The Perils of Plot by Kirk Curnutt

Kirk graciously agreed to write a guest post about his book, Breathing Out the Ghost, which won the 2008 Best Books of Indiana Fiction of the Year Award. He willingly to let me read it and then write about it. I'm still haunted by the characters and the writing itself. Here is Kirk's post and his thoughts on plot.

The Perils of Plot

The hardest part of writing a novel anymore is drama. I used to think of myself as a great reader, but I increasingly find it hard to finish books because I'll get two-thirds of the way into them and then, wham!, suddenly there's no compelling reason for me to get to the end. I always do make it a point to get to the end because I think as a reader I owe that to the author. It's just too easy to say, "I couldn't get into it" and put a book down. Trust me, I deal with that every day in the classroom. Right now I'm about halfway through a fairly popular novel that I won't name out of courtesy. I really looked forward to this book because I think the subject matter is important, but I've lost the steam of my enthusiasm. And I've lost it because on a certain page I was aware the author was shifting into background instead of integrating information he needed to convey about a certain character's growth into the plot. I mean, we're not talking about a paragraph or two of exposition—we're talking eighty pages of it! The whole structure of the book made me scratch my head. Like I said, I'll finish this novel, but it's no longer a page-turner, and it makes me sad. It's more like a bargain that I have to fulfill. Amid the pressures of daily duties—work, mainly—I find finishing it just another entry on the To-Do List.

I was well aware that readers feel those sorts of pressures when I was writing Breathing Out the Ghost. Unless you're fortunate enough to be popular, you're plagued by a basic worry: Who cares? Why would anybody want to read a book by me? That anxiety is one reason that I centered the book around the chase for Dickie-Bird Johnson, the man that Colin St. Claire believes abducted his son. I felt like I needed some action so the characters didn't just drift off into their own heads. That was sort of the thematic point I was trying to make, that grieving can be as solipsistic as it can (supposedly) be healing. But to allow that point to determine the form seemed dangerous. It seemed almost solipsistic, in fact.

Honestly, I borrowed the structure of my book from Moby-Dick. I borrowed a lot out of Moby-Dick—characters, imagery, certain rhythms—but that was the main thing. People tend to forget that Moby-Dick is a very dramatic novel when it comes to the whale-hunting scenes. You just have to bore through a lot of blubber to get to them. In my case I thought that if I could make the confrontation with Dickie the central chapter of the book, I could have two sources of engine power to ride the reader through: first, building up to the encounter with Dickie, and then afterward, dealing with the consequences of an interrogation that goes very, very wrong.

From the perspective of literary fiction, writers tend to dismiss form or drama as a contrivance. This is an attitude that started in the 1920s with the idea that plot—any plot whatsoever—was a formula. Suddenly, to be "literary" you had to eschew any semblance of dramatic development. That's why the early part of this century is full of novels like Djuna Barnes's Nightwood that are very interesting explorations of psychology and sexuality but which move with all the speed of a molasses drip. The idea was that there is a deep structure to fiction that you wanted to convey instead of the relentless rat-a-tat-tat of action. It was a rebellious thing to write a novel that seemingly went nowhere, because you were going against the inexorable grind of time, forcing the reader to step out of the speed at which the culture was hurling forward to discover the still center of meaningfulness, of significance. The peace that passes understanding.

Inevitably, though, what was rebellion becomes its own contrivance. By the 1960s and 70s it was a mark of cool to write a novel that was episodic, disconnected, disjunctive. In the hands of somebody great like Thomas McGuane, you ended up with books like Ninety-two in the Shade that are kind of the equivalent of period movies like Two-Lane Blacktop: they're flat and drifty, but the ennui of their atmosphere is making a statement about the temper of their times. But in many other writers, you just end up with books that feel lumpy and unshaped. They don't feel like they've been edited. I don't mean copyedited, which is important as well, but I mean edited in the sense that nobody seems to have argued with the writer's choices. Why this scene here? Why that? Again, I won't mention names, because that's ungracious. But I bet every reader can name one or two books in which there just didn't seem any forward motion to the character development. The story just sort of plods along. My hope is that form will become a major preoccupation again. Maybe they'll even teach it in creative-writing classes. I think plot has to become important, in some ways, because writers are competing with so many media that seem so much more direct and assertive in their storytelling. Video games, for example. You're at Level A and you need to get to Level B. There's a plot for you.

We live in such a rush of events that there doesn't seem time to sit and process the meaning and consequences of them. I think many writers view novels as a medium that runs contrary to that current. But doing so shouldn't come at the cost of the integrity of its own aesthetic shape. There's a grace and rhythm to a current, after all. It's much more attractive than dumping a gallon of water out of a pail in one fell swoop.


Breathing Out the Ghost can be purchased here, here or here. Go buy a copy.

Be sure to look for his next book, Dixie Noir, coming in the fall from River City Publishing. Any author that can draw the level of emotion out of me, as Kirk did with Breathing Out the Ghost, is one to follow.

You can learn more about Kirk at KirkCurnutt.com and check out his other books as well.

This whole process, reading this book, putting together my review, and hosting Kirk's guest post has been an incredible experience. Maybe, if I whine enough, Kirk will periodically check back in and maybe even write up a guest post every now and again. On whatever topic he chooses.

Kirk, you will always be welcome as a guest blogger at Catootes! Thanks so much for sharing your post and your stories!