This discussion of dialogue as in part an art of indirection has already
begun to illuminate the distinction between conversational disclosure and
authorial disclosure. This distinction enables us not only to identify the two
tracks of communication in any dialogue but also to analyze the relationship
between those tracks. This relationship can vary widely, from minimal dis-
tance (in cases where the implied author uses a character as a reliable spokes-
person for his views) to maximal distance (in cases where the implied author
communicates messages that run counter to the facts, interpretations, and
ethical evaluations the characters deliver in the dialogue). Implied authors
have multiple ways of signaling their distance: they can place clues in the
conversation itself, and they can establish particular characters as unreliable
reporters, interpreters, or evaluators so that whenever they speak, the audi-
ence’s default assumption is that there’s something off-kilter about their com-
munication. In addition, as noted above, implied authors frequently use a
series of conversational disclosures as the basis for authorial disclosure in a
new dialogue: in other words, in any given dialogue, the authorial disclosure
may exceed the conversational disclosure as a result of knowledge that the
implied author and audience share and that the participants in the conversa-
tion do not. As a novel progresses, this kind of authorial disclosure across con-
versations is likely to increase precisely because the author has more previous
conversations to draw upon.
As noted above, conversational disclosure itself is often far from straight-
forward. Strikingly, Higgins himself is on the record praising the dialogue in
“Appearances” because O’Hara does not make the motives of his characters
transparent (On Writing 120–21). Conversational disclosure will exceed autho-
rial disclosure when the mimetic context makes it clear that one or more of the
characters possesses knowledge that the implied author has not (or not yet)
disclosed to his audience. For example, in chapter 3 of Eddie Coyle, Eddie asks
his interlocutor, identified here only as “the second man” but later revealed to
be Jimmy Scalisi, where he’d like to pick up the guns Eddie will supply him.
Eddie: “Same place?” Scalisi: “I think that’s going to be a little out of my way
tomorrow” (23). Both Eddie and Scalisi know which place they’re referring to,
but Higgins does not bother to invent a way to tell his audience. For Higgins,
that specific information is less important than the fact that Scalisi can’t get
there and so makes a plan for them to leave messages for each other at Dil-
lon’s bar—and in that way bring them within Dillon’s orbit. In cases of autho-
rial disclosure across conversations, the implied author relies on the audience
to track the relationships between and among conversations (convergences,
complementarities, divergences, contradictions, and so on) and to draw the
appropriate inferences. For example, in chapter 23 of Eddie Coyle, when Dave
CONVERSATIONAL AND AUTHORIAL DISCLOSURE IN DIALOgUE • 173