I just started Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach (edited by Michael McKeon) and I'm having a hard time with it. It's thick and dense and i'm short on time, but I'm disinterested in categorization as a course of study.
As a writer, I find categorization unhelpful. Perhaps it is a way to teach a number of tools available to a writer, or for a writer to remember them.
Ultimately, however, communication needs to be at the centre of all writing. To borrow an idea from Philip Larkin, writing is a mechanism to transfer an idea from one person to another. There are lots of tools ranging from the language or the objects to publish the writing or performances. Larkin was talking about poetry as a means of transferring an emotion from the poet to the reader, each with a central purpose or a something for the poem to do in the world. I think of my poems as a script for me to read aloud. Novels use the object of a book, with its many words, to transfer more complex emotions and stories. A play is a blueprint to help the actors transfer a concept or a feeling, or simply a story. I, as a writer, have something inside and I want you to know it too. So I write.
Categorization is a game for critics and bookshops owners. For bookshop owners, I get it. Things need to be put on shelves to be sold, and novels are things. (This may be apocryphal, but the word 'novel' is said to come from the novel idea of carrying around your entertainment with you.) For critics, I just don't see the point. It's more about creating a literary in-crowd or influencing how readers see work which would otherwise have to (and be able to) stand on its own. Maybe that makes me a philistine, but I just don't see the point.
As a writer, I find categorization unhelpful. Perhaps it is a way to teach a number of tools available to a writer, or for a writer to remember them.
Ultimately, however, communication needs to be at the centre of all writing. To borrow an idea from Philip Larkin, writing is a mechanism to transfer an idea from one person to another. There are lots of tools ranging from the language or the objects to publish the writing or performances. Larkin was talking about poetry as a means of transferring an emotion from the poet to the reader, each with a central purpose or a something for the poem to do in the world. I think of my poems as a script for me to read aloud. Novels use the object of a book, with its many words, to transfer more complex emotions and stories. A play is a blueprint to help the actors transfer a concept or a feeling, or simply a story. I, as a writer, have something inside and I want you to know it too. So I write.
Categorization is a game for critics and bookshops owners. For bookshop owners, I get it. Things need to be put on shelves to be sold, and novels are things. (This may be apocryphal, but the word 'novel' is said to come from the novel idea of carrying around your entertainment with you.) For critics, I just don't see the point. It's more about creating a literary in-crowd or influencing how readers see work which would otherwise have to (and be able to) stand on its own. Maybe that makes me a philistine, but I just don't see the point.
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