![]() ![]() His greatest character, the Baron de Charlus, is arrogant, garrulous and caustic. Even Marcel Proust, who certainly delivers paragraphs of dense prose, used dialogue brilliantly and silence too. ![]() "Dialogue in a novel is like stained glass, the surrounding prose is there to frame and support it. If only because the subconscious can then chime in, his premeditated scheme never wholly dictates what someone will say. When a writer allows his characters to talk among themselves, he grants them their freedom. They then supply their own reading of how loudly or softly, truly or falsely, words are exchanged. ![]() It encourages readers to bring a book to life by enticing their participation in it. "Dialogue tells us what people say and it hints at what they do not. But a writer who cannot make characters talk, and have their conversations require us to listen to them, is locked into airless formality. It may also be possible to contrive great blocks of prose, in which landscapes are described and psychological states analysed as never before. It is possible to compose fiction without it, just as Georges Perec was able to write an entire book without using the vowel "e", but one had better be a genius to affect such forms of composition. Buy Frederic Raphael books at the Guardian bookshop ![]()
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