What Makes A Great Novel?

What makes a great novel?

 

      I think any author possess the desire to write great novels.  I don’t think anyone – in their heart of hearts – writes because it’s a sensible choice of profession or for financial gain.   I believe it was Steinbeck who said, ‘The profession of book-writing makes horse-racing seem like a solid, stable business…’

     Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Such testaments to the craft pose the question – Do you really want to be a writer — and if so, why?

      There is a considered opinion that artists – anyone who creates something for the enjoyment or aesthetic appreciation of others – is composed of fifty percent ego and fifty percent insecurity.  That makes a great deal of sense to me.  You are sufficiently arrogant to consider that the rest of the world should enjoy your creation, and yet you are terrified of their rejection or dismissal!  To live with such an internal contradiction makes for a fascinating and challenging existence.

      We create, we purvey our creation, we await the response.  We contend with critics.  Everyone contends with critics, no matter their walk of life.  But there seems to be something all the more penetrating about a criticism of something you have created with your own hands, your own heart, something that came from the soul.  Perhaps it is because it is taken as not only an attack on what you have created, but who you are.

      Criticism seems to require no qualifications.  I have never seen such a position advertised in the newspaper.

      People read books more than they read reviews.  Ultimately they care less about critics than they do the work that is being criticized.  As Christopher Hampton said, ‘Ask a working writer what he thinks about critics…you may as well ask a lamppost how it feels about dogs.’

Wendell Holmes added, “What a blessed thing it is that nature, when she invented, manufactured and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!”, to which Jean Kerr added, “When confronted by an absolutely infuriating review it is sometimes helpful for the victim to do a little personal research on the critic. Is there any truth to the rumor that he had no formal education beyond the age of eleven? In any event, is he able to construct a simple English sentence? Do his participles dangle? When moved to lyricism does he write I had a fun time? Was he ever arrested for burglary?”

       It is true that no statue has ever been erected to a critic.

       Personally, I have no complaint with critics or reviewers.  Generally I have been treated very kindly.  I think review and criticism is all part-and-parcel of the business of creation.  To determine that criticism is unfair is to question the validity of freedom of thought, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, and that is an entirely different subject for an entirely different discussion. 

       Regardless of his or her views about whether the work should be evaluated positively or negatively, an author is perhaps the very last person who should judge the value or quality of his own work.  All they can do is evaluate their own motives for what they do.

       Some of us, I imagine, write out of anger; some out of pain; some write out of prejudice or loss, some out of passion, the promise of something better, perhaps the belief that – even now – a book can be capable of changing a life.

      Some of us write to remember, some to forget; some to change things, some to ensure things stay the same.

      Some of us – as my editor and agent will all too easily testify – write because we cannot stop.

      Renard said that “Writing is the only profession where no-one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.”  Moliere said that first we write for ourselves, then we write for our friends, and lastly we write for money.  I am still writing for myself, and believe I always will be.  And the thing that drives me forward, the thing that reminds me of why I do this, and how important it is, is the reason for writing in the first place.  Because it matters.  It matters to the same degree as music, painting, dancing, sculpture, architecture, poetry, film, and all else that we create.  Is not the quality of life in a society judged by the degree to which its artists are supported and acknowledged?  Is not the society itself evaluated against the scope and substance of its artistic endeavors?  

      I just love to write, and though the subject matter that I want to write about takes me to the States, it is nevertheless more important to me to write something that can move someone emotionally, perhaps change a view about life, and at the same time to try and write it as beautifully as I can.  I also want to write about subjects – whether they be political conspiracies, serial killings, race relations, political assassinations or FBI and CIA investigations – that could only work in the USA.  Powerful subjects, emotive, contentious perhaps, but written with a view to engaging the emotions, the mind, the heart, the soul, and getting people to think about what they believe, what they see as the truth within our society, and perhaps to even change their preconceptions.

     So what is a great novel?

     Perhaps it is nothing more than a novel that challenges who we are, what we believe, and possess the power to change our viewpoint about something, however certain that viewpoint might be.

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