What does this have to do with “literary noise”?
There is very little literary noise in Anderson’s novel, if
you forgive the propensity of prior literary generations in using way more
adjectives and adverbs than we are “supposed” to use today. In the intervening
decades since Anderson’s book was published, we have moved to worshiping “show
don’t tell” in literary fiction and creative nonfiction. Some editors even
state that the adverb is or should be dead in literary fiction and that
adjectives and adverbs should be replaced by evocative descriptions of what
characters are doing, implying what
the adjective would have declared.
With the human predilection to believe that if some is good,
more is better, we now find writing that is so stripped of modifiers that it
requires long passages just to get at what the characters are doing or what can
be expressed viscerally about the scene.
"Moderation in all things" would urge that neither
the use of modifiers nor of passages that replace them be used to an extreme. I
believe the writer needs further latitude. In some stories and styles, multi-paragraph
scene descriptions evoke and even reinforce the actions and feelings of the
characters. In Anderson's novel, the
colors and weather conditions even substitute for direct descriptions and
statements of characters' thoughts and feelings. For me, this is what makes a
novel rich and aesthetically pleasing. It is not evocative writing in the
minimalist-description sense but in the somewhat indirect way it speaks to the
reader. It also, I believe, enhances.
However, I know avid readers who pass over or skim these
passages to get back to the "action." For them, all but action is
noise that interferes and stalls the momentum of the story.
In literature, is what constitutes noise only in the eye of
the beholder?
