What’s unsaid can say an awful lot. In Mad Men last night, protagonist Don Draper spent some of the time with a potential lover, who runs a family department store. The intimacy between them comes when they go outside and see some dogs there. The store’s dogs have been an important part of her life since she was a girl, and she reveals a softer side to herself when she’s around them. They kiss.

Later, Don is being the co-host of his daughter’s birthday party, and his wife shoos him off from speaking to a single mother who the other women in the neighbourhood find threatening. Don skedaddles away, supposedly to pick up a birthday cake. Instead, he returns much later – with a pet dog for his daughter. Without a word being said, we know where he got that dog. And more importantly we know who he saw to get it. And both of these things also tell us how Don is feeling about his marriage.

The principle of omission is an important one. What could Bill Murray possibly say to Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation that would be more powerful than what he whispers in her ear unheard by the audience? Where would the strength of Dead Man’s Shoes be if we knew the truth about Paddy Considine’s brother any earlier in the story?

In linguistic terms, omission is to do with putting the relevant material you want the audience to deduce within the deep structure of the story, rather than on its surface. Huh? Look at the deep structure as what’s under the water, and the surface as the iceberg: that which is explicated. For instance, if someone in a story is revealed to have a receipt for bullets in their jacket pocket, it’s reasonable to assume they also possess a gun. The connection is made in the mind of the audience, which is a far more powerful place for it to happen than in dialogue.

Some friends of mine were renting a flat. I visited them, and there was a substantial hole in the living room ceiling. During the time I was there, I didn’t once mention the hole, and just before I left one of my hosts was curious about why not. I pointed out that they were presumably fully aware of the gap above their heads and the problems it caused, and felt they’d bring it up if they really wanted to talk about something that was a possible cause of tension. Since I didn’t want them to feel bad, I saw no reason to draw their attention to a subject that their other visitors had apparently been more than voluble about.

Life is full of loose ends, and I like stories that have some about for you to ponder when the story is technically over. Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus trilogy (co-written with Robert Shea) is littered with story fragments that haunt you long after you’ve read the books. And the beauty of this is that you’ll seek closure for those issues in the real world, which is heading towards what people mean when they say good art can change you.

Cut to another extract from the interview I conducted with Cerebus creators Dave Sim and Gerhard:

Sim I mean, that was the end of the Illuminatus trilogy - Wilson flat out tells you that you’ve been changed by this book, and something inside your head just rears back from that and goes ‘No I haven’t!’, and at the same time there’s another part right back there behind him going ‘No, we have - let’s all admit to it.’ It’s the same thing…the story about the cop phoning. I wasn’t there.

Gerhard Dave was at a convention or something and I get a call from a police officer in a neighbouring city. He let me know right off the bat that this wasn’t an official police investigation but a friend of his, his son was reading this ‘mind-altering literature’, and he wanted to know what this was all about. And I thought ‘Fuck, isn’t this what literature is supposed to do, alter your mind?’.

Fuck indeed.