A gifted storyteller wrote:
A man hit his dog on the head.
At first, I took this to be the finest story I had ever read. Concise and spare, it did precisely what a good story should do: it created a space into which I could make an imaginative leap. First, I wondered about the man, the principal character and subject of the story’s only sentence. Given that he was the sort of man who felt inclined to hit dogs, I decided that he must be a cruel man. For that reason, I imagined him with a mustache. Second, I wondered about the dog, the recipient of the man’s abuse and object of the story’s only sentence. What breed of dog? A man who hits a dog is necessarily a coward, so it could not be a breed that is assertive, like a Bullmastiff, a German Shepherd, or a Doberman Pinscher. At the same time, it could not be a small breed like a Pomeranian or a Dachshund, as those are lower to the ground and more susceptible to kicks than to hits. I envisioned a larger breed with a passive temperament—a standard poodle. A man with a mustache struck his standard poodle on the head. As representational fiction, the story worked its alchemy: it drew me in and persuaded me that the man and his dog inhabited a reality which intersects my own.
But, of course, it can be a dangerous thing to accord too much agency to a reader in the telling of a story. It occurred to me that I have a favourite chair which I have named Dog. When the man hit his dog, maybe he was hitting a chair. In this rendering, the story ceases to make sense. The man hit his dog on the head, and everyone knows that a chair does not have a head.
The problem arises from the fact that we assume our story is representational fiction. Plato is perhaps the first person to have offered a theory of representational fiction. How does a “man” signify a man? How does a “dog” signify a dog? How does the written statement of an action correspond to that action in the reader’s world? Plato said that we experience things as instances of generalized forms. In fiction, the author’s words reference the forms; the reader’s imagination instantiates them.
I’m inclined to adopt a different view of things. I look to the affective impact of the story. What do I feel when I hear the words A man hit his dog on the head? On this account, it may not be necessary for me to know what the story’s words signify. I could be a native Mandarin speaker with no exposure to the English language and still understand the story. The blunt force of those Teutonic words conveys the sense of a violent act. It is there in a feeling on the tongue. It is there in the sounds that issue from the lips. It is there in the force that strikes the body, the absolute physicality of it.
A man hit his dog on the head.