Plot Summaries are useful, aren’t they, especially in a pinch, like: “I didn’t finish this month’s book-club selection, but still want to participate in the discussion.” Yet the dangers posed by the “plot summary” percolates in my mind due to a recent conversation with a dear friend who, in addition to so many other things, graciously offers me her ear as a sounding board.
The subject of discussion was a long novel—an acknowledged masterwork of literature from the 19th century. As widely and carefully as my friend reads, this book had not yet crept onto her chopping board, so to speak. Since I talk about it so much, though, she decided to peek at a plot summary. Finding the typical, matter-of-fact recounting of characters and actions, she failed to see a single reason why anyone would devote days to reading this book. In short, the accurate plot summary inescapably turned the book into something unappealing. And she was right.
Yet, when she recounted this to me, I gasped. Afterwards, I composed an overly effusive email saying, “Oh dear, oh dear! But wait: despite what the plot summary says, the book is actually about a-b-c, plus m-n-o, topped off by glorious doses of x-y-z.” She received my protests with her usual thoughtfulness and, I suspect, when time allows, she will read it. Our exchange, though, raised a hitherto never-considered warning for me about plot summaries, not to mention similar endeavors that purport to present or summarize any kind of artistic masterwork.
The valuable content of a narrative work of art lies not in its characters and their actions, but rather in the invisible spaces above, behind, beneath, and between the characters and their actions. If you don’t believe this, take something you do regularly: perhaps the actions of making a cup of coffee, running a load of laundry, going out to the car to gather in “stuff,” or walking to the bus stop. Imagine a third eye regularly watching you do this thing, observing an apparent continuity in the action, day in, day out.
Yet inside of you runs a kaleidoscope of mental and emotional narratives that vary so much, you might as well be six different people doing this action on six different days. You could be delivering mental monologues that contrast as vastly as “I told him not to buy this brand of coffee, so why won’t he listen?” to “Ah, I’ve still got twenty minutes—what a lovely thing . . . I’ll make coffee.” If the action happened to be cleaning out the car, the range of possibilities is even more drastic, from “Look, here’s that five-dollar bill I lost!” to “If they do this again, I’m going to . . .”. You know how that one ends.
So what is a good author (librettist, composer, choreographer, painter) doing when he or she tells a story? Is not a major part of the creative effort focused on turning silent monologues inside of characters’ heads and invisible qualities of the story into clear, tangible content others can receive, absorb, and respond to? Is not each reading of a piece of good literature, each meditation before a grand painting, each occasion for seeing a drama on stage, actually an engagement with the silent information only the creative artist possesses?
The more nuanced, colorful, intense, or intriguing that silent information is, the more meaningful the reading, watching, or listening will be. As we change and grow, our reception of the shared, projected inner monologues of characters, as well as the patient recounting of beautifully crafted descriptions, touches us differently. Few of us can grasp, as young people, the intensity and reward that great works of art actually offer. For that realization, time is needed: time, experience, and the knocks of life that, hopefully, will leave us wiser.
Yet encounter masterworks as young folks we must. A first reading of David Copperfield, Crime & Punishment, The Scarlet Letter, Treasure Island, or countless other works is just that: a first reading. If it ends up being the last reading, then the reader has gained a lot. But that reader is left standing on the first, or perhaps second step of the scale of possibilities. That first or second step does offer a good view, but the ultimate view lies above, awaiting an opportunity to reveal itself.
The same principle applies to music. A first hearing of a work opens the door. A second hearing gathers listeners up and moves them a bit down the corridor. Repeated listenings, whether close together in time or across decades, open the doors along the corridor, and ultimately push the corridor apart to reveal the palatial hall in which the listener actually stands. Of course, players and singers experience this even more intensely. (Watch the faces of brass players, for example, engaged in performing Mahler, Bruckner, Sibelius, Brahms, or Shostakovich symphonies.)
Listen, too, not just to slickly made, digitally enhanced recordings of young virtuosi today, but to those rare, treasured recordings and video clips of artists like Arturo Rubinstein, Maria Callas, Vladimir Horowitz, Yasha Heifetz, Jussi Börling, Jacqueline du Pré, and so many others. Try to see, live or on recording, multiple performances of great theatrical works, like The Cherry Orchard, Hamlet, Our Town, or The Importance of Being Ernest. And if circumstances allow you to “visit” significant art works repeatedly, whether in museums or in public spaces, do so. For it will not be in the plot that great works of art reveal themselves.
