"And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you"
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Irving is confessing a novelist's most seductive fantasy: that fiction isn’t invented so much as excavated. He wants the plot to feel pre-ordained before he dares type a first line, as if the novel exists in some completed, private tense and his job is pure transcription. That posture flatters the reader, too. If the story has "already taken place", then what you’re getting isn’t a drafty improvisation but a witnessed event, arranged with the authority of hindsight.
The intent is practical as much as philosophical. Irving’s books are famously engineered; he’s a writer who trusts design over discovery. By insisting on "all the important connections", he’s describing an ethic of causality: details aren’t decorative, they’re load-bearing. The first sentence isn’t a starting gun; it’s a contract. It signals that the author knows where every thread leads, and that you can safely invest attention because it will pay off later.
The subtext is anxiety dressed up as control. Waiting to begin until the connections are "known" is also a way to postpone the vulnerability of getting it wrong. Yet Irving turns that fear into a narrative stance: the storyteller as custodian, responsible for "the right order". That phrase smuggles in a moral dimension. Order isn’t just chronology; it’s meaning. By rearranging time, revealing information strategically, the writer decides what counts as fate, what reads as accident, and what feels inevitable. In a culture that romanticizes spontaneity, Irving makes a case for the quiet power of premeditation.
The intent is practical as much as philosophical. Irving’s books are famously engineered; he’s a writer who trusts design over discovery. By insisting on "all the important connections", he’s describing an ethic of causality: details aren’t decorative, they’re load-bearing. The first sentence isn’t a starting gun; it’s a contract. It signals that the author knows where every thread leads, and that you can safely invest attention because it will pay off later.
The subtext is anxiety dressed up as control. Waiting to begin until the connections are "known" is also a way to postpone the vulnerability of getting it wrong. Yet Irving turns that fear into a narrative stance: the storyteller as custodian, responsible for "the right order". That phrase smuggles in a moral dimension. Order isn’t just chronology; it’s meaning. By rearranging time, revealing information strategically, the writer decides what counts as fate, what reads as accident, and what feels inevitable. In a culture that romanticizes spontaneity, Irving makes a case for the quiet power of premeditation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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