The traditional idea, seen at its best in, say, Pushkin's "Queen of Spades", or Maupassant's much maligned "The Necklace", tended to rely heavily on contrivance to achieve its effects – ghosts, coincidences, characters suddenly going mad, priceless jewels turning out to be fake, and so on.
Along with the coincidences -- characters bumping into each other, Jeanene's convenient ability to understand modern Greek -- there is some crude doubleness in the plot.
He allows himself coincidences and characters who are then forgotten.
Now, what about those "coincidences" in characters though, Zal? Certainly, at least, as we have friends in common, he'd heard about Maja's lectures, went to one, and in true Hollywood style, dipped his hand in and broke off some of the imagery and vibe?
Hence the accusation of coincidence — of characters wrenched too neatly into place, and symmetries arranged for the director's pleasure.
It consists of three overlapping narratives, all set in contemporary Budapest, with some coincidences of character, location and incident; but it's hard at times not to feel that the underlying rationale binding these stories together is a simple pun.
His stories expressed the effect of coincidence on character through humour, grim or ironic, and often had surprise endings, a device that became identified with his name and cost him critical favour when its vogue had passed.
Another "coincidence": the character Ben is actually a DJ and he plays a set at Tracy's birthday party.
The point of coincidences is that characters notice them.
The horrific and endlessly fascinating forty-eight hours that brought together Kennedy, Oswald, and Ruby bequeathed too many puzzling details, weird coincidences, and shady characters for the doubters to stay silent.
In this novel we most often experience coincidence by meeting characters that we have already met.
