multidimensional writing

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “May Day”

RELEVANT FICTION

“A day late and a dollar short” as the old expression– possibly dating to Fitzgerald’s time– says.

TWO occurrences motivated this post, both involving New Pop Lit‘s Contributing Editor Kathleen M. Crane.

First was her inability to find F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Night at any local library. A few libraries, we discovered, don’t carry any of Fitzgerald’s books. Second, Kathleen recently was at a physical therapist’s for a lingering knee injury. In talking to a young employee, Kathleen mentioned that we hoped to soon make an excursion up to northern Michigan’s Hemingway Country, staying at a hotel where he once lived and frequenting his hangouts. The therapist looked perplexed, had never heard of him.

Hemingway and Fitzgerald: the one-time glamor boys of American literature. Literary rock stars. Throughout our time growing up and discovering ourselves as writers in the latter decades of the Twentieth Century, for Kathleen and I, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were the two larger-than-life figures of the art, combining charismatic personalities and compelling biographies with sparkling literary talent and an involvement in the greater world. Models for what American writers should be doing now.

An example of Fitzgerald’s involvement in the world was his 1920 novella, May Day— a multiple-viewpoint depiction of long-forgotten events on May 1, 1919, when anarchist demonstrations and riots, spear-headed by World War I army veterans, took place in cities across America. Fitzgerald ably weaves glimpses of the New York City riots with more personal stories– in his uniquely romantic literary prose style. The result? A multi-dimensional reading experience combining the “literary” with pop sensibility and a topical, here-and-now story. History-come-alive. Innovation, relevance, and style.

WHY can’t we produce this kind of work in 2025?

Karl Wenclas for New Pop Lit

Simultaneity

ABOUT 3-D THINKING

IS multidimensional fiction too far ahead of the crowd?

Possibly– as our brains have been wired from Day One into linear, two-dimensional thinking. The most lauded novelists– William Faulkner to Don Delillo– simply give us more of it: longer and longer sentences and paragraphs as the reader burrows ever further into the narrative. The text. Which has its appeal, no doubt, but shouldn’t be the only standard of value for literary products like the short story and novel.

One of the reasons perhaps why Aben Kandel and James Gould Cozzens are kept out of the canon is because their best novels– City For Conquest and Guard Of Honor respectively– are, at their core, multidimensional in design and effect. They throw entire worlds at once at the reader. Many of our best-trained literary experts and commentators can’t handle it.

NEW WIRING

The foundation of multidimensional fiction is 3-D Thinking. The ability to perceive and understand all sides of an issue, simultaneously.

Think of driving a car and seeing, directly and peripherally, everything happening around you. That person on a bike, on your right. Another person further ahead crossing the street. A speeding car passing you on your left, moving into your blind spot. Another coming up fast in your rear view mirror.

Unfortunately, most people driving on our streets have tunnel vision. Stand on a street corner and watch them. They stare straight ahead, oblivious to anything going on except that which is directly in front of them.

Or they’re staring at their smartphone.

3-D Thinking, by definition, also means increased compassion for other humans and their struggles, wherever they’re placed in society’s hierarchies. Not always easy to accomplish!

IS rewiring your brain worth the effort?

THAT’S the question. One I attempt to answer with my new novella, The Loud Boys, now available in ebook format at Amazon here, and at Kobo, here. (Print version coming soon.)

-Karl Wenclas

About Graphic Novels

–and their potential influence on literature.

Graphic novels and comic books aren’t taken seriously by literary people, even though they’re an offshoot of the novel (19th century melodrama; early 20th century pulp fiction), and are a gateway for many readers to the novel.

The basic building block for the narrative comic book is the panel. Mini-paintings or portraits, usually with words added. When they’re not, the stand-alone illustration is meant to make a point– to emphasize a key plot moment, even depict the story’s climax. The result: interconnected micro-chapters. Dialogue is used sparingly but well. The graphic novel embodies the principle of “less is more.” A single sentence or lone illustration carries meaning beyond itself. The technique works on not spelling everything out. On not having to spell everything out, a principle used first by impressionist painters, impressionist music composers like Debussy, and by 20th century modernist writers Georges Simenon and Ernest Hemingway.

“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg Address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.” -Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was heavily influenced by Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne. Like Stephen Crane, Hemingway saw literature as a visual art.

USING THE TECHNIQUE

JUST AS the comic book/graphic novel was an outgrowth of popular novels, there’s no reason why serious fiction writers can’t in turn be influenced by the graphic novel. “The graphic novel without graphics.”

Ways to do this:

1.) More striking, over-the-top characters.

2.) More dramatic plots.

3.) Short mini-or-micro chapters, to emphasize each plot moment– and to keep the narrative moving at a faster pace than traditional literature. All part of what I call multidimensional writing.

ADVANTAGES OVER GRAPHICS

What graphic novels can’t do is get inside the heads of their characters. This can be used in multidimensional writing, as in traditional fiction, without going full Henry James-Virginia Woolf “stream of consciousness.” One of the failings of contemporary writing is the trend toward alt-lit/autofiction-style solipsism, which often as not cuts out the actual world: the tragedies and happenings of now. Which is a shame, given today’s contentious chaotic happenings begging to be intelligently addressed with understanding, compassion and outrage.

One of the strengths of multidimensional fiction is the ability to present a variety of viewpoints, quickly switching between them for a rounded, three-dimensional effect.

As we’ve begun doing with some (not all) of our writing. Including the just-released novella, The Loud Boys— now available in ebook form at Amazon. Print version coming soon.

-Karl Wenclas