SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 53
SINE QUA NON
too surreal, fragmented, opaque, or "protest" to qualify. Novels like Toni Morrison's Beloved,
Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, Gayl Jones's Corregidora, Octavia Butler's Kindred, and
Samuel Delany's Dhalgren follow in the wake of Ellison's formal break, with each employing
strategies of spectrality, non-linearity, metafiction, or genre-blending to demonstrate that
Blackness exceeds realist convention. It is so that radial suspense allows Blackness to be
momentarily seized by form so it can escape it again, although it was already free.
Talent and craft are non-negotiable in producing a well-executed suspense in the
tradition of Highsmith or Ellison. Commenting on Highsmith’s talent, journalist Graham
Greene writes, “Fear after a time, as we all learned in the blitz (referencing the London Blitz
of World War II), is narcotic; it can lull one by fatigue into sleep, but apprehension nags at
the nerves gently and inescapably. We have to learn to live with it.”24 This “living with it”
and the ability to live through it so one can translate it, and suspend others in it, is the same
talent of which Highsmith speaks.
On craft, Highsmith states, “Writing is a craft and needs constant practice.”25 She
quotes French visual artist Pierre Auguste Renoir, who states, “Painting is not a matter of
dreaming or being inspired. It is a handicraft, and a good craftsman is needed to do it well,”
and American choreographer Martha Graham:
“It’s a curious combination of skill, intuition, and, I must say ruthlessness—and a
beautiful intangible called faith. If you don’t have this magic, you can do a beautiful
thing, you can do thirty-two fouettés, and it doesn’t matter. This thing, I guess it’s
born in you. It’s a thing you can draw out in people, but you cannot instill it in
people, you cannot teach it.”26
Renoir speaks of the craft, while Graham speaks of the talent, flair, and genius
required to use good craft. [She concludes] Craft without talent has no joy and
no surprises, nothing original. Talent without craft—well, how can the world ever
see it?27
To say craft, for Highsmith, is a matter of inspiration, production ability, talent, and genius,
and it is necessary to know what ought to be produced as art for the gallery, stage, or
manuscript. And although operating from different paradigms of suspense-craft, Highsmith’s
position aligns with Ellison, who agrees that “Everyone has to master his craft or profession.
Without the mastery, no one is free.”28 The relationship he holds to “mastery of craft” and
“freedom” relates to a notion of “knowing the rules so that one can break them”—or better
yet, breaking the rules from within the rules, which is what he decisively achieves in Invisible
Man.
Highsmith is equally clear about suspense’s presence and craft requirements. Every story
has suspense. Suspense is about creating tension but is even more about maintaining balance
across the story’s beginning, middle, and end that, at the writer’s designated time, forces the
reader to feel that the stakes are so high that violent action leading to death or nonviolent
Patricia Highsmith, Eleven (New York: Grove Press, 1989).
Highsmith, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, 100.
26
Highsmith, Plotting 78.
27
Highsmith, Plotting, 79.
28
The New York Times, “Interview,” para. 8.
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