Rachel Cusk, wants to reinvent the novel, at least according to the New York Times Book Review.* Just writing that makes me break into a sweat. Why do we have to reinvent the novel?
Okay, I get it. It's a bit like composers wondering where to take symphonic music after Beethoven. Ludwig pretty much said it all.
Poor Johannes Brahms: when folks heard his first symphony, they went, "OMG! It's Beethoven's 10th." Or so the story goes.
After 200+ years of the novel as art form, it's understandable that authors might want to try something different.
Perhaps you've noticed the trend toward SHIFTING POINTS OF VIEW, different characters taking turns at the helm…
. . . surely you've noticed the frequent use of SHIFTING TIME FRAMES, the lack of straightforward chronology…
. . . or maybe you've noticed the use of ALTERNATIVE TEXTS: news clips, diary entries, handwritten letters, scholarly papers, emails, even PowerPoint…
. . . how about the use of ALTERNATE REALITIES?
Sometimes it's hard to tell exactly where you are...or what character you're following—one of the criticisms leveled at Paul Auster's otherwise highly touted new book 4321. Other times, all this narrative disruption can make it hard to engage with the characters.
Yet we know people see and experience life differently. And that is precisely what the new fiction is trying to get at—to point out that human perception isn't cut in stone, that there is more than one way of seeing a particular event, and that memory is faulty.
Nonetheless, don't you miss the comfort of a single narrator? I do. I have a yen for that 19th-century style of writing in which someone steps onto your front porch, claims a seat, and tells you a grand story.
I hate being old-fashioned and curmudgeonly. But I'm weary of the fact that EVERY new book I pick up messes with point of view and chronology. Friends, I just had to get that off my chest.
* New York Times Book Review, January 29, 2017, cover review of Rachel Cusk's Transit.