Anthony Doerr: Suspense (January 2010)

What makes suspense compelling instead of melodramatic? Through close readings of work by Camus, Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph Conrad, Cormac McCarthy, and Edgar Allen Poe, Anthony Doerr suggests that well-executed suspense functions at a number of levels, so that even as smaller moments of literal suspense are resolved, larger, figurative questions continue to grow.