In a first-season episode of “Castle,” Martha tells her son
Richard, the bestselling mystery writer, “Research doesn’t pay the bills.” She’s certainly correct, as publishers pay Fiction
writers not for their research, but based upon sales figures. Nor do readers care how much research a
writer does. Their sole concern is how
entertaining they find his or her novels.
Yet writers need inspiration, and the stories they write need
grounding. So research, in one form or
another, seems like an intrinsic part of the writing process, as necessary to
the writer as it is for anyone who is paid based upon his knowledge as well as
his skills.
Nevertheless, I’ve often wondered if I have researched too
much, and written too little. Certainly
it’s easy to lose oneself in research. Occasionally research has only underlined all that I didn’t know
about a given subject, and intimidated me into not writing. I’ve often wondered how much of the research I’ve conducted
was absolutely necessary, and if it contributed to what I wrote in a meaningful
way. Or was research merely pandering to
my insecurities?
In her notes on the story “Handsome Andras,” contained in her book Folktales of Hungary, Linda Degh
describes the storyteller, Andras Albert, as “one of the most genuinely
creative storytellers in Hungarian oral literature.” She attributes this to the land in which he
worked as a lumberjack, but she also mentions that his superior abilities arise
from his unique mindset. Unlike most of
his contemporaries, he describes his life as a folktale, populated by
supernatural beings, characters from his own tales, and the heroic journeys he
undertook. He described, in
exacting detail, an airplane he built.
Unfortunately, it crashed in the forest, and he never found time to
build another. Still, he spent part of
his life in a cabin by a lake, where a dragon lived along its shores.
Life, they say, is full of compensations.
Linda Degh describes his story, “Handsome Andras,” as an
example of “the gifted storyteller who can build a complete story around an
incomplete episode. The main topic turns
on the hero’s wanderings. Well-known
tale elements are skillfully interwoven to thicken the plot before the final
entanglement. Thus a new story evolves.” This story offers numerous episodes and fantastic
elements, and utilizes motifs common to classic Hungarian folk literature. “The long wandering of the hero is described
with such dramatic sense that never for a moment does it become
uninteresting. The plot is cleverly
intricate; a dazzlingly picturesque world unfolds itself before us, and in a
fascinating manner the changing moods, the worries and anxieties of the hero
are poignantly described.”
At first glance, Degh seems to suggest that research is
unnecessary, that great stories arise solely from one’s ability to harness the
imagination. But a careful look at her
notes underlines that Albert “remodels the old form in so ingenious a manner
that instead of turning the tale into an individual literary composition, he
abides by the accepted pattern of folk narrative.”
Despite his extraordinary
imagination, it appears that Andras Albert would not have met the expectations of his audience,
had he not memorized the classic Hungarian folk tales, and understood why his
listeners loved them so much. So I guess I'll return to my research, even if the rewards of doing so are not immediately apparent. At least I can occasionally glance out my window, and watch the dragon lounging in my backyard.
This weekend, maybe I'll get started on that airplane.
Dragon Dave
