Understanding the Novel

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 370, 26 July 1946, Page 15

Understanding the Novel

N the first of his Winter Course talks Professor Gordon. makes the point that implicit in the novel is "a complete acceptance of contemporary life," whereas any attempt to escape the implications of contemporary life; results in a romance rather than a novel. The definition is a good one, and gets close to Stevenson’s "influential books... which repeat, re-arrange, clarify the lessons of life." But I should prefer to omit the "contemporary," otherwise we are forced to put\into the romance class historical novels of the I, Claudius and Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth type, too realistic to be regarded as "adult fairy tales." And if Professor Gordon took his own definition seriously could he, with a clear conscience, spend so much of his second lecture discussing Scott? A generally accepted idea is that the novel depends primarily on character and the romance on incident, but here again it is very difficult to draw the line, and Smollet, though one of the Big Four, would have to be ruled out for picaresqueness. And what of Thackeray \who said his preference was for "novels withcut love or talking, or any of that sort of nonsense," but containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery, and rescuing"? (Bitter irony that he died before the first Western.) So I think it safer to agree with Professor Gordon that it all depends on the author’s attitude of. mind.