Do We Need New Novels?

On certain days I would answer yes to this question, automatically and without hesitation. Losing myself in a good novel has always been one of my chief pleasures in life. But what I am beginning to question is whether the contemporary novel has a reason to exist. I've plowed through too many mediocre novels recently (and no, I'm not including Lorrie Moore's latest in that category--I haven't finished it so can't evaluate it), but this is not why I'm asking this question. It just struck me all of a sudden--are novels, contemporary novels, really speaking to the experience of the average Joe and Jane? Aren't Joe and Jane turning to various television shows, or to the movies, or to nonfiction or to YouTube, to have stories told to them?

I recently enjoyed Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, it's true. But with Kundera, who is really a philosopher-novelist, I'm there mostly for the philosophy and the humor, not because I'm in love with the characters or the milieu he's creating. (This is true with Calvino as well--though I could add that with Calvino one is also treated to a breathtaking richness and precision of language). Now, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Balzac, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dostoevsky--I'm there for the story, the characters and the milieu, and a little bit for the philosophy as well. I really lose myself when reading their works. But they're from a different time and place. Do we have anyone writing novels that matter as much as their novels mattered?

And if I, as someone who loves reading novels, find it difficult to understand the relevance of most contemporary fiction, what is it like for the Joes and Janes who are trying to squeeze in a good read on the subway or on their lunch break--or during baby's nap time? A friend of mine reads mystery novels almost exclusively these days, when he's not reading nonfiction. Most people are like him, I think. If they read a novel, it's historical fiction, romantic fiction, science fiction, fantasy, or mystery novels, which answer a specific need, the need for a particular kind of escape. So-called literary novels tend to irritate this sort of reader. Those novels do not help us flee reality, they attempt to highlight it in some way--however remotely or obliquely.

So why is that irritating? I think it irritates the average person today because most of us feel over-stuffed already with "reality," whatever that word means. Hyperreality (through kitsch and the media) is served to us in hefty portions, every day, no matter who we are and where we live. Reading many contemporary novels, written in their sardonic, or sententious, or shrilly clever ways, I can feel the average reader recoiling from the whole experience. It's not that the novels today are badly written; but it doesn't matter, the most cleverly written novels are speaking less and less to the general public, I think--or even, to the well-read public. Most of our recent novels are like another layer of chatter in an already resounding echo chamber.

Perhaps the contemporary novel will have to stand on its head. Since Joe and Jane are getting their stories from television and the movies, perhaps the novel will have to stop telling stories altogether.