Rick in
Casablanca notices the vast implausibility of happenstance: “Of all the gin
joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” Is serendipity
a good thing in fiction ever? For me, one of the precepts of good writing has
always been that coincidences are only permissible when the writer is setting
up the narrative. Indeed, they’re often necessary: Circumstances have to come
together in some way to launch an extended action. A sudden hailstorm brings
man and woman together under the same awning, creating the necessary meet, and
things can build from there, as it happened with Rick and Ilse. But, in my Tomus Primus of Good Writing wisdom
says: “don’t use a coincidence to develop or resolve the plot.” It seems Kay
forgot this cardinal rule. Happenstance is all over this novel. When the story
actions start resulting from Deus-Ex-Machina instead of the characters’
choices, purposes, reactions, plans, and the like, something is deadly wrong,
because these factors create patterns of cause and effect that enriches the
lives of those same characters. The problem in wrapping up a story with
happenstance is that it robs the main characters of their strife. Serendipity
to get characters into trouble are great; Serendipity to get them out of it are
cheating. When coincidence takes over, I stop caring about the characters, and
the book dies on me. Kay is one of my favourite writers. I don’t get it. Ghost
writing in play here? In my everyday life, the millions of things that whiz
through my day never match up so cozily. And I don’t notice it when they don’t
match up, because I don’t see them coming. The non-serendipity of everyday life
goes unregistered because they’re so pervasive. In a novel the writer has to
care of business, because I notice these things like a hawk. Close Reading at work.
