Nothing novel about the novel

WHAT'S in a title? Often very little, sometimes quite a lot. And occasionally more confusion, inaccuracy, digression, generalisations, false assumptions and claims than might seem possible to contain within the covers of a book. It is hardly surprising that most readers of fiction would be lured towards a study called The True Story of the Novel. I was. Only to be immediately told by the author, Margaret Anne Doody, Professor of Humanities at Vanderbilt University, that we are all guilty of believing that the novel was invented in 18th century England.

According to whom? Who says readers are not aware of the origins of the novel? Underestimating the education and intellectual curiosity of others is extremely foolish; some might say, dangerous. Small wonder Doody's reader soon begins to experience a sensation similar to being trapped in a phone box with a heavy handed; individual intent on haranguing the captive with established facts well grasped by any interested reader to correct the delusions of generations of readers, she appears to see herself as a campaigning evangelist. Except for the fact that it has long been accepted by specialist and general readers alike that all notion of narrative, or story, began with early man listening to stories being told around a fire. Far from accepting that the novel as we know it was suddenly born about 200 years ago, most undergraduates - in fact most readers - look back further for the origins of the novel.

The weight of literary tradition makes it impossible not to do so. Beyond Defoe to Milton's Paradise Lost (1665/67) and further back to Cervantes Don Quixote (1605/1615), and Spenser's verse epic The Faerie Queen (completed in 1609). Spenser and later Milton's verse epics are closely related to the development of narrative and should not be overlooked in the context of the novel. Further back again, there is the combined presence of Chaucer (c. 1343-1400), Langland (c. 1330-c.86) and Boccaccio (1313-75) - the last named, in fairness, nominated by Doody as the hero of her book.

Does Doody seriously believe that readers are not aware of the relevance of Old English sagas such as Beowulf, The Seafarer and The Wanderer, never mind Homer and Virgil or The Satyricon by Petronius, a work to which she returns repeatedly?

Arguing on behalf of the immense relevance of the ancient classical texts should strengthen Doody's thesis, which should more accurately be called The Birth of the Novel. Instead, it serves to render it unusually lopsided. Little she does can correct this, not even her manic enthusiasm, nor the fact that she ill advisedly appears to think she has written the late 20th century answer to Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism (1957).

Her book, she claims "is the revelation of a very well kept secret: that the Novel as a form of literature in the West has a continuous history of about 2000 years." What secret? There is no secret. Much of the book is devoted to detailed analysis of ancient Greek and Latin texts. Most of these classical texts are incomplete. The fact that most interested parties, i.e. readers, students and teachers, are aware of literary history, somewhat dilutes Doody's conspiracy theory approach to it.

"The English performed a wonderful trick in persuading themselves that `The Rise of the Novel' [using Ian Watt's title] took place in England in the 18th century. They eliminated the predecessors once so fully acknowledged".

Her glib accusations ignore the socio historical reasons which assisted that rise, which was not itself, an act of wilful theft.

THIS is a big book sustained by a heady mixture of arrogance and ignorance bizarre asides such as "poetry is never a mistake." Her text is packed with information; some references develop into lengthy analysis, while other one line references are dropped like burning coals, forgotten by an author carried away by her impressive if confused mass of source material.

"The reason we like novel characters - "flat" or "round" - may be that they are always (even the best) our inferiors," she writes. Many equally whacky comments emerge. How about "Mud is often referred to in novels - even in elegant novels by `ladies' like Jane Austen"? Or, "Fiction can be justified by declaring itself more mortal than other kinds of writing - but only if writers fulfill their obligations." She quotes Wilde's Miss Prism's comment of her own novel, "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means." Miss Prism, however, might not conform to most people's idea of a responsible literary commentator. And is Doody suggesting that the novel is more moral" than poetry and drama?

Throughout the book the reader is faced with wondering if Doody has actually challenged any of her illogically sweeping statements. "Medieval literature notoriously deals extensively in allegory ... we are now in a position to see that the use of allegory is not a medieval peculiarity, or invention." What a relief, so how come she takes this no further? Allegory is particularly relevant to the political literature of protest which has dominated so much of 20th century Eastern European and Latin American fiction. Elsewhere the author announces with the habitual psychobabble which shapes her arguments: "The Novel (her capitals) demonstrates that people can and should get out of their cocoons. Novels validate meeting people who do not belong to some originating or "natural" unit like the family, the tribe, the language group." Funny, I never thought of reading novels as a form of underground socialising. "The Novel itself - if we let it all in - offers a road towards a new aesthetics. In the Novel, History and Play combine."

WHY does she make these declarations? What are they worth? The Novel as constant alternative is what its enemies have accused it of being "escapist." It provides an escape from what the Civic order would, wish to describe as Necessity." What exactly is she trying to say? "As we have seen, the Novel is a ritual. Yet a ritual with many variables." The Novel, we are also informed, "is the repository of our hopes." What does this mean?

So intent is Doody in pursuit of what she sees as "the truth" and a random assortment of motifs such as "mud", "cave", "labyrinths" and "food", that she commits fantastical errors of exclusion. No mention of Scott Fitzgerald, Pynchon, or Gaddis, Beowulf is only mentioned twice and then only in reference to other works also contained in the same manuscript.

Instead of accusing the English of hijacking the novel, why doesn't she attempt a critique of the emergence of the novel and its role in social history due to the expansion of a middle class readership in late 18th and early 19th century France and Russia, as well as in England? Above all, where is the expected exploration of the 19th century novel, in particular, the 19th century social novel, and the almost oppressive legacy of excellence it burdened successive generations of writers with?

Why doesn't she discuss the American novel and its independence from the European tradition? Surely the Latin American, African, South African, Indian and Australian novel should be examined. Aside from Joyce she makes no reference to Irish writing aside from Miss Prism. But then, Saul Bellow only features in a comparative list of names beginning with Petronius and including Dickens. The entire political relevance of the novel, particularly in relation to Europe's former eastern bloc as well as Latin America, is not examined. Exclusions such as these consolidate the opinion that Doody's scholarship best equips her only to discuss the ancient origins of the novel.

The definitive test is having read this book, could one recommend it to a student? Warily, merely in its capacity as a reference book for classical material. It is a sweeping survey, not a coherent thesis.

As for the novel itself, first pronounced dead early this century when Eliot had accused Joyce of killing off the form, and recipient of regular death certificates issued since then, it survives. The novel form once famously described by Henry James as "a loose baggy monster" lives on, defying the efforts of the most ham fisted of authors, deflecting the crazed pronouncements of the most literal minded of critics. The novel has certainly had a long gestation followed by a tricky birth and childhood, but though some believe it to, be dead, it remains very much alive.