For anyone who spent some time reflecting about his / her own tastes regarding novels, the stories they tell and the resources they use to tell them, the apparent arbitrariness of these choices is striking. A literary movement like the Oulipo based its own identity on finding ways to escape it, by randomly constraining its authors to using certain forms and certain plots. The best example of it might be Georges Perec's Life, a manual, where every single plot, background, decor and character is determined, not by the needs of the story, but by a random draw from a pool of possible characters, decors, backgrounds and plots.
Far from being a flaw of the genre though, this arbitrariness is deeply rooted in its nature, as Marthe Robert demonstrates in the groundbreaking analysis she published forty years ago. As always, as I read it this morning, a powerful feeling of reassurance overwhelmed me as if, at last, I had been proven to be merely human.
This, and the sunshine.
"Sauf lorsque [le roman] se considère lui-même à distance et, découvrant ses propres illusions, les prend résolument pour sujet. J'ai tenté de montrer ailleurs (l'Ancien et le nouveau, Paris 1963, 1968) que cette méditation active et romancée du genre sur lui-même — ou «donquichottisme » puisque Cervantes en donne le premier et le plus grandiose exemple — est la seule façon de surmonter le paradoxe du « feint » et du « vrai », qui autrement tourne nécessairement à la mauvaise foi ou la naïveté."
"Apart from when [the novel] looks at itself from a distance and, discovering its own illusions, takes them resolutely as its topic. I tried to show elsewhere (L'Ancien et le nouveau, Paris 1963, 1968) that this active and romanticized meditation of the genre onto itself - or "Quixotism" since Cervantes gives it its first and most brilliant example - is the only way to overcome the paradox between the "faked" and the "true", which otherwise turns into bad faith or naivety."
Marthe Robert, Roman des origines et origines du roman, Paris, Gallimard, 1972, p.68 note 1.
Far from being a flaw of the genre though, this arbitrariness is deeply rooted in its nature, as Marthe Robert demonstrates in the groundbreaking analysis she published forty years ago. As always, as I read it this morning, a powerful feeling of reassurance overwhelmed me as if, at last, I had been proven to be merely human.
This, and the sunshine.
"Sauf lorsque [le roman] se considère lui-même à distance et, découvrant ses propres illusions, les prend résolument pour sujet. J'ai tenté de montrer ailleurs (l'Ancien et le nouveau, Paris 1963, 1968) que cette méditation active et romancée du genre sur lui-même — ou «donquichottisme » puisque Cervantes en donne le premier et le plus grandiose exemple — est la seule façon de surmonter le paradoxe du « feint » et du « vrai », qui autrement tourne nécessairement à la mauvaise foi ou la naïveté."
"Apart from when [the novel] looks at itself from a distance and, discovering its own illusions, takes them resolutely as its topic. I tried to show elsewhere (L'Ancien et le nouveau, Paris 1963, 1968) that this active and romanticized meditation of the genre onto itself - or "Quixotism" since Cervantes gives it its first and most brilliant example - is the only way to overcome the paradox between the "faked" and the "true", which otherwise turns into bad faith or naivety."
Marthe Robert, Roman des origines et origines du roman, Paris, Gallimard, 1972, p.68 note 1.
