Is Plot a Function of Character and Place?

"Place, then, has the most delicate control over character too: by confining character it defines it," writers Eudora Welty in her famous essay "Place in Fiction," and this reminds me of something I think I learned about ages ago in a writing workshop by Robert Canzoneri, or John Stewart, or maybe even Ernest Lockridge: Character + Place = Plot.

The idea behind this formula, though I admit it was never presented to me like this by any of these teachers, is that once you have a character in mind, and that character is rooted in a place, the story itself organically develops then to suggest a plot for that particular character, in that particular place at that particular time. Perhaps I should add (+ time) before the equals sign. For in her not as popular essay, "Some Notes on Time in Fiction," Welty writes that "in the face of time, life is always at stake."

Of course, most of us who write fiction know these well enough. Recently, I finished re-reading Saul Bellow's "Looking for Mr. Green" and I found that the character Mr. Grebe as conceived by Bellow and rendered to us is a kind of nexus, not only of place, character and time, but also of something more. Something that exists outside the story itself, but upon reading, my thoughts and emotions somehow consider.

Basically, Bellow takes a simple task, deliver a relief check to a hard to find client in a run-down all-black neighborhood of Chicago during the Depression, and by virtue of his choice for his focal character, Mr. Grebe, an-ex Classics professor, and salesman, Bellows can wax philosophical about everything under the sun and turn this story into a quest for the grail. It is really built upon the formula of character and place = plot. If the character were an ex-cop the whole dynamics would differ. As would the story and the plot. But in keeping with the world-view of this ex-professor, he is able to let the main character go ahead and think freely of transcendent notions, and entertain dissertations on wealth and class and the system. Race. And more. These are the reasons why this story is a classic, great story for Bellows is successful at delivering on the promise of both dramatic arc and presenting a deepening transcendence into human nature, history, being and meaning.

So how do you feel about any of this? Welty's ideas for character, place and time? Bellow's Mr. Grebe? Or perhaps you have your own story to compare this to.

Feel free to post anything. :)