What does Lubbock (1921) say about preparing a climax in an earlier part of a long book so the climax itself has little left to do, and which of his statements are general versus about Balzac's Eugenie Grandet and La Recherche de l'Absolu?
[1921 criticism] Lubbock states as a general claim that a prudent writer relieves the climax by taxing it as little as possible, so the climax only adds the touch that makes the book whole. He then reads two Balzac novels as laying the climax up in the opening picture: in Eugenie Grandet the climax is a slow chill that needs a long established routine, and in La Recherche de l'Absolu the repeated suspense-and-shock works because a rich world was built to be destroyed. He adds that preparation must be unrecognisable until it pays off, and that the critic (not the writer) perceives the stroke. He gives no test.
[1921 criticism] Lubbock states as a general claim that a prudent writer relieves the climax by taxing it as little as possible, so the climax only adds the touch that makes the book whole. He then reads two Balzac novels as laying the climax up in the opening picture: in Eugenie Grandet the climax is a slow chill that needs a long established routine, and in La Recherche de l'Absolu the repeated suspense-and-shock works because a rich world was built to be destroyed. He adds that preparation must be unrecognisable until it pays off, and that the critic (not the writer) perceives the stroke. He gives no test.
Curator qualifications: Climax laid up in the opening picture (readings).
Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.
Structured fields
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"url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18961/pg18961.txt",
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}Evidence claims
- [sourced_fact] [1921 criticism] Lubbock states as a general claim that a prudent writer relieves the climax by taxing it as little as possible, so the climax only adds the touch that makes the book whole. He then reads two Balzac novels as laying the climax up in the opening picture: in Eugenie Grandet the climax is a slow chill that needs a long established routine, and in La Recherche de l'Absolu the repeated suspense-and-shock works because a rich world was built to be destroyed. He adds that preparation must be unrecognisable until it pays off, and that the critic (not the writer) perceives the stroke. He gives no test. · locator: candidate evidence excerpts source
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