All writing must have narrative: Letter

Sir: You quote from Bill Buford's article in the New Yorker, in which he claims that "it is possible that narrative is as important to writing as the human body is to representational painting" ("Modern literary culture has lost the plot", 18 July). Surely this is not comparing like with like?

I would argue that narrative is to writing what composition is to painting. A painter may say that he is not interested in composition, just as a writer may say that he is not interested in narrative - but composition and narrative are still the fundamental component of each medium. As a progression of information, a piece of fiction can have a bad narrative or a dull narrative - but it cannot have no narrative, any more than a painting on canvas can ever have no composition.

STEPHEN VOLK

Bradford on Avon,

Wiltshire