26 October 1993
I am making notes on Vera because she keeps trying to become a symbol, and I will not have it. Symbols are what happens when a writer has stopped listening and started arranging furniture for critics.
Vera is fifty-three, owns a green suit too good for the life she is living, and wants money with an honesty I rather admire. She also wants to be thought generous. This is the useful contradiction. A person who wants two incompatible things is already halfway to a plot.
I have given her a niece because nieces are excellent instruments of exposure. The young think they are watching the old decline; the old are often watching the young repeat them in louder clothes.
The question is how much wickedness to allow her. Too little and she becomes another brave woman with a good sentence pinned to her coat. Too much and the story excuses itself from complexity. I want the reader to enjoy her before deciding whether enjoyment is evidence against them.
This is why I like the page. I can write down this sort of working note before it has been made respectable. There is energy in showing the scaffolding while the building still has rain in it.