Fiction has developed in unexpected ways since Elizabeth Bowen commanded, in her “Notes on Writing a Novel,” that the “functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the novelist’s mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.” Bowen counsels precise selection, following, in this respect, Edith Wharton, who also disliked novelists who used “irrelevant small-talk, in the hope of thus producing a greater air of reality.” Many contemporary novelists use dialogue precisely as small talk: as verismo-filler, giving us a comfy, televisual sense of the already known.

James Wood, in: ‘Say What?‘