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Landmark Novels -- Now and in the Future 2/24/2015 9:35:53 PM
I've been listening to an audiobook of Marcel Proust's novel "Swann's Way" -- a great achievement to which the reader Neville Jason makes a substantial contribution. My impression remains the same as when I started, that if Proust continued to work at the high level he reached here, then he created a unique literary work that will last for centuries. His admirers can legitimately claim that he is the greatest of all novelists, who occupies a high hilltop where there are no rivals.
"Remembrance of Things Past" will never be the only landmark novel, however. It's easy to think of companions: "Quixote", "War and Peace", "Karamazov" -- many others.
The art of the novel spreads across a wide territory. I like to think that Homer, using old Greek verse, wrote the first novels that still influence us. There's also the Japanese epic "The Tale of Genji" by Lady Murasaki, who wrote much later than Homer but still a long time ago for us.
Today's readers have a wide variety of novels to choose from: classics, epic novels, novels that come in series, pop novels, society novels, and novels focus on one character.
I've heard some readers say that the novel is passé and will soon die out. Maybe this is true for some folks, but there are billions of people in the world and no two people think exactly the same way. There are always plenty of valiant people who resist trendy fashions and plenty who read novels.
I like to think that for some of us the novel hasn't come to the end of its days but is at the beginning of development. It's likely that a few people will write novels until the world ends. A new question then arises: what will it take to write fiction that will stand alongside landmark works that already exist?
•Talent, of course, and talent grows for people who are patient, persistent, and willing to learn. Proust is an example.
•To do landmark work, a writer needs to cultivate a wide vision. Many people will remember Colin Powell, who served as the American Secretary of State. I read last week about advice he gave his son Michael: "Refuse to play in baby pools." Think big, in other words. Don't let mediocrity or the negative or small-time stuff drag you down. Don't lower yourself.
•The writers of future landmark works won't fear hard work. They'll know what dedication means and be willing to make sacrifices.
•Writers like most other people learn how to overcome obstacles. Homer was said to have been blind. Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy. Henry James endured the neglect of three great novels of his late maturity. Solzhenitsyn spent years in a communist jail. A creative person makes use of adversity. Most writers know how to keep on going.
•I learned from George Painter's biography that Proust explored Parisian high society for years and accepted the values of the people who were at home there until the day came when he decided that friends and acquaintances he'd admired were heartless at times and superficial. He looked for sounder, deeper ways than theirs. His quest led him to write a masterpiece -- the life story of a man who rethinks what he's done and what's happened to him and leaves the great world behind. Similarly, writers of future landmark works will learn how to study the societies they're part of and their own ambitions and the goals of the men and women around them. They will reclaim for the novel its role as light-bearer, critic of current trends, and beacon of truth about life.
