DIRECT AND INDIRECT GENERATION

Fictional truths can be generated either directly or indirectly. I call directly generated ones primary and indirectly generated ones

implied.

Goya's No Se Puede Mirar from The Disasters of War shows the bound victims of an execution by firing squad and the muzzles of guns pointing at them. It does not show the soldiers wielding the guns; they are outside the picture frame. Yet there can be no doubt that there are soldiers (or anyway people) holding the guns. We know that there are because of the position of the guns. It would be perverse, a willful misinterpretation, to maintain that the guns are hanging in midair

The fact that fictionally the guns are pointing at the prisoners is more than a reason for believing it to be fictional that soldiers are wielding them; it makes this so. The position of the guns is responsi- ble for the presence of the soldiers in the picture world; it is fictional that there are soldiers because it is fictional that there are guns posi- tioned as they are. The former fictional truth is thus dependent on, implied by, the latter; it is generated indirectly.

At the end of Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent Mrs. Verloc commits suicide by jumping from a cross-Channel ferry. Nowhere in the novel is it said in so many words that she does this. But her suicide is clearly indicated in the following passage, together with the fact, established earlier, that she was traveling to the Continent: Ossipon, as if suddenly compelled by some mysterious force, pulled a much-folded newspaper out of his pocket. The Professor raised his head at the rustle.

"What's that paper? Anything in it?" he asked. Ossipon started like a scared somnambulist.

"Nothing. Nothing whatever. The thing's ten days old. I forgot it in my pocket, I suppose."

But he did not throw the old thing away. Before returning it to his pocket he stole a glance at the last lines of a paragraph. They ran thus:

"An impenetrable mystery seems destined to hang for ever over this act of madness or despair."

Such were the end words of an Item of news headed: "Suicide of Lady Passenger from a cross-Channel Boat." Comrade Ossipon was familiar with the beauties of its journalistic style.2

The fact that fictionally this headline appeared in a newspaper shortly after Mrs. Verloc had embarked for the Continent (together with certain other circumstances) makes it fictional that Mrs. Verloc com- mitted suicide. It is fictional that she jumped from the boat because it is fictional that the headline read as it did;3 the latter fictional truth implies the former.

Fictional truths on which others are based may themselves depend on still more basic ones. The fact that fictionally the newspaper con- tained the revealing headline is probably implied by the fact that fictionally the narrator reported that it did. That fictionally there are

2.The Secret Agent, p. 2,49.

3. This is not to say that fictionally it is because of the headline that she jumped. Nor is the world of Goya's print a peculiar one in which the existence of soldiers depends on the existance and position of guns.

guns aimed at the prisoners may be implied by the fact that fictionally there appear to be guns so aimed. It may not be easy to find incontro- vertible examples of primary fictional truths, ones generated directly by marks on canvas or words on paper rather than via the generation of others. But it will be convenient to assume, temporarily (see § 4.4), that there must be such, that every representation generates a core of primary fictional truths that depend on no others, and that are responsible, indirectly, for whatever other fictional truths it genera- tes.4

Fictional truths breed like rabbits. The progeny of even a few pri- mary ones can furnish a small world rather handsomely. We are usually entitled to assume that characters have blood in their veins, just because they are people, even if their blood is never mentioned or described or shown or portrayed. It is fictional in La Grande Jatte that the couple strolling in the park eat and sleep and work and play; that they have friends and rivals, ambitions, satisfactions, and disap- pointments; that they live on a planet that spins on its axis and circles the sun, one with weather and seasons, mountains and oceans, peace and war, industry and agriculture, poverty and plenty; and so on and on and on. All this is implied, in the absence of contrary indications, by the fact that fictionally they are human beings.

Many such implied fictional truths are generated more or less by default, and many are of no particular interest (although if it were fictional that people did not have blood in their veins or births or ambitions, this fictional truth would be noteworthy). Some indirectly generated fictional truths are needed as background, even if they are not to be focused on. We have seen how a novelist can, economically and without undue emphasis, make it fictional that a large industrial city in an island nation with democratic and imperialist traditions and so on is the setting for various events simply by arranging for it to be fictional that they occur in London. The latter fictional truth implies all the others.

Implied fictional truths are by no means invariably or even typically relegated to the background, however. Sometimes the most promi- nent and significant ones are generated indirectly. A few offhand remarks by a character or a telling gesture may establish, elegantly and precisely, crucial characteristics of his personality or motives. Fictional truths of central interest in a portrait-ones concerning mood, tension, repose, resignation-may be implied by fictional

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4. Some fictional truths depend partly on others and partly on features of the work, independently of their generation of other fictional truths.

truths about the topography of the sitter's face. Indeed, implied fic- tional truths may vastly overshadow those on which they depend. The latter sometimes have little or no significance apart from what they imply; we may not attend to or even notice them while marveling at their progeny. Readers of a novel may be struck powerfully by a character's determination or insecurity or optimism without being able to say, or caring, what fictional truths concerning his actions or words or others' comments about him are responsible for it. Even close inspection of a painting may fail to reveal which fictional truths about the lay of a person's face imply fictional truths, themselves utterly obvious, about his expression or mood-or indeed whether the latter are implied by the former at all rather than generated in some other way. It is clearly misleading to say that, in general, appre- ciators infer implied fictional truths from those on which they are based. Sometimes the very indirectness of its generation gives a fic- tional truth prominence, especially when it would be easy to generate it more directly; a little coyness in constructing representations, here as elsewhere, whets the appetite and focuses attention.

Implication is close to indispensable for the generation of certain fictional truths in certain media. How can silent movies portray sounds, or paintings and still photographs movement? In Sternberg's

Docks of New York the sudden rising of a flock of birds establishes

that a shot has been fired, with no help from a soundtrack.5 It may be fictional in a picture that someone is running or jumping because it is fictional that both of her feet are off the ground simultaneously, in a configuration most unlikely for someone who is not running or jumping.

In addition to warning against taking directly generated fictional truths to be, in general, either more important or more obvious than indirectly generated ones, or supposing that their discovery is less inferential, we must be careful not to identify primary fictional truths with ones that are made "explicit" in the work nor to presume that implied ones are presented "implicitly." We shall see that the fic- tionality of what a novel explicitly "says" or a picture explicitly "shows," if it is fictional at all, may well depend on the fictionality of propositions the work expresses only "implicitly." (See § 4.4.) By "indirectly generated" fictional truths I mean simply ones that depend on other fictional truths; "primary" or "directly generated" ones do not. Let's not jump to conclusions about what else goes with being primary or implied.

Our investigation of the machinery by which fictional truths are generated will have to take account of principles of two different kinds: principles of direct generation, which say simply that if a work has or contains certain words or marks or whatever, such-and-such propositions will be fictional, and principles of implication, which specify what fictional truths are implied given the core of primary ones. Let us look first at principles of implication.