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| 2003 |
| Section B, Page 2 |
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| Lit/Writing B |
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| R.I.P.: The Novel?! |
| Novella Idea |
| Editor |
| 4-12-03 |
| Is the novel on its last legs? Have readers "moved on," leaving novels behind in the dust? I don't believe so, but it turns out that many people do. Originally, I believed the idea of the novel dying was old-fashioned and ridiculous. Nobody thought that anymore. Imagine my surprise when I came across an article in an online magazine (Granta) that mentioned the apparently prevalent opinion that the novel is dying. Again. According to Ian Jack, the editor of Granta, "The latest report of its demise came in the London Guardian of May 23 when Andrew Marr, in his role as the chairman of the judges for the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, declared that the novel these days came 'a poor second to non-fiction'." Who is Andrew Marr, and what exactly did he say? Well, I "Googled" him and came up with the following: "Death of the Novel," by Andrew Marr. According to Marr, "My conclusion, after reading scores of books [...] is that non-fiction writing in this country is better - stylistically => |
| better, more ambitious, more interesting, more dangerous - than fiction. [...] The tricks of the novel, in rhythm, setting, authorial intervention and characterisation, have been better learned by new generations of historians and biographers than by novelists. As a country, we may be addicted to novels, just as much as the Victorians." Ouch! Marr goes on to say that "Yet neither the male genre writers, nor their female equivalents, are really pushing things forward, are they? The novel sells itself, rather desperately, as entertainment, competing with the telly or the PlayStation. It makes no claim to extend the boundaries of how we understand the world, other than when it opens us to other contemporary cultures..." The novel "makes no claims to extend the boundaries of how we understand the world? Since when? What books has this guy been reading? Marr states:"Like millions of others, I consume them pretty constantly, snack-feeding from the shelves of pretty, pastel-coloured things." Mm-hmm. Richard McCrumb, in an article titled "Another premature obituary," "Marr may be right that contemporary British novelists lack ambition, that what he calls 'the tricks of the novel' have been appropriated by historians and biographers, and that science writers produce more 'clear, springy and vigorous sentences' than contemporary novelists, but => |
| the minute a really original new talent heaves into view, my guess is that we won't be hearing so much about the fading 'life cycle of the novel'." He then goes on to state that the novel remains the "truest contemporary mirror." Ian Jack seemed at least somewhat skeptical as well. In his article "The 'death' of the novel (again)," he states that "I think it would be more accurate to say 'a lull in the novel', particularly in the novel in England, particularly in the novel about England." But he goes on to say that: "What the novel allows, and which Andrew Marr doesn't make too much of, is imagination." Is the novel dying? I don't know. I doubt that it could die in England and not die here (We are, after all, the land of "Survivor"). ~ |
| Books I Plan On Reading: 1. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. 2. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt 3. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold 4. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens 5. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte 6. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte 7. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernières 8. The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx 9. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks 10. An Equal Music, Vikram Seth 11. Possession, A.S. Byatt 12. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy 13. Beloved, Toni Morrison 14. Emma, Jane Austen 15. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas 16. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje 17. Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce 18. The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles 19. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck 20. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood 21. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens 22. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf 23. Look Homeward Angel, Thomas Wolfe 24. Moby Dick, Herman Melville 25. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey 26. Schindler's List, Thomas Keneally 27. All The Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy 28. The Black Cauldron, Lloyd Alexander 29. Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden 30. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier 31. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk 32. Forest Gump, Winston Groom 33. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton 34. Jakob the Liar, Jurek Becker 35. The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling 36. The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis 37. The Mothman Prophesies, John A. Keel 38. Odyssey , Homer 39. Rumblefish, S.E. Hinton 40. Shrek, William Steig 41. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury 42. The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides 43. What Dreams May Come, Richard Matheson 44. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis 45. Nicolas Nickleby, Charles Dickens. Any suggestions? |
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