A Severe Bend in the River Hindustan Times Take a look at an interesting article we found.
Vidal's Not-So-Tender Gender Bender New York Sun Take a look at an interesting article we found.
Mailer Questions God London Telegraph Take a look at an interesting article we found.
Sundays used to be special -- in France and elsewhere. Now, they're becoming just like any other day.
 by J. Peterman |
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 by J. Peterman |
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 by Cynthia |
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March 20, 2008
The death of Norman Mailer plunged me into thinking about the topic that seems to crop up whenever one of our important writers dies - what happened to the early promise of the so-called serious novel, and why isn't anyone writing one anymore?
(Serious novels are not to be confused with escape novels. Or novels that pretend to be serious, but they're not, like "The DaVinci Code.")
Even if readers were clamoring to read the so-called serious (literary) novel, V.S. Naipaul argues that fiction is basically meaningless in capturing the complexities of today's post-Sept. 11 world. Or, as Cullen Murphy, a former Atlantic Monthly editor said, "Fiction is useless in making sense of a complicated and fractious world."
What surprised me is that killing off the novel has always been fashionable. In 1925, the year Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" was published, Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote the "Decline of the Novel." He coined the term "razón vital," and said, in essence, the novel has to have a vital reason to exist. What the vital reason is, he didn't exactly tell us. Perhaps the real reason he tried to destroy the novel is that he couldn't write one.
Gore Vidal is another novel-basher. Maybe the reason he bashes the novel is because he hasn't written any decent fiction (except for his nonfiction) in years.
Thomas Wolfe, who writes very big important novels, laid down some rules for future novelists. In his 1989 essay Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast, he said that fiction writers have to write big, deep, realistic novels that mirror the times and seize the high ground, since a real writer (like himself) is more warrior than artist.
Fortunately, Wolfe wasn't around to tell Cervantes that "Don Quixote," considered the first modern novel, and perhaps the best, was not a real novel. Or Salinger that "The Catcher in the Rye" was far too slight, didn't capture the times, nor take the high ground.
In fact, there's a bunch of pretty decent writers like Dickens, Balzac, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Joyce that probably couldn't have survived Wolfe's rules and restraints. I took two years, 2007 and 1950, and looked at the best-seller list, which might give an indication of what people were reading and what people were writing.
1950
1. "The Cardinal," Henry Morton Robinson; 2. "Joy Street," Frances Parkinson Keyes; 3. "Across the River and into the Trees," Ernest Hemingway; 4. "The Wall," John Hersey; 5. "Star Money," Kathleen Winsor; 6. "The Parasites," Daphne du Maurier; 7. "Floodtide, Frank Yerby; 8. "Jubilee Trail," Gwen Bristow; 9. "The Adventurer," Mika Waltari; 10. "The Disenchanted," Budd Schulberg.
2007
1. "The Appeal," John Grisham; 2. "Duma Key," Steven King; 3. "Plum Lucky," Janet Evanovich; 4. "Sizzle and Burn," Jayne Ann Krentz; 5. "A Thousand Splendid Suns," Khaled Hosseini; 6. "World without End," Ken Follett; 7. "People of the Book," Geraldine Brooks; 8. :The Senator's Wife," Sue Miller; 9. "Beverly Hills Dead," Stuart Woods; 10. "Sword Song," Bernard Cornwell.
Hmmm...
So...read any good fiction lately?
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The Church Thomas Hardy Helped Rebuild kimbofo Take a look at an interesting article we found.
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I still believe in the great novel or at least the propensity to write them. Saying that the good...
Mar. 20, 2008 10:19 AM
Who is your favorite novelist?
18% 47% 0% 6% 6% 24%
I recently re-read a James Clavell novel - Tai Pan. Still a good read after all these years.
I also reviewed an appraisers report on the value of a house. That was a reasonably fair piece of fiction writing, also.
I marked Hemingway on the poll. "Grace under pressure" is a good survival attitude when the going gets tough for us romantics.......
Would you like to read an excellent historical novel, written in the vein of the greats?
Here's one about the Nigerian civil war:
"Half of a Yellow Sun"
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
(If you haven't already, that is to say...)
SarahN said...
Let's not forget Herman Wouk...Youngblood Hawk, Marjorie Morningstar, Hawaii and many more.
stationary nomad said...
I still believe in the great novel or at least the propensity to write them. Saying that the good novel is dead is the same as saying humanity is dead. And, as far as Thomas Wolfe goes, just because you say something with a voice that sounds like you have the last word on the matter doesn't necessarily make it so.
more on the honor rollFor the writer that has the abilities to write a good novel, I say don't listen to anything any of the naysayers have to say concerning something as complex as a good novel. Instead, reach into yourself and dive straight into humanity and there you will be able to pull out something the rest of us would enjoy reading. As well, I say to the reader, read on, a good novel is worth looking for.
jmr said...
Interesting topic!....Somewhat apropos last night I picked up a rerelease of the 1958 novel, The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy, and read the new introduction by Terry Teachout who talks about the plight of some writers (like Dundy) to fall in and out of favor over the years. Their work is constantly rediscovered and then put aside. Very interesting--what does the fact that good novels are regularly relegated to obscurity say about the genre? How will history judge the "greats" of this decade?
This said I still love, love, love novels. I recently read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett and found it haunting. Same for Emily Barton's Brookland.
tmemedia said...
One of the best books I've read in a very long time is "Sacred Games," by Vikram Chandra. It's an achingly realistic look at organized crime in India, and also a great historical illustration of the Muslim-Hindu tensions still seething in the subcontinent. The writing is beautiful and haunting, the plot is thrilling -- I couldn't put it down, and I learned something too. After reading that book I came away knowing more about India than my husband, who spent several years LIVING there.
Right now I'm in the middle of another great book, NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON, by Swiss author Pascal Mercier. Another fantastic writer with a moving story filled with historical facts I am so ignorant of. This story follows a Swiss Latin and Greek teacher who picks up a book by a Portuguese author one day, and is so struck by the beauty of hs words, that he leaves his teaching job that day and takes the night train to Lisbon to try and find this author. Along the way, we learn about Portugal under the dictator Salazar, and muse on life's great questions, such as, is taking one life worth the saving of hundreds of others... how can one truly know oneself -- or is it possible that others can see us more clearly than we see ourselves... . I haven't finished it yet but I'm totally immersed in it, the characters have really come alive, and I keep forgetting it's just a BOOK, not real life! But it feels so real.
I do have to point out a book I just read that I cannot reccommend -- PEOPLE OF THE BOOK by Geraldine Brooks. It's getting alot of fanfare and whatnot, but I thought it really stunk. The characters were less than 2 dimensional, I didn't like any of them, the writing was labored and more chick lit than literary, and the story just didn't hold up at all.
Great discussion!
drdgscott said...
The sheer volume of fiction available today makes the question of the Great Novel more complex -- many great novels still emerge, but are more difficult to find amidst the sea of fiction being published. The Great Novel must now meet more stringent criteria than novels of previous generations -- they must be socially significant as well as providing superior storytelling with complex and compelling characters. They must also provide new ways of seeing and interpreting familiar events as the expansion of the media (especially media focused on books and bookselling) grows ever wider. The development of audio books, e-books, Kindles and graphic novels has virtually eliminated the once dominant experience of a reader intimately involved with the turning of pages during leisure hours.
There are still great voices in our age, but the volume has been turned up and the number of frequencies available have increased exponentially. As a result, the Great Novel has morphed from a stand-out item in a slowly emerging canon to a uniquely personal event in a crowded world of uncountable experiences.
Mary Doria Russell's "A Thread of Grace," Salman Rushdie's "Shalimar the Clown," Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori series, Yan Martell's "Life of Pi" -- none of these will have the impact on society as a whole that Dickens or Hugo or Hemmingway had simply because of the sheer number of voices out there, but each can still impact the individual reader in profound ways.
After reading all the great posts above, I'd like to add a small, but interesting novel for consideration. Things Fall Apart. This is a novel by an African writer about the effect of fear and anger on one man and how he self-destructs. It's set against the first missionary activity by the British in Nigeria and the impact it has on the tribal culture. It makes you think about the definition of "civilization".
My youngest son just read it as a reading assignment in his 12th grade British literature course. The book was first published in 1958. It's still available.
Kat said...
I agree with the others, this is a very interesting topic of discussion, and I see a few books I will pick up. My vote for a great American novel is "Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates. I also suggest reading it now before the movie comes out later this year. To me it is a novel that reflected its time, and still today is socially relevant and compelling. It's one of those stories you read that always stays with you.
A good novel is unique in its ability to put a voice inside one's head, from a distant realm or a divergent context, and yet pull off the magic of making the voice sound like our own. This is the great novelist's literary sorcery, which binds the reading world together by making common among readers the uncommon experiences of the novel's own population. For this reason alone, the lesser lights of the world might insist on sounding the novel's death knell, as they have no unique voice of their own for the novel to borrow and thus enrich. Pity them.
Evening Peterman...I'm the guy that has your other domino humidor....
I suggest "Don't Stop The Carnival" by Herman Wouk. While certainly not in the league of Ulysses,-as an aside, The University of Tulsa has a HUGE collection of Joyce's work-it is nonetheless one of my favorite.
Thanks for the great site. I wish I were well read enough to enjoy it.
KCD