TEXT D
The two modern writers whose influence on young novelists has been most pervasive are probably James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. There is no telling how many young writers have gone astray trying to emulate Joyce’s complexity of language and Hemingway’s misleading simplicity.
I was reminded of that as I read Nicholas Delblanco’s Fathering, an often exasperating novel, because it is so needlessly obscure and reveals so much talent and so little disciplining of that talent.
The internal maundering of Delblanco’s characters would probably interest a psychoanalyst, trained to decipher their significance as sign posts, But novelists should not write for the edification of psychoanalysts. Ostensibly reproducing the unorganized thoughts, memories and impressions flowing through a character’s mind is not often the best way to make that character comprehensible.
Such thoughts, memories and impressions become chaotic. The job of the artist is to bring some order and meaning out of that chaos, not to compound it, and to clarify, not befog, the nature of the character.
According to the passage, what do many young novelists try to do