Ken Chowder JADIS

Edvard Munch

In his novel JADIS, Ken Chowder does exactly what I imagine all novelists and moviemakers should do: cease the progression of story and plot at about the halfway mark of the work, and let the rest of the novel or movie, having provided you with enough mooring, lay before you an author's explication of character and sentiment, which is the only location in which aesthetic sense resides. That Jadis lights Egg's way to Tory in the very last few paragraphs of the book only happens to postscript Chowder's having already suffused you with integral, rhyming counterpanes of evolution and what is often called soul. The only true rockmark is imaginary. The browner skins are shortcuts. Annie dispenses with children on page 25, else we would be children.