There’s this character. Let’s, in our whimsical mood, call
him Jake Fitzwither. Jake works in an accounting firm in the daytime, but by
night Jake slaughters humanities students with a tire iron. There are two novels
about Jake quivering on the writer’s pen. The first is a detailed exploration
as to why a human being would choose to spend his life as an accountant in a
world of art and song and colour and interesting people. The second is about
what makes Jake so keen to slaughter humanities students with that particular implement.
It doesn’t take the entire marketing department of Random House to predict
which novel will shift more units. The reader wants . . . bleakness! Murder!
But do they
really?
Or do
readers merely respond to what we (the writers) think they might like? If Dan
Brown and his frogspawn started writing ponderous novels about the nature of
being among ennui-stricken fishmongers, would the gullible public munch them
down like putrid snacks, or would their specially-trained brains, sensing lack
of page-turning plot and believable characters, hurl them across the room in
outrage? I am waiting for that day when a populist writer attempts an arrogant epic
on something so microscopic as a man who drops a box of cereal in SupaSave—stretched
out for 900 pages.
It might
change something. Liberate us from something. We need someone to save us from
this emphasis on plot and character, people wanting characters “drawn from
life,” meaning recognisable as characters who talk like characters in a novel.
Save us!
Someone!
Set a precedent, you money-grubbing bastards!
Humiliate yourselves so we may breathe!
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