Thursday

From the Notebooks

Notes about Fiction

As I studied the work of Flannery O'Connor–possibly the ultimate craftsman of the novel, who wrote so slowly and deliberately that every word has a purpose–it seemed her philosophy is explicit. Consider, for instance, Rayber, the cold rationalist who was baptized as a child by his crazy uncle. At baptism, the cross was infused on his soul, and he cannot shake it. The grace of baptism, consequently, pops up throughout his days, giving rise to emotions his rationalism cannot account for (and, therefore, which he hates), such as love for his retarded son, a human with no useful purpose whatsoever (a thing hateful to Rayber). O'Connor, as narrator, describes it as the kind of love "that would cause him to make a fool of himself in an instant. And it only began with Bishop. It began with Bishop and then like an avalanche covered everything his reason hated."

Once one sees the importance and infusing-nature of the baptism, all that stuff about Rayber's love seems kind of obvious. A similar thing happens earlier in the book, when Tarwater first meets the retard, a person he is supposed to baptize. Tarwater shouts with rage at the pathetic thing. The rage, by all appearances, is wholly unaccounted for, but if you know what's going on, you see the rage is a manifestation of what is going on inside Tarwater (he hates his mission to baptize the little guy, but he can't get rid of the calling and he hates it, hence the "unaccountable" rage).

Well, it might be obvious, but it's never stated by Flannery. That's the important thing: Nothing in fiction is explicit, whether through the narrator, a character, a news story, whatever. You might put in every sign in the world to make it obvious what you're getting at, but you don't ever say it or have a character or letter or bulletin board or e-mail message or stray homepage say it. Those things can provide signs–even blatantly obvious ones, and perhaps the more obvious the better, at least for someone like me who is not experienced enough to be subtle–but they can't say it.

Perhaps Flannery's best book about the art of fiction: