Pretty remarkable when the National Review looks back at Camus, Malraux and Eliot as a Golden Age. What was radical becomes conventional.
“The novel, which among its other functions used to bring the news about how we live and much more, has in its contemporary effusions lost its excitement”.
And then cites Bonfires of the Vanities as the last great novel with that sensibility. Wolfe’s book wasn’t about how “we” live, it was about how a very particular subculture in NYC lived. When people stopped thinking that NYC (and soon CA) was the aspirational archetype of modern US life, novels about NYC (literature is the essential art form of NYC) became less relevant.
I think there is a trust element in novels that can, and has, been broken. I don’t need to “trust” a non-fiction author...I can manage that by reading several authors and synthesizing the fact-based narratives. I don’t need to “trust” a poet, much as I don’t need to “trust” a violinist.
To enjoy a novel, you need to “trust” the novelist not to abuse the reader with polemics or a perverse psychology. That might be the reason for the rise of fantasy literature...an orc never asked anyone to vote. And any peculiarities are in a fantasy world disengaged with the personal. “Well, elves are just like that as a race...”
NB: here I define “perverse” as anything that impedes kindness and empathy for others here on Earth.
“The novel, which among its other functions used to bring the news about how we live and much more, has in its contemporary effusions lost its excitement”.
And then cites Bonfires of the Vanities as the last great novel with that sensibility. Wolfe’s book wasn’t about how “we” live, it was about how a very particular subculture in NYC lived. When people stopped thinking that NYC (and soon CA) was the aspirational archetype of modern US life, novels about NYC (literature is the essential art form of NYC) became less relevant.
I think there is a trust element in novels that can, and has, been broken. I don’t need to “trust” a non-fiction author...I can manage that by reading several authors and synthesizing the fact-based narratives. I don’t need to “trust” a poet, much as I don’t need to “trust” a violinist.
To enjoy a novel, you need to “trust” the novelist not to abuse the reader with polemics or a perverse psychology. That might be the reason for the rise of fantasy literature...an orc never asked anyone to vote. And any peculiarities are in a fantasy world disengaged with the personal. “Well, elves are just like that as a race...”
NB: here I define “perverse” as anything that impedes kindness and empathy for others here on Earth.