And, simply because fiction has to make sense, we take for granted certain things that hardly ever happen in real life.Ĭonsider premonitions. What I’m really getting at, though, is not so much that life is a tale told by an idiot as that fiction had better be otherwise. Perhaps it all balances out, perhaps there’s some sort of cosmic justice visited in another lifetime or another world, but all that is hard to prove and not too satisfying dramatically. Characters play major roles in the opening scenes, then wander off and are never heard from again. In life, onstage cannons are forever silent, while others never seen go off in the wings, with spectacular results. I think it was Chekhov who pointed out that it was dramatically essential that any cannon that appeared onstage in Act 1 had damn well better be fired before the final curtain. Life, unlike fiction, gives every indication of operating utterly at random, with no underlying structure, no unifying principles, no rules of drama. When we want to praise fiction, we say that it’s true to life, but it’s not that often the case. Life does not, and I suppose it’s just as well, or vast chunks of life would bounce back from the Big Editor in the Sky with form rejection slips attached to them. That’s how you can distinguish between it and Real Life.”įiction has to make sense. “No, soap opera has a certain internal logic to it. Then we looked at each other, and I shrugged and said something about it all being a lot like a soap opera. He told me all of this, and then he told me some other things that had happened to some other people we both know, and with which I won’t burden you. Upon returning to New York I ran into an old friend and made the mistake of asking him what was new. I just learned of the latest chapters in this saga-the death, the funeral, the guest appearance by the judge’s daughter-a few days ago as I write this.
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