At the Edge of the Precipice with F. Scott Fitzgerald

The other day I started re-reading The Great Gatsby because it's recently out of copyright and as a result there has been a lot of brouhaha about it, with dramatisations and new editions galore, and I wanted to remind myself what all the fuss was about. Then I spent a guilty half hour in our local Amnesty bookshop (guilty because generally I believe in buying new books so that authors get their due royalty, but I was poorly and didn't quite know what I was doing. Guilt partly assuaged by supporting Amnesty though...) and bought The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which has sidetracked me a little, but THEN I stumbled upon the wonderful quotation below, which has catapulted me straight back to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and you'll see why...

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I'll tell you a story.

Here is a thought that sums up what is exciting about great writing. First of all, it subverts, it takes you by surprise - Scott Fitzgerald isn't saying draw your chair up to the fire, or closer to mine, he's taking you to the brink of something extraordinary.
   
I like the fact that in this line there is an implicit contract between the writer and the reader. The writer is asking something of his reader and promising a reward in return. In reading a book you form a brief but intense relationship with its author. You open up your imagination and your emotional experience and allow him to work upon them. It's an intimacy that is almost sexual, and the vertiginous excitement that can result from it is what Scott Fitzgerald is referring to here.

There is danger in what he is proposing: the edge of the precipice. You are still on solid ground, but only just. If you lose your balance, either literally or metaphorically, you could plunge to your death, or to some hitherto unexplored depths of your interior world. He is not locating you anywhere comfortable; he's not offering you an easy ride; on the contrary, he is throwing down a challenge, but in doing so he is also asking you to trust him. Perhaps that's a writer's  greatest task – to challenge his readers, but to bring them safely home.

Whether you're reading or writing, finding a story that skirts the precipice's edge is the most exciting thing of all.