Novel

Article Outline

Introduction; What Is a Novel?; Elements of the Novel; Techniques of the Novel; Genres of the Novel; History of the Novel; The Novel Today

Post-World War II

After World War II ended in 1945, the international experimental impulse persisted. New tendencies developed, including plays on words, parodies of the act of writing itself, and a lack of concern for completion and resolution.

Irish novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett, who spent much of his life in France, became one of the best-known experimental writers of the time. In several of his novels his characters seem lost in their own minds, incapable of judging or changing their surroundings. They serve as voices that speak about the futility of life. Beckett’s novels include Murphy (1938) and the trilogy made up of Molloy (completed 1947; published 1951; translated 1955), Malone meurt (completed 1948; published 1951; Malone Dies, 1956), and L’innomable (completed 1950; published 1953; The Unnamable, 1958).

Some of the most interesting experiments in form and subject came in the so-called new novel, which developed in France in midcentury. Among the writers known as new novelists were Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon.

These writers differ in many ways, but they all portray life as a sort of detective story in which there are clues but no solution. Robbe-Grillet’s novels, for example, replace a straightforward story with repetitive clusters of scientifically precise descriptions generated by obsessed, unidentified characters. Thus, Robbe-Grillet’s characters lack both the physical characteristics and the inner psychology of traditional characters. In his relentlessly detailed La jalousie (1957; Jealousy, 1959), Robbe-Grillet focuses exclusively on the visual details of walls, drinking glasses, and landscapes. These objects and scenes are what the eye of the jealous husband obsessively focuses on.

North America

North American novelists, like European novelists, took traditional and experimental literary approaches in the 20th century. Another important development was the growing number of prominent novelists not of Anglo-Saxon background. Writers from other ethnic and cultural groups moved within the general literary current, but their subject matter often related to the issue of cultural diversity in modern society.

Pre-World War II

The 20th century was a time of great change in the novel in North America, but some writers in the early part of the new century continued in the traditional veins of the 1800s. The last great novels that Henry James wrote, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904), involve the common 19th-century theme of social manners. James had a strong influence on American writer Edith Wharton, whose works also examined the subtleties of turn-of-the-century upper-class social life. Wharton’s major works include The House of Mirth (1905), about a woman who loses her place in society, and The Age of Innocence (1920), a love story with an unhappy ending.

American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald also focused on human behavior and its consequences, but his work had a more contemporary feel, as he chronicled the glamorous Jazz Age society of the 1920s. Fitzgerald’s most famous work is The Great Gatsby (1925). This book is narrated by a man named Nick Carraway. Nick tells the story of James Gatz, a poor Midwesterner who makes a fortune through devious means and reinvents himself as Jay Gatsby, a wealthy and mysterious man famous for his lavish parties on Long Island. Gatsby’s ultimate goal is to win the love of Daisy Buchanan, an upper-class socialite who has married another man. Gatsby’s attempts to win her end in tragedy, however.

In Canada, historical sagas were popular. Maria Chapdelaine (1914; translated 1921) by Louis Hémon is considered a classic of French Canadian literature. It examines the lives of early settlers. One of the best-known historical sagas is a series of novels by Mazo de la Roche that began with Jalna (1927). The collection focuses on the fictional Whiteoak family in Ontario. Mine Inheritance (1940) by Frederick Niven is another treatment of Canada’s early settlement.

Other writers took a more activist approach to social change and made an effort to depict realistically the lives of the downtrodden and the ignored. This tendency had begun in the late 19th century with writers such as Stephen Crane and Frank Norris. Crane’s novella Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (1893) chronicles the life and death of a young prostitute. Crane depicts the disturbing aspects of war in Red Badge of Courage (1895), about a young soldier’s experiences in the American Civil War (1861-1865). In McTeague (1899), Norris shows tragedy in the lives of ordinary people.

One of the first 20th-century works to take a critical look at modern society was Sister Carrie (1900) by American author Theodore Dreiser. This plainly told story is about an ambitious girl who uses her sexuality to move ahead socially. With later novels such as The “Genius” (1915) and An American Tragedy (1925), Dreiser became a leader of the literary school of naturalism. Naturalist writers felt that people’s actions are controlled by instinct and by social conditions, and that people have little chance to change their behavior through their own free will.

The works of Crane, Norris, and Dreiser reflected a growing tendency in the early 1900s for American authors to depict society with a view to reform or revolution. Some writers focused on specific injustices, as did American writer Upton Sinclair in The Jungle (1906), about working conditions in the meat-packing industry in Chicago, Illinois. This book led to investigations by the federal government and the passage of laws to ensure the safety of food. Other writers commented more generally on the corrupting effects of capitalist society, as did American author Sinclair Lewis in Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922), both explorations of deficiencies in the Midwestern character.

Other American authors who addressed social and economic issues were James T. Farrell in the Studs Lonigan trilogy (1932 to 1935), about a Catholic boy growing up in the slums of Chicago; John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath (1939), about a family driven off their Oklahoma farm and forced to become migrant laborers; and Richard Wright in Native Son (1940), about urban race relations.

In Canada, Douglas Durkin criticized society in The Magpie (1923). Waste Heritage (1939) by Irene Baird is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Another strain of Canadian novels concerned war and its impact on people. Examples include Generals Die in Bed (1930) by Charles Yale Harrison and Barometer Rising (1941) by Hugh MacLennan.

One of the most important developments in literature in North America in the early and mid-20th century was a new attention to the possibilities of style. For example, in tightly controlled novels such as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929), American writer Ernest Hemingway captured the sensory texture of human experiences such as battle, café life, love, and sport. Hemingway’s language was simple, but he used it to complex effect. Relying primarily on nouns and verbs, he sought to make the reading of a text as close as possible to the actual experience of what it described. This approach, he felt, would have the strongest emotional effect on the reader.

In a different vein, American writer William Faulkner followed the trend of European authors Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, André Gide, and Thomas Mann in innovating with style. Faulkner set many of his novels in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, using this environment to explore the idea that the traditional values of the American South had been savaged by a new ideal, power. Like the European authors, Faulkner's greatness lay not only in his themes but also in his way of rendering them—with experiments in fragmented narrative. In novels such as As I Lay Dying (1930), Faulkner used stream of consciousness to reproduce the perceptions of crazed or fixated people and to mix fact with legends and illusions. One of his goals was to present the world as a place where no objective truth exists—that is, a place in which each person has a dramatically different impression of the world.

Post-World War II

After World War II (1939-1945) several major novels about war appeared. The Naked and the Dead (1948) by American Norman Mailer features a platoon of soldiers in the Pacific Ocean arena of conflict during World War II. Turvey (1949) by Canadian author Earle Birney satirizes the Canadian intelligence service through the eyes of Tops Turvey, a young soldier. From Here to Eternity (1951) by American author James Jones studies war from an enlisted man’s viewpoint.

Perhaps the best-known North American novel to emerge from World War II was Catch-22 (1961) by American author Joseph Heller. The novel describes the absurdities of military life. Representing the craziness of war is the regulation “Catch-22,” which states that “a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.” The result of the regulation is that an airman who has gone crazy can ask to be grounded, but when he asks, his concern for his well-being proves that he is in fact sane, and thus healthy enough to fly.

Around midcentury, issues of civil rights surfaced in literature. In 1952 Ralph Ellison emerged as a major literary figure with the publication of his novel Invisible Man. The novel’s narrator, whose name is never given, describes how he comes to realize that he is in fact “invisible.” As a black man in the United States, he can never really be seen as a thinking, feeling human being, but is perpetually walled in by white people’s stereotyped notions of black people. The hero finally retreats to an abandoned cellar, making his invisibility total. The hero’s swings from realism to hallucination and back, along with Ellison’s insight into the loneliness of modern city life, make the novel more than just a study of black consciousness. “Who knows,” his character asks the reader, “but that on the lower levels, I speak for you?”

Other writers pushed the boundaries of literature by addressing unconventional topics. In 1955 Russian-born American writer Vladimir Nabokov shocked readers with his Lolita (1955), about a middle-aged man named Humbert Humbert who becomes obsessed with a teenage girl. Nabokov’s Pale Fire (1962) is a fragmented tale about a scholar editing a poem. The novel encases the reader in a world of jokes, ironies, and wordplay.

Many other writers experimented with language in the mid-20th century. In her book The Double Hook (1959), Canadian writer Sheila Watson uses cadence (the rhythm of writing) and images rather than plot for communicating ideas. In the novels The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) and Giles Goat-Boy (1966), American author John Barth uses puns, parodies, and tricks—anything but the progression of a story or the analysis of a character. In parts of The Subterraneans (1958), American writer Jack Kerouac gives interrelated impressions to convey an experience:

…the cold winter rainy nights when Charles would be crossing the campus saying something witty, the great epics almost here sounding phantom like and uninteresting if at all believable but the true position and bigburn importance of not only Charles but a good dozen others in the light rack of my brain, so Mardou seen in this light, is a little brown body in a gray sheet bed in the slums of Telegraph Hill, huge future in the history of the night yes but only one among many, the asexuality of the WORK—also the sudden gut joy of beer when the visions of great words in rhythmic order all in one giant archangel book go roaring thru my brain, so I lie in the dark also seeing also hearing the jargon the future worlds—damaje-eleout-ekeke-dhdkdk-dldoud, ——d, ekeoeu-hdhdkehgyt—better not more than which strangely he doth mdodudltkdip—baseeaatra—for example because of mechanical needs of gyping, of the flow of river sounds, words, hark, leading to the future and attesting to the madness, hollowness, ring and roar of my mind which blessed or unblessed is where trees sing—in a funny wind—well-being believes he’ll go to heaven—

In V (1963) American writer Thomas Pynchon transforms the mystery story form into a meditative exploration of 20th-century history. In Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) the framework of an investigation barely serves to hold together Pynchon’s story about World War II, weaponry, and the destructive powers of modern civilization. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. also concerns World War II. The novel is the story of a prison camp survivor named Billy Pilgrim; the plot jumps back and forth between Billy’s life experiences and his experiences on a fictional planet named Tralfamadore, to which he is taken several times.

Other writers took a more traditional approach in their look at postwar society. While fashioning a spare, hard-boiled style, American writer John O'Hara took up the themes and obsessions that Fitzgerald wrote about in the 1920s: money, success, class, competition, youth, and beauty. In From the Terrace (1958) he undertook a survey of the entire American scene. Many novels by American author John Cheever, including The Wapshot Chronicle (1957) and Bullet Park (1969), are set in American suburbia, which Cheever presents as prosperous but spiritually destitute. American writer Louis Auchincloss wrote about the American moneyed classes in books such as The Rector of Justin (1964), which is about the headmaster of a boarding school, and The Embezzler (1966), which depicts financial maneuverings.

With his Rabbit series—Rabbit Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990)—American author John Updike explored a less glittering side of American life, tracing the life of a former high school basketball player through four decades of personal and social change. Several Canadian novels of the 1990s looked at social change by re-examining historical events. The Afterlife of George Cartwright (1992) by John Steffler looks at early contact between European settlers and Native Americans. Fugitive Pieces (1996) by Anne Michaels traces the impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations. In Québec the historical novel enjoyed success in the French language in Au nom du père et du fils (In the Name of the Father and the Son, 1984) by Francine Ouellette and Les filles de Caleb (1985; Emilie, 1992) by Arletter Cousture.

Two other major Canadian novelists of the late 20th century were Robertson Davies and Margaret Atwood. Davies’s writings encompass myth, magic, psychology, the theater, and circus life. His novels are rich in descriptive passages, but Davies was mostly a philosophical novelist, with characters engaged in metaphysical debate about worldly temptations and the struggle between God and the Devil. His best-known work is the trilogy Fifth Business (1970), The Manticore (1972), and World of Wonders (1976).

Atwood typically writes about women, the themes of lost opportunities and missed connections, and the way the past haunts the present. Atwood’s writing is noted for its alarming perspectives on the familiar. Her heroines are both victims and victimizers, and they see themselves as objects in a consumer society. This notion is depicted literally in The Edible Woman (1969), about a woman who finds herself unable to eat after she starts to feel that her society is consuming her by destroying her individuality. Atwood’s other novels include The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and The Robber Bride (1993).

Many other North American novelists paid special attention to the situation of women in society. The Women’s Room (1977) by American writer Marilyn French is about a married woman who becomes increasingly independent. French focuses on the struggles and dilemmas of modern women as they try to balance society’s expectations of women with their own personal goals. Other major feminist works include Play It as It Lays (1970) by American writer Joan Didion, about a California woman who has a mental breakdown; Fear of Flying (1973) by American author Erica Jong, about a woman asserting her personal independence; and The Good Mother (1986) by American author Sue Miller, about a woman who loses custody of her daughter after a divorce.

The experimental impulse remained active through the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century. Canadian writer W. P. Kinsella merged reality with fantasy in books such as Shoeless Joe (1982), about the appearance in an Iowa cornfield of famed baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson. In The English Patient (1992) Canadian author Michael Ondaatje pulled together several plot lines to create a complex story that jumps back and forth in time. American author William Gaddis wrote JR (1975) in fragmented dialogue. His works include The Recognitions (1955), Carpenter’s Gothic (1985), and A Frolic of His Own (1994).

Perhaps the most important development in the North American novel in the mid- and late 20th century was the dramatic increase in the number of works written by authors from minority groups. These writers form part of the overall current of the development of the novel, but an important element of many of their works is the attention they give to the situation of ethnic groups in North America.

Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright is a chilling account of an African American man’s hatred of the weakness and hypocrisy of middle-class whites. It is an indictment of the social structure, but also a frank coming-to-terms with the reality of violence. The narrative technique of Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison—which uses wild and grotesque portraiture, as well as surrealistic scene painting—makes its exploration of New York City’s predominantly African American neighborhood of Harlem into a literary experiment and a study of society. Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), by James Baldwin, is an evocative portrait of a boy growing up under the terrors of hell-fire preaching. Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel Prize in 1993, explored the African American experience in novels such as Song of Solomon (1977) and Jazz (1992).

Jewish writers Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and Saul Bellow found inspiration in America’s urban scene. Malamud experiments with myth in The Natural (1952), an allegorical tale about a baseball hero, and with the Jewish situation outside North America in The Fixer (1966), about a Russian Jewish man sentenced unjustly to prison. Roth spoke to the concerns of middle-class Jewish intellectuals in Portnoy's Complaint (1969) and in a series of novels focusing on the character Nathan Zuckerman: The Ghost Writer (1979), Zuckerman Unbound (1981), The Anatomy Lesson (1983), and The Counterlife (1986). More broadly, Roth’s subject is the experience of Americans of varied ethnic backgrounds and their struggle to define identity and to find happiness. Bellow’s major works include Herzog (1964), Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970), Humboldt's Gift (1975), and More Die of Heartbreak (1987). His varied characters range from baffled victims of the business world to intellectuals trying to puzzle out the universe from the beehive of a chaotic city.

Obasan (1981) and its sequel Itsuka (1990) by Canadian author Joy Kogawa examine the history of Japanese Canadians and the persistent difficulties arising from their forced internment by the government during World War II. Macho! (1973) by American writer Victor Villaseñor is about a young Mexican man who wants to enter the United States. In The House on Mango Street (1984) American novelist Sandra Cisneros looks at the experience of a young Hispanic girl as she grows up. American writer N. Scott Momaday incorporates Native American storytelling techniques in House Made of Dawn (1968), about a World War II veteran. Canadian author Bharati Mukherjee, in Wife (1975) and Jasmine (1990), draws on her Bengali heritage to explore the problems of adaptation for an Indian woman in North America.

Latin America

In the early 20th century a major movement in Latin American novels was the regionalist novel, which focused on nature and local characters—gauchos, landowners, and politicians—or national historical events such as the Mexican Revolution. Major representative novelists included Mariano Azuela of Mexico (Los de abajo, 1916; The Underdogs, 1929), Horacio Quiroga of Uruguay (Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte, 1917; translated under the same title, 1997); José Eustasio Rivera of Colombia (La vorágine, 1924; The Vortex, 1935); and Ricardo Güiraldes of Argentina (Don Segundo Sombra, 1926; Don Segundo Sombra, Shadows on the Pampas, 1935).

A second major development was Indigenismo, a literary movement dealing with Native American cultures and their interaction with European society. Prominent novelists included Jorge Icaza of Ecuador (Huasipungo, 1934; translated 1962), Miguel Ángel Asturias of Guatemala (Hombres de maíz, 1949; Men of Maize, 1975), and José Maria Arguedas of Peru (Los ríos profundos, 1958; Deep Rivers, 1978). These writers and others immersed themselves in Native American cultures to explore their language, traditions, and myths.

In the mid- and late 20th century Latin American novelists moved to the forefront of literary experimentation. Infusing their books with a mixture of legend, local history, political conflict, gossip, and keen social observation, they created a new genre known as magic realism, which mixed fantasy and reality. Pedro Páramo (1955; translated 1959) by Mexican writer Juan Rulfo was one of the first magic realist novels. A novel about Mexico before that country’s revolution in the early 20th century, it focuses on a small town, Camala, and the brutality of Camala’s wealthy, landholding classes. The novel is cast in the form of a ghost story, and its characters are the dead residents of Camala.

Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982, is one of the best-known writers of magic realism. García Márquez’s writings focus on injustice and oppression. His novel Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970) is about the rise and fall of a town called Macondo. The novel shows the stylistic influence of American novelist William Faulkner, and like Faulkner, García Márquez traces the origins of power and corruption through a family history. The work mixes fantastic images with the reality of a country whose economy and political system is dominated by a foreign fruit company.

Mexican writer Laura Esquivel achieved great success with Como agua para chocolate (1990; Like Water for Chocolate, 1993). The novel’s main character, Tita, suffers because she was not allowed to marry her true love. Tita works as a cook, and her emotions are reflected in how her cooking affects people. For example, after she cries into the batter of a wedding cake, the guests who eat it become sick.

Some Latin American authors avoided magic realism and used different experimental techniques. Argentine writer Manuel Puig uses stream of consciousness to depict the thought processes of intensely emotional people. In La traición de Rita Hayworth (1968; Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, 1971) he examines the manners and values of the middle class. The novel is set in the 1930s and 1940s and is told through the eyes of a boy entranced by the United States and its movies and consumer culture, which are represented through actress and dancer Rita Hayworth.

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes mixes fact and fiction in El gringo viejo (1985; The Old Gringo, 1985), which is an account of the later years of American journalist and short-story writer Ambrose Bierce. The novel involves Bierce in the campaign of Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution. Fuentes blends politics, reflection, and violent action to create a vision of his country in crisis.

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