Like houses, novels have proper entranceways intended by the author as the way into the fiction that follows, and like an architect, the author designs those licensed openings for maximum aesthetic effect, so as to lure us into the narrative structure beyond. That linear interior is likewise an arrangement laid out so as to enhance the experience of encounter, and it subjoins the entranceway as a complex instrument of authorial control. Entering a novel by means of the first word, sentence, chapter, and proceeding along the intended corridor is a convention basic to the act of fiction, but it is a route like that found in a carefully planned theme park, managed by the controlling intelligence so as to exercise full aesthetic authority. But should the reader get into the narrative by another, unintended opening, then quite a different route is followed and a different experience may be obtained, one controlled not by the author-architect but by the reader as explorer of forbidden spaces.

The kind of opening I am describing provides access not to the narrative but to the workings of the narrative, the infrastructure that lies within the story by means of which the author leads us. Moreover, by gaining access to the infrastructure, by discovering the way the novel has been designed to work, we can often gain access to the author as well. The Rise of Silas Lapham provides a convenient (but by no means unique) example, for we know that the writing of this novel coincided with something close to a nervous breakdown experienced by Howells, that its carefully worked out social drama seems to have put a great strain on the author in order to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.