“GAP CREEK” “Would that I could learn to write with the effortless freedom so evident in works by Leo Tolstoy.” I wrote that line in some notes many years ago when I was reading his fine novel “Resurrection”. I was struck by the simple, directness of his style.
He was adept at simply recounting a tale he had heard or was fashioning as he went along. In truth, one found out later, he was skillfully “working” his reader to his own advantage. Readers think and even say what they are thinking as they make quick judgments as too he probable advancement of the story. Tolstoy worked with the advantage the writer of radio or recorded drama in our day. Readers often participate in the telling of the story more than they may realize. The author suggests, rather than sets the next event. The reader, depending on his or her temperament, participates in the progress of the story more than they realize. The writer is suggesting a path the forming tale might take.
Reading Tolstoy could do that sort of thing for me. If he had made a male character say to himself or a friend: “She was cold tonight. Could I have said something wrong?” The reader, at that moment reflects on what had been said, what was not said and what might have been said and has a task of choosing what direction the story will take, but it is the writer who remains in charge none the less. Readers feel – without knowing it – they have grown a bit in those seconds.
All of this has been brought to mind because I am reading a modern novel which has caused me to recall qualities I admired in the Russian literary giant.
The present day book is called “Gap Creek”- the story of a marriage - and recounts the tumble of events happening in the lives of people living along a creek by that name in the western hills of South Carolina just across the line from Carolina-North. In reading Robert Morgan you will enjoy much of Tolstoyian skill with simple details skillfully mixed and blended. It will please you that “Gap Creek” uses not a single word of profanity in contrast to the over use of such artificial terms found in so many of today's lecture novels.
Get a copy and read it. “Gap Creek”, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, N. C. 1999. It was also an Oprah's Book Club selection so a friend of yours may well have a copy.
A.L.M . February 26, 2006 [c434wds]
