Novelists Without a Future

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 821, 22 April 1955, Page 4

Novelists Without a Future

glance at the judgments passed on their predecessors. A history of the English novel, written lately by Walter Allen,* will remind them ‘again of the flimsiness of literary reputation. Posterity, from whom so many of them expect verdicts more discerning than the opinions of their contemporaries, is not really to be trusted. Mr. Allen is severe with writers who in their day were highly regarded. True, he is speaking for himself, and readers do not always listen respectfully to critics. Instead of arguing about Dickens, they read him. And although Somerset Maugham gets only two pages from Mr. Allen, his books may be giving pleasure when James Joyce, who receives more than five pages, is suitably embalmed as an Influence. & is ‘salutary for writers to In their saner moments, no doubt, writers understand that they can put no faith in posterity; but they need their strong feeling about the future. It is all very well to say that a man who feels the creative impulse will write whether he can be sure of an audience or not. At the beginning he is convinced that his audience is waiting, and will presently dis--cover him; and the dream of success will urge him forward if, in spite of failures, he continues to produce books, and is able to get them published. A time will come, he thinks, when the world will be ready for him. At present, however, writers cannot rely too much on the distant view. It has become possible for them to wonder, in all seriousness, if posterity will exist. Life has always been hazardous; and the written word, frailer than monuments of stone which now lie

broken in the deserts, has so far persisted through wars and collapsing civilisations. But destruction by the H-bomb threatens to be comprehensive. Although the vainest of authors may not expect his works to survive indefinitely, he likes to think that he will be read in the next century. And who can say what men will be reading in 2055, or indeed if they will be reading at all? In these bomb-happy days, with new explosions occurring almost every week, and with scientists warning us of genetic consequences if we venture too far with nuclear experiments, it is harder than it used to be to embark on a large creative enterprise. There are other discouragements. Writers are being told, or are saying themselves, that the novel is either dead or dying. Nobody seems to be certain what a novel really is, or should be: Walter Allen, for instance, suggests that it is too often confused with fiction, which apparently is something else. A novel may have a story, but it can exist without one. Still, it cannot have a long existence if nobody will_buy it; and the drift of the market suggests that people insist on being entertained. And so the novel, as we have come to know it in recent years, seems to be in no need of assistance from the bomb as it moves towards extinction. Yet writers have always been pertinacious. If one field is closed to them, they will enter another; and if they cannot be sure about ‘posterity they will speak for the moment. The bomb will not silence them; but it may be enough in their thoughts-as it is in the: thoughts of plain people who simply want the world to be safe for their children-to have an inhibiting effect on the imagination. Danger in small doses can be a stimulus: too much of it is paralysing. These are not times in which we can look for greatness in the art of narrative.

*THE ENGLISH NOVEL, by Walter Allen; Phoenix House Ltd., through A. H. and A. W. Reed Ltd., N.Z. price 22/6.