That’s. Just. Great.

Posted 1 August, 2007 in Flannery O'Connor, Book News |

Most depressing lede to a book story in a while, from USA Today:

The pitch intrigued the publishing world: “Forrest Gump wins Powerball.”

And with that, Patricia Wood’s new novel, Lottery, was launched into a bidding war that nabbed the first-time writer a six-figure deal.

Perfect. A 310-page novel distilled to four words. And this is what has the New York publishing world all a-twitter. Do any of them recall Flannery O’Connor’s admonition in her essay “Writing Short Stories”:

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word of the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story.

Perhaps Wood’s book is brilliant. But any novel that can be boiled down into four pithy words (especially those four pithy words) should be approached with a certain amount of skepticism.

Your comment: