The Good of the Novel: Part One
What makes a novel a novel? How does the language used in a novel create a world different from that of drama or poetry? What kinds of truth can be told uniquely by the novel? And what role can the literary critic play in the egalitarian age of the internet?
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These are the questions addressed by the critics and writers who bring their perspectives to the thirteen novels (among them Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty and Don DeLillo’s Underworld) discussed in The Good of the Novel. They were also the starting points for the lively literary discussion held at a London Review Bookshop event in May.
Tackling ‘the good of the novel’ was a panel of writers, publishers and critics that included James Wood, Lee Brackstone, Frances Wilson, Amit Chaudhuri and the book’s co-editor Ray Ryan.
Extending that debate, we invited a small group of writers and bloggers to discuss the role of the modern novel, and, by implication, the role of the modern critic. First up is the following piece from Richard T. Kelly. Richard is in a unique position – not only is he the acclaimed author of Crusaders (2008) and The Possessions of Doctor Forrest, but also the biographer of Sean Penn, a contributing editor to Esquire magazine, the Editor of the Faber Finds list, and also a blogger.
Following Richard are the thoughts of Clare Alexander, literary agent at Aitken Alexander and previously publisher and Editor-in-Chief at Macmillan.
Thoughts on ‘The Novel’ by Richard T. Kelly
When I was a schoolboy beginning to take an interest in the notion of good books, I read what all the smart and fashionable sources told me was the book of 1984, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. I had already decided that whatever I was advised to read at school was dull and moribund by definition. Conversely, what was hip and foreign and strange seemed de facto interesting.
I can’t say I loved The Name of the Rose but I was certainly impressed and daunted by it, and I began to drop its name into conversations with anyone I thought might care. Whereupon a wise adult of my acquaintance thought I would be interested in a review of Eco that he had clipped out, by the novelist John Updike. And I daresay Updike’s review startled me more than had Eco’s novel, for Updike, while not quite taking the book to the cleaners, nonetheless wound round to the extraordinary opinion (here I must paraphrase from memory) that the problem with The Name of the Rose, though clever enough a production, was that it made ‘The Novel’ seem like an endeavour all too easily within the reach of any decently educated fellow. Reading that I thought then – and think now – ‘Gosh.’
This, probably, was my introduction to the idea that The Novel proposed a standard to be upheld and defended, also tested perennially. Previously, like many an auto-didact, I was sure only that reading should be promiscuous – inclusive, not exclusive – but that one should not read anything that failed to promise the delights of the unknown. Updike didn’t entirely turn my head round on this score, so while I came to acknowledge the unsatisfying thinness of ‘postmodern’ fictions I kept on through my late teens being delighted by the foreign, the taboo and the tantalising. For instance I had no difficulty embracing the idea that The Novel could be a work as unclassifiable as Lautreamont’s Les Chants du Maldoror, Bataille’s Madame Edwarda, Kundera’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
Cut to 1989 and I read Tom Wolfe’s essay ‘Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast: A literary manifesto for the new social novel.’ Wolfe argued that ‘the intelligentsia have always had contempt for the realistic novel’ and that in fact The Novel ought really to be Dickensian (or Thackeray-like, or Dos Passos-esque) in its scope and ambition. In this instance Wolfe was, of course, clearing his throat and pointing a thumb in the direction of himself and his just-published Bonfire of the Vanities. And I find Wolfe an unpalatable figure in all sorts of ways; but his cleverness is always worth decoding, and that essay still worth reading. If you wish to give it a go then please read alongside it this online piece from themillions.com by Garth Risk Hallberg, concerning the literary criticism of Zadie Smith and the recent claims made for Tom McCarthy as an exemplary proponent of the ‘avant-garde’ novel.
I truly hate to come on all plus ça change, nonetheless I daresay we will always find ourselves staring down ‘two paths for the novel.’ For my part I have reached that age where I can claim – like Socrates! – to know just enough to appreciate that I know nothing. To my mind ‘The Novel’ shouldn’t be any one thing in particular, other than diverse. For sure it requires the fertile soil of adventurous readers, who will be playing their part in creation if they uphold the notion of literary standards that must be defended and tested. I do take the view that a novel does best when it poses a challenge to the reader; but that this is only possible when the novelist has challenged his or herself to make a work that is larger than their own square-yard of experience. (As a novelist I admit I may myself be more than usually challenged in this department.) But the wonder of the novel by my reckoning is that it can contain multitudes, can teem with life, more potently than any other art-form. So let a hundred flowers blossom, and let’s see if we as book-lovers have the nose to discern the distinctive scent of each.
Clare Alexander on Great Novels
Good novels are my addiction. Bad novels, given my trade, are my affliction.
What is the difference?
A good piece of writing has the power to take you out of your own life and transport you to another place or time, or into another person’s skin. The best fiction rings absolutely true. With empathy it will articulate what it is to be someone else, thereby also helping us to understand who we truly are ourselves.
Great fiction will do this in such a way that words and paper seem to disappear entirely, or with language so lovely that it adds another dimension, like walking towards a great painting and seeing the artist’s brush strokes.
