Abstract

What should be immediately apparent to any writer of realistic fiction is its unreal or synthetic nature. Regardless of how persuasive the forgery appears, it is still a forgery. The colors of the painting are not identical to those of the real world. The illusion of similarity is achieved by trickery. The houses of realistic novels are like those found on a stage set; they are there to lend reality and weight to what is important, which may be a conversation between two realistically dressed people, walking in front of the novels' realistic buildings, conversing about something which would, in actuality, be impossible to talk about openly, something which would, ordinarily, seem impossible to take seriously as a motive for violent emotion which leads to violent action. No matter how expertly and exactly a novelist's world duplicates common reality, the duplication must be a means to an end. Duplication itself is not the novel's goal. If it were, the novelist would be properly defined as a camera which takes pictures with words or as a maker of verbal documentaries who strives to capture the passing scene. This is an axiom which must appear self-evident to both the writer and the audience. However, when I wrote Anya , I found that this self-evident truth provided random and unreliable light; if this truth had been a source of electricity, it would be safe to say that its failure to illuminate caused a blackout of comprehension for many critics and readers. Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, professor of English at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, is the author of Falling, Anya, and Time in Its Flight, several collections of poetry, including Rhymes and Runes of the Toad and Alphabet for the Lost Years, and, most recently, The Queen of Egypt and Other Stories