maybe a lot of our differences are somewhat semantic. i don’t know that its fair to compare just the novel (as opposed to literature itself) to music, as equal categories..and lots of groundbreaking novels, ulysses and gravity’s rainbow for example, wouldn’t have been considered literature at all by 19th century readers, and indeed were given the same treatment by many contemporary readers.

maybe i view the novel in a way narrow enough to make its development seem conservative by definition: i dont consider the tv series the wire a “visual novel” the way david simon does, but doing so would expand one’s point of view of the novel’s development.

then again, maybe the same is true for the way i view structure (although in your critique you don’t seem to differentiate between style and structure quite as much i might): for instance, i don’t think that a collectively written novel would represent any kind of structural innovation at all. how would you be able to even tell it was collectively written from the text? that isn’t intrinsic to the novel we would be holding in our hands as readers in any way. maybe gravity’s rainbow was actually the product of a shadowy collective — pynchon’s secretive, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t make you wrong, who knows? this wouldn’t change the novel, or the Novel. if, on the other hand, you would consider a lauded collectively written novel a structural shift, i think you would be compelled to apply the same judgment to the nba-winning echo maker, which richard powers wrote using voice recognition software.

most importantly, i don’t think the level of innovation going on would necessarily be affected one iota by whether or not the great novels of an age were all written by rich men living in comfortable chateaux — although i don’t think either of us believe that an accurate description of the reality. a great novel doesn’t epitomize its author’s sex/culture/politics/sexuality/etc, it transcends them to tap into things that are universally human.

it is, perhaps, characteristic that the novel is constantly declared exhausted (just as poetry often rises to its own defense), which may have much to do with the fact that, with the quixote, it was conceived in self-parody/irony.

as a sidenote, interesting quote from david mitchell: “I think fiction is an aircraft with four engines: plot, character, theme and structure. Like all artists (if I can call myself an artist) I don’t want to do what has already been done. Every possible way to portray a character has been done. There are no new discoveries to be made. Also there’s not much you can do with a plot that hasn’t been done. You can tell the plot forwards, you can use flashback or you can tell the story backwards. Theme moves forward at the speed of the world, at the speed of change. Of course it was impossible to write an internet novel twenty years ago, but you have to wait for the world to change before new discoveries can be made in theme. This leaves us with structure. It sounds quite a boring word, it is more an engineering term than an artistic term but, perhaps because of this, there are still discoveries to be made in how to structure the narrative. I used to be very interested in attempting to make these new discoveries. How can you disassemble a traditional structure and still have a readable novel?”

all right, done clogging the comments section! but what a fascinating question…

for example, much music — pop & otherwise — of 2007 wouldn’t even be considered ‘music’ by someone 100 years back. Most of the men (all men) in your list are using techniques found in Don Quixote. the novel resembles itself, still, relentlessly. this is what i was trying to get at. other artistic forms have progressed in quantum leaps…

One response to my criticism might be that the novel is a sensitive thing, so tiny stylistic changes are actually large and significant — i believe this partially, for example I’m psyched to see Marias on your list (twice) although he is Jamesian indeed. I just dont want to see the novel turn into wine-tasting, where rich folks go to chateaus and throw adjectives, drunk on a lengthy list of similar texts with similar functions invoking similar pleasures and trespasses.

obviously, these men are self-consciously pushing formal innovation and virtuosity (to the extent that they don’t negate each other) — and so i think a parallel be drawn to the musical avant-garde of the 20th cent. (schopenhauer, stockhausen, even aphex), the same self-conscious formal radicalism among some of society’s most comfortable members. i think popular notions of formal leaps occur largely unconnected to avant-garde currents.

(i find it odd that there are no lauded collectively written novels. THAT would be a weird structural shift & it doesnt seem to hard to accomplish. is the myth of the Author a particularly strong preventative here, or might it be related to the novel’s Bildungsroman-backbone?)

long entry! thanks for the list & points, i’m being cranky w/ you and hope you dont mind!!! — I’ve been meaning to check The Erasers & Cloud Atlas….

if you’re talking about the “average novel” on a bookstore shelf (if there is such a thing) then i think if see your point. although i think even there it may be less a matter of what happened over the past century than of where we happen to be, in the cycles of literary fashion — for ex., henry james is a model for many leading novelists today, whereas he would have been rejected as an influence by many 50 years ago.

I’m talking about (relatively) popular literature rather than the tiny-readership avant-garde, although part of my argument would be that someone like a modern-day Beckett would never be able to reach the level of visibility and public acclaim in these times.

think of the lasting and profound structure changes & evolution/mutation in ‘popular’ music all across the world since 1907, not to mention fashion, architecture, slang, critical theory, film, the plastic arts, and on and on and on. when comparing other cultural objects’ to the lauded literary novel, the good ole novel seems like its moving in molasses, carefully conserved. even the way of writing about it and analyzing it often taps into my ‘identity politics is the new colonialism’ bit, such a strange marriage, the critical tools often seems to confine high-level literary discussion to some tight, patrolled areas.

jace, 3 years ago (with kid606), i think chicago was different. the city is evolving… to what, i’m not sure yet.

heck, funkstorung played to a crowd of maybe 20 people. even these well-known international electronic musicians can’t get chicago people away from the couch and television, and not only that, but the club was giving away free tickets online to the $10 show, and they still wouldn’t come out! it’s a shame, imho.