Oyster opens with a woman in a bath - the narrator caught up in a heat wave. In the distance, a telephone rings. Normally she wouldn’t bother getting out, but the ring sounds ominous. It’s her brother Dan, with bad news.
So much time and paper have passed into oblivion since I wrote that scene. I can’t remember why I decided to start there, although for sure a woman in a bath represents my ideal reader. To me a reader is a singular being. One of a kind. I like to imagine her (or him) relaxed, possibly lying in bed, burning the midnight oil or lounging around mid-afternoon, turning the pages, leaving my book midway, spine split open, just long enough to dash away for a bit of life, then coming back soon.
In my list of priorities, the best a novel can do is take the reader out of her own life and plant her firmly in another. This ability to change the furniture in a reader’s head is a goal I strive for. I’m no good at thrillers that quicken heartbeats, or mysteries that make the reader work hard to get ahead of the plot. I write to distract my reader from her own life. Embed her totally in the world of other people, entice her to care what happens to them. Down with self-absorption! Bring on empathy! I do believe fiction has the power to act as a balm on the noisy turmoil of real life, at least temporarily.
As preparation for the publication of Oyster (my first novel since Pier’s Desire in 2010), I gave out some of my older books to women in my fitness club who don’t know me as a writer. The response seemed to be positive, a slew of complicit smiles and nods as we spread out our mats. When they did make actual comments, they tended to whisper. I liked that, took it as a sign that, looked at one way, novels are also good gossip.
This sense of intimacy with a reader is totally missing in my other life as a playwright. When a script is “ready” it’s handed over to actors and (often) someone else as director. This team is expected to make the work their own, forge a consensus, and, in the jargon of the stage “get the play on its feet”. Rehearsal is a nerve-wracking process that creates a feeling of shared responsibility, so that by the time a mainly anonymous audience is sitting quietly in the dark, I don’t feel as personally responsible for what follows. On the other hand, it’s just plain wonderful to hear a couple of hundred people laugh at something I’ve laughed about in private.
I guess what I want to say is that writing fiction is nothing without a reader (many readers) or an audience (ideally, many people) completing the experience. The sense that I’m telling a story that will grab others and be worth their time acts on me as a serious responsibility. I try to be honest and kind toward the characters, which can be a dire contradiction. Like all worlds, theirs exists independently of me, in the minds of others. Once a book reaches print or a play is onstage, it ceases to be mine. It’s over to you.
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