Forum / Pointless violence.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 21, 04:23pm

  I use it a lot in my fiction, but think of myself as moral. I wonder what others think.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Sep 21, 10:54pm

  I don't see this as a problem in your work, James.

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  Matthew Robinson

  Sep 22, 02:43am

  I don't know if I can successfully articulate my thoughts on this, but one of the most important functions of violence in literature is addressing the paradox of it. The strongest violent writing is that which studies the pointlessness (or, the incalculable ruinousness) of violence versus the inherent violence in man. The best example of this thesis that I (and most people, I'd gamble) can think of is Flannery's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Cormac McCarthy, Donald Ray Pollock, among numerous others, are writers who have addressed violence in this way to great success (if you haven't read Pollock's The Devil All the Time, I highly recommend it).

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 22, 03:06am

  Found this on Pollock:

  http://www.npr.org/2011/07/26/138605683/donald-ray-pollock-on-finding-fiction-late-in-life

  And, no, I hadn't read Devil All The Time, but it sound intriguing. I'll check it out.

  Flash fiction is not the place for a treatment of violence that has purpose. I've been successful more in the hint of it than anything else, but you can't help but walk into offering the occasional graphic shocker, something that's easy, but as pointless as the violence it depicts, I think.

  Flash fiction, in that respect, is a weak medium for violence, offering only titillation and not thoughtful treatment. But I really like to know what people think of it. I know that some people say they avoid it, but how can you walk away when the whole piece is only a few hundred words.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Sep 22, 03:45am

  Agreed. The threat of violence is often more effective in flash than actual violence, as in your latest piece, where you leave a very clear picture in the reader's mind of what will likely happen in that parking lot.

• 
  J.A. Pak

  Sep 22, 04:54am

  "Flash fiction is not the place for a treatment of violence that has purpose." — that sounds like a challenge. :)

  Ursula Le Guin has a lot of violence in her works but I'd regard her as a very moral writer. Lot of violence in the Bible. I suppose it's not so much content but the thoughts that shape the content, intention, etc. At times a violent scene in a work evokes compassion.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 22, 05:44am

  "Flash fiction is not the place for a treatment of violence that has purpose."

  I'll stand by that statement because there is not room for both the violence and the insinuation of a moral objective. Not in only a few hundred words. I don't believe Ms. Le Guin dabbles in flash fiction.

  Yes, Matthew, that story of mine is only a hint, though clear enough, of violence intended. But what does the story suggest to the reader in terms of a moral perspective? Nothing. If the story was expanded perhaps... there would be room for it.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 22, 05:45am

  J.A. you can take the challenge. Be interesting to see where it goes.

• 
  eamon byrne

  Sep 22, 09:11am

  Maybe violence is hard because it's easy. Let me explain that because it sounds a bit pretentious.

  In many cases violence is presented in a genre setting. Well-used images abound and are easily thought up. So the danger is cliche. And cliche is easy.

  James, you avoided that. Relax son.

  My all time favourite cowboy movie is Shane. Now you wouldn't call Alan Ladd beating the christ out of Ben Johnson violent. The violence was him throwing the whiskey on Ben Johnson's shirt just before he king hit him. (Sort of a sneaky cowardice sub-theme there - taking the opponent by surprise.) Otherwise what we have in Shane is a beautiful gentle harmonious mood piece about a christ figure in a mythic settler landscape. True. I shit you not.

  Compare that to the good the bad and the ugly. (What a kickass title!) All that stylised poncing about with low angle shots behind the holsters and Morricone's bugles going jaja jaja jajaaaaa ... Is that total right wing violent macho cliche or what? If it wasn't such a masterpiece I'd hate that movie.

  There's serious heavy violence in Light in August. Black guy has his testicles cut out by a white racist lunatic. Can you imagine that? Faulkner sure did. And that's the point: violence is nearly always imagined. It's second or third hand. Why is that?

  Maybe it's because violent people don't direct, write or paint very well. Too busy being violent. So it's left to real artists sitting in their chairs to describe violence from their imagination, which is always heavily influenced by the imaginations of others. And let's face it it's not a wide field. The metaphors are limited.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 22, 03:36pm

  "...violent people don't direct, write or paint very well. Too busy being violent. So it's left to real artists sitting in their chairs to describe violence from their imagination..."

  Not so sure about that. In fact, I know better. Artists, writers are not immune to the most human characteristic. Not all writers spend most of their time sitting in a chair. The thesis has holes through which you could drive a getaway car if you had to. I don't have to talk about my own self. Off the top of my head and in a few short minutes? Consider these:

  Norman Mailer stabbed his wife. Thom Jones was a boxer, the sport that requires more than a little violence at the core of one's psyche. Anne Perry helped murder her young friend's mother. Mark Read was a violent criminal. Richard Dadd, the painter, killed his father, tried to kill a stranger. Eadweard Muybridge, the photographer, shot his wife's lover. Mark Wahlberg has a history of violent crime from his youth.

  Just to name a few.

  The source for violent material is not so limited and neither is it always rooted in imagination. Some of the most classic forms of literature are rife with violence simply because it is and always has been commonplace. Shakespeare is so bloody that if they gave it thought, most parents would seek to ban the plays from libraries... but they don't. Why rail against some forms and not others?

  Maybe that's my real question. What is and is not acceptable? I'm curious about what people think.

• 
  J.A. Pak

  Sep 22, 06:11pm

  James, I wouldn't be surprised if Le Guin wrote flash. I recently found out she wrote poetry. In any case, my Le Guin comment was about the general violence question and not specifically about flash.

  I'm afraid I'm not up to taking the challenge myself. The closest I've ever gotten to violence in flash was my "Concentric" flash, which is pretty mild: http://fictionaut.com/stories/ja-pak/concentric. The truth is, I'd rather that my brain didn't get started down that direction.

• 
  David Ackley

  Sep 22, 06:42pm

  It's curious that you would cop to the portrayal of "Pointless violence," JLD when your most recent piece offers a series of justifications, and in fact, the makings of "a code," which offer exactly a point for the protagonist's planned act of murder. The same piece also says( to me, need I add)that even in flash, violence can be portrayed and justified. This isn't conventional morality, but it's fairly close to the code that Hemingway lived by and offered in his writing.I'm not sure that "pointless violence" can ever exist in a piece with serious aspirations to art, where almost everything in it either has to have or at least relate to a " point," though the point may be more an aesthetic than moral one. The world abounds in violence, and most of it is pointless, but when it is represented on the page, at least the portrayal of it has a point, always.

• 
  Mathew Paust

  Sep 22, 07:47pm

  It comes down to craft, as with all depictions. It works or it doesn't. Eamon makes the point easily by noting that GBU is "total violent right-wing macho cliche" and a masterpiece. JLD's flash piece was...perfect. doodle oodle-oo do do do, doodle oodle-oo do do dooooo...

• 
  whatwouldbukowskido

  Sep 22, 08:28pm

  "It works or it doesn't."

  Exactly.

  If it works, it works.
  If it don't it don't.

  Doesn't matter if it's
  violence or sex or drugs
  or tax evasion or first kisses
  or rock n' roll or political intrigueses
  or marital disharmonies or snips and snails
  and puppy-dogs' tails sugar and spice and everything nice.

  It's the equivalent of asking if power chords work in rock songs.

  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

  If it works it works.

  It's up to the artist and the needs of the material.

  Write hard, hoss!

• 
  whatwouldbukowskido

  Sep 22, 08:45pm

  "pointless violence"

  implies artlessness.

  Hungarian Rat Vampires

  (if artfully presented)

  would not be pointless.

• 
  eamon byrne

  Sep 22, 09:29pm

  James, I think my point was that it's hard to do violence well. So many modern examples in film, particularly, indulge completely in cliche. Action movies using excessive cgi effects are among the worst culprits. Of course my quip about real writers sitting in chairs was just that - a cheap quip. Like cheap violence, very easy to fall into making.

  On a completely different subject: Matt, is Hernia one of your fictional avatars, or Hernia, is Matt one of yours? Just asking.

• 
  whatwouldbukowskido

  Sep 22, 09:38pm

  "Just asking."

  No, you're not...

  ;-)

• 
  Mathew Paust

  Sep 22, 10:49pm

  Eamon, Hernia/Hungarian, et. al. *is* a Matt. Just not this one. That one's a writer. I just type.

• 
  eamon byrne

  Sep 23, 09:21pm

  that's me, always the last to know

• 
  Gary Hardaway

  Sep 24, 01:49am

  The Greeks always had the violence off stage. Yet, they were a violent culture. Go figure.

• 
  Mathew Paust

  Sep 25, 04:31pm

  I have the impression--not sure how I came to it--that while the Greeks were fierce warriors they eschewed barroom brawling.

• 
  David Ackley

  Sep 25, 06:41pm

  For "onstage" violence, "The Iliad," is unbeatable in ferocity graphically portrayed. The qualifier "pointless," somehow doesn't seem to apply to Homer, for a variety of reasons too boring to detail here.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 27, 12:56am

  My question is not a reflection of my taste... the concept of 'pointless violence' is something I get from others. I think it's a moral judgment, but it's not mine. Whether you subscribe to the Fall of Man theory or the concept of human evolution, you should recognize that violence in mankind is only a reflection of violence in nature.

  There are those who would say that violence in nature is merely a necessary point of survival, but watch a cat toy with its prey and tell me that again. Animals can be psychotic and some will kill merely because they can, or out of conflict, or because they are afraid. Even out of jealousy in mating season.

  I use violence in my fiction because I don't think people want to read about life presented as every day the same... get up, go to work, come home, go to bed.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  But say that during the mundane coming and going, you stop at a convenience store and the guy ahead of you in line is trying to come up with just the right words to say when he whips out a gun and tells the clerk to hand over the money... and the guy behind you is a gun enthusiast who has a license to carry and who has waited his entire life to have the opportunity to become a hero.

  Many people go through their entire lives without witnessing violence of one kind or another, but it's out there, always a possibility and when it's presented in fiction, it offers the writer an opportunity to explore the human condition in moments where character is tested.

  It's... interesting.

• 
  Lucinda Kempe

  Oct 03, 12:37am

  Well, what can you say about Hemingway's micros in the Vinca ed. of his short stories, almost all graphic depictions of gruesome violence? All violence has a point. Terror. Those who write it do so for many reasons, some making a point of showing the horror sans comment. Just the reason that Hem's little horror shows work so well.

• 
  Adam Sifre

  Oct 05, 10:40am

  Violence, sex and horror. Everything else is just window dressing.

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  James Lloyd Davis

  Oct 05, 05:51pm

  Hemingway's micros? I suppose you mean the unpublished stories? I.E. unfinished? I suppose they would be lacking comment, but can hardly be judged as finished works. Hemingway's 'horror shows' worked so well because he lived in an age of violence, experienced it first hand. Two world wars and the Spanish Civil War.

  If your world is a violent one, I suppose that's where meaningful conflict is expressed.

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