'Authentic' novels

A redaction of a novel, by Hollywood or Broadway or Reader's Digest or a paraphrase or any other means, is known not to be a novel, not to be authentic. A novel can be dropped or outmoded or rediscovered by readers, but it can't be changed into something else ...

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

The comment above, made by Jane Smiley in her wonderful book 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, raises questions in my mind. Is what she says really true?

I don't think there is any question that a novel adapted for a movie or a stage play is no longer a novel. The story may be changed into a screenplay or a play, yet the novel itself still exists, unchanged. One can both read a novel and watch a movie adapted from that novel.

Reader's Digest seems more problematic. Is a condensed novel no longer a novel? Is it no longer the same novel? How about if the novel is condensed by the reader, who skips over descriptions or, as in the case of Moby-Dick, all those chapters about whaling that have little to do with the narrative? Do such readers fail to read "the novel" because, like Reader's Digest, they condensed what they read?

Does a novel translated into other languages, with totally different words, somehow cease to be "the novel?" How about if an editor cuts out large portions of a novel, such as happened with Thomas's Wolfe's work? Or what if a novelist changes something in a novel from one edition to another, as has sometimes occurred? Is one edition more "the novel" than another?

Novels, it seems to me, are "changed into something else" all the time — by editors, publishers, readers, translators, magazines that serialize them and even by the authors themselves. Scholars can make a career out of trying to determine which version of a novel is the authentic one.

The great river

A novelist is someone who has volunteered to be a representative of literature and to move it forward a generation. That is all.

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

Jane Smiley's comment above begins to make sense after reading her earlier comment describing literature as "the great river of novels." Her book, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, represents Smiley's view of literature, from the earliest novels to some written not long before her book was published in 2005. She examines the whole river, so to speak.

In her view, anyone who writes a novel, good or bad, acts something like a small tributary. And so her metaphor comes clear. A novelist volunteers — nobody is forced — to write a novel, and by doing so adds to that great river and, as she says, helps "move it forward a generation." Even those who write novels set in an earlier generation are, perhaps without even meaning to, saying something about their own generation.

Even as fewer people seem to be reading novels, more people seem to be writing them. Years ago I made this observation about poetry — that more people seemed to write poems than read them. Now something similar seems to be happening with novels. There may be more novels being published today than ever before. Whether or not that is true, this great river keeps getting bigger and bigger, while fewer of us seem to be stopping to take a dip in that river.

When a woman soars

"Independence is freedom, and freedom is the only way for a woman to soar."

Spoken by Arlette in A Promise to Arlette by Serena Burdick

The above line found early in Serena Burdick's terrific 2025 novel A Promise to Arlette sounds like something contemporary feminists might say to one another, but this book covers a period from the 1930s to 1952. The novel disproves that line.

Ida Whipple is an American housewife with two children as the story opens in 1952. At a party a neighbor displays what purports to be a Man Ray photograph showing two nude women. Ida knows immediately that it is not actually a Man Ray photograph. She knows this because she is one of the women in the photograph.

That night Ida leaves her family, steals the photograph and heads across the country to California to try to find Man Ray. A few days later, after getting a clue about where she might be, Sidney, her husband, follows her to California, their two little girls in tow.

Most of the novel is a flashback. Ida seeks her independence by abandoning her family in England when in her teens and heading for Paris. Arlette becomes her new friend, a beautiful young Jewish woman who works for Peggy Guggenheim, the famous art patron and another Jew. When war breaks out and the Germans invade France, Peggy escapes, but Ida and Arlette remain in a chateau. When Arlette is captured, Ida assumes she has been taken to a camp and exterminated. Unable to leave France, she stays at the chateau under an assumed name. Then comes Sidney Whipple, an American paratrooper, who finds his way to that chateau and stays there, abandoning the war after falling in love with Ida.

What is the promise made to Arlette? Burdick saves the answer until near the end, giving the novel a powerful conclusion. Ida has twice abandoned her family, without ever truly finding independence or freedom. She soars, however, when the family she loves finds her.

Journey of discovery

The key is to think about reading as a journey of discovery, an excavation of the inner world. ... What's important is to take the plunge.

David L. Ulin, The Lost Art of Reading

When I was still in school, I never knew which I liked best — the first day of school in the fall or the last day of school in the spring. Both were exciting to me. Similarly I don't know which I like best — reading the first line of a book or reading the last line. (You could probably make similar comments about vacations, parties and a variety of other things.)

Finishing a book is fun because you made it to the end. If it's a long, challenging book, you have finally completed the task. If it's an exciting mystery or thriller, you finally know what's been going on and how the hero is saved. Questions have been answered. Last lines of books are often beautiful and rewarding in themselves.

Yet David L. Ulin above puts his finger on what's exciting about starting a book. It's very much like beginning a journey of discovery. What's ahead? What's this all about? What lies ahead, on the next page, in the next chapter? Will I find thrills or disappointment?

Before I buy a book, I normally read the back cover of paperbacks and the inside cover of hardbacks to see what they are about. If I know the author, I may not even do that. But by the time I actually start reading a book, which may be months or even years later, I have usually forgotten what it is about. I just start in, going blindly into my adventure.

The other day I tossed out a new book, which I had recently purchased, after reading just a few pages. I didn't like where this adventure seemed to be going, so I bailed. I picked up another book, and after about 100 pages I still don't know where it is going. Yet I am remain intrigued. I like this adventure.

Take the plunge, Ulin says. Try something new. Good advice.

Books that murmur

Heather Cass White

Readers like to have books around because they continue to murmur after they have been read; they are living extensions of our minds into a space not wholly ours.

Heather Cass White, Books Promiscuously Read

Let's examine that sentence phrase by phrase.

Readers like to have books around ...

This is not true of all readers. Many readers happily return books, even books they love, to the library. Or they give them to a friend or give them away. Heather Cass White seems to be writing about a different kind of reader, my kind of reader. These readers are the sort who can identify with the next phrase.

... because they continue to murmur after they have been read ...

Can books murmur? I think so, although it has more to do with memory than sound. The best books stick with us, just like the best movies do. We remember something about them — a character, a passage, a feeling. The fact that such books are still around in our homes can trigger these murmurs whenever we see them.

... they are living extensions of our minds ...

Books that murmur, in a sense, are still living, in a sense. Their ideas have become our ideas, even if our own minds have reshaped them into something different than what the authors intended.

... into a space not wholly ours.

White goes on to compare books to children's toys. She uses the psychology term "transitional objects." Children use toys to create imaginary worlds, not wholly theirs. Books work similarly for those who can read. They can take us on a raft with Huck and Jim or into a courtroom with Scout and Jem. Any book that's any good takes us somewhere.

The missing wife

Laura Lippman's standalone novels have been very popular in recent years, yet it is hard not to miss her outstanding Tess Monaghan series of mysteries featuring a female private investigator. One of those gems is By a Spider's Thread, published in 2004.

The Baltimore detective is hired by a Jewish man to find his missing wife and their three children. Tess herself is half Jewish, as well as half Irish, and so she has some understanding of what makes Mark Rubin tick — why he refuses to shake her hand, for instance.

So protective is Mark that he refuses to divulge to Tess key details that might help her find Natalie, his wife. One such detail is that Natalie's father  has long been in prison, and that she used to visit him there. Mark used to work with Jewish prisoners, which is how he met Natalie.

It turns out that Natalie has long been in love with Zeke, one of those prisoners. While waiting for Zeke's release, she married Rubin and had three kids with him. Now that Zeke is free, she runs away to join him. The three kids, however, are a surprise to Zeke and upset his plans.

Lippman gives us both sides of the story, alternating from Tess and Mark to Natalie and Zeke. One of the key characters is Isaac, the oldest son, who misses his father and works behind Zeke's back to make his life difficult.

It's a grand story that readers will love.

Unintended art

At the beginning of the twentieth century ... novelists began making a case not only that novels were art, but also that certain qualities of certain novels were more artistic than others.

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

If Jane Smiley is correct in what she says above, and I believe she is, then some of the greatest novels ever written — Pride and Prejudice, Our Mutual Friend, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, Crime and Punishment, etc. — were written before novels were considered art. Thus the likes of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen were creating art without realizing it. They just wanted to tell good stories.

Folk art might made a good parallel. Unassuming people in isolated places make quilts or carvings because they find them beautiful or clever, not because they are trying to create art that one day might be on display in a museum.

Did the quality of novels become better after they were recognized as art? Maybe. Maybe not. Before the 20th century the quality of novels was measured primarily by their popularity. If people wanted to read them, they must be good. Since then popularity has actually been considered a detriment to art. If people like it, it must not be very good. Or so many in the literary field seem to think.

I am not making a case that a bestseller like Lessons in Chemistry is art. I haven't read it, and I have no idea. But not all books that were bestsellers in the 19th century are recognized as art today. My point is simply that something need not be obscure or difficult to be artful.

Further, some of the worst novels being written today are by authors deliberately trying to create art. And some of the best are written by people just trying to tell good stories.