Nevertheless, it is this lowlier angel that concerns us here. There have been signs that she has been rather neglected of late; maybe she could do with a little petitioning. What place has place in fiction? It might be thought so modest a one that it can be taken for granted: the location of a novel; to use a term of the day, it may make the novel “regional.” The term, like most terms used to pin down a novel, means little; and Henry James said there isn’t any difference between “the English novel” and “the American novel,” since there are only two kinds of novels at all, the good and the bad. Of course Henry James didn’t stop there, and we all hate generalities, and so does place. Yet as soon as we step down from the general view to the close and particular, as writers must and readers may and teachers well know how to, and consider what good writing may be, place can be seen, in her own way, to have a great deal to do with that goodness, if not to be responsible for it.
