What do you think your favorite author's personal theory of narrative is? (Week 15)

I don't really think I could tie down one theory of narrative for an author. I believe to do so would be to commit the fallacy. But, after thinking about your question, I have been thinking about all of the short stories I have read whose events I don't necessarily know to be constituent or supplementary events while reading, but then as I end the story, the events fall into place. These are the stories that catch. These are the stories that I end with “Aha. I see what you did there.”  

Patricia Highsmith is one of these writers. When reading a story like “The Terrapin,” part of the magic of the experience is the simultaneous reading and figuring. Where is his father? Is that important? How old is Victor? Oh, he’s 11. Is that important? She tossed the turtle into boiling water. How fast? Oh. nevermind.

Deciphering which are constituent events and which are supplementary events is part of the puzzling of the reading itself. Is that a feature of gothic stories? I experience the same while reading a Flannery O’ Connor story. Or an Edgar Allan Poe story. I have more thinking to do on this front. And that seems to be the fun of narrative theory.