"To Come into the Story as Late as Possible, and To Tell It as Fast as You Can": Pace in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Abstract:Why do some novels have a fast pace and others slow? Pace in narrative gauges the movement of a story in a specific direction with respect to time. Dialogue, descriptive summaries, chapter breaks, and other formal elements speed up or slow down the perceived tempo of a narrative. In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carré creates pace by exploiting the discrepancies between fabula and syuzhet. By his own admission, he prefers to begin a story as late as possible to induce pressure between the content of a story and the manner of its telling, a pressure that sets and regulates narrative pace.