The bestseller
A distinction should be made between novels whose high sales are an accolade bestowed on literary merit and novels that aim less at aesthetic worth than at profits. The works of Dickens were bestsellers in their day, but good sales continue, testifying to a vitality that was not purely ephemeral. On the other hand, many best-selling novels have a vogue that is destined not to outlast the time when they were produced. It is often a characteristic of this kind of bestseller that the writing is less interesting than the content, and that the content itself has a kind of journalistic oversimplification. The high sales of the commercial novel typically accrue from careful, and sometimes cold-blooded, planning. A novel in which a topical subjectâsuch as the Mafia, corruption in government, the election of a new pope, a spate of aircraft accidents, or the censorship of an erotic bookâis treated with factual thoroughness, garnished with sex, enlivened by quarrels, fights, and marital infidelities, presented in nonliterary prose, and given lavish promotion by its publisher may well become a bestseller. It is also likely to be almost entirely forgotten a year or so after its publication. The factual element in the novel seems to be necessary to make readers feel that they are being educated as well as diverted. Indeed, the conditions for the highest sales seem to include the reconciliation of the salacious and the didactic.
A novel with genuine aesthetic vitality often sells more than the most-vaunted bestseller, but the sales are more likely to be spread over decades and even centuries rather than mere weeks and months. The author of such a book may, in time, enrich others but is unlikely to attain the opulence of writers of bestsellers such as Harold Robbins, James Patterson, or Danielle Steel.
Fantasy and prophecy
The term science fiction is a loose one, and it is often made to include fantastic and prophetic books that make no reference to the potentialities of science and technology for changing human life. Nevertheless, a novel such as Keith Robertsâs Pavane (1969), which has as a premise the conquest of England by Spain in 1588, and the consequent suppression rather than development of free Protestant intellectual inquiry, is called science fiction, though such terms as âfiction of hypothesisâ and âtime fantasyâ would be more fitting. The imaginative novelist is entitled to remake the existing world or present possible future worlds, and a large corpus of fiction devoted to such speculative visions has been produced, more of it based on metaphysical hypotheses than on scientific marvels. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells pioneered what may be properly termed science fiction, mainly to an end of diversion. Since the days of Wellsâs The Time Machine (1895) and The Invisible Man (1897), the fiction of hypothesis has frequently had a strong didactic aim, often concerned with opposing the very utopianism that Wellsâmainly in his nonfictional worksâbuilt on the potentialities of socialism and technology. Aldous Huxleyâs Brave New World (1932) showed how dangerous utopianism could be, since the desire for social stability might condone conditioning techniques that would destroy the fundamental human right to make free choices. Toward the end of his life Huxley produced a cautious utopian vision in Island (1962), but the dystopian horrors of his earlier novel and of his Ape and Essence (1948) remain more convincing. George Orwellâs Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) showed a world in which a tyrannic unity is imposed by a collective solipsism, and contradictions are liquidated through the constant revision of history that the controlling party decrees. Anthony Burgessâs A Clockwork Orange (1962) and The Wanting Seed (1962) portray ghastly futures that extrapolate, respectively, philosophies of crime control and population control out of present-day tendencies that are only potentially dangerous.
A large number of writers practice prophetic fantasy with considerable literary skill and careful factual preparationâKurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Italo Calvino, Isaac Asimov, J.G. Ballard, to name only a fewâand novelists whose distinction lies mainly in more traditional fields attempted the occasional piece of future-fiction, as in the case of L.P. Hartley with his Facial Justice (1961) and Evelyn Waugh in Love Among the Ruins (1953). The fantasist who fantasizes without prophetic or warning intent is rarer, but works such as Nabokovâs Ada, Tolkienâs The Lord of the Rings, and Christine Brooke-Roseâs Out (1964) represent legitimate and heartening stretching of the imagination, assurances that novelists have the right to create their own worlds, as well as characters. However, the dystopian novel can have a salutary influence on society, actively correcting regressive or illiberal tendencies, and Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-four can be cherished as great didactic landmarks, not just as works of literary art.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the enduring popularity of science fiction and fantasy led to the creation of subgenres such as cyberpunk (which is characterized by countercultural antiheroes trapped in a dehumanized, high-tech future), steampunk (which incorporates history), and romantasy (a blend of romance and fantasy). J.K. Rowlingâs Harry Potter books, written for children but eagerly embraced by adult readers, were a juggernaut in sales, as were the fantasy-infused series of Sarah J. Maas, George R.R. Martin, China MiĂ©ville, and Rebecca Yarros.
Proletarian
The novel that, like Dickensâs Hard Times (1854) or John Steinbeckâs The Grapes of Wrath (1939), presents the lives of laborers or other members of the working class or disenfranchised is not necessarily an example of proletarian fiction. The category properly springs out of direct experience of proletarian life and is not available to writers whose background is bourgeois or aristocratic. Consequently, William Godwinâs Caleb Williams (1794) and Robert Bageâs Hermsprong (1796), although sympathetic to the lot of the oppressed worker, are more concerned with the imposition of reform from above than with revolution from within, and the proletarian novel is essentially an intended device of revolution. The Russian author Maxim Gorky, with works such as Foma Gordeyev (1899) and Mother (1907), as well as numerous short stories portraying the bitterness of poverty and unemployment (in fact, the pseudonym Gorky means âBitterâ), may be taken as an exemplary proletarian writer. The United States has produced a rich crop of working-class fiction. Such socialist writers as Jack London, Upton Sinclair, John Dos Passos, and Edward Dahlberg, however, did not witness the triumph of the workersâ revolution in their own country, as Gorky did in his, and it is often the fate of American proletarian novelists, through literary success, either to join the class they once dreamed of overthrowing or to become anarchic and frustrated. In the former Soviet Union the proletarian novel was doomed to disappear in the form that Gorky knew, for it is the essence of the revolutionary novel to possess vitality and validity only when written under capitalist âtyranny.â
England has produced its share of working-class novelists exuding bitterness, such as Alan Sillitoe, with his Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), but conditions apt for revolution have not existed in Britain for more than a century. British novelists who emerged after World War II, such as John Braine (Room at the Top), Keith Waterhouse (There Is a Happy Land), Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim), and Stan Barstow (A Kind of Loving), provided a solution to working-class frustration in a fluid system of class promotion: Revolution is an inadmissible dream. Generally speaking, in the novel, which is preoccupied with individuals rather than with groups, it is difficult to make the generalized political statements that are meat and drink to the revolutionary propagandist.
Other types
The categories briefly discussed above are among the most common fictional forms. Theoretically there is no limit to the number available, since changing social patterns provide fresh subjects and fresh taxonomies, and new metaphysical and psychological doctrines may beget new fictional approaches to both content and technique.
Other categories of fictional art include the erotic novel (which may or may not be pornographic), the satirical novel, the farcical novel, the novel for or about children or teenagers (dubbed âyoung adult fictionâ), the theological novel, the allegorical novel, and so on. Necessarily, given its tendency to present history solely from the perspective of white Europeans, the colonial novelâsuch as E.M. Forsterâs A Passage to India (1924), Henri Fauconnierâs Malaisie (1930), and the African sequence of Joyce Caryâlargely gave way to fiction that presented non-European viewpoints to âfill in the gapsâ or correct skewed narratives, such as the novels of the Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude movement or the works produced by Indian authors such as Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy or Nigerian authors such as Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Queer and LGBTQ+ fiction, feminist fiction, urban fiction (or âstreet litâ), âNew Weird,â and âcli-fiâ (novels that center on environmental crises such as climate change) are among the contemporary genres that have become popular. So long as human society continues to exist, the novel will exist as its mirror, an infinitude of artistic images reflecting an infinitude of life patterns.
Evaluation and study
No novel is beyond criticism, but many are beneath it.
It has been only in comparatively recent times that the novel has been taken sufficiently seriously by critics for the generation of aesthetic appraisal and the formulation of fictional theories. The first critics of the novel developed their craft not in full-length books but in reviews published in periodicals. Much of this writingâin the late 18th and early 19th centuriesâwas of an occasional nature, and not a little of it casual and desultory. Nor, at first, did critics of fiction find it easy to separate a kind of moral judgment of the subject matter from an aesthetic judgment of the style. Such fragmentary observations on the novel as those made by Samuel Johnson in conversation or by Jane Austen in her letters, or, in France, by Gustave Flaubert during the actual process of artistic gestation, have the charm and freshness of insight rather than the weight of true aesthetic judgment. It was perhaps not until the beginning of the 20th century, when Henry James wrote his authoritative prefaces to his own collected novels, that a true criteriology of fiction can be said to have come into existence. The academic study of the novel presupposes some general body of theory, like that provided by Percy Lubbockâs The Craft of Fiction (1921) or E.M. Forsterâs Aspects of the Novel (1927) or the subsequent writings of the critics Edmund Wilson and F.R. Leavis. After World War II it may be said that university courses in the evaluation of fiction attained the dignity traditionally monopolized by poetry and drama.
A clear line should be drawn between the craft of fiction criticism and the journeyman work of fiction reviewing. Reviews are mainly intended to provide immediate information about new novels: They are done quickly and are subject to the limitations of space, and they not infrequently make hasty judgments that are later regretted. The qualifications sought in a reviewer are not formidable: Smartness, panache, waspishnessâqualities that often draw the attention of the reader to the personality of the reviewer rather than the work under reviewâwill always be more attractive to circulation-hunting editors than a less spectacular concern with balanced judgment. A thoughtful editor will sometimes put the reviewing of novels into the hands of a practicing novelist, whoâknowing the labor that goes into even the meanest bookâwill be inclined to sympathy more than to flamboyant condemnation. The best critics of fiction are probably novelists manquĂ©s, people who have attempted the art and, if not exactly failed, not succeeded as well as they could have wished. Novelists who achieve very large success are possibly not to be trusted as critics: Obsessed by their own individual aims and attainments, shorn of self-doubt by the literary worldâs acclaim or their royalty statements, they may bring to other writersâ novels a kind of magisterial blindness.
Novelists can be elated by good reviews and depressed by bad ones, but it is rare that a novelistâs practice is much affected by what appears in the literary columns. Genuine criticism is a very different matter, and a writerâs approach to the art of fiction can be radically modified by the arguments and summations of a respected or feared critic. As hens are unable to judge the quality of the eggs they lay, so novelists are rarely able to explain or evaluate their work. They rely on the professional critic for the elucidation of the patterns in their novels, for an account of their subliminal symbolism, for a reasoned exposition of their stylistic faults. As for novel readers, they will often learn enthusiasm for particular novelists through the writings of critics rather than from direct confrontation with the novels themselves. The essays in Edmund Wilsonâs Axelâs Castle (1931) aroused an interest in the Symbolist movement that the movement was not easily able to arouse by itself. And the essay on Joyceâs Finnegans Wake, collected in Wilsonâs The Wound and the Bow (1941), eased the way into a very difficult book in a manner that no grim work of solid exegesis could have achieved. The essence of the finest criticism derives from wisdom and humanity more than from mere expert knowledge. Great literature and great criticism possess in common a sort of penumbra of wide but unsystematic learning, a devotion to civilized values, an awareness of tradition, and a willingness to rely occasionally on the irrational and intuitive.
All this probably means that the criticism of fiction can never, despite the efforts of aestheticians schooled in modern linguistics, become an exact science. A novel must be evaluated in terms of a firmly held literary philosophy, but such a philosophy is, in the final analysis, based on the irrational and subjective. If the major premises on which F.R. Leavis bases his judgments of George Eliot, Mark Twain, and D.H. Lawrence are accepted, then an acceptance of the judgments themselves is inescapable. But many students of fiction who are skeptical of Leavis or other esteemed critics, past or present, will read them in order that judgments of their own may emerge out of a purely negative rejection of the critics. In reading criticism a kind of dialectic is involved, but no synthesis is ever final. The process of revaluation goes on forever. One of the sure tests of a novelâs worth is its capacity for engendering critical dialectic: No novel is beyond criticism, but many are beneath it.
The future of the novel
It is apparent that neither law nor public morality nor the publicâs neglect nor the criticâs scorn has ever seriously deflected dedicated novelists from their self-imposed task of interpreting the real world or inventing alternative worlds. It has been said that âevery person has at least one novel in him,â and near-universal literacy around the world has produced dreams of authorship in social ranks traditionally deprived of literature. Some of these dreams come true, and taxi drivers, pugilists, criminals, and film stars have competed, often successfully, in a field that once belonged to professional writers alone. It is significant that the amateur who dreams of literary success almost invariably chooses the novel, not the poem, essay, or autobiography. Fiction requires no special training and can be readable, even absorbing, when it breaks the most elementary rules of style. It tolerates a literary incompetence unthinkable in the poem. If all professional novelists withdrew, the form would not languish: Amateurs would fill the market with first and only novels, all of which would find readership.
But the future of any art lies with its professionals. For if a novelistâs skill is employed for limited ends, chiefly the making of money, the novel can never advance as art. The literary professionals, however, are dedicated to the discovery of new means of expressing, through the experiential immediacies that are the very stuff of fiction, the nature of humanity and society. In the symbiosis of publishing, the bestseller will probably continue to finance genuine fictional art. Despite the competition from other art media, and the agonies and the indigence, there are indications that the serious novel will flourish in the future.
It will flourish because it is the one literary form capable of absorbing all the others. The technique of the stage drama or the film can be employed in the novel (as in Ulysses and Giles Goat-Boy), as can the devices of poetry (as in Philip Toynbeeâs Pantaloon and the novels of Wilson Harris and Janet Frame). In France, as Michel Butor pointed out, the New Novel performed some of the tasks of the old essay; in America, as Truman Capoteâs In Cold Blood and Norman Mailerâs The Armies of the Night show, the documentary report can gain strength from its presentation as fictional narrative. There are few limits on what the novel can do, there are many experimental paths still to be trod, and there is never any shortage of subject matter.
For all this, periods of decline and inanition (cultural emptiness) may be expected, though not everywhere at once. The strength of the American novel in the period after World War II had something to do with the national atmosphere of breakdown and change: Political and social urgencies promoted a quality of urgency in the works of such writers as Mailer, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, and Philip Roth. In the same period, Britain, having shed its empire and erected a welfare state, robbed its novelists of anything larger to write about than temporary indentations in the class system, suburban adultery, and manners. An achieved or static society does not easily produce great art. France, which has known much social and ideological turmoil, generated a new aesthetic of the novel as well as a philosophy that, as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus showed, is very suitable for fictional expression. A state on which intellectual quietism or a political philosophy of art is imposed by the ruling party can, as the Soviet Union and China showed, succeed only in thwarting literary greatness, but the examples of Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and, later, Mo Yan and Can Xue are reminders that repression can, with rare artistic spirits, act as an agonizing stimulus.
Every art in every country is subject to a cyclical process. During a period of decline it is necessary to keep the communication lines open, producing minor art so that it may some day, unexpectedly, turn into major art. Wherever the novel seems to be dying it is probably settling into sleep; elsewhere it will be alive and vigorous enough. It is important to believe that the novel has a future, though not everywhere at once.