Reflections of a middle-aged novelist
PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN
1. H. Plumb's 'Where are the novels of yester- year?' was published on 10 January, and 'A reply' by Marlin Seymour-Smith on 17 January. This week a practising novelist gives his views.
I have been writing novels, and thereby keep- ing myself off the street, for the last ten years; and as I have come to understand it, the nub of the matter is this: the primary object of a novelist must be to keep his reader reading. Never mind how subtle his characterisation, how delicate his descriptions, how authentic his dialogue or how significant his message, if readers as a class abandon the thing, or persevere only because they are 'doing' it for 'A' levels or research, then the novelist has failed.
So how (I ask myself every time I start a novel) can one keep the reader's head down? By interesting him (comes the only possible answer) in the group of fictitious persons whom one is about to present. And what is the most effective way of doing this? By stating what those persons want and then immediately giving a number of sound reasons why they are most unlikely to get it. These reasons can and should be very various: physical difficulties and dangers, moral shortcomings and moral objections, emotional distractions, the com- petition of rivals—any and for preference all of these should stand between the people of a novel and whatever it is they are aiming at. But although the reader should have a general idea of the course to be run, this must not be too clearly marked out; there is nothing like a surprise (the nastier the better) to prop up drooping eyelids: so some obstacles must be hidden till the last moment; others, long viewed from afar, must change shape as we approach, and all of them must bring out elements of character or expertise in those con- cerned which, while consistent with what is already known of their personalities, have been hitherto unsuspected.
The quality of any novel will depend far less on what the protagonist and his associates desire (or think they desire) than on the nature of the struggles they go through to attain it. Thus, although the declared aim of Gwendolen Harleth (a comfortable life) is essentially trivial, Daniel Deronda is one of the most interesting and serious novels ever written; this because Gwendolen, by making an easy and cynical choice, unwittingly violates and so brings to life a latent moral instinct which she never even dreamed she possessed but which now turns out to be of quite spectacular intensity.
Or to put the point the other way about, while the ostensible aims of James Bond are positively monumental (e.g., and on at least one occasion, to save the whole human race from destruction), the Bond novels are never more than merely entertaining because the obstacles which Bond comes up against are never more than crudely mechanical. Whereas Gwendolen, who is looking only for selfish security, encounters high moral drama, Bond, who is seeking the world's salvation, must endure little more than elaborate bouts of fisticuffs. Only once does Ian Fleming make a bid to be really serious and absorbing, 'and
that-4 when Bond (at the beginning of, I think, You Only Live Twice) puts some pertinent questions to himself, not only about his physi- cal capacity to carry the affair through, but also about the ethical implications of his entire function. Although the subject is dropped almost at once, as being beyond Bond's com- petence (and Fleming's), we have had just a tiny glimpse of the stuff which makes for the greatest and most fascinating novels in our own or any language—moral conflict.
We never get this again in Fleming, and indeed we don't expect to, but there is an important point to be made about him not- withstanding: although Fleming writes about physical conflict only, and writes, therefore, on a low level, conflict at least there is, and enough of it (by and large) to keep the reader's attention. There is no depth, no seriousness and little subtlety in Fleming's confrontations; but confrontation, of a sort, he offers, and so compulsion, of a sort, results. Nor is there any good reason that I know of why we should despise novels which belong to this category; let us simply be clear as to the level at which the author is operating, and then let us be grateful for what be achieves on it.
Very well then. Whether we are reading George Eliot or Ian Fleming, Marcel Proust or John Buchan, Henry James or Bram Stoker, we look to them to promote conflict, each in his own kind. Provided they keep this conflict more or less in evidence, we shall be prepared to endure a very great deal in the way of verbal lapses or longueurs, logical in- consistencies, social fads, intellectual dottiness, or even outright preaching; but once they allow the conflict to fade, then let the writing be never so skilful, the insights never so acute, the epigrams never so crisp, they will surely lose us.
All of which may help to explain (and this is what I have been working up to all along) why I, a novelist in my early middle age, have lately found that I am being bored and let down by at least 70 per cent of the novels I read by my younger contemporaries, no matter how undeniably talented they may be.
For although their novels are short (seldom more than 250 pages), they cannot (with a few notable exceptions, such as Julian Mitchell and Melvyn Bragg) bold my attention even over that short distance. Since I am a patient and practised reader, I am entitled to assume that the fault lies in the novels and not in myself; and on examining them for such a fault I find it to be of they contain no genuine conflict of any kind. And why do they not? Because (or so I would suggest) real conflict, as opposed to factitious protest, is something which most young novelists, being the progressive children of their age, mistrust and repudiate. Indeed, they see no necessity for it. Physical conflict or adventure they despise as 'hearty' or 'violent' (when did you last read a good story of physical action by a
young novelist?); and as for moral conflict —well, for them the moral issues are already settled for good and all, beyond any possi- bility of disagreement, so that there is no ground -left- on which moral debate can take place. One side (the left-wing and progressive side) is conceived as having an absolute and inalienable monopoly of truth and justice and good will; and any opposition raised against it must therefore be dismissed out of hand as perverse and even criminal, as something to be howled down (protest) and in no circum- stance to be allowed—for is it not evil by definition?—to state its case. Not much chance, you will agree, of worthwhile confrontation there.
This still leaves it open to young novelists to write about emotional conflict, and it is here they come nearest to sustaining my in- terest; but even in this field their work is severely limited, as their strong inclination is to concentrate on the right to receive (from parents, lovers, teachers and so forth) and to ignore the obligation to give. In other words, what emerges is not an emotional - conflict but a state of masturbatory discontent, deliberately self-induced by summoning up other people's shortcomings. Even so excellent a novelist as Margaret Drabble (whose books, let me say at once, I could read through an earthquake) has a tendency to make her emotional con- frontations one-sided—featuring righteous heroines who have been refused or cheated of their legitimate demands, and with far less said about what they themselves have failed to contribute, since it does not always occur, even to the admirable Miss Drabble, that they are bound to contribute anything.
To speak, in conclusion, more widely : the truth is that novels, in order to succeed, must be about competition, effort and achievement, on whatever level; a novel must describe a physical, emotional, mental or moral dispute. But these days to dispute, to compete, to achieve, to win, are -unacceptable activities. They indicate, too plainly for everybody's com- fort, that some people , are superior, at least in some respects, to the rest. The only accept- able modern activity is 'cooperation' (welfare), and this can be no subject for a novel unless there is an enemy against which to cooperate. There are only two such available: either the enemy must be some natural or necessary con- dition of the universe, in which case the book becomes a documentary—very good of its kind, perhaps, but not a novel; or the enemy must be 'them' (the reactionaries), who, as a matter of received doctrine, are so wrong and so cor- rupt that the resulting conflict, as being between absolute white and absolute black, has neither subtlety nor moral interest and indeed is only described at all as an exercise in propaganda. True, the practical mechanics of the contest still offer the author a fair chance, but since he will almost certainly distrust action (i.e., aggression), even these will be boring and apologetic.
In short, what is destroying the quality of the novel, just as it is destroying the quality of life itself, is egalitarian dogma; for the chief fascination of novels, as of life, lies in the perception, and the celebration, of human inequalities.
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