Vocalize

A couple of days ago, the Mason Nostalgia Corner hosted a mini-conversation about whether Annie Proulx was just a Wyoming-hating elitist or an ironical Exaggerator of the Real–the Jessica Anthony perspective.

I hadn’t looked at Proulx from Jess’s perspective, but now I think she’s right (though taste is taste, and I still think Proulx’s a meanie, and I’d rather leave That Old Ace in the Hole at home and lug around some Wallace Stegner on my next camping trip).

What we’re talking about–which is always what we talk about when we talk about writing–is voice.

Which I thought of this morning reading the inside scoop on the Booker pick of The White Tiger. The head guy says:

The most beautiful book is Barry’s. It is a glorious piece of writing with not a word misplaced. It was painful to all of us that it did not win. It was a close call, anyway. If I had to describe why it lost out to Adiga’s, it was because there were more questions about Barry’s plot. Had every part of it been convincingly told? Was its denouement plausible? Adiga won out too because his angle seemed so fresh, writing about India from the viewpoint of a village boy who makes his way to the city where he and his master are corrupted.

So Adiga is to Proulx as Barry is to Stegner. At the end of the deliberations, it probably didn’t really matter whether The White Tiger contained just as many plot holes as The Secret Scripture. Adiga found the voice for that village boy and it carried the book.

There are loads of novels and stories, obviously, that thrive without a particularly distinctive voice. I’m in the middle of The Plot Against America, and it’s about the farthest thing from Portnoy, but it’s carrying me along fine. American Pastoral was even better, and I don’t remember it for its voice. I remember the magnificent characters, the magnificent storytelling, a dinner-table scene that runs fluidly for about a hundred pages. (I know, I know: A strong argument is that The Storyteller is a voice of its own…)

The way I figure, in my oversimplified, ultra-non-litcrit way, the real masterpieces are the tales that could stand on their own no matter who did the typing, but also have a voice you’ll never forget. Augie March is the most-recently read in that category for me. There are many others.

That brings me back to Jess, actually. I read an early draft of The Convalescent a while ago (it’s got to be coming out any day now, right?), and it really stuck with me, much more than your average story of a sickly Hungarian meatcutter should. It’s the brilliant voice. It carries the book.