Ronald E. Merrill First NA Serial Rights

THE NOVELS OF KAY NOLTE SMITH:

AN APPRECIATION

Ronald E. Merrill

Ayn Rand showed the same striking originality as an artist that she did as a philosopher. Her basic innovation was combination of old and new methods. Like writers of the previous century, she used moral conflicts to drive her stories. She was an unashamed Romanticist in the sense of showing heroic characters struggling over crucially important values. But for Rand, the crucial values were those of the real, modern world, not a faraway land or a mythical kingdom.

Rand's extraordinary fiction intimidates would-be followers by its sheer overpowering quality. Still, one can discern the embryo of a school of "Romantic Realism" forming. In the novels of the late Kay Nolte Smith we can see the potential for post-Randian fiction, and perhaps some of the obstacles it faces.

Like many first novels, The Watcher (1980) is a derivative work, and it shows heavy influence from Rand. The basic plot device, a heroine who allows herself to be tried for murder to save the man she loves, is borrowed from Penthouse Legend. The villain is fleshed out from the corresponding character in Think Twice. The key themes--the evil of envy, the decisive role of self-esteem, the alienation of the good from a corrupt society--mirror those that underly Rand's fiction.

But the book is no mere imitation. Smith comes up with fresh situations and tells an original and interesting story. Her plot is complex, ingenious, and skillfully integrated with the philosophical themes. The prose is deft, unusually so for a first novel, and characterization, which will prove to be one of Smith's strongest points, is excellent. The major flaw is a somewhat forced climax, a significant problem for Smith.

In her second novel, Catching Fire (1982), Smith indulges her passion for the theatre. A key gimmick appears, which Smith will use again: The actor who conceals his secret by displaying himself in public on the stage. Alienation, perennial theme for Smith as it was for Rand, again serves as the plot driver. Here it is represented especially by Maeve Jerrold, a brilliant playwright who, like Dominique Francon, has given up on the world. The book's hero is her protege Erik Dante, the slum boy who becomes a successful actor and theatre entrepreneur. He tries to draw her into the fight for her own values, and in the end succeeds in a way he did not expect.

But it is journalist Jac Sanda who is the story's heroine. The author's real sympathies clearly lie with this rough-and-tumble working woman, not the pallid and passive Maeve. Jac and Erik fight as equal allies against the gangsters who are infiltrating the theatre unions. Erik's struggle to deal with his love for both women is only the most prominent of several conflicts of divided loyalties for characters in this novel.

In this book Smith displays the same merits as in her first, and the same defects, notably a contrived plot climax.

With Mindspell (1983), Smith moves from the orbit of Rand toward that of Nathaniel Branden. Cayla Hayward, CEO of a biotech company, finds her confidence in her own sanity shaken when an apparent reincarnation of one of her ancestors--who was burned as a witch--appears in a simple farm woman. In searching for a rational explanation, she turns to Stefan Veere, a cognitive psychologist and debunker of psychics.

Smith ingeniously integrates biotechnology, mysticism, and even Freudian psychology into her theme of self-acceptance. While the importance of rationality is critical to the story, this book is fundamentally psychological instead of moral in its focus. The emphasis is on the childhood development of the characters and how it influenced their personalities, more than on the ethical choices they make.

Smith indulges in some heavy-handed feminism in a few passages. Early in the book, we are supposed to be stunned that a company President could be a woman; then, toward the end, we are supposed to fall for the same trick and be stunned that the head of research is a woman. But this is a minor flaw. The book is ingeniously written and, unusual for Smith, it concludes with convincing dual climaxes that resolve the private and public dilemmas of the protagonist.

It is arguable that Elegy for a Soprano (1985) is Smith's finest book. Certainly it best illustrates Smith's writing and her connection to Ayn Rand. This mystery story about the murder of a genius, opera singer Vardis Wolf, gave Smith the opportunity to probe her relationship with her mentor in fiction, just as Barbara Branden did in non-fiction a year later. Dinah Mitchell, the dead singer's unacknowledged daughter, must solve not just the murder, but the even greater mystery of who this woman was, and why.

Not that the novel is a roman a clef. Though the personality of Vardis Wolf shares much with Rand's, and several incidents from Rand's life are replicated in the plot, Smith is aiming at deeper issues. There are certain great individuals who contribute something unique and irreplaceable to us. What do we owe them? And how much should we tolerate from them? In studying the character of Vardis Wolf--and of her murderer, who is, it turns out, another sort of genius--we learn a new perspective on this question, and perhaps on how we should view Ayn Rand as a person.

As a psychological study, Elegy for a Soprano is luminous, showing that Smith's rehearsal in Mindspell was very fruitful. But the later book is most notable for its brilliant integration of the psychological and moral approaches. This is post-Rand fiction at its best, as Smith works up to a stunning solution to the mystery that presents her protagonist with one of the most gripping moral dilemmas in literature.

While the main plot-climax is convincing, the resolution of the heroine's love interest is forced and badly forced. Dinah makes a final decision that is so illogical that I would not have been more surprised if she'd unscrewed her feet at the ankles and screwed them into her ears. Nonetheless, Elegy for a Soprano must be rated as a superb piece of fiction, quite aside from its unique interest to admirers of Ayn Rand.

In Country of the Heart (1988) Smith continues her experiment with the fusion of psychological and moral themes. At the same time, like Mindspell, this book served Smith as a training ground for a new approach to her work.

The plot, again, is based on a psychological investigation: why did the great Russian composer Boris Nikolayev, twenty years before, abort his plan to defect to the West? His wife and his daughter Hedy, who did escape, have to know. On a moral level, the theme is the value of freedom, and, more deeply, of truth and openness. Hedy must confront these issues not only in her father's life, but in her own family and sexual relationships. And in this book, Smith ends up with a much more ambiguous moral position than is her usual practice.

The novel's strengths are its interesting and well-drawn characters--always Smith's strongest point--and the vivid feel it gives of the intimate world of professional musicians. Its weakness is Smith's usual contrived climax, in this case based on a sexual encounter that is forced in more ways than one.

With A Tale of the Wind (1991) Kay Nolte Smith changes her fictional approach dramatically. She switches from thrillers to a historical novel; from Romantic Realism to classic Romantic style; from moral-philosophical focus to a much less cerebral story-telling. She immerses herself in her love of theatre and the arts by telling a saga of Nineteenth-Century Paris. The story begins at the dawn of Hugo's Romanticism, and ends with the premier of Cyrano.

Smith's hero is the actor Nandou, a dwarf in ordinary life, something much more on the stage. One night by magic he rescues a rag-picker's daughter from a life of poverty and prostitution. The complex relationship that results is the thread that ties together the fates of several generations of Parisians. As always, Smith creates a variety interesting characters, but it is Nandou and Jeanne who dominate the story.

Nandou's deformed body hides an intelligent and talented mind and an indomitable will. Whether saving the life of Victor Hugo, stealing back a kidnapped child, or rescuing a man from prison, he is both remarkable and convincing. The beautiful and tempestuous Jeanne is at once a fit and unfit mate for Nandou, and it is this tension that propels what otherwise would be a rather plotless narrative.

Thematically, the book deals with the value of art and liberty, and the driving issue is the tension between convention and creativity. The efflorescence of Romanticism and other schools of art against the constraints of classical formality, is reflected in the struggles of the characters to live creative lives despite the protocols of social class and French bourgeois morality.

Aside from its rather sprawling plot line, this book has few flaws. Perhaps the most notable is the lack of a sense of place. The story might as well be set in Columbus, Ohio, for all the sense it gives the reader of being in one of the world's most fascinating and distinctive cities.

A Tale of the Wind is the climax of Kay Nolte Smith's art. One has the sense of the author at last acknowledging her real desires and zestfully asserting her freedom. In reading her books, I could not but feel that The Watcher was hard work for the author; and that A Tale of the Wind was play. To create fascinating characters and carry them through fantastic situations, and to pour out her love of the arts, was Smith's accomplishment and her pleasure.

One must make allowances for a work that is produced as an artist's life is closing, perhaps in ill health. But it must be said that Venetian Song (1994) is no more than a supermarket-rack historical romance.

Susanna Bardi, a noblewoman of Sixteenth-Century Venice, is a beautiful woman with a scarred face. Running away from her repulsive husband she hides as a masked actor in a travelling troupe--thus, like other Smith characters, concealing her flaw in public view on the stage. After assorted adventures she takes on this role permanently and finds more or less of happiness in it.

The book indignantly criticizes the social and religious repression of the period. But it has no real ideological theme except for a dutiful but dispirited feminism, expressed in repeated depictions of repugnant men. The only male character of even minimal merit is the clown Paolo, a pale, pale shadow indeed of the inimitable Nandou.

What, in the end, can we learn from Kay Nolte Smith? Two principles, I think.

First, personal authenticity is perhaps the most important root of esthetic merit. The artist must have something to say; and the full potential of the work is reached only when it expresses what the artist has to say, not someone else--no matter how extraordinary that other someone. Smith's efforts to carry on Ayn Rand's work have great merit, but they are labored, and it shows. Her metier was books like A Tale of the Wind.

And yet, there is a second factor to be considered. In reading Smith's books chronologically, one sees that, like any artist, she developed not just by working but by emulating. Even Ayn Rand, as I have previously argued, served an apprenticeship under Hugo when she wrote We the Living. If Smith had not served her apprenticeship under Rand, would she ever have developed the skill to write A Tale of the Wind?

Writers who wish to inherit Ayn Rand's legacy would do well to study Smith carefully. In her work we see new examples of the essential elements of Randian fiction: a moral perspective with a plot based on moral choice; psychoepistemology as a basis for characterization; and above all, a thematic approach that uses original situations to provoke us to think about important questions.

But the Randian model of fiction is extremely demanding, and few writers can realistically aspire to it. A commitment to Romanticism is not enough; "Romantic Realism" is much more complex than Romanticism, as a novel is than a folk tale. The integration of philosophical themes with plot and characterization presents a profound challenge. It is very much to Kay Nolte Smith's credit that in her best work she came surprisingly close to the standard set by Ayn Rand.

The End