From: Sally Manton smanton@hotmail.com
Alison wrote: <For the most part characters in fiction are a lot less complex than real characters. <snip> So, I often find ideas, milieux and plots more interesting than fictional characters, because I frequently think that fictional characters are simplistic, rigid, and implausible. They reflect the author's prejudices, and reinforce the readers'.>
Interesting, but I'd definitely say that the same is true of "ideas,
milieux
and plots" in a lot of fiction.
There is something going seriously wrong with this morning.
I'm agreeing with Sally twice in one day.
The average difference between real people and homo fictus is probably no greater than the difference between real
life
messiness and unfinishedness, and the constraints of an acceptable
fictional
plot., even a brilliant one. And <g> how *can* you claim that the ideas
and
themes of a story would *not* reflect the author's prejudices? I would've said that was the *most* likely place his own mindset would imprint, even more so than the characters he invents to illustrate those ideas.
And where did we find them in Deliverance. Not in the characters, but in the ideas and themes. Sally, you're not a convert by any chance, are you?
Three times in one day. Three more and I can actually have breakfast.
Neil