Who is the narrator of “Starting Out in the Evening?” Is it Brian Morton? Is he “telling” the story, displaced across space and time to enter the reader’s home? Or is there another entity mediating between Mr. Morton and the reader—surely a creation of Mr. Morton’s but not the human entity himself? (Why are there so many questions?) On the back of the Harcourt paperback edition, there’s a photo of Morton (circa 1998 I assume), a small photo next to his bio. He’s smiling, look

What’s missing in “Starting Out in the Evening” is as significant as what’s present. A lot is missing; the novel consists of discontinuous glimpses of the four character’s lives, like scenes from a play. Umberto Eco had a great comment on this phenomenon, saying that the only genre where the continuity of characters’ lives doesn’t break is pornography. In pornography, Eco says (I don’t know because I’ve never seen any), if a character goes out to the store, the viewer sees th

All right, sit down everybody. I’m going to continue talking about “Starting Out in the Evening,” but first I have a few (other) thoughts I’d like to share. What am I doing here with this blog? I’m enjoying writing it very much and hope it’s of interest to others. But what’s it about? What’s the point? My project is to write about novels from a writer’s perspective. I’m interested in a novel’s structure, how the story is told—the narrator’s role. I‘m interested in characters—

One of the joys of “Starting Out in the Evening” is the lovely interconnectedness of it—the integrity, if you will, of a story that refers to itself over and over like a beautiful carpet whose central figure keeps appearing in subtly new forms. Mise en abymes? In this story, there are many, best beloved. What do the three central characters want? Another way to express this—what’s missing for them? These questions drive the story. On the surface, Heather Wolfe would seem to d