At 03:11 PM 27/10/2007, you wrote:
>It's not the writing that makes a story or an
author
>memorable, it's the story, the novel. Sometimes
images
>enhance a work, but if it doesn't tell a story? What
good
>is it?
I think you've set up something of a reverse, can't-lose
tautology Jack: fancy, bloated, overly-descriptive detail is
good writing (it isn't) while strong, concise story telling
is bad writing (it isn't.) When you're done, all you're
saying is good writing is good writing, and bad is bad. Much
as I enjoy a good RA battle, I won't even argue that one off
the list.
As for character vs. narrative vs. style, why should we have
to choose? Hundreds of thousands of books published every
year and I'm supposed to take one or the other? I'm too
greedy for that. At $35 a book, I want it all. I want
interesting characters revealed in strong narratives with
only the essential details beautifully written. And dammit,
I'm going to be subjective when I make my decisions,
too.
On the flip side, I loved Sallis' Lew Griffin series (as I've
said before.) In some interview I think I got to through an
address on this list, Sallis said the series had no plot or
plots at all. I know that would piss off a number of Rara
Avians, but I don't think I believe him anyway. The essence
of plot is so basic to how we organize information to make
sense of our worlds that I think readers will impose at least
a minimal plot if there weren't one, and that writers cannot
avoid at least implying one, either consciously or
(sorry Al) unconsciously. This is especially true if the
intention in consciously avoiding writing a plot is to point
out that life lacks one, or, as some would suggest, that it
doesn't matter.
Regardless, in reading Sallis, occasionally in the midst of
some of the grimiest, ugliest urban settings I've had
described to me in a book, among some of the meanest, most
marginal of characters, Griffin as narrator will utter a
sentence or two that is so sublimely beautiful I read on
hoping to encounter another before the book or I am
done.
It's usually an observation about something, a jazz riff, a
woman's touch, I dunno, a flower in the concrete, that lifts
Griffin above the clutter of his own and others' horrific
problems. In the end it's not much more than "stop and smell
the roses," or perhaps it's the transcendent quality of art
and for the life of me I don't know if that precludes or
qualifies the series as noir, but I am just perverse and
deluded enough to think that is the conclusion of Sallis'
minimalist plot from the get-go, give or take.
Anyway, don't you think he was pretty smart getting us to buy
his bloated, 700 page book by dividing it into a bunch of
novella-length booklets that lacked plots?
Whatever, Kerry
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