Death of the Novel Part II

The Death of the Novel continues to be broadcast. We surveyed the outlines of the “movement” in the last blog, and I want to get a little more specific in this one. What leads people to say that novel is dead or dying? Why did John Barth write something like “The Literature of Exhaustion”? And why were several other critics around that time asserting that the novel had come to the end of the road?

Barth’s essay spends a lot of time talking about creativity. He focuses a great deal on the writing of Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentinian writer Barth admires and on his innovations as a writer. He appended a preface to the article and says that it is often misquoted, and I’ll agree with him to a degree. He is speculating on where the novel will go more than saying it is dead; and he confesses that he isn’t sure. His most direct move toward the subject is when he says that the novel may be at the end of its primacy as an art form:  that like the epic poem or the sonnet sequence, the novel may sink to a secondary place in literature and not be the most read or admired art form. It may “die” in this sense. Still, he does seem to think it is in decline and danger due to lack of creative paths for it to take.

 

Barth holds to a modern view of the novel, and this is part of his concern over the continued life and health of the novel.  Modernism held to a sort of sacrosanct view of the literary canon. There were certain novels that were “serious” literature and certain novels that were “popular” literature. Popular literature did not really matter. The line of novels that began with Pamela by Samuel Richard and included greats like Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Joyce and Kafka, and all the other names that cluster around what was called “great” literature as Barth saw it, was starting to dribble out.

Borges

Barth sees some hope in the work of Borges. It’s creative, quirky, surprising, and innovative but still operates within the grand tradition of novel writing. But, he asks, how many people like the Argentine novelist are writing? And who could be as creatively daring as Borges?

I will agree that Borges is remarkable. His story “The Garden of the Forking Paths,” is one of the most amazing stories I’ve read and one of my favorites; the same is true for “The Gospel of Mark.” They are dazzlingly creative. I would have never thought of either of them, and they are written to surprise and delight. Very few people (certainly not I) could write stories as innovative and brilliant as these. This is the source of some of Barthes pessimism.

But is the grand tradition necessary? Does one have to write a certain way and create novels that carry on the tradition of Wuthering Heights or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? If the definition of what is a novel is restricted, there is not very much room to move around. You may be creative, but one can only imitate the "great" novels that went before your own. The canal gets more narrow and filled with more and more silt as time goes along. Not many will be able to craft a novel that will sail well in such circumstances.

So it is that the death of the novel seemed to loom. The idea of a grand tradition—the idea of “fine art” and “great novels,” as opposed to inferior popular literature limits the range of possibilities for new works of art. Hamlet lamented that virtue cannot “inoculate our old stock.” We think of vaccination when we use the world “inoculate.” Shakespeare (and his audience) would have thought about cattle breeding. To inoculate was to bring fresh, healthy, strong animals in to interbreed with a herd of animals that was becoming infertile from inbreeding. Barth seemed to think that the novel was dying out because it was to inbred, its possibilities almost exhausted, its creative resources growing thinner and thinner.

This could be the case—unless the old stock can be inoculated in the old sense of the word—unless new and healthier specimens can be brought in to restore life and vitality. More on this in the next blog.

Check out my newest short novel  ShadowCity, a paranormal story of a world that exists as a shadow of our own and the quest of three people to keep darkness from completely engulfing it.

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