The quote below from Richard Bausch, which appeared yesterday on Facebook, has really spoken to me. Novels are an avenue into the interior life of human beings, their private ways of thinking and seeing. No other art penetrates inner lives in such an expansive way as novels do. I think this is the reason why reading novels can be so compelling—they allow us access that we cannot possibly have in day-to-day life. So if we do not write novels that make it their project to address this “news of the spirit,” that George Garrett spoke about, then we are not milking the medium for what it does be
“The trap for every novelist who ever put pencil to paper, for good or ill and for love or money, is the tendency to fall into the episodic: things happen to a major or central character, but they are only connected by the fact that it’s that character they happen to; and the events become very nearly interchangeable because there is no connecting tissue in them, no evolving story. Now, every novel—no matter its literary pedigree, from mystery through science fiction and fantasy to realism—is in some way about the private life. And while every novelist is—by a kind of default having to do with the portrayal of time and place and people—also a sociologist (though if he is any good he is a psychologist, too, and a historian, and a magician and a seer as well), still in every instance the story is about the inside life, the inner life, what George Garrett used to say was ‘News of the spirit.’ So there must be some central thing, some evolving central concern. This becomes the ‘aboutness’ of the story, and the actions, sufferings, falterings and successes of the characters, must ride over that like a cable car over a river.” Richard Bausch
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