A Novel Take

Richard Russo in Sunday's Washington Post: There's also a story in which Eliot isn't even the main character. Because how believable is it, really, that they came across him by chance on that wiretap? His many enemies are justly famous as the dirtiest of tricksters. Maybe I should be writing a thriller, but I dislike and distrust plot-driven narrative and have grown fond of my own messed-up, untidy Eliot, so American in both his ambition and the disgrace that seems to flow from it so naturally. I might not know precisely why he's done what he's done, but he connects to my long-held conviction that people (in fiction, in life) aren't meant to be saints, or to be treated like saints. That's the hard lesson Hawthorne's Reverend Dimmesdale learned from the pulpit.