Talking Fiction

Sometimes when I’m feeling blue I pick up an Iris Murdoch novel. Yesterday I started rereading an old favorite, A Fairly Honorable Defeat, first published in 1970.

There are many astonishing things about Murdoch’s novels, not the least of which is her use of dialogue. When her characters speak, they speak volumes; and it takes very little—a few drinks, perhaps—to get them to drop profound thoughts into the most casual conversations. Here is a snippet of dialogue from the Fairly Honorable character Rupert Foster, a lifelong student of philosophy:

“There are times when one’s just got to go on loving somebody helplessly, with blank hope and blank faith. When love just is hope and faith in their most denuded form. Then love becomes almost impersonal and loses all its attractiveness and its ability to console. But it is just then that it may exert its greatest power. It is just then that it may really be able to redeem. Love has its own cunning beyond our conscious wiles.”

I don’t know of any other current or recent authors who write this kind of dialogue in fiction, with the exception of Saul Bellow. In fact, Bellow was sometimes accused of writing novels that were nothing but talk. His defenders countered with the assertion that at least it was excellent talk—and so it was.

Now that Murdoch and Bellow are gone, where do we go to find fictional characters who can expound like this? Is the problem that I am still stuck in the 20th century, thus missing the 21st century novelists who write great dialogue? I welcome your suggestions!