Magical Thinking

The excellent klages has sent us an Easy Button! You know, from the Staples commercials: a big red button that says "Easy" on it? In the commercials the Easy Button seems to have the power to rearrange time and space. Here at home it simply announces "that was Easy." Its magical capacities are subtle--time and space does not rearrange, homework doesn't immediately get done, the lost pants or book or cell phone don't immediately transport in from Wherever--but there's an actual, discernible placebo effect to using the Button. Tres cool.

And it's Greatly To Her Credit?

Jon Carroll's column this morning cited a review by Lucy Ellman of Kathryn Davis's new book, The Thin Place. Being an inquiring sort, I immediately went over to see the review for myself. And there it is in black and white (italics mine):

To its credit, this is not a novel that depends on plot."The Thin Place" concerns a small present-day New England community in late spring and early summer. What little drama there is seems contrived; most of the time nothing happens except insights and insect bites. The rewards are all in the writing: one ancient lady "began to head upstairs in that very slow way of the very old, almost as if she were dragging the banister and the attached steps down to her own level rather than rising to meet them."

To it's credit? So: the book is plot light and description heavy. Maybe the description is particularly dense and lovely, as Ellmann seems to think it is. And there are certainly books which are more character studies or exercises in setting, and they can be lovely. But why give extra credit for plotlessness? Why privilege a book that isn't plot-driven over books that are? Cause I gotta say: genre trades in plot and genre fiction is low-class? Or is it just easy to dismiss plot because people like it? Because plot is hard; writing a novel in which things happen gracefully and believably is work.

I suspect that The Thin Line is an interesting book. Lucy Ellman hasn't chased me away from reading it, but I think she may have chased me away from reading her own work.