I’m having trouble with Goldsbrough’s leap from the glories of Victorian era fiction to our modern screen focused time. Yes, the Victorian era was a golden age for the novel. Yes, modern society is screen obsessed and much fewer people read novels anymore. But we stopped writing Victorian novels over a hundred years before smartphones invaded our brains. We stopped writing Victorian novels when we stopped being Victorians. But the 20th Century was hardly bereft of brilliant literary and popular novel writing.
Exactly: it’s a familiar line of argument -- certainly familiar to Jenkins in the 1940s. I don’t disagree that we read less but the reasons aren’t correct.
Spoiled by choice is an excellent way to put it. I was recently contemplating the same situation with music. I started getting back into vinyl a few years ago, and I have my choice of almost a century of vinyl to buy, which is more music than anyone could sample at any point in history. People lament the death of the symphony, or the decline of rock. But there is more of everything. More good, more bad. More choice.
I agree with you that non-fiction resonates more now. At least, it makes a bigger splash when it lands.
That said, do you agree that it seems to be a bit more ephemeral?
So, example: I have been meaning to read THE CATCHER WAS A SPY and THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN since the 90s. I haven't, but I just remember how much people buzzed about them at the time.
Yet I never hear of them today.
Whereas I do feel like I hear about big 90s novels still. LIke... I don't know
THE ALIENIST
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
THE JOY LUCK CLUB
These aren't great examples, but I guess I just do feel like novels are more likely to persist in "the conversation" than non fiction.
Probably yes but it’s too early to tell and much non fiction survives just not with the general audience --- though i think people are still reading The Tipping Point for example
And Hawthorne, Melville, Fitzgerald's "Gatsby", Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men,"and Faulkner's body of work? Mario Vargas Llosa? Chickenscratch?
Well, they seemed to forget about Joyce too. What about Hardy, the master of narrative form? Or Conrad? The manner in which Dickens composed, trying at least partially to work around the absence of an international copyright law, almost dictated a form different from, say, that produced by Hawthorne or Melville or anyone else who pubished only in book form. England just lost its soul earlier than America, lost its sense of the tragic before Dickens. Even the young Fitzgerald had a hold on that in "Gatsby." Hawthorne's
"Scarlet Letter," Melville's "Moby Dick," and Faulkner's "Absalom! Absalom" have the power of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or "Othello." because their authors were wrestling with the Devil, exploring the problem of Evil. And they believed in Evil.
Interesting thoughts Henry. I like the image of imagination running in many channels, and no one person is positioned to appreciate all of it. I wonder whether this discussion translates to other languages, since here it seems limited to the "English novel"? But even within the form of the English novel there is such variety it hardly makes sense to call it all the same thing.
I’m having trouble with Goldsbrough’s leap from the glories of Victorian era fiction to our modern screen focused time. Yes, the Victorian era was a golden age for the novel. Yes, modern society is screen obsessed and much fewer people read novels anymore. But we stopped writing Victorian novels over a hundred years before smartphones invaded our brains. We stopped writing Victorian novels when we stopped being Victorians. But the 20th Century was hardly bereft of brilliant literary and popular novel writing.
Exactly: it’s a familiar line of argument -- certainly familiar to Jenkins in the 1940s. I don’t disagree that we read less but the reasons aren’t correct.
Spoiled by choice is an excellent way to put it. I was recently contemplating the same situation with music. I started getting back into vinyl a few years ago, and I have my choice of almost a century of vinyl to buy, which is more music than anyone could sample at any point in history. People lament the death of the symphony, or the decline of rock. But there is more of everything. More good, more bad. More choice.
I agree with you that non-fiction resonates more now. At least, it makes a bigger splash when it lands.
That said, do you agree that it seems to be a bit more ephemeral?
So, example: I have been meaning to read THE CATCHER WAS A SPY and THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN since the 90s. I haven't, but I just remember how much people buzzed about them at the time.
Yet I never hear of them today.
Whereas I do feel like I hear about big 90s novels still. LIke... I don't know
THE ALIENIST
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
THE JOY LUCK CLUB
These aren't great examples, but I guess I just do feel like novels are more likely to persist in "the conversation" than non fiction.
Do you agree?
Have you taken this on?
Probably yes but it’s too early to tell and much non fiction survives just not with the general audience --- though i think people are still reading The Tipping Point for example
Yes, I definitely think you're right.
Though that's also another interesting topic:
Non-fiction books that are reported narratives
Non-fiction books that are just sort of very long essays (which is all Malcolm Gladwell as far as I can tell)
I wrote about gladwell here https://commonreader.substack.com/p/how-to-write-like-malcolm-gladwell
This is really good
Not quite encouraging but it doesn’t have to be
But I think you are right
Also... McWhorter’s take is v good
Maybe hip hop isn’t all of poetry
But is it the leading bit?? Probably so
And Hawthorne, Melville, Fitzgerald's "Gatsby", Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men,"and Faulkner's body of work? Mario Vargas Llosa? Chickenscratch?
I have to wonder if there isn’t a little Anglocentrism at work, given how much more dominant American fiction was in the 20th century.
Well it was a British newspaper tbf
Well, they seemed to forget about Joyce too. What about Hardy, the master of narrative form? Or Conrad? The manner in which Dickens composed, trying at least partially to work around the absence of an international copyright law, almost dictated a form different from, say, that produced by Hawthorne or Melville or anyone else who pubished only in book form. England just lost its soul earlier than America, lost its sense of the tragic before Dickens. Even the young Fitzgerald had a hold on that in "Gatsby." Hawthorne's
"Scarlet Letter," Melville's "Moby Dick," and Faulkner's "Absalom! Absalom" have the power of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or "Othello." because their authors were wrestling with the Devil, exploring the problem of Evil. And they believed in Evil.
Interesting thoughts Henry. I like the image of imagination running in many channels, and no one person is positioned to appreciate all of it. I wonder whether this discussion translates to other languages, since here it seems limited to the "English novel"? But even within the form of the English novel there is such variety it hardly makes sense to call it all the same thing.
I don’t read enough in translation to know but from what I have read I’d say the novel is doing just fine in other languages, yes
That'd be my take too. And so many talented translators as well.