(the) American (Novel of)

72 Alison Leigh Brown
know, I am hard at work on the new novel, which practice leaves me
scant opportunity for thinking or conversing. But to recount the details
of my workaday life would be unforgivably boring. Loving you, I spare
you the details of my coffee making, pencil sharpening, pacing, etc. I
write in part selfishly. You raise so many interesting points in your last
letter, many of which I need to work out to have a thematically
interesting novel. To do justice to your intensely theoretical letter would
take twenty pages at least. Consequently, I will address just one of the
issues you raise. I cut short my theoretical responses because I want to
share with you some very interesting gossip. Theory first.
What I am working on in the novel is complex. One of my
characters is finding increasingly that she is incapable of love. She is
loved but she cannot love in return. As she examines the details of her
life for clues to this sorry state she realizes that she is not unique in this
regard. There is a sense in which not being capable of love is part of
the human condition. This depresses her very much. She thinks about
this new state of affairs—not only is she incapable of active loving, she
is terribly depressed. It strikes her that her reaction to depression is
shameful. Hers is not a biologically based sadness. Instead, it is justifiable
sorrow in the face of actual loss. Since contingent in this way, she
decides that she should be able to will herself out of her deep sadness.
Right now I am working on the manner in which she finds the
strength to get out of her predicament. My problem is turning this to
action. No one wants to read a novel wherein the character is merely
introspective. What novel would work wherein the hero solves her
problem by solving a philosophical problem? I have to find a plot line
that shows her working through this depression in a way that is interesting
but which nevertheless illuminates the philosophical insights she
has. (I know that this is not impossible: look at Nabokov! Dostoevski!)
The other problem is purely theoretical. The issue at stake is, what is
it about every era that seems to its writers as too, too depressing? There
are so many answers but it is difficult to find one that is not repeated
endlessly throughout history—at least Western history. I think that the
answer lies in recent theorists reacting to the great wars by spending
their time analyzing something which should be left unthought: the
basic emptiness at the core of human consciousness. Why can’t we just
acknowledge this and move on? This is the problem on which I am
working. Since in my novel, it is tied up with love, I will spend my time
responding to the things you write to me about love.