A Writer’s Prowess

Abstract

Page 19 September–October 2009 even that is too slight to matter. Lush as Blackwood’s descriptions of the urban landscape are, they are geographically ambiguous. What finally emerges from this writer’s muchtouted second volume of fiction is a series of connected but negligible events that ultimately have a profound impact on fairly unremarkable people. The intensity of their emotional reactions to these incidents makes for an interesting study in the human psyche; but short as it is and lyrical as Blackwood’s prose often is, by the end, things become mundane. Even after multiple readings, it’s not entirely clear which have actually taken place and which are part of dreams and fantasies, how, if at all, the characters and their relationships have been changed by the experiences , or what, if anything, they’ve learned. That Scott Blackwood is a talented wordsmith is beyond question. There is a sense of taut workmanship and linguistic power in almost every line of the book. Yet, by the end of the volume, it’s hard not to believe that the novel is more about the writer’s prowess than it is about his story. The short, tight chapters reveal situations where causes have no earthly effects and effects reveal themselves without temporal causes. Characters circle around one another like so many clouds in a hot summer sky, occasionally touching, but insensible to one another’s presence. What’s wanted is a thunderhead, a climactic storm to bring everything together. The book is overworked, too “writerly” to make for anything more than a literary curiosity. One can hope that more fiction will emerge from Blackwood’s keyboard, but before he sets his hand to that, one can also hope that he will find a story to tell and will gather some sense of a place and the people who occupy it. Clay Reynolds is Professor of Arts & Humanities and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Dallas. A writer and scholar, his most recent work of fiction is Sandhill County Lines. A Writer’s Prowess Clay Reynolds We Agreed to Meet Just Here Scott Blackwood New Issues http://www.wmich.edu/newissues 164 pages; cloth, $26.00 Scott Blackwood’sAWPAward-winning novel, We Agreed to Meet Just Here, will disappoint readers who expect fiction to provide a plot or characterization or theme. Apparently subscribing to what any number of people have come to call “The NewYorker school” of fiction, a post-postmodernistic trend that seems, too often, to make the work greater than the sum of its parts, Blackwood dives into this slender story of American suburban life in medias res; he emerges on the other side more or less in the same place after having shown very little and told a great deal, most of which isn’t important. Nothing actually happens that is of much interest, and much of it isn’t real. Subscribing to another contemporary trend that virtually demands that fiction contain multiple dream sequences and illusions (what most American writers mistakenly think is “magic realism”), he weaves the fantastic with the actual so tightly that in many places, they can’t be separated. Probably nothing is more dangerous for a writer to include in a novel than a dream or hallucination detailed at length. If it’s more compelling than the main story, then the return tends to be a letdown; if it’s less interesting, then it’s a tedious departure, since it’s not part of the novel’s fictional reality. Too often, it’s merely authorial self-indulgence, and it must be handled with care. Charles Dickens pulled it off with panache—once. In lesser works, it almost always falls flat, sends the reader hurrying along, skimming to get back to the main plot. Of course, if there is no main plot, that’s another problem. What Blackwood’s novel does accomplish very well is an in-depth commentary on middle-class angst, most of which is internalized. The reader is exposed to all flavors of personal guilt: parental, spousal, professional. But there is no atonement, or at least none that occurs on the page. In the course of the story...