Saints aspire to simplicity. On the other hand, writers who drink too much sometimes like to think of themselves as complicated. "The most complicated subject that I know, since I am a man," wrote Ernest Hemingway, "is a man's life"--meaning that the most complicated subject he knew was himself. Complexity is a sort of macho/metaphysical burden. But maybe the smokescreen of the "complicated" is also the beginning of the storyteller's art. ("Bill! Bill Faulkner, where have you been for the last three days?" "It's a complicated story, dear.")
"Complicated" appears in a blurb on the jacket of Summer of Deliverance (Simon...