Volume 32, Number 12 · July 18, 1985
The Story Isn't Over
By Robert M. Adams
The Cider House Rules
by John Irving
Morrow, 560 pp., $18.95
The House of the Spirits
by Isabel Allende, translated by Magda Bogin
Knopf, 368 pp., $17.95
The Magic Kingdom
by Stanley Elkin
Dutton, 317 pp., $16.95
'Sturdy, old-fashioned storytelling'—it carries a heavy burden indeed in that expression 'old-fashioned.' The linear plot has a long history, not only in the life of the culture, but for each of us personally; being 'told a story' connotes in each of our infantile histories the memory of placating, soporific experience, as self-indulgent and satisfying as thumb sucking. Over the centuries, this kind of pleasure, compounded agreeably of pretended apprehension and secure anticipation, was not thought incompatible with serious commentary on adult matters like money and morals, the tale and the teaching bound together by the denouement in some sort of terminal snugness. But in the early years of this century, it seemed likely that we would get away from such tired formulas and shamefaced conventions of storytelling—would do away, not only with the 'lived happily ever after' conclusion but with the contrived obstacle course leading to it. Partly the old conventions seemed to be used up; partly the idea of earning moral and material kudos in return for demonstrated virtue appeared ridiculous in the modern world; partly the linear plot was uncongenial with a central development of modern concern, the expansion of self-consciousness.
Review, 3842 words
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