John Grisham's The Confession

I have nearly completed John Grisham's, The Confession, which I renewed today for the third time. The fact that it is taking me three library renewals to complete it is not entirely Grisham's fault. I have been very busy with other things. However, I must say that I have not enjoyed it as much many of his other novels. It contains a good deal of filler the reader could have easily guessed for himself, such as the results of the research found on the Internet about the killer. Basically it is a piece of thinly veiled propaganda against the death penalty. Of course, fiction of this type has many highly respected parallels such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe's monumental attack on slavery. Knowing Grisham's political views, as anyone would who has read his books, made certain events in the story almost inevitable and consequently somewhat simplistic. Without the execution the story would have contributed to the notion that the system works and that innocent people aren’t likely to be executed. This is certainly an idea Grisham would not have wanted to promulgate.

The people in the story who pushed the execution of an innocent man forward seemed to have been far more concerned about the effect it would have on their careers than about the guilt associated with the taking of an innocent man's life. Though this may be a fair portrayal of some caught up in the administration of the capital punishment system, it seemed a bit over the top to me, and as unrealistic as to assume that all who favor the death penalty are willing to kill innocent people every now and again. In other words, it seems to me that Grisham's obsessive revulsion to the death penalty (which, to some extent, I share) interfered with his task of writing a realistic fiction involving this important issue.

As I once heard somewhere, I think, there are basically two kinds of good fiction: one in which the unbelievable is made believable, and the other in which the believable is made unbelievable. In the former, the author begins with a large canvas and lots of unbelievable actions, attitudes, and coincidences. It is his task to make the extraordinary events and characters in this story somehow seem possible or even plausible. The unreal must be made to seem realistic. The writer whose story falls into this category fails if, after all is said and done, there are too many fantastical characters, actions, or coincidences for the reader to think of the story as anything other than unreal.

Fiction in the latter of the two categories takes ordinary events, attitudes, and actions and makes them worthy of contemplation by developing inward, emotional and mental struggles. In this case, the writer must make events and characters compelling, which otherwise could easily become boring. Usually this is done by showing that nothing and no one is really without significance. Sometimes the main character in such a story is portrayed as a hero not because he is doing exciting, unbelievable things but because, for one reason or another, in spite of extraordinary mental, educational, or moral excellence, his life revolves around patiently doing unexciting things with faithfulness, fortitude, and excellence. His struggles and feats are largely inward. I like many of Grisham's books because they often fall into this latter category, which I greatly prefer. Unfortunately, this book did not.