The way I see it, people with brilliant minds are not particularly well suited to writing novels. Of course some degree of intelligence and education and overall knowledge is necessary to turn one out. I myself am not entirely lacking in those areas. At least I think so. Probably. But if someone were to ask me point-blank “Do you really think you’re smart enough?” I’d have a hard time sounding confident.
In my considered opinion, anyone with a quick mind or an inordinately rich store of knowledge is unlikely to become a novelist. That is because the writing of a novel, or the telling of a story, is an activity that takes place at a slow pace—in low gear, so to speak. Faster than walking, let’s say, but slower than riding a bicycle. The basic speed of a person’s mental processes may make it possible to work at that rate, or it may not.
For the most part, novelists are trying to convert something present in their consciousness into a story. Yet there is an inevitable gap between the preexisting original and the new shape it is spawning. That creates a dynamic the novelist can use as a kind of lever in the fashioning of his narrative. This is quite a roundabout way to do things, and it takes a great deal of time.
Someone whose message is clearly formed has no need to go through the many steps it would take to transpose that message into a story. All he has to do is put it directly into words—it’s much faster and can be easily communicated to an audience. A message or concept that might take six months to turn into a novel can thus be fully developed in a mere three days. Or in ten minutes, if the writer has a microphone and can spit it out as it comes to him. Quick thinkers are capable of that kind of thing. The listener will slap his knee and marvel, “Why didn’t I think of that?!” In the final analysis, that’s what being smart is really all about.
In the same vein, it is unnecessary for someone with a wealth of knowledge to drag out a fuzzy, dubious container like the novel for his purposes. No need for him to set up an imaginary time and place from scratch. All he has to do is rationally organize and then put into words the information he has on hand to wow his audience.
It is for these reasons, I think, that so many critics have trouble understanding—or, if they can understand at all, effectively verbalizing or theorizing that understanding—a certain type of novel or story. Such critics are generally smarter than the novelists whose works they analyze, which means their brains move at a more rapid speed. They may not be able to adjust to the slower vehicle that is the novel. As a result, they “translate” the pace of the text into the faster pace that is natural to them and then construct their critique in line with their version. This approach fits certain texts, but not all. It may work well in some cases but fail in others. It is especially problematic when the text under discussion is not just “slow” but operates at multiple levels with significant complexity. In such cases, their so-called translation twists and distorts the original.
At any rate, I have witnessed a great many intelligent and quick-minded people—many hailing from fields other than literature—head off to new destinations after writing a novel or two. In a great many cases, their novels were brilliant and well written. A few of them have even broken new ground. Yet a scant few of those authors have remained in the ring. In fact, it seems to me that they got a taste of the novelist’s vocation and then made a quick exit.
Another reason why so few stick it out is that someone with a fair amount of literary talent may have a single novel in them that they can roll out fairly easily, but no more. Or someone who is highly intelligent fails to find the payoff they anticipated. Such writers, after turning out one or two novels, may say, “Okay, now I get it,” shrug their shoulders, and move on to something that will use their time and energy more efficiently.
I understand these feelings. Novel writing is indeed a most inefficient undertaking, consisting of repeating “for instance” over and over. Say there is a personal theme you wish to develop. So you transpose it into a different context. “For instance, it could be like this,” you say. That transposition or paraphrase, however, is not complete: it has parts that are unclear and fuzzy. So you start a new section that basically says, “Let me give you another ‘for instance.’？” It can go on and on like that, a chain of paraphrased “for instances” that never ends. It’s like one of those Russian dolls that you open again and again, always to find still another, smaller doll inside. Could there be more circuitous, inefficient work than this? If a theme could be voiced clearly and rationally from the outset, then there would be no need for this incessant round of “for instances.” An extreme way of putting it is that novelists might be defined as a breed who feel the need, in spite of everything, to do that which is unnecessary.