The Contrapuntal Conversation

The character of literature is essentially choral. If a voice is lacking, we hear that silence as part of a specific literary texture. New points of view are consistently arriving on the scene, just as familiar characters are making their exit. Our practiced, sensitive listening carefully tracks this contrapuntal conversation, and cannot fail to detect any lacuna. As voices rise and fall, every silence and dissonance makes its statement and is, at least subliminally, eventually recognized and identified.