Stories

I know there's a contradiction in what I wrote yesterday about novels. I implied that we all need stories, on some primal level; and then I said that perhaps novels will have to stop telling stories. What I was trying to say is that perhaps television and the movies--and even YouTube or NPR--are telling us the only stories we need to hear, so it's time for novels to try to do something else.

I never would have said that a few years ago. I don't know if I would have even said that a few days ago. Because I always believed that a good novel teaches us something about the human condition that no television series or film could possibly convey. But why is it, then, that no contemporary novel seems to reach me any more (someone who has adored novels all her life)? Because--I know this sounds simplistic, but it's true--I just don't lose myself in them. I'm not sucked under by the force of the story being told. With all of my favorites--War and Peace, East of Eden, Pere Goriot, Invisible Man, to name a few--that's what happens--I'm pulled under, held under, and come up for air reluctantly; then wander around for days trying to get my land legs back. Perhaps contemporary fiction (The English Patient, Immortality, Mysteries of Pittsburgh--all novels I enjoyed) aims for that result, but in my view, it never achieves it. But why would I give up on its ever achieving such a goal?

Because the hyperreality we live in makes any attempt to mirror that reality, and to tell the story of our lives, a sort of joke--something akin to adding another mirror to a hall of mirrors. What can we do about it? I'm not even sure I really think that novels should stop telling stories, but somehow the idea seems intriguing to me.