she felt.

I certainly can't assign this home-made stereotype to every author who ever existed, but perhaps a big chunk of them. Of course the one that pops into my head first is Jane Austin. I've never read any biographies of her, but I did see the movie Becoming Jane; from what I've heard, it's pretty accurate. Her real-life romance did not endure, but she vowed that women in her novels would not share the same fate. These authors yearn for something incredible, something of great value to them, and after coming to the realization that these things are very rarely obtained in real-life, they've devoted themselves to creating this special something in their own writing. This is why they write. This is why I write.

Relating to the comics in my last post, for some folks it just isn't enough to experience something. By writing their thoughts down, they are either making more sense of past events (non-fiction), or morphing experiences into an alternate reality (fiction) which tells a story that encompasses a more complete and fulfilling experience; or it could be a mixture of the two. Either way, it seems to me that these authors aren't content until they get the contents of their mind on paper. So I wonder if we were all to become content with our lives as is, would there be any more literature? I suppose science-related work would be exempt here. I believe they say that most art (including novels) stem from extreme emotion generated from some sort of tragedy. Imagine if you could somehow examine every single penny in every single fountain in the world and trace it back to the wish of the person who made it. "World Peace", would be in the majority. Imagine if that were to come true.