David Lodge

A truly exhaustive description of any event is impossible; from which it follows that all novels contain gaps and silences which the reader must fill, in order to “produce the text” (as poststructuralist critics say). But in some cases these gaps and silences are the result of unconscious evasions or suppressions on the writer's part (and no less interesting for that) while in others they are a conscious artistic strategy, to imply rather than state meaning.