Authorship, the craft of writing, hooks the author and reader together in a complex, personal relationship. The novice writer perhaps believes that in writing a bestseller he or she is writing for a mass market. Nevertheless, the author must remain aware that he or she is really writing to an audience of one, speaking to the reading world one soul at a time, touching one individual heart and mind. Every reader who opens a novel embarks on a relationship with an unseen author; he or she prepares to be seduced, flattered, amused, stimulated and intellectually and emotionally aroused.
The Writing Hook - the Author as Seducer
Most authors have at least a superficial awareness of this personal relationship: new writers always want to learn how to ‘hook the reader’ – this widely-used expression leaves no doubt that the author-reader relationship involves seduction and entrapment. The author as seducer has an obligation to meet the reader’s expectations, provide a satisfying emotional experience and never abuse that profound trust.
Some authors have pondered and explored this remarkable, tantalising relationship more deeply: Australian author Elizabeth Jolley has made it the subject of a bitingly funny, moving novel: Miss Peabody’s Inheritance. It is a delightful story, but would-be authors should read it for what it says about the trust-relationship involved in offering a work of fiction to the reader.
Miss Peabody's Inheritance by Elizabeth Jolley
Miss Peabody’s Inheritance is a deceptively simple, funny story; should readers doubt that it holds a far deeper significance, then the powerful, short opening sentence should sends shivers of warning down their spine.
The nights belong to the novelist.
Elizabeth Jolley delighted in portraying isolated, lonely or eccentric misfits. As the very name suggests, Miss Peabody is one such person. The lonely English spinster takes her greatest pleasure in reading romances by an Australian author whose works tend to have a romantic, erotic flavor. Miss Peabody, we learn, has written a fan letter to author Diane Hopewell and a correspondence has begun – a correspondence which includes chapters from Diana’s latest unpublished manuscript.
Thus, the reader gets two stories: the manuscript, with comments on the characters and the writing process by Diana herself; and that of Dorothy Peabody (or Dotty, as her bed-ridden aged mother so aptly calls her) and her response to the text. We enter the familiar reading process with Dotty as she assesses characters, tries to figure out clues, hidden meanings and implications, and basically 'what will happen next'.
The Reader's Involvement in the Fictional World
Both the exterior and interior stories are touching and told with wry, dark humour. Miss Peabody frequently fantasizes, constructs heroic images of Diana astride her beloved horses in the Australian Outback, and finally tips over into an insane fantasy: when the manuscript’s characters make a trip to London, Miss Peabody takes the train to London, because she is sure she will recognize them in the street. Most readers will empathise with how real and powerful beloved fictional characters can become.
The would-be writer must peer below the surface and see that the letters Diane sends Miss Peabody constitute a slow literary seduction. It reminds us that, as writers, our business is seducing the reader, getting them to linger for one page more, as we manipulate them and toy with their feelings.
Suspension of Disbelief
Miss Peabody’s Inheritance looks at how the created world of the story can become, for many of us, a very real world and explores the links and strong parallels between our real lives and fiction.
In one letter, Diana Hopewell summarises the very nature of fiction writing: "There is, too, a thin line between truth and fiction, and there are moments in the writing of fantasy and imagination where truth is suddenly revealed."
SOURCE: Elizabeth Jolley, Miss Peabody's Inheritance, UQP, St Lucia,1987.
