Theories of the novel's origin are as numerous as declarations of its imminent or recent demise. The word "novel" is a transliteration of the Italian "novella," meaning a structured, realistic story. Although the use of this word in Italian dates back to the Middle Ages, the English word "novel" only came into use in the 18th century. This has led many critics and readers to conclude that the thing itself only dates from then, with Richardson's Pamela (1740), usually cited, following in the footsteps of the 17th-century Spaniard Cervantes, who usually gets the nod as the world's first novelist, with Don Quixote as the world's first novel.
Taking the Long-Range View
But not in Steven Moore's world, where the novel is not only not dead, but 3000 years old and doing very well, thanks. Moore, an independent scholar based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, devotes his 698-page survey The Novel: An Alternative History to disagreeing with the literary Cassandras and rewriting the Richardson–Cervantes timeline. He believes that the novel is as old as human civilization itself and that it survives because it answers a vital need in human nature, the need for art and narrative and eternal verities. Everything we think we know about the origins of the novel is, in his words: "Wrong. The novel has been around since at least the 4th century BCE (Xenophon's Cyropaedia) and flourished in the Mediterranean area until the coming of the Christian Dark Ages." (p. 3)
"The Novel Novel"
n a belligerent and highly entertaining introduction called "The Novel Novel," Moore directs his Scots-Irish ire at the critics and writers B. J. Myers, Dale Peck, and Jonathan Franzen, referred to collectively as MPF, all of whom are guilty of holding "...a very narrow view of fiction's function," Moore says, "and a historically uninformed one at that." (p. 9) He uncovers prototypes of the novel genre as far back as the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 2700 BC) and the Egyptian Sinue (ca. 1900 BC). Some candidates are less convincing than others, but in all cases he argues eloquently, with a boisterous sense of fun not usual in works of literary criticism.
Anyone who thinks linguistic extravagance in novels began with Ulysses in 1922 hasn't done his homework....[M]ay I introduce Messrs. Petronius, Apuleius, Achilles Tatius, Subandhu, the anonymous Irish author of The Battle of Magh Rath, Alharizi, Fujiwara Teika, Gurgani, Nizami, Kakuichi, Colonna, Rabelais, Wu Chengen, Grange, Lyly, Sidney, Nashe, Suranna, the Scoffing Scholar of Lanling, Cervantes, Lopez de Ubeda, Quevedo, Tung Yueh, Swift, Gracian, Cao Xuequin, Sterne, Li Ruzhen, Melville, Lautreamont, Carroll, Meredith, Huysmans, Wilde, Rolfe, Firbank, Bely, et al.? (p. 2)
Give Joyce a Chance
Moore is, it should be noted, an acknowledged authority on the works of the postmodern American novelist William Gaddis, on whose work he has published two books. He is also an expert on the genre-bending confections of other innovative modern novelists–the works of Barth, D. F. Wallace, Pynchon, Beckett, Joyce, et al. You know: that crowd, the purveyors of "literary" fiction. Moore wields the cudgels on their behalf. The denser, busier, and more allusive the novel, the more he's inclined to like it. As for the "cultural relevance," or lack thereof, of the literary genre, he's having none of it.
Do you want to know a secret? Literature is not for everyone. People grant that about the other arts–serial music isn't for everyone, nor is Balinese shadow dancing–but when it comes to fiction, there's a democratic assumption that anyone with a basic education should be able to read and enjoy any novel. (p. 24)
So he urges us to give the literary mega-novels a try, if not for Art's sake, then for sheer escapism–yes, even for entertainment.
For me, reading [Gaddis's] J R for the first time was like taking a thrilling roller- coaster ride; reading Marguerite Young's 1,200-page Miss MacIntosh, My Darling was like slipping into a luxurious opium dream; and as the old ballad says, "There's lots of fun at Finnegans Wake." (p.9)
Well, maybe not lots. But more than you’d think.
Novels Begetting Novels
One wonders where Moore found the time to hunt down the obscure (to me) epics and unknown narratives from all over the globe that he patches together under the name of The Novel, indulging himself all the while in provocative statements and unexpected comparisons–this one, for example, traces the history of the novel in pseudo-Biblical style:
Jesus begat Cu Chulainn, begat King Arthur, begat Perceval, begat Galahad, begat Njal Thorgeirsson, begat Hamlet, begat Faust, begat Don Quixote, begat Heathcliff, begat Ishmael and Billy Budd, begat Uncle Tom, begat Sydney Carton, begat Prince Myshkin and two of the Karamazov brothers, begat Ivan Ilych, begat Twain's mysterious strangers, begat "Lord" Jim, begat Alissa Bucolin, begat Stephen Dedalus, begat Josef K., begat John the Savage, begat Joe Christmas, begat Pietro Spina, begat Miss Lonelyhearts and Tod Hackett, begat Jim Casy, begat Merseult, begat Greene's whiskey priest, begat Lowry's Consul, begat Tessie Hutchinson, begat Winston Smith, begat Holden Caulfield and Seymour Glass, begat Santiago, begat the corporal in Faulkner's Fable, begat Wyatt Gwyon and Stanley, begat Simon, begat every third character in Flannery O'Connor's Christ- haunted South, begat Sal Paradise and the naked angels of the Beats,.... (p. 115)
And so on. There's a cartload of books behind those names. And I'd bet he's read every single one.
An Artist at Heart
But Moore is no tedious pedant. He has the soul of a true artist; he finds much to revere, and enthuses unapologetically over literary works from The Odyssey to Ulysses and many less celebrated ones in between. He divides his book into five parts: the Ancient Novel (roughly 20th-century BC to the Early Christian Era); the Medieval Novel (Irish, Icelandic, Byzantine, Jewish, "Arthurian"); the Renaissance Novel (Italian, Spanish, French, and English); the Eastern novel–meaning, essentially, Middle Eastern, including India; and the Far Eastern novel, focusing on Chinese and Japanese masterpieces like Three Kingdoms ("deservedly praised as one of the 'four extraordinary books' of the Ming era, and [maybe] the greatest war novel ever written") (p. 605) and The Tale of Genji (which "explores the psychological depths of its characters to a degree that wouldn't be seen in European novels until the 19th century") (p. 544).
The Great Mesoamerican Novel
In the middle is a "bridge" chapter dealing with the Great Mesoamerican Novel. This title, with its echo of The Great American Novel, is a wry conceit in itself, since, as Moore admits, "Mesoamericans didn't distinguish between myth and fiction, theology and history, or even ... between prose and poetry." (p. 392) But he maintains that his main candidate in this section, the Mayan Popol Vuh, or "Council Book," does much of what we expect from a novel–it narrates, exalts, pities, and inspires. "Though based on oral legends and a pictorial codex," Moore avers, "the Popol Vuh is very much a literary work, and in fact celebrates the power of language." (p. 394) These are his terms for admission to novel status; these, and having passed the test of time. And, like so many works, the Popol Vuh miraculously survived–in this case, survived the predations of the Spanish conquest, generations of illiteracy, and the odd book-burning.
On the Road With St. Luke
Odd and savory trivia abound. Every novel Moore mentions opens a window onto an exotic, usually long-gone, culture; he scatters the names of these works, and sundry details about them, almost faster than the reader can absorb. He tells us, for instance, that Petronius’ Satyricon is “the first novel in which the size of a male character’s genitals is noted,” adding wryly, “a detail you hardly ever get in George Eliot’s novels.” (p.103) He furthermore asserts that the Satyricon is a road novel, like the New Testament books of Luke and Acts, also proto-road novels written, presumably, by proto-Kerouacs.
Luke's... [is] a story of life on the road, of life on the run even, and its dramatic interest is heightened by the use of trial scenes, daring escapes, and incidents like the ...shipwreck. (117)
First Novel Narrated By a Parrot, and Other Little-Known Facts
As you read on, the trickle of trivia becomes a flood of facts, the wherewithal for an all-night session of Trivial Pursuit. First novel to mention a woman's menses? Probably Leucippe and Clitophon, by Achilles Tatius (ca. 150-200 AD). (p. 88) First Indian novel narrated by a parrot (a favorite literary device of early medieval Sanskrit novelists)? Bana's Kadambari (7th century AD). (p. 431) Cervantes' first novel? No, not that one; actually, Galatea, a sentimental romance (1617), came first. (p. 318) First sci-fi novel? Probably A True Story, by the 2nd-century AD Greek satirist Lucian (note the irony of the title, introducing a brazen fabrication). (p. 86) And so on.
That Mysterious "Esplumoir"
At times it seems that Moore can't resist plunging down every obscure byway. In his chapter on the "Arthurian" novel, for example, he evokes the lovely and mysterious word “esplumoir,” observing that it can be found not only in the 13th-century Book of the Grail, by Robert de Boron, in which its meaning is obscure, but also "in John Cowper Powys's immense novel A Glastonbury Romance (1932), where a scholar goes mad trying to figure out the 'esplumoir Merlin.'” (p. 203, n. 95)
Signposts to the Present
Moore finds more signposts to the present day in unexpected places: here, for instance, in Niketas Eugenianos's 12th-century Byzantine (Greek) novel Drosilla and Charikles.Like Nabokov at the beginning of Laughter in the Dark, like all writerly authors, Eugenianos is less interested in the why than the how, less interested in the plot than in ringing variations on the themes of the ancient Greek novels and showing off his linguistic abilities. (p. 168)
How many people do you know who have read both Laughter in the Dark and Drosilla and Charikles?
A Workshop, Not a Museum
Moore, like all great critics, is the nemesis of second-hand thinking and received wisdom. Although his primary goal is to provide the first complete and unabridged history of the novel, zeroing in on "innovative, unconventional" works throughout history, his second, but equal, goal is to uphold the flame of Fiction as Art. In doing so, he has created his own work of art, a vast Rabelaisian digression across time, his own sprawling homage to the sprawling masterpieces he so enjoys. "The novel has always been a workshop, not a museum," Moore remarks (p. 6). And this remarkable book is his cabinet of marvels.
The Novel: An Alternative History
by Steven Moore
Continuum, 698 pages
$39.95
[1] A Reader's Guide to William Gaddis's "The Recognitions" (1982) and William Gaddis (1989).
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