The jigsaw of life

Ms. Katy,

This morning I am reading, belatedly, a review by Michael Cunningham of Margaret Drabble’s new memoir in the NYT Book Review. The book is called The Pattern in the Carpet; it is a sort of history of the jigsaw puzzle and a memoir, combined.  Cunningham is an amazing writer, his The Hours (and of course Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway) is one of my favorite books. And, yes, I once read a novel by Margaret Drabble but it has been years now. The reason I bring up all this ancient history is that I want to quote a few things from her book via the review. That’s all. So here goes.

Drabble states: “The jigsaw is the very opposite of the novel. The novel is formless and frameless. It has no blueprint, no pattern, no edges.” Which seems to me sort of an amazing observation. I have been reading James Wood’s little book, How Fiction Works, and according to Wood there are so many conventions in novel-writing that if you want to be published you can barely be original these days. Maybe to Drabble there is no form or frame, but to many writers, including me I am now observing, there are thousands of bits of collective understandings about how a novel should work, how narrative works, and what the reader expects from a novel — and also from the sort of writing they will accept and embrace. This sounds a bit pretentious. Okay. The novel was invented about 300 years ago. It has grown, changed, improved, and become part of the fabric of modern life. It hasn’t changed much for about 100 years. If that’s not a form I don’t what is.

Cunningham says: “She writes that our human desire to create order, to solve something, is entirely natural, given all there is to fear in the world, and that spending time imposing order, even if it produces nothing of practical value, is no cause for shame.” Drabble is talking about the jigsaw puzzle here… or is she? Cunningham continues, “It’s courageous, considering her life’s work, to contemplate the possibility that putting together a jigsaw puzzle might afford a sense of engagement and companionship not unlike, and not inferior to, what a good novel provides.” Drabble is quoted: “Books, too, have beginnings and endings, and they attempt to impose a pattern, to make a shape. We aim, by writing them, to make order from chaos. We fail. The admission of failure is the best that we can do.”

Okay, now I’m going to go shoot myself! At least Cunningham disagrees with that statement by adding: “Well, maybe. Or maybe not.” If a novel doesn’t provide pleasure and engagement by making order out of chaos, I don’t know what it does. Why bother? That, to me, is the essence of the novel, the satisfaction of writing and/or reading one, the joy of companionship with characters and the thrill of the denouement. If you don’t want order out of chaos, read a biography. Real life is rarely orderly.

Margaret Drabble says she’ll never write another novel. Maybe she’s just depressed about that. But I AM writing another novel. And it feels damn good, Margaret. Even the chaos.

xxx,

Lise