Load-Bearing Elements — Setting

SPOILER ALERT: These are the books discussed in today's post.

Okay, you're definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Whoa, Hypothetical Reader, don't be a buzzkill before we even get started.

Let me say that I am skeptical of the ability of Setting to sustain a reader's interest in a work of fiction.

Don't underestimate the power of good world-building.

Wait, we're only talking about made-up places?

No, let's stipulate that even if the Setting is a real place, a writer still needs to make their fictional version feel real to the reader.

I agree.

Good, so let's talk about some books with a strong sense of place!

Hmm, so we're going to talk about some assigned reading type book? But this time it's one where the setting is like another character or something cheese-y like that?

We are. It's actually a book that was the only assigned book in my Senior Thesis class at UC Santa Cruz.*

You went to UC Santa Cruz?

Yes.

Home of the Fighting Banana Slugs?

Yes. Can I get back on topic?

Sure, slug boy.

Well, actually, banana slugs are hermaphroditic, unless one of them gets its enormous penis stuck inside of its partner during mating, forcing the couple to chew it off.

I did not need to know that.

Anyway, let's talk about Steinbeck's Cannery Row, which you could almost say is more about the street for which it is named than it is about any of the myriad characters it portrays.

Bullshit, it's about Doc.

Well, sure, he's a central figure, but the whole thing starts like this:

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing."**

 The second to last chapter is about a god-damned gopher, the book is about Cannery Row, full stop.

Okay, I will concede that, while Doc is an important character, Cannery Row itself is the looming presence in the novel.

I know. Now it's kind of a tourist attraction, complete with a bust of John Steinbeck, who would've hated that. But it's also close to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is fun, so it's kind of a wash.  In any case, whether it's Doc's lab, Lee Chong's grocery, Mack's flophouse, Dora's whore house, etc, the novel is concerned about Cannery Row itself and the community it houses.

All right, all right. So we're going to make a jump to genre fiction now aren't we? We could talk about how the setting of the Harry Potter books helps JK Rowling write fun mystery stories.

Oh?

Yeah, I mean, it's a school, right? So that means that Harry, Ron, and Hermione are subject to any number of rules that act as a hindrance to their investigations. Whether they need to get access to the restricted section of the library or move about the castle after their bedtime, it means that Rowling doesn't have to invent artificial obstacles. Like could you imagine how plodding and meandering a Harry Potter novel might be without the constraints of the school schedule?

I mean, you're basically describing The Deathly Hallows in that last sentence.

Oh am I?

Yes. But it's okay, I still enjoyed Deathly Hallows in spite of its faults.  But you're right, in setting the novels at a school, Rowling also provides any number of opportunities for Harry to be given exposition by another character. Oh, are werewolves going to be important later in your narrative? It sure would be helpful if there were another character who could swoop in and make sure the readers know a little bit about how werewolves work in your setting.

Right?

Right.

But I don't think Hogwarts really makes sense as a place.

Come again.

Well, it's more of a feeling than a believable Setting. It's a place where Harry feels he belongs and it's a convenient narrative conceit, but the Wizarding World doesn't really hold up to serious scrutiny. Like how does magic work?

That's not really important. Also, I don't know. In any case, the setting of Hogwarts exists for precisely the reasons you've said, it serves a narrative function.  Sometimes an author will do the reverse.

Create a narrative solely for the sake of the Setting?

Well, sort of. That's right, we're talking about The Lord of the Rings!

Must we?

I'll be brief. Look, it's a well-known trivia fact that Tolkien's hobby of creating conlangs led to his creation of Middle-Earth and all its inhabitants and so on and so forth.

And?

Well, sometimes, in reading LotR, it feels Tolkien is more interested in lovingly describing the involved genealogies and bucolic country-side of his invented setting than he is in the progress of the world-saving quest that his heroes are on. And he's definitely more interested in sharing snippets of his invented languages.

True, but you could argue that those further the depth of Middle-Earth and make it feel more like a real place than, say, Rowling's Wizarding World. That sense of history gives the story its epic scope.

Huh, for someone who was reluctant to jump into this Tolkien discussion you sure are keen to defend him.

Whatever. Are there any other examples you want to drag out?

Well, my thesis was about how Philip K. Dick portrays two different sci-fi visions of San Fransisco in The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but this is already getting a bit long. So, what have we learned?

That whether or not your Setting is believable it can still serve a narrative purpose. But be careful about making it too believable, then someone on the internet will complain about how it distracts from the objectively awesome story you're telling?

Huh, you really are more into Tolkien than you let on, HR.

Just don't bring up the eagles.

Noted.

*That is to say, the only reading assigned to everyone, the class was titled "Regions and Writers in California," so once we'd all chosen our topics, we were pretty much on our own. My thesis was about Philip K. Dick, obvs.

** Steinbeck, John. Cannery Row. Penguin Books, 1994. New York. p 5. Orginally published by Viking Books in 1945.