The Proper Distance

Issue 174

Troy, 2013

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A lot of trouble could have been avoided if Mr. Darcy had simply sent a text. Or if Don Quixote could have looked up a few facts along the way. How about if K. had GPS in his pocket? Even a single email would have made Odysseus’ journey more pleasant. Certainly both Romeo and Juliet would have appreciated short, informative, and timely voicemails.

To the detriment of all these unfortunate characters, however, coincidence and chance and lost opportunity are often the hinge on which drama swings. The old line that story “occurs when a story goes wrong” has some truth: there’s a reason that most stories about bank robberies are stories about failed bank robberies, just as stories about missing flights are much better than stories about making flights. So the usual trick to trigger a bit of tension—to the detriment, once again, of all those poor characters trapped inside stories—involves missed connections, unexpected encounters, mistaken conclusions.

And distance has always been the cruel writer’s tool to achieve this drama: some physical distance between the characters, some temporal distance between actions. A classic way to make a perfectly humdrum story go wrong is through a bit of physical coincidence, so the letter isn’t read in time, the phone call is missed, the stranger is spotted in the park. The passions that are fundamental to drama—jealously, rage, revenge, betrayal, despondency, to list a few favorites—come alive through misunderstandings and misjudgments, which means that the ignorant character, obstructed by some physical barrier, is the cruel writer’s friend, while the calm and sincere character who always returns favors and who ensures that all professional and social and ethical responsibilities are fulfilled—isn’t the character that usually gets the leading role in the novel.

But what happens once every character has instant access to every other character? There can still be misunderstandings—or perhaps, interestingly, even more misunderstandings—but the timeworn principle of physical distance as a spur to drama isn’t possible with immediate connection. A character with a mobile phone or another technological link is a character who can always call for help, ask for details, or try to find clarification. Characters with phones can’t become lost, yet that’s a timeless fictional plot. And, in reverse, a character with a phone can always be reached, which is a real hinderance to many classic plots.

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What intrigues me—especially when it comes to drama—is how the change in distance between characters begins to influence how characters perceive the world around them. In the contemporary world, everyone is crammed inside the same room, always in touch with even the most distant person, forever just a few clicks away from a connection and only left isolated through deliberate choice. And this shrinking of all distances and relentless, constant interaction does alter how we think about physical distance—which might involve travel to overcome but no longer involves a loss of connection. All the trials and thresholds and transitions that come about during travel are now unrelated to the difficulties that arise from isolation.

Nearly every story involves travel, too, even if the trip is metaphoric rather than literal. For countless fables and mythologies and adventures, there’s no evading the symbolism: the story ignites from a departure, leads to a journey, and ends with an arrival, with some tales even including a return. And the hardships of travel are frequently linked to the lessons of travel, yet those hardships mostly arise because of the difficulties of distance—a separation from the familiar, estrangement from other characters, struggles with the journey. There’s no potential to double check arrival times and messages are rather suspiciously left unread. The examples are endless, and cover everything from Homer’s The Odyssey, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Jack Kerouac’s On The Road.

Echos of a journey, one that’s intrinsically human, come through all of these narratives: take a cautious but decisive step away from the campfire and into the unknown, learn or discover or conquer, and then, most importantly, bring back your story—with the entire journey taking place in isolation and without the comfort of checking in on those still at home. You’re alone, and that remains the case until you complete your journey. If, when you do return, you grab the attention of those around the fire, make them laugh, open their eyes, help them to sleep, then the job is complete.

One obvious yet unstated aspect for all these stories is that what’s lugged back home must have required some effort. Whether it’s knowledge that you’ve gained, an experience that you’ve suffered, or a place that you’ve discovered—the journey influences the endpoint. But the journey is obviously quite different if you’re checking your GPS or confirming through text the exact meaning of the last conversation or leaving voicemails to confirm the meeting.

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And you might have also noticed that many contemporary stories have a hilarious abundance of broken phones, missed calls, and double-booked schedules—because it is certainly troublesome for the cruel writer when every character can always reach every other character. Most intriguing to me, however, is the emergence of the overly-emotional character who refuses to talk during an argument: they won’t answer phone calls, won’t return texts, yet the story must plug along. This seems like a particularly annoying trope that won’t fade anytime soon. A protagonist a few decades ago was forced to travel a long distance to have a difficult conversation. A protagonist today, however, is forced to deal with a more callous antagonist, one who refuses to talk and reconcile, enabling the isolation and drama that once resulted from distance.

What’s obvious but still notable is that our stories simply reflect our lives. Just like your favorite character, you, too, have less separation from your friends, family, and enemies—however porous those groups—in the contemporary world. What’s the longest you were unreachable by anyone in the last year? What’s the longest that your ancestors were unreachable in an average year? If you had a mistaken conclusion about someone close, would distance or connection or circumstances out of your control prevent a reconciliation? Or could only stubbornness and a refusal to connect—rather than an inability—keep the drama alive? For the typical person, there’s more planning, certainly more structure, and a much fuller calendar than in the past—which does reduce the potential for chance. If you squint and consider the contemporary world, a world where everyone is connected, then it starts to resemble a drama where all the characters are confined to a sole setting, perhaps even a single room, regardless of the actual distance between characters.

The instinct to explore, to depart, won’t vanish from storytelling, it will merely follow a different path, one that’s more internal and balanced by contemporary technology. Finding a cocoon of comfort and staying forever near the fire where it is warm will remain a most inhuman act, though the first steps away from camp won’t resemble our timeworn, fundamental tales, because there’s now, alas, a electronic leash that can instantly end the most solitary journey. A long trip or irreconcilable distance becomes an insufficient technique in literature once all trips are short and no distance prevents connection. What remains, instead, is the cerebral, the internal, the transformation that occurs while the eyes are closed.