How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these? Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect? Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends? Where are the hatreds, the political ambitions, the lust for power? Where are speed, noise, ugliness, everything that makes us who we are and makes us recognize ourselves in fiction?
In "Crossing to Safety," Wallace Stegner raises a profound question about the essence of storytelling. He challenges the notion of what makes lives compelling enough for fiction, particularly when many lives are quiet and unremarkable. He wonders where the dramatic elements typically present in novels, such as excess, violence, and scandal, are situated in the lives of ordinary people. Stegner's inquiry points to the absence of the loud and chaotic experiences that are often seen as the lifeblood of engaging narratives.
This contemplation highlights the disparity between expected literary themes and the more subdued reality of some lives. Stegner suggests that true human experience encompasses the mundane and the quietly profound, even if it lacks the traditional markers of intensity and conflict. Ultimately, he posits that the true challenge for writers is to find depth and meaning in the ordinary, to convey the richness of life that exists even without the trappings of drama.
