Death of the Novel & the Birth of the Everlasting Telephone

Tuesday, 24th November 2009

From a letter written by the American novelist F. Marion Crawford, on August 23, 1896:

The old fashioned novel is really dead, and nothing can revive it nor make anybody care for it again. What is to follow it?...A clever German who is here suggested to me last night that the literature of the future might turn out to be the daily exchange of ideas of men of genius—over the everlasting telephone of course—published every morning for the whole world....

As Marbury says, that's a pretty good description of the internet, though, of course, access to the everlasting telephone is scarcely restricted to men of genius...

But Crawford - who seems to have been an interesting chap himself - was wrong. Despite everything and despite it's oft-predicted demise, the novel, in all its many forms, still survives. And, while the literary novel may remain a minority taste, that doesn't mean it's doomed. The human need for story-telling seems likely to endure for some time yet. Indeed, blitzed as we are by the stream of information on the internet, the idea of the novel as a retreat from and alternative to this tumult is obviously appealling. But you have to make time for it. Which means switching off your "phone*" and your laptop...

*Does anyone still use telephones for, you know, talking to people?

Filed under: Books (174 more articles) , Internet (80 more articles)

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Bob Smith

November 24th, 2009 3:06pm Report this comment

And who knows, one day that urge to tell stories might cause the Spectator to publish the results of its short story competition....some day, one day in the distant future...

Fergus Pickering

November 24th, 2009 5:28pm Report this comment

I talk to my daughters over the telephone. That is when I cannot talk to them face to face. How else would I talk to them. I use emails for as much business as I can and this sort of thing to vent my spleen. Twitter? Tweet? Cor blimey, mate, leave it out. How do you text? Don't tell me because I don't want to know.

Beeafeater

November 24th, 2009 6:07pm Report this comment

Raw emotion, gang warfare, violence, exile, intimate confidences, outraged abuse, shunning, cabals, vindictiveness, petty malice, sincere piety, heartfelt prayer...
Who needs novels when you can participate in real-time living drama in the comment section of blogs. Littlegreenfootballs and its rival, Blogmocracy, are a retelling of War and Peace, with casts of thousands and names to rival the Russians'.

Michael Booth

November 25th, 2009 9:17am Report this comment

Letters are doomed though - not so much business letters, but the ones where people communicated their thoughts, ideas, refelctions and feelings. Will we see the Collected Letters of (here insert name of any contemporary writer/figure)in the future? Would we want to?

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