Apart from originality, a terrific plot, and mind-boggling prose, great works of literature are set apart from second-rate works by their power to describe certain experiences exceedingly well.
These works resonate with us, compel us, make us feel wholly connected with our humanity. And therefore, we become attached to them. Out of the corpus of human experience and emotion, these works provide a framing of emotions – that we have felt – in the lives and experiences of “the character”.
What, one might ask, makes some writers able to do this so well? It is tempting to draw the conclusion that for writers to be able to accurately describe these experiences they must have experienced them themselves, perhaps with even more intensity as the reader.
“For great writers to describe human feeling and emotion as they do, is experience of it needed?”
Experience shapes writers, and writers shape their work. As Kingsley Amis said, the writer is inseparable from their work. They may try to write without reference to their opinions, experience and personality, but within tens of thousands of words within a book, they seep through. So, the experience of writers is incredibly likely to shape their work.
Is it fair therefore to say that writers that have vast and vivid experience of the human condition tend to write greater works of literature? Does this gravitate towards the extremes? For great writers to describe human feeling and emotion as they do, is experience of it needed?
There are lots of arguments at play here, so this article will only push some ideas around, rather than provide a critical synthesis of them.
Take the example of Ernest Hemingway. Served in WW1. Married 4 times. Lots of family loss. Alcoholic with the ‘black dog’, which eventually drove him to kill himself. Hobbies included big game hunting, deep sea fishing and bull-fighting – some of which led him to sustain long term injuries.
This rough cross-section of the life of Hemingway leads one to assume that the man had experienced life perhaps near as fully as is possible. And that he had experienced grief, love, hatred, regret and many of these deep emotions even by the publication of A Farewell to Arms (1929).
“A Farewell to Arms is considered by many to be a great piece of literature…it is also semi-autobiographical”
A Farewell to Arms is considered by many to be a great piece of literature, even one for the crown of The Great American Novel, if it had not been set in Italy. But further to this is the fact that it somewhat mirrors Hemingway’s experience in WW1 as an ambulance driver. It is semi-autobiographical.
I can imagine the experience of writing A Farewell to Arms being one of catharsis, ten years after the war. And it is my view that the influence of Hemingway’s wartime experience into the novel is what makes it a great piece of literature.
Other examples of great literature and their corresponding writer’s experience are found with Joyce, Orwell and Bauby.
Humans are drawn to powerful experiences, in a somewhat primitive way. Reading of experiences of emotions and feelings similar to our own is riveting and rewarding.
This explains the prominence of such works of literature – by writers that have experience and know how to describe it – among the greatest ever. Sharing as such is powerful.
Nowadays, we seem to read of experiences far more moving than those in our own lives. But reading of these experiences is no alternative to experiencing them ourselves. I do not feel that great works of literature will continue to emerge without writers having experienced life fully.
And therefore, budding writers, alongside (or even instead of) reading books, should choose experience. Seek some discomfort. Live dangerously.