Use of Detail in Novel, Haiku and Photograph

I was thinking about the difference between novel writing and haiku poetry. In a novel, detail is included, in a haiku, detail is omitted, except for those exquisite details that distill from the experience to represent it.

The advice to writers is to write what you know. A novel or haiku starts with a preexisting experience, something from the life of the writer or from an intense experience ("haiku moment," which is distinct from just having an idea or taking one from memory), which is like a photograph. The haiku may be more photographic than the novel, since the novel requires the author generate much more of the picture. In haiku, the reader supplies half of the picture. This is like painting compared to photography, where each begins with the scene, but the camera captures the scene and the painter generates the scene. Each process may be equivalent, since the photographer manipulates the scene through the camera in much the same way the painter manipulates the scene naturally through the process of constructing the image. One just requires more skill at capture time than the other, the camera instantaneous and automatic, the painter lengthy and detailed.

Setting out to write a novel, the author must collect experiences in the smallest detail for inclusion in the story. A novel would be painfully brief if it were not for rich detail filling the pages. The novelist must pay attention to how people speak, the language they use in conversation, the detail in the world around them, like a reporter, recording detail for use in the novel. It is said Steinbeck used reports from a government official detailing the conditions of people living in camps as source material for his novel.

The haiku writer needs to cut down the details, from the uncounted numbers filling the poet's surroundings, to just those expressing the experience. Many details are left for the reader to fill in, which can make haiku from another time or place opaque.

In photography, interestingly, detail is an artistic problem. The camera records the scene with an unblinking eye, including things running counter to our photographic idea. It records with greater detail than the eye, in some sense "possessing" the subjects. Detail that comments on or is contrary to the subject or intention of the photographer is called "subversive detail" and is sometimes the bane of photographers or may be beneficial. Think of taking a picture of a magnificent cathedral with a line of garbage trucks on the street in front. This is a classic example. The lowly trucks create a cognitive dissonance with the soaring cathedral. Whether they should be included or not, is a question. Should the photograph remind us of the connection between the gritty realities of life or should it lift our emotions up to the heavens? Both are possible intentions. Street photographers frequently use subversive detail to enhance their photographs, the classic example being persons on the street appearing to interact with or be watched by persons on posters or advertisements (as well as the irony of the subject of one photograph interacting with the subject of another). Subversive detail gives rich layers to photographs and can be exploited to make comments on the subject.

It is fascinating how questions of detail emerge in three art forms, prose, poetry and photography.