{"id":1774,"date":"2019-08-25T13:20:52","date_gmt":"2019-08-25T13:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/?p=1774"},"modified":"2019-08-25T14:12:52","modified_gmt":"2019-08-25T14:12:52","slug":"is-there-any-hope-for-the-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/?p=1774","title":{"rendered":"Is there any hope for the novel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I ask because I’ve spent time this summer with crawdads and Evvie and stupid self-involved conversations with idiotic young women, and I wonder if the whole art form is over, and even if that’s maybe a good thing whatever my personal preferences.<\/p>\n

Which are to passionately clutch my book to my heart and spew invective at the uncaring universe.<\/p>\n

Only, if the novel can survive this current self-referential vapidity, what then? Where to, what next, and more to the point, how? And what is it, exactly, that’s savorless here: the form, or the stagnant, artificially sweetened thinking poured into it?\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I know, I know: I’ve been down this road before, but I think I’m a proven, trustworthy pathfinder for this particular journey. (Those who’ve encountered my own fiction might disagree; I’ll take that argument.) But there are plenty of fellow travelers: this blog was inspired in part by a comment by Ross Douthat on the passing of Toni Morrison, quoted by Brigid Delaney in The Guardian<\/a>:\u00a0 \u201cSomething has changed in the cultural status of the novel.\u201d What a genteel little understatement! Delaney wonders about the impact of social media; I suspect that’s symptomatic of a wider, even more critical disturbance.<\/p>\n

This is only a quick post on an off week, which is to say I haven’t thought all this through yet, but next weekend’s a holiday and I hope to post something better Labor Day. Until then, it’s a matter of letting the questions themselves point the way: is the novel still an important form, one that can move or enlighten societies, even nations? If not, why not? If yes, what the hell happened?<\/p>\n

Suggestions welcome.<\/p>\n

MM<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo credit:\u00a0Ellen Forsyth, Fiction, genre sign Burton Barr Central Library, Phoenix Public Library (CC BY-SA 2.0)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I ask because I’ve spent time this summer with crawdads and Evvie and stupid self-involved conversations with idiotic young women, and I wonder if the whole art form is over, and even if that’s maybe a good thing whatever my personal preferences. Which are to passionately clutch my book to my heart and spew invective […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1774"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1781,"href":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1774\/revisions\/1781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asmikemiller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}