The 700-year history of the novel in English defies straightforward
telling. Geographically and culturally boundless, with
contributions from Great Britain, Ireland, America, Canada,
Australia, India, the Caribbean, and Southern Africa; influenced by
great novelists working in other languages; and encompassing a
range of genres, the story of the novel in English unfolds like a
richly varied landscape that invites exploration rather than a
linear journey. In The Novel: A Biography, Michael Schmidt does
full justice to its complexity. Like his hero Ford Madox Ford in
The March of Literature, Schmidt chooses as his traveling
companions not critics or theorists but "artist practitioners," men
and women who feel "hot love" for the books they admire, and
fulminate against those they dislike. It is their insights Schmidt
cares about. Quoting from the letters, diaries, reviews, and essays
of novelists and drawing on their biographies, Schmidt invites us
into the creative dialogues between authors and between books, and
suggests how these dialogues have shaped the development of the
novel in English. Schmidt believes there is something fundamentally
subversive about art: he portrays the novel as a liberalizing force
and a revolutionary stimulus. But whatever purpose the novel serves
in a given era, a work endures not because of its subject, themes,
political stance, or social aims but because of its language, its
sheer invention, and its resistance to cliche--some irreducible
quality that keeps readers coming back to its pages.
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