All of the strands of the novel from its inception in the west to roughly the mid-19th century rise of realism share one thing in common: they're concerned with action.
Whenever I try to do some historically-situated complaining over the state of literature I try and remind myself that literally not a single person in 19thc America would have correctly predicted that in 200 years we'd still be reading a spinster who barely published in her lifetime, and a moderately successful travel writer.
It's a bit rich of that Compact writer to complain when the last two awards seasons have both featured conductor biopics that make the world of classical music look glamorous and beautiful and have long, wordless scenes of Mahler, Beethoven, etc.
The neurotic, bourgeois navel gazing is exactly why I have never had any patience for modern "literary" fiction. It is especially frustrating that with all the effort towards making novels more "diverse", they tend to be diverse only in (literally) skin-deep ways, one could swap a stereotypical 20th century white male protagonist back in and change almost nothing. They are not diverse, they are all one with the Borg. You will contemplate your navel and name-drop dead writers all the time (last name only, full names are for genre barbarians). You will have unfulfilled career aspirations that dominate your life. You will have dreary, loveless non-relationships with other tedious, neurotic twats. Resistance is futile.
Very interesting piece, a lot to mull over. Although I'm not really seeing how the picaresque turned into the detective novel. That was a really perplexing thing to read.
Trans writer TaraElla has two substacks: The TaraElla Project and The TaraElla Project Part 2. Interesting and very intelligent writer but very much mono-focused on debunking wokeness from a classical liberal perspective.
The picaresque is about a unchanging character thrust into a variety of absurd situations. He is usually a rogue, or someone in touch with the criminal element. In real life, early detectives were, infamously, often thieves and rogues themselves. One of the early writers of the English picaresque, Henry Fielding wrote a fictionalized account of the life of Jonathan Wild, the thief-taker general, the first detective in London, which provided inspiration to later writers of detective fiction.
Audrey Rouget: What Jane Austen novels have you read?
Tom Townsend: None. I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author.
I have a minor technical point to make about reading Aristotle (full disclosure: I'm not an expert in classical Greek). My understanding is that if you look at the actual text of the original it's highly compressed and is essentially a set of lecture notes, probably not written by Aristotle himself. For instance, if Aristotle were discussing Taylor Swift, it would literally say something like "Best seller. Eras tour. Boyfriends. Never ever ever.". Thus, when reading a "translation" of Aristotle, in particular the *Poetics*, it's always a reconstruction of the text, and it's very much a creation of the translator. So in many instances we really don't know what Aristotle said or thought; rather, we just inherit the conventional so-called "wisdom" about his ideas.
Deleted my last comment, because I see what you're saying here! Makes sense! Didn't know that about the writing, but it makes sense!
The people who came up with the three unities idea didn't even have access to the poetics though. They were going by some stuff they'd read about Aristotle. It was an idea they projected whole cloth into him. It's proven very sticky, but it really isn't there. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1910/03/the-dramatic-unities/644384/
Whenever I try to do some historically-situated complaining over the state of literature I try and remind myself that literally not a single person in 19thc America would have correctly predicted that in 200 years we'd still be reading a spinster who barely published in her lifetime, and a moderately successful travel writer.
It's a bit rich of that Compact writer to complain when the last two awards seasons have both featured conductor biopics that make the world of classical music look glamorous and beautiful and have long, wordless scenes of Mahler, Beethoven, etc.
Who is the moderately successful travel writer???
Melville! Maybe my phrasing was a bit off the mark.
I was thinking Thoreau. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, etc.
The neurotic, bourgeois navel gazing is exactly why I have never had any patience for modern "literary" fiction. It is especially frustrating that with all the effort towards making novels more "diverse", they tend to be diverse only in (literally) skin-deep ways, one could swap a stereotypical 20th century white male protagonist back in and change almost nothing. They are not diverse, they are all one with the Borg. You will contemplate your navel and name-drop dead writers all the time (last name only, full names are for genre barbarians). You will have unfulfilled career aspirations that dominate your life. You will have dreary, loveless non-relationships with other tedious, neurotic twats. Resistance is futile.
Very interesting point about wanting to be seen as distinct but also equal.
Very interesting piece, a lot to mull over. Although I'm not really seeing how the picaresque turned into the detective novel. That was a really perplexing thing to read.
Trans writer TaraElla has two substacks: The TaraElla Project and The TaraElla Project Part 2. Interesting and very intelligent writer but very much mono-focused on debunking wokeness from a classical liberal perspective.
The picaresque is about a unchanging character thrust into a variety of absurd situations. He is usually a rogue, or someone in touch with the criminal element. In real life, early detectives were, infamously, often thieves and rogues themselves. One of the early writers of the English picaresque, Henry Fielding wrote a fictionalized account of the life of Jonathan Wild, the thief-taker general, the first detective in London, which provided inspiration to later writers of detective fiction.
That makes perfect sense - thanks for the explanation!
Audrey Rouget: What Jane Austen novels have you read?
Tom Townsend: None. I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100142/
Thanks for a fascinating article!
I have a minor technical point to make about reading Aristotle (full disclosure: I'm not an expert in classical Greek). My understanding is that if you look at the actual text of the original it's highly compressed and is essentially a set of lecture notes, probably not written by Aristotle himself. For instance, if Aristotle were discussing Taylor Swift, it would literally say something like "Best seller. Eras tour. Boyfriends. Never ever ever.". Thus, when reading a "translation" of Aristotle, in particular the *Poetics*, it's always a reconstruction of the text, and it's very much a creation of the translator. So in many instances we really don't know what Aristotle said or thought; rather, we just inherit the conventional so-called "wisdom" about his ideas.
Deleted my last comment, because I see what you're saying here! Makes sense! Didn't know that about the writing, but it makes sense!
The people who came up with the three unities idea didn't even have access to the poetics though. They were going by some stuff they'd read about Aristotle. It was an idea they projected whole cloth into him. It's proven very sticky, but it really isn't there. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1910/03/the-dramatic-unities/644384/