" Such, however, has been
the transformation of his mind during a twelve days' sojourn that he
understands the crime, he pardons it, he approves it.
Can this wholesale change of attitude be brought about without a plot?
Yet many of these reviewers discover no such thing in the book. "It
possesses not the faintest shadow of a plot," says one of the most
reputable of them. This annoys me.
I see no reason why a book should have a plot. In regard to this one, it
would be nearer the truth to say that it is nothing but plot from
beginning to end. How to make murder palatable to a bishop: that is the
plot. How? You must unconventionalise him, and instil into his mind the
seeds of doubt and revolt. You must shatter his old notions of what is
right. It is the only way to achieve this result, and I would defy the
critic to point to a single incident or character or conversation in the
book which does not further the object in view. The good bishop soon
finds himself among new influences; his sensations, his intellect, are
assailed from within and without. Figures such as those in chapters 11,
19 and 35; the endless dialogue in the boat; the even more tedious
happenings in the local law-court; the very externals--relaxing wind and
fantastic landscape and volcanic phenomena--the jovial immoderation of
everything and everybody: they foster a sense of violence and
insecurity; they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ideas.
If that was your plot, the reviewer might say, you have hidden it rather
successfully.
Pages:
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179