The use (and non-use) of suspense: analysing Brautigan to learn writing

Suspense is there to keep readers reading.  A gun to the reader's head could do that, but it's usually better to keep them reading by making them want to know something--but to withhold that something.  Brautigan does this in one of his short stories by suggesting that all is not right with a very old woman wanting a pound of meat:  "...but who knows what such an old woman could use a pound of meat for?"  Suddenly the readers interested is piqued.

But the suspense is not simply not telling the reader what he or she wants to know until later--it's building the suspense.  The rest of the story demonstrates her odd behaviour, her insistence, her feelings of victory once she's bought it.  It all serves to make a simple act--buying a large amount of meat--into something more interesting.  And so the reader wants to know more and more about this pound of meat, and is satisfied at the end--particularly so as it serves this story as a whole: the weather in San Francisco (it's a surreal story).

That said, Brautigan also does the opposite to good effect.  In Complicated Banking Problems he starts:  "I have a bank account because I grew tired of burying my money in the back yard and something else happened."  Brautigan could have built up that "something else", talked about its surroundings, alluded to its history and then ended the story revealing an unexpected and interesting "something else".  But instead he says:  "I was burying some money a few years ago when I came across a human skeleton."

But now the suspense has transferred to the human skeleton.  Why is it there?  But he doesn't explain that, or even build up the suspense.  It's just left as an arbitrary skeleton in an arbitrary backyard.  He talks about what was in the skeleton's hand, instead.  And, moreover, right there in the second paragraph he gives the moral of the story.  Without building up any more suspense, except to say there are three women in front of him in the queue, he goes on to write an excellent piece.  And it all works perfectly--all without any more suspense.

After all, suspense is only a good literary device when it's interesting:  few will read on page after to page to find out what I had for breakfast this morning (eggs on toast.)  And if you can make that interesting something without using suspense (Brautigan does it by beautifully describing the women in front of him in the queue) then suspense could become a useless adjunct.