Novel(s) of Ideas

[Liam]

So I've been reading a lot of A. S. Byatt lately, her essays in particular, and there is an instance where she talks about her inability to "like," to really like, the fiction of Virginia Woolf. She refers to Woolf's style as too "airy" for her tastes, and makes a case for what she calls "a novel of ideas": the primary example she gives is, of course, her beloved George Eliot's Middlemarch.

Byatt's own fiction can be described as belonging to the world of ideas, especially such novels as The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and The Children's Book.

Curiously, I've never had any trouble as a reader to enjoy both Woolf AND Eliot (as well as Byatt herself), but it got me thinking about the idea she was proposing: that some novels belong to a more brainy, cerebral category than others.

Naturally, Byatt has her own notions of what a "novel of ideas" constitutes, but I was wondering if there were perhaps other readers like her: readers who need a lot of context, a lot of knowledge (so not just length, but a careful presentation of ideas and concepts) in their fiction?

 

[Bartleby]

When I read the title of this thread, I thought it was gonna be about recommending novels of ideas, but it turns out it's more about reception, and the art of reading in general, a topic I greatly appreciate discussing.

While I understand Byatt, and I cannot in all truth say that everything will be to my taste, I at least share this principle (and constant attempt, whenever I open myself to a work of art) of trying to assess what a given work is trying to do on its own basis; nor, when reading or seeing or listening to something, do I try to compare one work to a creator's other ones, but I make an effort to even nearly forget whose artist a given piece is from, and just read (reading here in a broader sense) it on its own terms.

So, say, we may have on one hand a piece of fiction that is more cerebral, sharing some DNA with the essay genre, purposefully keeping a dry style, and not presenting very well-rounded characters, and on the other a sweeping tale, with very believable characters, an engaging plot, purple prose etc - if in both extremes the work serves the aesthetic point the artist is trying to achieve, it will have been successful.

In short, there is a variety of ways of telling a story. In my humble opinion we, as readers, while being critical of what we consume, should also perform almost an act of devotion towards the otherness in art and appreciate the efforts someone else has made in offering their vision.

 

[Liam]

In my opinion, one of Woolf's greatest achievements (other than utterly changing the form of the novel), is capturing the inner consciousness of her characters through language. So all of Mrs. Dalloway's anxiety, and turmoil, and inner angst is felt by the reader through the medium of Woolf's unique style.

Also, I know that Byatt's sister Margaret Drabble ADORES Woolf, so I was wondering if on some level this was a deeply concealed "dig", on Byatt's part, at her sibling, whom she is not close with (she has often described their relationship as distant and very competitive).

By the way, feel free to turn this into a "recommendation" thread, there is no reason why we shouldn't recommend novels of ideas to each other since that is, precisely, the name of the thread,

I will recommend Byatt's own tetralogy, which has been very influential on my life in general, as it describes the inner development of a literary scholar, an inquisitive mind trying to leave her own mark on the world: The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower, and A Whistling Woman.

Out of the four, I think I liked Still Life the best, the ending really had me crying breathlessly, SO beautifully done!

 

[Cleanthess]

De gustibus non est disputandum...

I intensely dislike George Eliot, having suffered through Daniel Deronda and The Mill on the Floss. I'm sure it was my fault for not reading Middlemarch first, but life is short and reading is long, so it's too late for me.

I didn't really like Angels & Insects, the only Byatt I've read so far, however, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye beckons from my bookshelves.

I love Woolf, and enjoyed reading Drabble's The Middle Ground and some of the stories found in her A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman.

 

[Liam]

^The joke, of course, is that Eliot's Middlemarch was Virginia Woolf's favorite novel, ?

 

[errequatro]

What a fascinanting topic!
I have always struggled in my own amateur writing to cast aside my preoccupations with "ideas". The only short story I have ever published was achieved because I wanted to convey an issue through an image, not an idea.
But, alas!, I have discovered that a novel can BOTH dabble in ideas AND be entertaining...
Javier Marias is a good example. His novels can be described as "novels of ideas".
The breakthrough came for me, however, with Saul Bellow. Hugely entertaining and well written but also very fertile in what ideas are concerned.

I find the classification "novel of ideas" very thin. This is because at some level, every single novel is a novel of ideas. Saramago, for example. He always starts from a "what if" and his novels are very much revolving around specific ideas.
A good novel, at its core, WILL HAVE some idea or other.

Moreover, I find Byatt's quip very disingenuous and facile.
Woolf's writing encapsulated many ideas!
"Mrs. Dalloway", for example: the whole description of the psychiatrist contains a revolutionary whif of the antipsychiatric movement that would gain relevance many years later. The idea of the existence of an unnamable "collective consciousness" that seems to afflict the main characters: the undertones of an era's or a particular society's problems.
Yes, they are not a clear cut as they are, say, in Eliot's or Mann's writing. But seriously, Woolf not having "novels of ideas" is the most ludicrous thing I have ever read/heard Byatt saying.

There is also another point that bugs me.... It seems that there is a slight dismissal of writer's who don't directly engage with a certain intelectual dimension of writing.... Like: Eliot is superior to Woolf because she was an open intelectual.
Typical British snobbery, if you ask me...
(and I say this is in earnest, even though my British half feels conflicted when I utter statements like these... But my Portuguese half is implacable when it smells British b.s... so, there you go ?)

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Speaking of “British snobbery” (and I speak as a deeply engrained Anglophile): I noticed this in several groups ostensibly devoted to 20C literature at Goodreads. Many of the members have apparently never read a non-British book, and never intend to.

It is the worst kind of parochial identity politics. Reading these people’s posts, I perfectly understand how Brexit happened.

One of the mods at these groups went into a tizzy over how Miguel Ángel Asturias could be tapped for the Nobel Prize instead of Graham Greene.

This is a British thing. Philip Larkin, for all his greatness, was like this. Many 20C English philosophers ignored or disdained Continental philosophy.

 

[Liam]

I find Byatt's quip very disingenuous and facile.

To be fair, I am quoting her out of context, which is always a dangerous thing to do and does no justice to the writer in question,

Byatt's essays are quite excellent, actually, I am surprised she never finished her PhD at Cambridge, though I think she said somewhere that she was made to leave after she got married and had her first baby (this would have been in the 50s, I am guessing?).

I find her concept of "a novel of ideas" a little awkward, because as someone upthread pointed out, every novel is a novel of ideas (some more, some less so than others). I think what she's attempting to distinguish here is simply a question of style: she just happens to like Eliot's style of presenting the material, but not Woolf's.

OK, fine. Then just say it, there's nothing wrong with having favorites among writers.

Again, I am not doing her argument justice, but I suppose what Byatt looks favorably upon are those novels that wear their ideas on their sleeve, like Eliot's and Mann's--novels of social change and both external and internal evolution of people and the places they inhabit.

And Woolf isn't that. Her project was more subtle, having to do with capturing the flickering and fluctuating of an individual consciousness.

 

[errequatro]

To be fair, I am quoting her out of context, which is always a dangerous thing to do and does no justice to the writer in question,

Byatt's essays are quite excellent, actually, I am surprised she never finished her PhD at Cambridge, though I think she said somewhere that she was made to leave after she got married and had her first baby (this would have been in the 50s, I am guessing?).

I find her concept of "a novel of ideas" a little awkward, because as someone upthread pointed out, every novel is a novel of ideas (some more, some less so than others). I think what she's attempting to distinguish here is simply a question of style: she just happens to like Eliot's style of presenting the material, but not Woolf's.

OK, fine. Then just say it, there's nothing wrong with having favorites among writers.

Again, I am not doing her argument justice, but I suppose what Byatt looks favorably upon are those novels that wear their ideas on their sleeve, like Eliot's and Mann's--novels of social change and both external and internal evolution of people and the places they inhabit.

And Woolf isn't that. Her project was more subtle, having to do with capturing the flickering and fluctuating of an individual consciousness.

precisely! She could aim at presentation rather than substance...

 

[errequatro]

Speaking of “British snobbery” (and I speak as a deeply engrained Anglophile): I noticed this in several groups ostensibly devoted to 20C literature at Goodreads. Many of the members have apparently never read a non-British book, and never intend to.

It is the worst kind of parochial identity politics. Reading these people’s posts, I perfectly understand how Brexit happened.

One of the mods at these groups went into a tizzy over how Miguel Ángel Asturias could be tapped for the Nobel Prize instead of Graham Greene.

This is a British thing. Philip Larkin, for all his greatness, was like this. Many 20C English philosophers ignored or disdained Continental philosophy.

Tell me about it!
My PhD supervisor (scholar of romance languages, francophile who was taugth by Derrida himself and who additionally was fluent in Portuguese and Spanish) used to go beserk when some of his parochial minded colleagues would start on a rant about how Golding or Greene were more influential than Borges. Borges! imagine the cheek!
It's the worst form of ignorance.

 

[Liam]

I mean, perhaps they WERE more influential, but the question is, where? In British fiction, maybe. World literature? Not so much, ?

I am not aware of any British writer following in Borges's footsteps though, so if anyone occurs to you, please mention their names!

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Mexico can be very parochial, too. For reasons that I have never fully penetrated, despite reading Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude, this country has always been decidedly isolationist, even refusing to take any kind of leadership position in Latin America. The last two Presidents, Peña Nieto and AMLO, have had no languages besides Spanish, and the latter in particular is loathe to even leave the country; he won’t go to G20, for example. Naturally, the economy is tanking on his watch, but he retains his popularity among the uneducated as a “leftist” (but really corrupt) populist. The world outside Mexico is simply uninteresting to him and to them.

I contrast this with another country where I lived, South Korea, which is incredibly worldly. The average educated South Korean might speak three or four languages (including English, Chinese, Japanese), is well-versed in concepts like soft power and human capital, and can tell you what is happening everywhere.

Which is not to say that they are not Korea-centered. They are keenly aware and proud of Korea’s position in the world. Every year around this time, there are stories in the media, “When is a Korean going to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?” They went crazy when Parasite won all those Oscars and other awards. Whereas (I am sorry to say), Mexicans basically don’t care about the Three Amigos (Iñárritu, Cuáron, del Toro) who have dominated Hollywood for the past decade. I try to bring it up and people are like, “Yeah, whatever.” It is sad.

I thought Roma might grab them because after all it is such a profoundly Mexican film, but no, they mostly didn’t like it, too “artistic”. I wanted to scream. Even if a Korean had that thought about a parallel film, I doubt s/he would express it; instead the tone would be, what a triumph for Korea.

 

[Stevie B]

I intensely dislike George Eliot.

Not that I want to pass along gossip, but I recall overhearing at a London dinner party (many, many years ago), that the feeling was mutual.