When you're writing a novel, you're not exactly filling a niche. The number of non-book readers has almost tripled since the 1970's. Half of American adults read fewer than five books this year. On top of all that, there's been a recent slump in fiction - readers are going for memoirs and (cringe) self-help books instead.
The novel is dead, and here we all are, insisting on birthing zombies.
(I'm feeling like the school outcast about now, rigidly holding my lunch tray, scanning the cafeteria for a place to sit. If I were a good blogger, I would find a meme from Glee or some such thing to illustrate this. Topic for future discussion: Have Memes Replaced Metaphor?)
What's the point of a novel? Why read or write thousands and thousands of words that describe imaginary people doing various things? Sure, we can gather a couple of truths about the human condition, if we're lucky, but can't we just mainline that shit through honest non-fiction? Why trudge through the parable?
Why write the parable?
Before you abandon all hope and start writing about your mildly dysfunctional childhood with a renewed commitment to unadorned truth, check out this week's New Yorker. Adelle Waldman, author of the very funny and much-lauded "The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P", wrote a stirring essay in defense of the novel.
She maintains that in fiction, we can read about people that wouldn't necessarily write about themselves. Memoirs and their writers vary wildly in subject and viewpoint, sure, but undeniable bottom line is that memoirists are all people willing to cast themselves as the main subject of their own work. That's a very specific type of personality.
Fiction, when done well, catches the more slippery fish, both in character (Boo Radley, Franny Glass) and subject. Waldman writes that novels "have a knack for speaking and casting doubt simultaneously, for being clearly stated and yet hard to pin down, possessing meanings that slip away or evaporate when you try to express them in a language of exposition of argument."
So there you have it. What we're doing is impractical, unprofitable, and patently kind of ridiculous, but fuck if it isn't noble. We're already martyrs, so let's do it right: Stop with the literary selfies. Turn your focus outward. Study and describe people that aren't you. Try your hand at the third person. If your main character is a bookish twenty-something that's basically a better-looking version of you, put that piece in the drawer for a while and write about that old man that you see through the window every night when you're out walking the dog. Widen your lens until you find something to zoom in on, and save the duck lips for snapchat.
What's the point of a novel? Why read or write thousands and thousands of words that describe imaginary people doing various things? Sure, we can gather a couple of truths about the human condition, if we're lucky, but can't we just mainline that shit through honest non-fiction? Why trudge through the parable?
Why write the parable?
Before you abandon all hope and start writing about your mildly dysfunctional childhood with a renewed commitment to unadorned truth, check out this week's New Yorker. Adelle Waldman, author of the very funny and much-lauded "The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P", wrote a stirring essay in defense of the novel.
She maintains that in fiction, we can read about people that wouldn't necessarily write about themselves. Memoirs and their writers vary wildly in subject and viewpoint, sure, but undeniable bottom line is that memoirists are all people willing to cast themselves as the main subject of their own work. That's a very specific type of personality.
Fiction, when done well, catches the more slippery fish, both in character (Boo Radley, Franny Glass) and subject. Waldman writes that novels "have a knack for speaking and casting doubt simultaneously, for being clearly stated and yet hard to pin down, possessing meanings that slip away or evaporate when you try to express them in a language of exposition of argument."
So there you have it. What we're doing is impractical, unprofitable, and patently kind of ridiculous, but fuck if it isn't noble. We're already martyrs, so let's do it right: Stop with the literary selfies. Turn your focus outward. Study and describe people that aren't you. Try your hand at the third person. If your main character is a bookish twenty-something that's basically a better-looking version of you, put that piece in the drawer for a while and write about that old man that you see through the window every night when you're out walking the dog. Widen your lens until you find something to zoom in on, and save the duck lips for snapchat.
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