There is some minimal, to be sure narrative characterization at work here, which is to say that the storyteller's voice is not as absent as either minimalist champions or critics might wish or lament. But the sense and even the tone of the conversation is conveyed in a choice of words that is, consistent with Barth's description of minimalist vocabulary, "stripped down." Nor is there much editorial comment on the part of the writer. For as lacking in descriptive embellishment as the prose and dialogue are, they convey a precise realism. The environment of the telephone call is closely observed, highly objective, and this is consistent with the definition of minimalism as well. The people in this scene are tense, rather unhappy people who react and behave with body language as well as with words, and to this extent they are anchored in reality. Indeed, the shift on the sofa, in this view, is what might pass for editorial comment contained in more traditional fiction. Compare the scene between Nick and Petra to a moment of shared emotional between Dinah and Adam in Adam Bede. Two of the foremost critics of minimalism are Gardner and Gilder, who condemn the form in partfor the very reason that it breaks away from the accepted narrative norms. In particular, Gilder, who does not accept the implied literary dictum that "less is more," fails to find resonance in what he sees the too specific nature of minimalism's pattern of ideas or the means by which these ideas are made apparent. He considers minimalism a kind of failed thematic structure, replete with "miniaturized epiphanies." to boldly interrupt his preceding material, or to only stripped down syntax that avoids periodic sentences, serial Beattie's scope is less grand and her irony far less savage than Barth's. She deals in domestic ironies that are nonetheless or for that very reason involved with the ultimate concerns of most people. She depicts the lives of quiet desperation |
