I am easily seduced by language. With an apt word choice or felicitous turn of phrase, an author wins my heart. I'll happily float along with a book full of evocative images confident that I "know what he means." Clear definitions of meaning slip and slide around in my brain until I wake up to the fact that I don't fully understand what's going on.
Ms. Smiley is not so inclined. If Smiley holds literary theory at arm's length, she has a lot to say about the techniques writers' deploy in creating a powerful story. I was surprised by her reaction to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.* She thinks the plot is implausible, the characters are underdeveloped, and the prose is imprecise. One of Fitzgerald's last observations reads, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." This is just the sort of writing fall for, but as Smiley crisply notes, "The image is lyrical and paradoxical but it doesn't really make sense." Reader, I gasped.
It's All About Technique
It's All About Technique
As I work through The List, beginning in the10th century Heian court of Japan and ending with Jonathan Franzen's 21st century Middle America, I'll strive to be more alive to the mechanics of the novel. Smiley argues that novels are systems, logical structures crafted out of insight and observation. Every novel is an ontology--an argument of how it feels to be alive--and the basic rhythm of the novel is event, reflection; event, reflection.
Reading with Divided Attention
Reading with Divided Attention
I will try and read with two minds: part of my attention will focus on the internal consistency of the characters, the narrative arch of the plot, and analyze the author's particular style; the other part of my consciousness is free to revel in the beauty of the language.
What Defines a Novel?
What Defines a Novel?
But, first things first: novels are defined as lengthy written prose narratives with a protagonist. Smiley's analysis of how the form of the novel determines its content is fascinating. I'll talk about the implications of novelistic form in my book reviews, but for now, let's nail down some basic categories of How to Read a Novel.
The Layers That Compose a Novel
The Layers That Compose a Novel
Smiley imagines a novel as a five-layered pyramid. The bottom layer is language and is comprised of word choice, punctuation, and grammar. The second layer is diction. This is how emotions, sensory data, and ideas go into and out of words. This is the realm of phrases and the connotations that words carry with them. The next layer is plot and protagonist. In a convincing novel, a character and her actions grow out of each other. An event is shaped by a character's choice or her interpretation of that event. In turn, this helps shape future events.
The fourth layer is setting and theme. The setting is the particular location of the novel, and a writer's theme is the larger meaning to be understood from the specifics of the story unfolding in a certain time and place. A novel's theme or organizing idea brings together emotional understanding with the cause-and-effects reasoning of the narrative. Finally, the top layer is complexity. Life is complex, so novels are complex. Novels can portray emotionally complex situations and they can be complex in terms of form. Puns, allusions, and parallel structures within the novel engage the reader's sense of play.
Novels are Both Linear and Spatial
Novels are Both Linear and Spatial
The pyramid of the novel is linear because the realistic novel moves sequentially through the stages of exposition, building action, climax and denouement. Yet, each layer within the pyramid is spatial. The author's job is to set the scene and makes something happen, but for that event to have importance, he must switch gears and explain how the event felt and what it meant This dual approach to crafting a story explains why the characteristic pattern within novels is that of action, reflection; action, reflection.
Each Novel Contains Various Kinds of Logic
Each Novel Contains Various Kinds of Logic
Below is a list of the different types of logic at work in a novel
- Scenes are the product of cause-and-effect in the narrative
- Characters act with coherent thoughts and actions and from identifiable perspective
- Themes or Organizing Principles hang together as a world-view; its the novel's ontology
- Structure of the plot is clear and makes sense
- Style of the prose mirrors the story being told or is somehow appropriate to the narrative
*Smiley, pp. 447-449.
