whence/whither/wither plot?

Updike made a kind of amazing claim in a 1987 New Yorker piece reprinted (in part) in that magazine's most recent issue:

"What if you think that the narrative art derives its value and importance...from its imitation of reality, from its truthfulness to our mundane human condition? Then plot is justifiable only to the extent that reality itself can be said to have a plot, a design... For the Greeks, plot traces the vengeance of the gods, often working their will through human passions. For Christians, plot echoes divine Providence and its ultimate justice... [William Dean Howells] slowly but thoroughly became an agnostic, and, in his middle life, turned to Tolstoy and socialism in lieu of a supernatural faith. Purposefully, then, and not from any mere aesthetic disdain of flashy effectism, his fiction is formless..."

I don't know from William Dean Howells, but is it so, that plot makes the most sense to those of us who believe life has a plot? If we don't believe in Providence (if we have a healthy incredulity toward metanarratives, say), will beginnings, middles, and ends always strike us as artificial? Will our plots, where we try them, be forced and pretentious without fail?

Then I start thinking...is it maybe true that my favorite 20th-century novels (even ignoring the postmodern ones, which are too obvious here) hold it together by focusing specifically on the lack of order, or the search for order? The Catcher in the Rye is arguably a religious novel with the "punchline" left out*; even Gatsby, which is pretty conservative by these standards, is basically about someone's failure to create a narrative... But then how many such novels can be produced before that subject's played the fuck out? I'm not sure what the number is, but I bet it's been reached.

Maybe the only kind of fiction somebody like me can write (in good faith, and with pride) is comic fiction, absurdist fiction, finding its "order" in meaninglessness...?



* I'll write about this someday.