If a character in a novel is not described as being fat, is he fat nevertheless? Could he possibly be fat if the novel never says so?

From On the existence of fictional characters by D.G. Myers. A few paragraphs packed with insight.

To pretend to know something about a character when the novel is silent about it is to reveal something about ourselves, not about the novel.

[snip]

These reflections are provoked by some questions that Jessa Crispin asked in a recent post at Bookslut. “Where are all the fat characters in literature whose fatness is not the central issue of the novel?” she asked:

It’s like abortion in literature. Where are the abortions in literature that are not the central problem of the book? Can a character just have an abortion and not have it be like the worst thing that has ever happened?

There are really two varieties of question here. The first is a historical question: why have novelists, so far in the history of the novel, included fat characters or abortions only when they are “central” to their novels? Have any novels already been written in which they are not central? (“I’m kind of blanking,” Crispin says.)

But there is also a theoretical question, which is the more interesting. If a character in a novel is not described as being fat, is he fat nevertheless? Could he possibly be fat if the novel never says so? Obesity is treated as extraordinary, a distinguishing characteristic, but what if it is not? What if it is as unexceptional, as unworthy of comment, as teeth and nails? Obesity is extraordinary only from a specific point of view, and where it is “central,” then, the novelist is testifying to his ideology.

Hence Crispin’s resort to abortion. Her own ideology is suggested by her complaint that abortion in fiction is invariably treated as if it were “the worst thing that has ever happened.” Why can’t an abortion be an unremarkable portion of a woman’s experience? And why can’t this unremarkable portion be assumed about female characters in fiction, especially now that abortion is the common experience of so many women? Every character in fiction has a childhood, whether or not it is described. If the same could be said of female characters—many of them had abortions that were peripheral to their experience, not significant enough to remark upon—the unspoken assumption would influence the way in which abortion is conceived in the culture

[snip]

A female character in fiction has undergone an abortion if and only if the abortion is inscribed in the fiction. Perhaps the mere fact of reporting or describing an abortion makes it seem “central” to a critic for whom abortions should not be so; perhaps a prescriptive criticism will emerge that urges novelists to write about abortion (and also obesity, while they’re at it) more nonchalantly. They must write about it at all, though, to write about it with small concern; and the mere inclusion of it—the plain fact that the novelist decided to speak of it instead of remaining silent—will be significant. What is excluded from fiction signifies nothing, because it might as well not exist. Nothing outside the language of a novel is true about the men and women who are sentenced to live within it and nowhere else.

I broadly agree with Myers regarding the view that the only piece of a story which we can all share is that which is made plain and we need to be careful about seeing that which is not there. However, this also seems to oversimplify on two counts. What happens when the author deceives us (characters accurately relate "facts" in the story which turn out not to be accurate) and what happens when much is implied without being explicit? "Her eyes reminded him of a clear sky in April." So, are her eyes blue? I think that is a fair inference but it is not completely explicit. What about "Her troubled eyes reminded him of a summer thunderstorm"? Could be anything from green to yellow to hazel to black and it might depend on the nature of storms in your terrain. It is a thin line between reasonable person inference and preponderance of evidence.

Apart from that nitpick though, I am in alignment with Myers. I have long been troubled by the extent to which criticisms of a book focus more on the issues of the reviewer than they do on what is explicit in the book.

Maybe the mark of a great book is the extent to which it is able to serve both as a template and a receptacle. Firm enough as a template for us to understand the author's intent but pliable enough that there is a role for our own contribution.