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In today's Printers Row Journal, Kevin Nance interviews Richard Bausch about his new novel, Before, During, After. Complexity, Bausch suggests, separates serious fiction from other forms of entertainment. And I think, yes. Complexity. That's the word.

Q: The other intersection between public and private history in “Before, During, After” is indicated in the title. There’s a way in which these great calamities that happen — in my parents’ generation it was the Kennedy assassination, in my own generation it was 9/11 — seem like points of demarcation, watershed moments that define “before” and “after.”    

A: Yes, and it has to do with the discovery of complexity and the fact that there’s evil in the world — things that no amount of study or work or will or effort can change one bit, and we just have to somehow live with it. I think that’s what separates serious, sophisticated fiction from more trivial kinds of entertainment — although it all had better entertain or it’s a failure, no matter what its intent. 
    It’s all honorable and good, I should say; there’s no such thing as fiction writing that’s immoral — I don’t believe that at all. If it diverts and tells a story that involves the reader, it’s a good thing. If it’s boring, that’s different, but that’s another kettle of fish that has nothing to do with what the activity really is. I mean, Stephen King, who’s begun to get some cachet as the excellent storyteller that he is, used to be dismissed out of hand as some sort of hack. But if you read the guy, he can write like hell. There’s an aspect of what he does that could be defined as genre writing, but even that shows real thought and real intention, and people are starting to notice that.

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Two phrases have the insta-charm of nudging me into a dark corner:

The first: Can I pick your brain?

The second: Beth, the Prolific Author

The first always sounds like it will hurt. My hair will be shaved, my skin will be onioned (I mean peeled), my skull will be shattered (crash), and then my brain will be picked. Ouch. I want to help. I am glad to recommend an excellent book or think something through or suggest a possibility. I can answer (some) questions. (I have no answers for the really hard questions.) But I don't want my brain to be picked. I really don't.

The second I receive (oh, sensitive me) as a sleight. "Prolific" is a substitute word. When someone says "prolific" someone is most likely also not saying more meaningful words, like: "thoughtful," "searching," or even "good." Prolific, though, is how I'm most often introduced. I look at my writing life. I see struggle, hope, frustration, some elation, very little time, books that matter to me, a voice that carries me, quiet that sustains me, quiet that I search for in between the jobs I must do so that the bills will get paid (most of which I have nothing to do with the writing of books), and, thus far at least, no true commercial success. I look at my writing life and I see books that, every single one, came from a deep place and not from a machine, from a hope to capture some essence of the world I love, from a belief that I haven't conquered the whole thing yet, haven't figured it all out, never will.

I was thinking about this as I read Kevin Nance's interview with Michael Cunningham in today's issue of the Chicago Tribune Printers Row. Here's the excerpt that I stopped to jot down. I like what Cunningham says:

On the one hand, writers should write about the biggest possible world, and that takes more than one novel. But I'd be a little suspicious of a writer whose vision and sensibility and quality of insight were unrecognizable from one novel to another. I would wonder what that writer really (cares) about.

If you look at writers far greater than I, from Chekhov through Faulkner, the stories and the books differ from one to another, but there's a Chekhovian sensibility. There's a Faulknerian sensibility. You hope to be able to tune in to a lot of characters, but there's a limit to how chameleonlike you wan to be.

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