The novelists
Norm’s favourite English-language novels vote is in. I was very pleased to see Austen lead the pack by a wide margin. So she should. There is no one who can touch her for what I can only call perfection – for ruthless avoidance of flab, gas, wind, padding, self-indulgence; of bad writing; of sentimentality; of sententiousness; of overt lecturing; of sloppiness. There’s a power, a muscularity, a cold authority to her writing that makes a lot of male writers look feeble indeed. She’s widely supposed to be a narrow genteel nostalgic peddler of romances; well, Dickens and Thackeray and Hardy should only have been so lucky to have the force and strength of pen that she had. She and Emily Bronte could outdo them all.
Thus I was sorry not to see Emily Bronte until 32. Also not to see Willa Cather at all (meaning she got eight votes or fewer or none). I think Cather is under-rated. Some of her stuff is brilliant, and unlike other novels. The first half of The Song of the Lark is staggeringly good, I think.
I was glad Rohinton Mistry made the near-miss list but I wish he’d done better. I’m surprised to see Orwell there at all – he was a godawful novelist. I suppose he’s there on the strength of the last two, but really, as novels…they’re not very good. And two novels that I recommend strongly: Rebecca Goldstein’s The Mind-body Problem and J G Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur.
I thought it was strange not to see Zadie Smith on the list. On Beauty is such fun. I didn’t expect to see Ruth Ozeki, but she’s great. My Year of Meats and All Over Creation. Both extremely fun as well as serious. Norm said to pick what you like, not what you esteem. I wonder if everyone followed those instructions. Lotsa very, very impressive stuff there.
Willa Cather scored only 5 points, Ophelia.
As usual, I didn’t vote, but why not Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) or Louis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)?
In my opinion, Orwell writes very well. Actually, the standard rules for English style come from Orwell. don’t they?
I wonder if the ‘wet-nurse’ experience Jane Austen was in receipt of for the first eighteen months of her life had any long-lasting influence on her life as an author? She, has rather, on a world-wide scale (for nigh on 200 years) been whetting the appetite’s of humanity.
“There’s a power, a muscularity, a cold authority to her writing that makes a lot of male writers look feeble indeed.”
Considering the above, she was of disposition (physically speaking) very, very petite! I was astonished to see the tiny clothes she wore, when I went to visit a quaint museum (in her honour) in the South of England.
Austen?
errr…
Great characters, shame about the plots!
:-))
Very soon I will be blacklisted at B&W–I’ve never read a book by Jane Austen. Tried, got bored. Who cares who marries whom? I’m willing to repent and try again. What must I read?
Jean: I don’t care who marries who either, even if the style is perfect. Forget Jane Austen, if you’re not interested in techniques for catching a rich husband. Read Balzac, who shows social-climbers looking for “good matches”, without the mystification of Jane Austen. Balzac, like Jane Austen, shows a world where money counts, but in Balzac money isn’t hidden in the name of “good taste”.
Amos, I think it’s more to do with Orwell’s style as an essayist. Plain English and all that; didn’t work that well with the novel.
But seriously, Philip K. Dick is in and Melville, Ford or Beckett aren’t? Something wrong there… I suppose the quality of the writing was one of the main criteria (since the poll is limited to English-language novelists) and Dick was possibly one of the worse SF writer when it comes to style. (Yes I know! SF and bad writing, the field is rather crowded!)
May I confess that I find Atwood way overrated? And that I, too, have never read anything by Jane Austen?
Arnaud,
Atwood’s a great cure for insomnia, sin’t she?
Or was that just me…
:-)
And no Bulwer-Lytton?? Shome Mishtake, surely? ;-))
I wonder what this list says about the people who habituate that blog…and the subset of them who bothered voting?
Sorry, meant to include this link in the previous post:
Bulwer-Lytton Contest
amos, Jean – groan – it’s not just about who marries whom; that’s the skeleton, but it’s far from everything.
Arnaud is right: I’m talking about the novels, not the essays. Although of late I have come to think that Orwell is a little overrated as a stylist even in the essays. He’s okay but he’s not that good – he’s no Hazlitt.
Thanks for the info, Norm.
I remembered another I didn’t see, which really shocks me, or at least makes me think people don’t know what they’re missing – Fielding. Tom Jones is a brilliant, brilliant novel.
Yes I know! SF and bad writing, the field is rather crowded!
I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of it is crud.
The Revelation: Ninety percent of everything is crud.“
— Theodore Sturgeon
Arnaud, Granted that Orwell was better essayist and journalist (Homage to Catalonia, Down and Out in London and Paris, the Road to Wigan Pier) than novelist, 1984 is a good novel. I’m simplying, but a good novel isn’t just style and plot: it’s content too. Orwell has content. He has moral seriousness. For example, in translation at least, some of Dostoyevsky’s novels are badly written, verbose, sentimental, but their moral seriousness makes them worth it.
Amos, I haven’t read Balzac either, but I’m not quite as ashamed of that. Moral seriousness-I like that concept. I reread Crime and Punishment and the Brothers Karamazov not long ago and for some reason I hadn’t remember how verbose he is. Sheesh. But moral seriousness yes. And good stories. I guess I need a little “dark” mixed into things, and get that from George Eliot, Thomas Hardy,Charles Dickens…but not from Jane Austen. Possibly if I got page 17 of one her novels I’d find what I’m looking for.
For Dostoevsky in English try the Pevear and Volokhonsky translations, especially “Crime and Punishment”.
Gore Vidal is always fun, I particularly liked his “Burr”.
>Austen?
>errr…
>Great characters, shame about the plots!
>:-))
>I’ve never read a book by Jane Austen. Tried, got bored. Who cares who marries whom?< >I don’t care who marries who either, even if the style is perfect. Forget Jane Austen…< So do you not care who marries whom among people you know? A novel which carries you into its own world leaves you having a feeling for the characters almost akin to “real life”. While I’m reading the book, Elizabeth in “Pride and Prejudice” feels as real a character to me as Austen herself, in fact more so, given I know little about her (sometimes one feels it could almost be Austen herself, such is her intelligence and sensitivity to people and situations). I think Austen herself gave an answer to the above responses in her early novel *Northanger Abbey*. It was a defence of the novel as against more “serious” writings such as history, etc, but fits well to her own novels. It is given in her authorial voice: “And what are you reading Miss – ? ‘Oh! It is only a novel!’ replies the young lady… ‘It is only ‘Cecelia’, or ‘Camilla’, or ‘Belinda’; or, in short, only some work in which… the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.”
“I guess I need a little “dark” mixed into things, and get that from George Eliot, Thomas Hardy,Charles Dickens…but not from Jane Austen.”
It’s there all right.In fact it is the the thing about Austen that I am most ambivalent about, her hard-heartedness towards those who are beyond the social pale, amounting almosty to cruelty. She is subtle and sometimes forgiving within the staggeringly narrow social parameters that she considers acceptable but any activity beyond that, such as running away to get married, has you banished forever, apparantly without a second thought. I don’t think any of us would meet her standards. Amis (M) has written well about this.
That’s not to say that I don’t like the novels, I do. They are clever and funny if a bit too ‘perfect’ sometimes (I like a bit of the imperfection that comes with larger ambitions).
Would I be banned forever if I mentioned Elmore Leonard ? I know crime lit’s not extactly highbrow, but the guy moves you through so many events through very authentic dialogue rather than narrative… there are always strong well drawn female characters… he has little sympathy for most of the people in the worlds he depicts, it’s just that some people deserve one more break and others don’t… I might add I’d advocate teenagers to read one of his books right after a Dickens…
>She is subtle and sometimes forgiving within the staggeringly narrow social parameters that her hard-heartedness towards those who are beyond the social pale, amounting almosty to cruelty. She is subtle and sometimes forgiving within the staggeringly narrow social parameters that she considers acceptable but any activity beyond that, such as running away to get married, has you banished forever, apparantly without a second thought.< I don’t recall that Austen gives any opinion on such matters. As far as I can see she describes the attitudes of the society with which she is familiar, but I don’t see how that implies approval.
Amos,
I didn’t mean for a minute that Orwell was a bad novelist! Just that in my experience when people praise his style, they praise the style of his essays. And it is true that for me the clarity and the concision of his prose, his lack of “showiness” were more adapted to the genre.
It’s also true that style is not all, you mentioned Dostoevsky but that’s also what I meant with Philip K Dick. The fact that he was a poor writer wasn’t enough to make him a bad author (it just meant that, personally, it me took another ten years before I recognised that fact and started to read him seriously! My shame…)
Or look at Norman Mailer for that matter.
Style is not all, but it is something. It’s not sufficient but by gum it is necessary – at least I think so. Style is the novelist’s medium, it’s her tool, her equipment, her doctor’s bad. Moral seriousness doesn’t excuse a bad style.
Allen put it beautifully.
Allen, though, there is a bit in Mansfield Park where Austen does pretty much dismiss Maria in her own voice. It’s always made me a little unhappy. It’s entirely predictable for its time (though the time was also of course that of Byron and Prinny and other cheerful bed-hoppers) but it’s not beyond it.
Bag – her doctor’s bag, not bad. Jeez – wake up.
“In fact it is the the thing about Austen that I am most ambivalent about, her hard-heartedness”
In a way it’s one of the things I like most about her – but with some ambivalence in particular cases. But I like the absence of piety and sentimentality, especially when it comes to family. She doesn’t try to pretend that Lizzy really loves her mother and younger sisters underneath; she obviously doesn’t. (Emma’s the major exception to that: she’s devoted to her father even though he’s a great selfish demanding baby.)
>Allen put it beautifully.< I think that bit was Jane’s!
Nuh uh! I know the much-quoted passage from NA when I see it! I meant the two paragraphs preceding it.
Irish fiction @ Wiki has a host of Irish authors.
Just giving the aul tiny country a wee look-in @ B&W.
(Irish has the third oldest literature in Europe (after Greek and Latin).
I found I couldn’t vote for novelists if they had only written one novel, like Emily Bronte, or if I only really rated one novel, like Thackeray & Vanity Fair (tho’ Pendennis isn’t bad).
Re Orwell’s novels – I’ve read them all because they’re by Orwell not because they’re much good tho’ pretty readable. Animal Farm is great though, perfect in structure and he manages animal characters better than human ones – is there anyone whose undeserved fate you weep over more than Boxer’s? But that’s a fable rather than a novel per se. And his plain style suits the deadpan telling of a tragic fable.
I’m just getting into Hazlitt and enjoying his richness and warmth and can see what OB means about him vis-a-vis Orwell. But whenever I see the dates after Orwell’s name (1903 – 1950) I so long for him to have survived another twenty years or so.
Well I wish Emily Bronte had written more than one (and she didn’t for the same reason Orwell didn’t write more – bastard TB! It got Keats, and Chekhov, and Thoreau! Bastard! Bastard!), but the one is such a staggerer – that I didn’t hesitate over her. I’d swap all of Thackeray for WH any day.