The Special Halo
17 Dec
Quote # 2 comes from Italo Calvino: “The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.”
To me, this is a great quote about subtext, the invisible-yet-ever-present currents that run beneath a work, the cumulative power of its silences. This quote makes me think of one of my favorite novels, The Lover, which is a) amazing, and b) largely driven by subtext. The dark nature of the relationship between the narrator and her brother, which is in many ways at the heart of the novel, is never addressed, never spoken of, and yet it is present on every page; the reader “[reads] what is not written.” And isn’t that often the way in life, too? In that the things we never speak of are often the things that leave deepest imprints on the self.
Also, can we talk about the “special halo”? As in, what exactly is a “special halo” and where do you get one?
I think it emerges in the editing? With my first novel, I kept removing pages, until I had 194 on one side, which were what I took out, and 224 on the other, what I kept. I think the halo comes out of the economy, in part. That it is made from compression.