In his 1933 essay, “One Hundred False Starts,” F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed that, as writers, we write about two or three experiences in our lives that we constantly disguise and rework. The quote is reproduced in full in Matthew J. Bruccoli’s Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald:
Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.
Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen.
(1981)
Fitzgerald has made three assertions in this statement: first, that authors must repeat; second, that we only have two or three stories to tell; and third, that authors write those same stories over and over in different disguises. In order to fully address each of these, I will split my argument into three corresponding parts. First, I will discuss repetition present in the writing of both professional and ‘new and emerging’ writers. I will then agree using Freud’s repetition compulsion and the role of repetition in imagination, that authors are compelled to repeat ourselves. Last, I will argue that though authors may have many moments in their life worth writing, they have only a few experiences about which they need to write.
Fitzgerald states that authors tell their few stories, disguised, over again. This is true of writers everywhere, from new, young writers to published authors. Children’s author, Andrea Mack, posed the question, “Do you ever look back on your old writing and see common threads or themes that you can’t seem to escape?” on her blog and sparked a discussion between fans and fellow writers about the instances of this repetition they’ve noticed occurring in their writing (2012). Looking at my own work, I see both repeated themes and character archetypes—common in my fiction is the theme of oppression (particularly for something that is an intrinsic part of identity). I also questioned writing peers: one found she leant towards “stories with soul mates in them and unrequited love,” and her female protagonists were often “insecure and emotional” (B. Parthenay, personal communication, April 16, 2013) and another noticed her inclination to write about the way “good and bad relationships coincide,” “fresh starts,” “nonverbal communication, escapism/ignoring mortality, and the will to survive” (C. Mullins, personal communication, April 16, 2013). Judy Stone-Goldman discusses this in her 2011 blog post, saying she recurrently writes about “[p]rocrastination, delay, and fear along the path to action” and “[h]olding on versus letting go,” among others. She found that these themes showed up throughout her work, to various degrees and in different disguises, and that they “link stories of many decades and bring [her] into the present” (2011). This repetition is true of even the most famous authors; Fitzgerald admits to it by virtue of making such a statement, and Charles Dickens has a number of recurring themes throughout his body of work, among them debt, hypocrisy, hidden/secret identities, and spouse abuse, which are often handled in similar ways (n.d.). Much of John Irving’s writing contains “[b]ears, absent parents, New England, deadly accidents, wrestling and a category timidly referred to as ‘sexual variations’” (Volmers, 2009) and Franz Kafka’s work “insistently, unrelentingly [recurs] to an unresolved anxiety” (Bercovitch, 1968, p. 613). Sara Zarr describes “recurring themes as being part of a writer’s DNA,” as being something “deeply embedded in us” (n.d.). She believes that this occurrence in writing is simply a reflection of real life (n.d.).
There is a misconception that repetition is mutually exclusive to imagination when the two are actually necessary to creative writing. In his essay Imagination and Repetition in Literature, Casey examines this idea; he explains that “at their most basic level of activity, both repetition and imagination have to do with absence” (1975, p. 251). Repetition is a way to hold onto what is absent—or what will be absent—“from present perception or possession, unavailable to action or cognition” and imagination “can be seen as a means of coping with the inevitable unfulfilment of human desires and expectations” (Casey, 1975, p. 251-252). But the two concepts are more closely linked even than that—in order to do one, often you must also do the other. To imagine, for example, a cup of water, that image is being mentally repeated, “reinstating it [in the mind], however hastily” and, in an “attempt to repeat something, [you] must often at the same time imagine what precise form such a repetition will take or what its effect will be” (Casey, 1975, p. 252). It is in this way that both are equally and wholly necessary to creative writing: to bring a work of fiction to the finishing stages, there needs to be repetition and imagination in not only the prose and story but also in the process (you cannot continue to create and imagine if you never remember what you have done so far). Repetition is also deeply entwined with life itself. Freud first became aware of this “shortly after World War I,” when he discovered that “in certain instances dreams and play patterns expressed not a disguised wish fulfilment but, on the contrary, a recurrence [of] trauma and terror” (Bercovitch, 1968, p. 610). He believed that this repetition compulsion was a “pre-libidinal…instinct” and reasoned that when a “threatening excitation” occurs too intensely to be controlled, that “a primary psychic urge drives [the person] back again and again to the point of shock—in an effort at rearming the subject…for self-preservation” (Bercovitch, 1968, p. 610). That is, the trauma is repeated until such a point that the person is no longer affected and resolution can be reached. Freud (cited in Ganteau & Onega, 2013, p. 73) explained that “[i]n the unconscious mind we can recognise the dominance of a compulsion to repeat, which proceeds from instinctual impulses.” He further stated, “It is strong enough to override the pleasure principle” (Ganteau & Onega, 2013, p. 73). The repetition compulsion is “neither verifiable nor refutable” (Bercovitch, 1968, p. 610); it remains a theory. But if we take this theory as true, then it lends credence to Fitzgerald’s argument that “we authors must repeat ourselves” (Bruccoli, 1981). The key word of this phrase is must; Fitzgerald believed that authors have no choice but to repeat. Above are two critical reasons why I agree with this statement: first, the connection inherent between repetition and imagination, and how they function together in creative writing, and second, the psychoanalytic belief that humans hold within them an instinctive compulsion to repeat.
In any author’s life, there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of moments that are worth writing, but the person who experiences them, coloured by their particular point of view, will only ever be so moved and so deeply affected by certain moments—perhaps two or three, like Fitzgerald said, or less or more—that (s)he finds them worthy of rendering in the written word. An explanation of why these experiences are being repeated over and over is because they are issues that the author is subconsciously trying to process or understand; through creating a narrative, the author is attempting to reach a resolution. If we return to the concepts of the previous paragraph, both were connected to that same destination. Repetition and imagination are both about lack of resolution—they are a “means of coping with the inevitable unfulfilment of human desires and expectations” (Casey, 1975, p. 252). The example of World War I soldiers experiencing a repetition of the horrors they saw, in what would now be referred to as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, involved, as Freud (cited in Bercovitch, 1968, p. 610) explained, an attempt at “mastering the amounts of stimulus which [had] broken in and…binding them, in a psychical sense, so that they [could] be disposed of,” and this disposal is a type of resolution. None of this is solely the domain of writers though; Morgan calls humans “interpreting beings” and further states that “[w]e all have daily experiences of events that we seek to make meaningful” (Morgan, 2000). A way that we make meaning is to translate the experience into a sequence of linked events to create a narrative (Morgan, 2000). It is possible that fiction writers have stumbled across their best technique of making meaning from their lives and creating resolution. Literature, and the act of writing, can have a therapeutic effect. Bercovitch writes, “…literature represents not a fantasy but a vital confrontation with reality; and it makes concrete…that creativity involves ‘the development of the ego toward mastery of its…environment’” (1968, p. 610-611). Creativity is related to the “binding” described by Freud, and by writing, it is possible to, in fact, “overcome the ‘distressing excitation’” and “deal with reality” (Bercovitch, 1968, p. 611). Pennebaker (cited in Henke, 2000, p. xi) expresses the value of writing to psychological health, presenting evidence that “the very process of articulating painful experiences, especially in written form, can itself prove therapeutic” (Henke, 2000, p. xi), and, in 2001, Golden stated that “creative writing does [him] a lot of good.” The link between repetition and creative writing is in their mutual connection to imagination; a rich imagination means you are more likely to write fiction and, therefore, to write your repetitions into that work.
F. Scott Fitzgerald believed that authors must repeat themselves, and that each of us only has two or three stories that we are retelling in various disguises. This is a theory and—like Freud’s—it is “neither verifiable nor refutable” (Bercovitch, 1968, p. 610), but I agree with the argument he has made for the reasons stated above. Repetition is instinctual and part of being human; we repeat until we have mastered the “object,” until we reach a resolution we find satisfactory. Authors carry that instinct into their creative endeavours and we see this in the recurrence of stories, themes, character archetypes and analogies in their fiction.
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References
Bercovitch, S. (1968). Literature and the repetition compulsion. College English, 29(8), 607-615. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.ecu.edu.au/
Bruccoli, M.J. (1981). Some sort of epic grandeur: The life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York City, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Retrieved from http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/bio/bruccoli-somesort.html
Casey, E. (1975). Imagination and repetition in literature: A reassessment. Yale French Studies, 52, 249-267. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.ecu.edu.au/
Ganteau, J.M. & Onega, S. (2013). Trauma and romance in contemporary British literature. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis. Retrieved from http://reader.eblib.com.au/
Golden, L. (2001). Creative Writing as Therapy. The Family journal, 9(2), 201-202. Retrieved from http://tfj.sagepub.com.ezproxy.ecu.edu.au/
Henke, S.A. (2000). Shattered subjects: Trauma and testimony in women’s life writing. London, England: Macmillan. Retrieved from https://library.ecu.edu.au/
Mack, A. (2012, February 24). Recurring themes in your writing [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://andrea-mack.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/recurring-themes-in-your-writing.html
Morgan, A. (2000). What is narrative therapy? : An easy-to-read introduction. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications. Retrieved from http://www.dulwichcentre.com.au/what-is-narrative-therapy.html
Recurring themes in the works of Charles Dickens. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://suite101.com/article/recurring-themes-in-the-works-of-charles-dickens-a124708
Stone-Goldman, J. (2011, March 28). Haven’t I read this before? Recurring themes in writing and life. Retrieved from http://judystonegoldman.com/havent-i-read-this-before-recurring-themes-in-writing-and-life/
Volmers, E. (2009, November 21). Recurring themes. The gazette. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.ecu.edu.au/docview/434880681
Zarr, S. (n.d.). Recurring themes (or, are my issues really that obvious?). Retrieved from http://www.powells.com/essays/sarazarr.html
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