How to Number the People

Why do writers and stories have so few characters? I know some stories can have many characters, but in reference to the population of their respective worlds, they are so few.

Is it possible to write a book in which more than so few characters are used? Would it just be clutter to the reader, or would the author really just exhaust or kill himself trying?

Still, all those lives in his head exist, live, eat, breathe without him putting names to the faceless faces anyway. Why not give the living beings meaning through ink and paper?

Of the few characters mentioned in a tale, usually only one or two (counting the "villain") gets the limelight. Can there be a novel where everyone is the hero and everyone is the villain? Or is this generally disallowed because of clutter?

I feel like my head is bursting with ideas, but it keeps obsessing about these thoughts. If there is truly no one villain and no one hero, but everyone is both in his own time and world, then limiting the focus to a stream narrow enough to show only one hero and one villain––as stories usually do, though making room for henchmen and minions and supporting cast––then isn't it an injustice to the rest of the characters in that world who are given no recognition of existence? They live. They breathe. They have stories and lives and meaning––if they didn't have meaning . . . would we, those of us not touted as heroes of Earth? So what should be done?

Shall books now be written that tell the lives, in even infinitesimal detail, of the people: the rich, the poor; the giving, the greedy; the good, the bad––those moments when each is one and the other, the hero and the villain? Is that even possible?

I have either stroked genius or started on an obsessive path that will lead to death and/or insanity in my search to find the answer to this.

This might be my mark or style, including all beings, even extraneous to plot, if I can manage it well or proceed and not realize this idea is crazy. In which case, I may be writing some very bad books. But the speculation to this end is haunting me. I cannot be the first person to have attempted this. I think Faulkner did attempt it, at least he might have tried, in A Fable. Up 'til now, I have considered similar efforts as a way of showing what "the people" felt about a plot, but now I think of it as what "the others" felt, see, hear.

The other characters in the stories have their own apotheoses, too. No seems to care, though.

I think I'm a nutter.

Woman Pipe Smoking

I have often wondered at the stigma against women smoking pipes, and now more than ever do I have to consider it since I have started. Smoking––it has this grandfatherly, English appeal to it. It brings back subtle universal memories, of generals and gentlemen, of explorers and philosophers, of quiet nights by a hearth fire. Pipes carry an entire world in each puff.

I flip the lighter and pull in drafts of the tobacco, and my mind wanders. I'm using a friend's pipe at this moment, since I do not have my own yet; I need one. There is a great feeling of release in a pipe. The stars grow brighter, the air smells sweeter, and the conversation (for smoking alone is a bother) more intimate. This semester has been crazy––an odd crazy, like there is something wrong with the world, and you cannot quite put your finger on it––and I need a break somehow. Some might say I'm using an external substance to cope, but––what of it? The means are there, use them.

But women smoking? Tsk, tsk. You think of grandfathers when you say the world pipe. Not grandmothers. I cannot say, "Oh, get over it, you prudes," to whomever may object. I have to say that to myself first. My family is traditional, and a disagreement with women pipe smoking (or cigarette smoking, or cigar, or hookah, or anyone smoking anything, despite the sex) has been slipped into my cereal with the raisins. I don't know if the thought was implied or present. It just exists. So, before I make a grand habit of this new hobby, at least before I start on the street corners on a parade day, I have to stand and stare in the mirror with a pipe in my mouth and come to terms. Of course, if you google images of "women pipe smoking", the search engine pulls up sultry pictures of sexy, bad ass women smoking and winking. I smoke. I don't usually wink. Not in that way, anyway. Traditional family, remember?

I am no rebel. I just want a way to relax, to think, to philosophize. As my writing teacher (he also smokes) said one day, "You must choose your vices." I choose pipe smoking. If I'm going to be eccentric without trying, I might as well direct it a bit.

This is an interesting article. I'm ignoring the part that will reveal itself in an obvious way: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123509294170728733.html.