Not everyone wants to read them. Not everyone wants to write them. But for
certain readers and writers, unless a novel stretches your mind—at least a
trifle—it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.
It doesn’t have quite enough substance. Whether you wrote it or read it, you’re
pretty much who you were when you started. Where’s the fun in that?
But “smart” has another meaning. Somewhat ironically, as a verb, “to smart”
becomes the action of irritating or wounding. It’s easy to inflict that on
readers: just sound like a smarty-pants.
How do you offer the heft that leaves one changed when the book ends—without
depriving readers of the entertainment they seek? And without being a
smarty-pants?
*** Mystery.
In Andrew Winer’s The Marriage
Artist, readers learn about the richly illuminated Jewish marriage contract
called a “ketubah.” Murders to solve and
sex to savor keep us turning pages while delving into not only Jewish tradition
but the meaning of art—especially when it stops being representational.
*** Humanity.
On a panel at the recent AWP conference in Minneapolis, Joan Silber remarked
that historical fiction comes alive when readers grasp what “the characters would
know and feel.” That “makes the history yours.” This explains the popularity of
Hilary Mantel. We’re certainly being educated. But it doesn’t “smart” to wade
through all those royals and edicts and Thomases—because they’re as real as a Piggly
Wiggly clerk.
*** Voice.
In The Gold Bug Variations (pun
intended) by Richard Powers, once you acclimate to the dazzling array of verbal
gymnastics, poeticisms, and intellectual prowess, you’ll earn honorary degrees
in history, classical music, genetics, and more. Rhythm and metaphor sweeten a scientist’s
musings about the search to crack the DNA/RNA/amino acid code:
“We
knew a little; enough to know that further extrapolation would require a whole
new zoo of relational models. Certain things we already suspected: a long, linear
informational string wound around its complement, like a photo pinned to its
own negative, for further unlimited printing.”
*** Plot.
“She
was like a fossil that’s been cleaned and set so everyone can see what it is.”
In Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable
Creatures, the history of fossil-hunting gets magnetically intertwined with
the fates of the fossil hunters.
Tip:
Smart novels are fun novels. But they have to feel like novels. That’s plot and
character.
