D. G. Myers

The tyranny of suspense

January 28, 2015

In far too much bad fiction, suspense has replaced drama as the motive force of storytelling. There is, in fact, an entire subgenre of fiction dedicated to the ignorant error—“thrillers.” Suspense, however, is the sworn enemy of good fiction.

To create suspense is to induce anxiety—that is, to cause distress. And naturally, then, the craving is for relief. You read as quickly as possible to discover what happens, to allay your uneasiness, to release the tightness in your chest. The outcome is not a literary experience—literature is the freedom to dream up other possibilities—but the unpleasant feeling of being manipulated. Anxiety has a “coercive character,” Karen Horney says. So does suspense.

D. G. Myers

The literary critic and scholar D. G. Myers died of cancer last September. I miss reading his Commonplace Blog, which was written in such a distinctive voice — opinionated, smart, ornery, engaging, honest, unfathomably well read — that I almost felt I knew him. The blog is still online, and it is worth a visit.

The MFA Generation

June 14, 2010

It is hard to imagine a living American novelist writing a passage like the last four paragraphs of The Great Gatsby, summoning up the “fresh, green breast of the new world.” American novelists by and large do not identify with ordinary Americans any longer, nor with the American dream (“the last and greatest of all human dreams”), but with their intellectual class — the people with whom they went to school, whose minds are furnished with the same authorities and assumptions, who share a similar understanding of the world.… And thus the American novel, once a lively voice in the national debate to specify the American idea, has devolved into the voice of a homogeneous intellectual class.

— D. G. Myers on what he has elsewhere called “the emergence of a literary generation whose experience is limited to creative writing.”

A few links

September 2, 2009

Random bits found floating around on the web today:

At About Last Night, Terry Teachout dug up a great video of Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling discussing “Lolita.”
At A Commonplace Blog, critic D.G. Myers names his five best novels of the decade (with no room for Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children — repent, D.G. Myers!).
At In Character, Joseph Epstein advises writers to make it look easy, even when it isn’t.
And if Nabokov and Trilling is a bit much on a hot summer day, try this video of new Red Sox outfielder Joey Gathright. Gathright has a decent glove and a noodle bat, but never mind all that. What makes him interesting is that he can jump over cars. I say again: the man can jump over cars.

D. G. Myers

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