the reality line

bloom is an ass. i firmly believe this. still, many an ass since balaam has had much to say that is useful. bloom makes a distinction between two types of stories: the borgesian and the chekovian. the checkovian are realistic, and serve to promote a kind of truth in life, while the borgesian are fantastic, and attempt to turn truth inside out to find another kind of truth. while this does seem a bit simplistic, it is true that all stories brink a certain line at some point in their creation and existence. i have felt this myself. for my own purposes i will call this the reality line.

the reality line is simply the final divide separating reality from surreallity. once this line is crossed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to recross it. if your story exists in both at once, it is more likely to be finally percieved as belonging to the surreal school, by virtue of that element existing within its pages. stories firmly rooted in either mode can partake of the other, but only by relating it to a certain aspect of the story which does not partake, such as a character, or narrative mode. though this seems wordly and complicated it is finally as simple as the question: could this story really happen (or have happened) or not?

we get at this in workshop by asking what sort of a reality the story exists in. is it a true-to-life? does it utilize mythologizing of characters and so fall off a bit in its realism? is it a phantasm masqerading as the quotidian? after adressing these questions, the details can be picked apart so that the reality the story inhabits, whichever that may be, can be depicted with more verity.

recently i was complaining about this very subject to my brother on the phone. my problem being, i seem to cross and recross the reality line frequently--from piece to piece--and often a story started off in one mode will veer off the road into the other. controlling this is a difficult thing to do. perception provides a set of blinders that also cause trouble once the piece is out in the public arena. often a reader/listener will love a piece, but will make assertions about it that are completely wrong. For example, upon assessing a piece that is realistic, but lies near the line to fantasy (read: not what the reader/listener is used to), a reader will state: "this piece is great! i love how surreal it is." when in fact, for an artist such as yourself, this is the most gritty reality, the harsh-facts-of-life version, in which you spared yourself no amount of grief in rendering its limbs so as to be without the distorting twist of the surreal.

back to bloom: he does not prize one of the modes over the other. does this mean, then, that regardless of whichever school i belong to, that i can write in both? or does this mean that at some point i will find myself caged on one side of the reality line, unable to cross it? and which side to i belong to anyway? (i suspect that neither would have me without reservation.) and how much does any of this blather matter? questions that have little to no relevance to life often have the most concrete and decisive of answers.