On Writing, Page 2
Method Writing (continued)
In Herman Wouk's epics The Winds of War and its sequel War and Remembrance, interspersed within the plot are the memoirs of a fictional German field marshal during WW II. Wouk—who is of Jewish heritage—effectively writes this character, from his point of view, and how this Prussian aristocrat rationalizes away the unmitigated evil of the Third Reich and even the Holocaust in a convincing manner—in the character's mind. I often wondered if writing this was distasteful for Mr. Wouk. If or if not, he is a professional with the rare capacity to put his mind into that of another's and faithfully report the character's motivations, thought processes and extenuations for his actions.
Satirists have long delighted in deriding "method acting," which teaches that an actor should try to "become" his character. That is, try to think, feel and respond as the character would. Nevertheless, Lee Strasberg's The Actors Studio has produced such celebrated actors as Al Pacino, Rod Steiger and Robert De Niro. Strasberg himself, after an absence of over thirty years from acting, rendered an extremely good and convincing performance as Hyman Roth in The Godfather, Part II.
Many of the writers I admire most, Shakespeare, Puzo, Graves and Wouk, to name a few salient examples, all seemed to have that rare gift of being able to fully understand another person, regardless how alien the character's nature might be to that of the writer's. I often wondered if such an apparent gift is simply a talent natural to such people from early childhood, or rather whether anyone can train himself or herself through some form of "method writing" to do likewise.
Are most writers doomed to strictly follow the oldest admonition to writers in the book: "Write what you know about," or can we heed the advice of an English teacher in a movie I once saw who retorted rhetorically: "What did Shakespeare know about Venetian Moors?"
My opinion on the subject follows.
