Did the novels of the 20th century accomplish anything?
December 13, 2024 2:18 PM Subscribe
Exquisite sentences are one thing; to present the novel as representing a collective experience raises different questions. Frank is a skillful storyteller, weaving together expository accounts of the novels with tangy anecdotes from the authors’ biographies. His subtitle refers to a multiplicity of “lives,” lived by the authors as well as by their imagined characters, and maybe he doesn’t need a single story. But if the twentieth century did go through a shared cultural experience and if the novel articulated that experience, as he suggests, it seems fair to ask what story he’s telling. Whose collective experience is he talking about? Laid end to end, what do his own elegantly turned sentences add up to? from Kicking an Open Door [The Baffler; ungated]
A review of Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel by Edwin Frank.
A review of Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel by Edwin Frank.
An impossibly short piece for the topic (even as a book review).
The Twentieth Century was incredibly dense in terms of cultural change (or change, generally) and its literary output reflected that (including in its volume relative to every preceding century).
This must be The Baffler's version of listicle.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:07 PM on December 13 [1 favorite]
The Twentieth Century was incredibly dense in terms of cultural change (or change, generally) and its literary output reflected that (including in its volume relative to every preceding century).
This must be The Baffler's version of listicle.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:07 PM on December 13 [1 favorite]
Amazingly unedifying.
posted by tinlids at 5:39 AM on December 14 [2 favorites]
posted by tinlids at 5:39 AM on December 14 [2 favorites]
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