Victor LaValle, Mos Def, and The Ecstatic

Mos Def's new album, The Ecstatic, is named after the novel by Victor LaValle, which Mr. Def calls one of his favorites.

LaValle is also the author of the story collection, Slapboxing with Jesus (a title I used to kick off countless poetry games in the writing workshops I facilitated with the Prison Creative Arts Project). His next novel comes out next year. It's called Big Machine--and it takes a horror turn.

 While in North Carolina, I was fortunate enough to have several conversations with LaValle about plot--the sort of craft element that fiction writers seem embarrassed to talk about, so busy we are pondering the implications of white space and theme and so on. "Plot-driven" is used synonymously with "hack" as a fiction descriptor, unfortunately implying that the only thing worthy of happening in a "literary" novel ("character-driven," such a book is described as, as if it is wholly separate from something that is "plot-driven") is characters thinking about stuff and feeling things.

In a class he taught on plot last week, LaValle used H.G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau to reveal how to hammer out what, actually, happens, chapter by chapter, boiled down to the barest.

A character sitting on his couch, reflecting on war and devastation in one chapter doesn't make that a chapter where war and devastation happens, no matter how vivid the description is, how striking the dialogue. In that chapter, a character sits on his couch and thinks. And maybe that is exactly what should happen in that chapter. Maybe that's the kind of book you want to write. But the point LaValle was making, and that struck me, was how easily we delude ourselves about the plots we make, seeing complex character relations as indistinguishable from "what happens" in our writing. The point, then, is to see what we do and see if it's what we want.

LaValle said that he hoped such a class might liberate a writer who felt like he or she couldn't write anything packed with interesting plot and still be a "good" writer.

For more of the wonderful literary ruminations--this time, on narrative voice--and good humor, check out LaValle's interview with Amy Minton in Hobart.

In other literary hip-hop/rap news, Mos Def intends to revive HBO's Def Poetry Jam. Rock.

Thanks to Maud Newton for the initial link.

Image credit: National Public Radio

Comments

[Nora]

I've been looking forward to the new Kate Atkinson book (third in her recent quasi-mystery series) because the last two were so well plotted - AND had great characterization, dialogue, etc. In other words, I think you can have both. And there's a reason why "genre" fiction is so popular - people like a good story in which Stuff Happens. But of course mysteries, fantasy/sci-fi and romance can all be well-written ("transcends the genre" is the phrase that's always used, right?)

Ali Smith's "The Accidental" had both, too, for a non-genre-y example, though the plot is an old classic: "a stranger comes to town."

[Nora]

P.S. Haven't read anything by Mr. LaValle but he's on my list now...