Classifying Books by Mood Induced, not Plot

[Extollager]

I wonder if this will get some good discussion going:

How about classifying some literary works that matter to you by the predominant mood they induce?

For example, I find that in some of my favorites a solemn wonder prevails: Tucker's The Year of the Quiet Sun, Budrys's Rogue Moon, parts of Hodgson's Night Land that I have been able to finish, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, etc.

I expect the most difficult part will be pinning down the word or words that express the quality that we value. I tried to put into a brief expression the quality of Chesterton's Man Who Was Thursday and, so far, haven't succeeded.* It would be easy to call it an "inventive spoof-thriller," but that is not a description of the mood or predominant imaginative effect of reading the book.

The effort might be worthwhile, though. I think that, in many situations when we are talking about books we cherish, it isn't really, or primarily, the plot or genre that captivates us, but the mood. We can spend decades talking about our favorites and think that we have expressed what it is that we cherish... yet never really do so. For example, I suspect that many people who are captivated by Lovecraft think they are deeply impressed by his philosophy, but, could they but put it into words, what they really value is a mood his work induces in them. Even thinking of his philosophy may be valued more for the mood it evokes in them than, strictly speaking, its tenets. But if someone wants to debate what I've said about Lovecraft, I would beg him or her to start a thread at the dedicated Lovecraft site here at Chrons.

Can anyone do anything with the proposal I've made in this posting? I fear that, otherwise, I'll end up posting a few more thoughts of my own and then the thread will become inactive.

*Whatever it is, it is something the Chesterton book has in abundance, while perhaps Phil Dick tried for it in Galactic Pot-Healer and didn't succeed in evoking it. In me, at least. This proposal is a fairly subjective matter, I suppose.

 

[Michael Colton]

The subjectivity of it is a difficulty. While it is true that all genre and literary things have a smattering of subjectivity, this one is almost pure subjectivity.

 

[Randy M.]

I agree about Lovecraft. He was attempting to create a mood and frequently succeeded.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Ebullience and enthusiasm, wonder, openness to joy, to each of life's experiences, to life itself. Childlike in the best possible way. In one sense, this is a stylistic trick that Bradbury pulls off. His unnamed (as I recall) narrator is open to sense impressions that flow onto the page seemingly without filter. Many of his short stories are also memorable largely for the mood they evoke: "The Foghorn" -- wonder; "Homecoming" -- melancholy and sadness.


Randy M.

 

[Extollager]

Would it be possible to discuss the mood actually evoked by a work, as distinct, sometimes, from the mood that might seem appropriate to the overt agenda of a story?

For example, what I think really draws some readers to Lovecraft is a mood of adventurous expectancy. I for one have never really taken very seriously his characteristic pronouncements about the dire consequences of learning things we mortals would be better off remaining ignorant of.

Also, in HPL there's often the idea of only a very few knowing things the great majority don't know, and I think that some readers feel and enjoy that sense of exclusiveness. Since we live in a culture that endlessly promotes egalitarianism, access for all to whatever and the shaming of any impulses to exclusiveness (old-fashioned social clubs for men only as now unthinkable institutions), the sense Lovecraft's fiction evokes may subtly gratify an impulse that is discouraged by our culture's many official monitors and of which we may ourselves think we disapprove.

Or take Tolkien. On an overt level his writing is a fantastically elaborate made-up world, a man's lifelong self-pleasing gratification of the game of inventing one's own languages and so on. But I find that the mood evoked by his writing is (often) a pleasant but humbled interest in ordinary natural things and social pleasures. The great Tom Shippey says that reading Tolkien turns people into bird-watchers, tree-spotters, hedgerow-grubbers, and he might have added, star-observers. When I walk my dog in a wooded area near my house and look up through bare winter branches at stars, the mood evoked by Tolkien is close by. Likewise, the enjoyment of "good talk" is evoked by Tolkien and one may find that one is more conscious of what one's enjoying, when one enjoys it, thanks to Tolkien.

If any of this makes sense to you, then the next question is, what are other literary works that evoke similar -moods-? They might not be very similar to Lovecraft or Tolkien or whomever as regards plots and genre, but perhaps they are close as regards feeling.

In other words, I might get a more truly "Tolkienian" mood from reading, say, Thoreau's essay "Wild Apples," than I would get by picking up some multiple-volume fantasy series.

I'm actually quite convinced of this. For some readers, at least, there's a hidden affinity between books that may, outwardly, be quite unlike, and the cultivation of this sense may become one of the main activities of a reading life.

Yet till we realize it, we may go one reading works that seem, outwardly, obviously close to our favorites, and not really recognizing that we are getting only a superficial and unsatisfying "similarity." I am thankful that I realized quite early on that I get almost nothing of what I like in HPL from many of his epigones. I'd probably get more of what it is I like in Lovecraft from an antiquarian essay by Charles Lamb than from a horror-monger like Robert Bloch.

I'm making a number of comments above and hope that their all being in one message won't lead to folks picking up just one -- whether folks agree or disagree.