“The novel is dead…” no, it just requires some re-imaging…

Will Self goes on (well, he does tend to go on) in a recent Guardian article  about the death of the novel: eclipsed and submerged by electronic media and interactive forms of communication and meaning reduced to small, manageable chunks. He seems to be arguing that the kind of work required of serious literature (and we can argue for a long time as to what that means–) is becoming increasingly rejected by a distracted and frantic population. Though he blends his arguments about the loss of codex– the printed text- with the death of the art form and the insular nature of creative writing courses: preparing people to teach an art that is no longer economically viable so creating more teachers instead of writers– the connecting idea is that the private & reflective space necessary for deep contemplation and learning is growing extinct. Of course, he references the golden age (last half of the 20th ct.) as a time when many ‘might be walk(ing) the streets with their head buried in Ulysses or To the Lighthouse, ‘ . I know a few who do so today. However, Self maintains we are in a different time.

He says:

“But what is already no longer the case is the situation that obtained when I was a young man. In the early 1980s, and I would argue throughout the second half of the last century, the literary novel was perceived to be the prince of art forms, the cultural capstone and the apogee of creative endeavour. The capability words have when arranged sequentially to both mimic the free flow of human thought and investigate the physical expressions and interactions of thinking subjects; the way they may be shaped into a believable simulacrum of either the commonsensical world, or any number of invented ones; and the capability of the extended prose form itself, which, unlike any other art form, is able to enact self-analysis, to describe other aesthetic modes and even mimic them. All this led to a general acknowledgment: the novel was the true Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk.”

And:

“But … but, well, there’s still no substitute for the experience of close reading as we’ve come to understand and appreciate it – the capacity to imagine entire worlds from parsing a few lines of text; the ability to achieve deep and meditative levels of absorption in others’ psyches.”

This is why I respectfully disagree with the proposed death:

I think there is a great possibility that a serious engagement with reading –and the pleasure and inspiration of sharing ideas, responses and questions to provocative reading will pull people away from the limited space of the screen back  into community with other thinkers.  I know from my own experience that talking about literature–especially serious, challenging literature– is among the most satisfying experiences in human relationships. This may sound self-serving as it is much of the work that I do–yet I notice all the book clubs and groups formed around reading and discussing ideas and think: there is quiet revolution here.

There are others who have similar views to Will Self. This Canadian blogger  echoes some of Self’s premises:

“… in our fast-tracking to digital integration we lose track of a leisurely pace. A pace that creates space for thought, self-development, self-critique and learning to sense the rhythms in life around us and in the people in close proximity to us.  We don’t know what we’re missing but we think that our pixels will recreate anything that we’re lacking.

In his amazing book “You are not a Gadget: A Manifesto”,  Jaron Lanier (a silicon valley veteran technologist) wrote a challenging thesis on how we (as a culture and as individuals) are not doing the necessary work to think about how the technology we use is affected our understanding of what it means to be human and in relationship to others….“I fear that we are beginning to design ourselves to suit digital models of us, and I worry about a leaching of emphaty and humanity in that process.”

I wanted to explain to my daughter recently that the quest for the chicest clothing label won’t ultimately satisfy (she is 14–so I held back- I wouldn’t have listened to me either) –but one of the gifts of increased years is a greater ability to recognise what does deeply satisfy: Time with the people I love, great food, runs and swims and the gift of widened perspectives in reflection of great writing. This may not be universal, but the more I work with an ever increasing diverse group  of readers–of all ages and stripes, the more I am able to call this satisfaction a majority experience.

See you in the pages.