I wonder what your idea of a good novel is. Does it embody the attributes of solid plotting, characterisation and an impermeable membrane between invention and reality — the novel, that is, being a box from which nothing can leap out, and into which nothing, except what the author has chosen to put there, can leap in? And does it conform to the conventions laid down by the great writers of the 19th century?
That’s what I assumed, during my schooldays; and the little that had filtered down to me of Don Quixote, which is claimed by many to be the ‘first’ novel, did not alert me to the fact that it was anything more than a story. As opposed to — to put it very simply indeed — a story about stories.
This assumption was blown to smithereens when I first came across The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and I started wondering whether Laurence Sterne was mad, or I was. How, I asked myself, could something so old seem so modern? It even made Ulysses look conventional. (I exaggerate for effect.)
This is the question that propels the first half of Javier Cercas’s charming and thoughtful essay on the novel. He cites Milan Kundera, who proposed dividing the history of the novel between its early, radical, innovative impulses (Quixote containing, in its way, all the possibilities of the novel form — although Cercas goes on to say that what should be called the ‘first’ novel is in fact an earlier Spanish work, Lazarillo de Tormes); its ‘absolute liberty’ — it could contain anything it liked, being itself a mestizo, bastard art form; and the 19th-century repression of these impulses. ‘It spurns or remains unaware of this substantial part of its inheritance.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in