Expository vs. Narrative and Dialogue

I'm reading a great book titled Civilwarland In Bad Decline by George Saunders. Published in 1996, it stands up to the test of time. It's funny, thoughtful, sad, engaging and compelling as well as relentlessly creative. In terms of creativity, it rivals Absurdistanby Gary Shteyngart.

I highly recommend that people read both of these books in order to see two verdantly creative minds at work. The one caveat, Civilwarland does share more than a few traits with stories by Vonnegut, especially his short story Harrison Bergeron.

The reason why I'm writing about this book, though, is to note that as I was reading last night it struck me that there is very little dialogue and quite a lot of expository, or at least expository-related writing. In other words, he tells as much as he shows. In most books this doesn't work. The News From Spain and Shorecliff come to mind as examples. Too much telling so that the story never really emerges and the pace is rather slow. I put both books down for that reason.

I suppose the point is that if you are going to rely on expository to carry the story, you need to do two things:

1) Ensure the narrator is entertaining and engaging enough to carry it off.

2) The narration does a lot to move the story and carry the story as much as it does to explain and tell what is happening.

I don't really have a preference for either style, it's hard enough to be a good writer, but I do believe that if you have a good story to tell and want that to come through unfettered by the narration that reducing or eliminating the expository is important.