Friends by Stephen Dixon

Author:Stephen Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Friends: More Will and Magna Stories
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8329-3
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 1990-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

pp. 221-224

Page 221.1 don’t know if I can write it. It’s taken me almost two years to get to this page. I don’t have anything more to say. The novel’s run flat. I don’t want to go on with it. But after 221 pages? 220 I mean. And it’s not true I don’t want to go on with it. I do. I’m sure I can too, but I’m just bogged down. I have him where he’s on a bridge. He has to make a decision about something. This has been the main point of the novel up till now. To have him go through the novel till the moment where he makes a decision that will change his life and also change the direction of the novel. I didn’t know where he was going to make the decision. After the first hundred pages or so, it could have been almost anywhere in his journey through the city the novel takes place in. I didn’t block out the novel from the beginning, just as I haven’t with any of the novels I’ve written. But he should make the decision now. On page 221. There’s no place else for him to go. It’s late at night, he’s alone on that bridge. Looking at the river about fifteen feet below. He knows he has to make the decision. He’s been talking about it on and off through the entire novel. He left his apartment at dawn on page one to make the decision. A decision he knows will change his life. He hasn’t revealed yet what the decision’s about. Really hasn’t revealed anything about the decision: just that he has to make one. What the decision’s about is supposed to be revealed when he makes the decision. The reader’s supposed to follow him around the city right up till the time when he makes the decision. I think I said that. Then he’s supposed to make the decision. If he doesn’t make it now there’s nothing else he can do. He’s done everything else in the novel but make that decision. At least everything else that would apply to his personality and life and actions and whatever other things apply, before he makes that decision. But what’s the decision he has to make? He has to know what he has to decide on if he’s to make the decision, and he has to make it. So make it. I’m telling him to make the decision. Say something out loud or in your head or even write it down if you want that will change your life and also change the direction of this novel. If those devices don’t work, say it some other way. By a gesture or just one word or any way you think to say it, as long as it’s clear to the reader that what you’re doing is making that decision, but make it. If you don’t, this novel’s finished. It was all supposed to come to this. It has come to this.

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