Why the Novel Isn't Dead "Exactly"

In his memoir Point to Point Navigation Gore Vidal argues that “the novelist” is no longer a public figure of any notoriety. One may say that Gore Vidal has earned the right to say such things for his literary career has spanned an age in which both novelists and their art have passed from considerable attention and into the shadows. I like what Mr. Vidal has to say about how this diminution of the novelist’s fame has almost nothing to do with literary merit though I will say more about this “on the other side”. Here is what Mr. Vidal says:

“Recently I observed to a passing tape recorder that I was once a famous novelist. When assured, politely, that I was still known and read, I explained myself. I was speaking, I said, not of me personally but of a category to which I once belonged that has now ceased to exist. I am still here but the category is not. To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun. How can a novelist be famous–no matter how well known he may be personally to the press?–if the novel itself is of little consequence to the civilized, much less to the generality? The novel as teaching aid is something else, but hardly famous.”

“There is no such thing as a famous novelist now, any more than there is such a thing as a famous poet. I use the adjective in the strict sense. According to authority, to be famous is to be much talked about, usually in a favorable way. It is as bleak and inglorious as that. Yet thirty years ago, novels were actually read and discussed by those who did not write them or, indeed, even read them. A book could be famous then but today’s public seldom mentions a book unless, like The Da Vinci Code, it is being metamorphosed into a faith-challenging film.”

“Contrary to what many believe, literary fame has nothing to do with excellence or true glory or even with a writer’s position in the syllabus of a university’s English Department, itself as remote to the Agora as Academe’s shadowy walk. For any artist, fame is the extent to which the Agora finds interesting his latest work. If what he has written is known only to a few other practitioners, or to enthusiasts (Faulkner compared lovers of literature to dog breeders, few in number but passionate to the point of madness on the subject of bloodlines), then the artist is not only not famous, he is irrelevant to his time, the only time that he has; nor can he dream of eager readers in a later century as did Stendhal. If novels and poems fail to interest the Agora today, by the year 3091 such artifacts will not exist at all except as objects of monkish interest. This is neither a good nor a bad thing. It is simply not a famous thing.”

Vidal reminds us of the serpentine intersection of technology, history and the discernment or apprehension of the public mind in the making of noteworthy culture. Between 1850 and 1970 the novel was a widely discussed public “thing” –a “famous thing” as Vidal would have it but that “FT-ness” was in no small measure a reflection of improvements in printing technology. The novel was serialized in inexpensive popular magazines that were in turn widely read and swapped in public which is to say that the art form was the Agora’s currency. But when widely read coffee table magazines vanished in the mid 1970’s the novel immediately went on life support where it remains. Its not that novels and poems fail to interest the Agora today its that the Agora no longer has a mere handful of culturally dominant and easy to find delivery systems that present literary writing in every living room and coffee shop. (A notable exception is represented by the work of Oprah Winfrey who has used  her popular daytime TV show as a pulpit for good literature. But even Oprah can’t save the novel when the Agora is distracted and when it turns distractedly to more TV since that same exhausted Agora has almost nothing to read.) Where in America will you find literary magazines at the supermarket check out line? (I’m not talking about progressive food co-ops in university towns where you might find the latest issue of The Utne Reader.) 

“Ah, but Mr. K,” you may conceivably ask, “How come romance and thriller writers sell tons of books?” To which I would (presuming I heard you) reply that selling books isn’t the issue. Books are still being sold and read. I know several contemporary novelists who are selling books including Russell Banks, Ethan Canin, and Michael Cunningham. The point that Mr. Vidal is making is that writers are no longer culturally recognizable figures because the Agora isn’t being introduced to them the way its introduced to sports figures or politicians or notable scoundrels. Television used to look to the magazines and the press for cultural guidance but it no longer does so, indeed it cannot do so when the magazines and newspapers have gone the way of the telegraph and when the blogs and Zines have not been wholly successful at taking the central place of popular magazines that once sold fiction to the public. (Let us recall that Ernest Hemingway was famous because of Life Magazine long before Hollywood got ahold of him. In the mid 20th century Life Magazine  was the equivalent of TV and the internet and in turn it was a machine for introducing Americans to novelists.)

Well okay we all know this –we who love books or who deign to write books or at least profess such arcane interests. We also know that the novel is not going away for the art is not “of little consequence to the civilized, much less to the generality” as Vidal would have it. The appetite for good writing remains undiminished in America. Of course it does.

Yet by God the enfeebled spotlight still trails the contestants of reality TV shows and try though you may, you will not discover novelists on The Tonight Show. In fact I predict that Conan O’Brien will be as much a failure in this regard as was Jay Leno. In Mr. O’Brien’s case this will be all the more disappointing given his Harvard background. (I do not flatter myself imagining Mr. O’Brien will see my blog.) The point is clear though: TV needs to step up and reintroduce Americans to writers even as it tosses us paste for the eating and its vinegar for drink.

S.K.

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto