A Russian Pill for the Postmodern Blues

By Emily Walls

My generation is obsessed with irony. In Internet comments, Tweets, TV shows, and face-to-face conversation, we seem incapable of authenticity. April Ludgate of Parks and Rec is our poster child, but of course the poster is hung only in tongue-in-cheek self-reference. The writers of The Simpsons summed it up more than a decade ago in this gag from "Homerpalooza."

Irony and its cousin, metaphor, can be powerful, but I think when we use them exclusively, we dilute their virtue. In literature and art, our authors and filmmakers most often use metaphor to expose truth, and they are effective. American Beauty, Pan's Labyrinth and Toy Story 3 deftly expose deep longing within us, but they do it parabolically. In our art, subtlety is king, and irony is second in command. We are, in fact, so steeped in irony, much like the Simpsons characters, that straightforward declaration is uncouth, even vulgar. It's all right, we suppose, in the proper media, like Opinion sections and documentaries, but it is repugnant and amateur in fiction. We've seen it done poorly too many times to give it credence. Saved, Robinson Crusoe, Remember the Titans, even parts of my favorite book of all time, Jane Eyre, stumble into didacticism. In response, we stick with ever-faithful metaphor. Because we have only learned to draw stick figures, we eschew portraits altogether, but I believe that the realism of a Rembrandt can be just as stirring, sometimes more so, than the abstractions of a Picasso. Or in unambiguous terms, metaphor is useful but not all-encompassing, so when we reject explicit storytelling—both in plot and dialogue—we needlessly limit our expression.

This Picasso (1937) is good.

This Picasso (1895) is also good.

For proof, let's look to the master of straightforward dialogue, Fyodor Dostoevsky. His characters in The Brothers Karamazov are as ideologically diverse as they are fascinating. When I read the story last summer, I was two hundred pages in before I realized the plot had barely moved. The characters were so engaging, their dialogue so provocative, I had not noticed the glacier-esque plot. What's more, their conversations were philosophically charged, so much so that if I were inclined, I could spend weeks dissecting and studying each exchange. I'm not exaggerating. I often found myself mentally developing curricula for imaginary book circles I led (with an iron fist and a garish hat).

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky takes the best conversations you've had in the last decade, your wandering thoughts in the shower, your quiet reflections at night just before you fall asleep, and your meditations on sermons and speeches, divides them among a dozen characters, and gives them back to you in organized and clear discussion. Consider the following dialogue, a small portion of a discussion on the problem of evil:

...and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child who beat her chest with her little fist and prayed to 'dear God' in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears! Not worth it, because her tears remained unredeemed. They must be redeemed, otherwise there can be no harmony. But how, how will you redeem them? Is it possible? Can they be redeemed by being avenged? But what do I care if they are avenged, what do I care if the tormentors are in hell, what can hell set right here, if these ones have already been tormented? And where is the harmony, if there is hell?...I don't want harmony, for love of mankind I don't want it. I want to remain with unrequited suffering. I'd rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation, even if I am wrong. Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony; we can't afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket....which is what I am doing. It's not that I don't accept God, Alyosha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket."

The entire novel is filled with conversations on compassion, faith, God, sin—the biggies. When I read it, I was struck by the dialogue's unique style. It challenged me, not just as a reader, but as a human being, to explore my own thoughts. I could see my own ideas through the characters' vantages, and although Ivan, Dmitri, and Alyosha were not always able to articulate their convictions, the words they used sounded like my own inner monologues. I shared in their struggles to understand, and I grew more decisive as they did.

And that's what is missing from modern storytelling, precisely because our stories are not modern at all—they are postmodern. Our dialogue in art reflects our actual dialogue, which is largely either waffling and noncommittal or insolent and satirical. When we take offense at every opinion and villanize every solid stance, not for its substance but for its existence, it's no wonder that our literary characters hint rather than declare. We have rebelled forcefully against modernism and now fall too often into insipidity. Authentic, straightforward storytelling is difficult to master, but it's a valuable tool too often overlooked.

Metaphor can be powerful and effective, but we overuse it to our detriment. Let's add another skill to our repertoire: candor. Both in art and in life, let's peel back the layers of ambiguity and for once, naked and raw, say what we mean.