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New York Times
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Has the Death of the Novel Been Greatly Exaggerated?
To the Editor: Re 'The Decline of Great Novels,' by David Brooks (column, July 13): I'm a novelist in my 20s, squarely in the cohort of writers that Mr. Brooks claims are conformists afraid to truly express their thoughts on the page. This is an interesting idea. Can one make art if one is scared to tell the truth? I'd argue not, obviously. I would not be interested in reading or writing a book that conforms in any way. I strongly believe that one should make art only if one is not afraid to be bold. Unlike Mr. Brooks, I think there are plenty of gifted young writers who are working on bold, uncomfortable and groundbreaking novels. In fact, some of them were in my M.F.A. program, which Mr. Brooks seems to think is the height of conformity. Mr. Brooks is not wrong to suggest that the reasons there are no literary superstars today à la Saul Bellow and Philip Roth are shorter attention spans and more time on screens. But to suggest that there are no literary superstars because there aren't any young writers willing to be innovative on the page because of their perceived politics could not be further from the truth. Sophie KempBrooklyn To the Editor: David Brooks argues that novels no longer have the same cultural importance they once had. I think this is true, but it illustrates a change that has taken place often in the past and is usually not recognized until much later. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, literary reputations were made with long narrative poems like Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,' Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander' and Shakespeare's 'Rape of Lucrece' and with sonnet sequences. It took more than a century for people to recognize that stage plays — popular literature written to make money — were the greatest works of the period. In the 19th century, French critics wondered when the Great Romantic Drama would be produced, oblivious to the fact that the great art form of the period was all around them: the novel. And all of the debates of the 20th century about what could claim to be the Great American Novel missed that the most significant art form of the century was film, while great artists like John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock were dismissed by many Americans as popular culture. I do not know what ultimately will be recognized as the defining artistic medium of our period, but I am sure it will have been popular and damned with faint praise by the intelligentsia. Christopher J. WheatleyPort Ludlow, writer is a professor emeritus of English at the Catholic University of America. To the Editor: David Brooks's column on the decline of literary fiction struck a nerve. I recently submitted my 200-page manuscript — an attempt at literary fiction — to 40 publishers in France and Quebec. Not long ago, editors would return your manuscript with a comment, sometimes even a page-long critique. A rejection, yes — but also a gesture of respect and engagement. Today, most publishers state that they prefer receiving manuscripts by email and that they may never respond. The process has become opaque and discouraging. I don't know whether my book is good or not, but it's hard to grow as a writer when silence is the only reply. My 30-year-old son was once an avid reader — the Harry Potter books and stories by Guy de Maupassant by age 12. He doesn't read fiction anymore, though he did admit recently that he missed it and that Maupassant's 'Bel-Ami' gave him his first sexual awakening. That's the power fiction used to have. The deeper loss isn't just readership — it's the fading relationship among writers, readers and the gatekeepers who once nurtured them. Isabelle LandryMontreal To the Editor: As a lifelong reader, I disagree with David Brooks's assessment of a dearth of great novels. In the last year I have read the novels 'James,' by Percival Everett; 'The Emperor of Gladness,' by Ocean Vuong; 'Our Missing Hearts,' by Celeste Ng; 'The Mighty Red,' by Louise Erdrich; and many others. It's not that there is a lack of great books being written; it's an inability to become involved with something that is slower than social media, the internet or any of the other readily available speedy distractions. Reading continues to be one of my greatest pleasures. To share someone else's ideas through their words has opened me up in so many ways. To share these words with others — family, friends or grandchildren — is an immense joy. Leslie ValasBerkeley, Calif. To the Editor: David Brooks makes some excellent points about the apparent decline of great novels, but he should not despair. John Irving's 16th novel, 'Queen Esther,' is set to be published on Nov. 4. Mr. Irving's previous works have sold millions of copies, four have topped The New York Times's best-seller list, and four have been published by Modern Library. Mr. Irving typically focuses on difficult topics such as feminism, sexual abuse, gay and transgender bigotry, abortion, antisemitism and more, always with compassion, imagination, insight and sometimes prescience. He always fulfills Mr. Brooks's quest for capturing 'psychological and spiritual storms.' All is not lost. Sheldon HirschWilmette, Ill. To the Editor: David Brooks attributes the novel's decline to three elements: the internet, social pressure and conformity of thought. But there is arguably one more: the rise of the critic as the dominant and all-pervasive voice, the 'superstar' in academic literary circles and beyond beginning in the 1970s. One thinks, for example, of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Paul de Man. The relevance of the author was challenged (replaced by the critic), as was the text (replaced by theory). The novel as story was assigned to the 'unenlightened.' As a consequence, higher education lost touch with the American public — which, frankly, still enjoys a good story and is also curious about the motivations of the author. William G. DurdenBaltimoreThe writer is a former president of Dickinson College.
Irish Times
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp: Building a novel around a protagonist with a ‘low quantitative IQ'
Paradise Logic Author : Sophie Kemp ISBN-13 : 978-1398533745 Publisher : Scribner UK Guideline Price : £16.99 They say love is blind. Well, I once dated a blind man, and he broke up with me after a month. Maybe it's more accurate to say instead that love is stupid. This at least seems to be the contention of Paradise Logic , the debut novel by American writer Sophie Kemp, whose 23-year old heroine, Reality Kahn, has the winsome qualities of a 'low quantitative IQ' and 'one of the most pure and open hearts in the world'. After her friend and part-time lover Emil suggests she needs a new hobby, Reality sets out on a quest to find a proper boyfriend and become the 'greatest girlfriend of all time'. So ensues a luridly imagined and slapstick narrative that follows Reality around Gowanus, New York, as she valiantly attempts to win the affections of Ariel, a 27-year-old doctoral student with the 'hazel eyes of an introspective family pet', who lives at Paradise (#221), a 'DIY venue with a jazz twist'. They start going out and Ariel quickly becomes the 'apple of [her] eyeball'. Though his true feelings for her seem vaguer, he agrees to be her boyfriend; she, meanwhile, starts taking an experimental drug called ZZZZvx Ultra (XR) to transform herself into hyper-feminine perfection. One runs into problems when writing the stupid: gags alone might not sustain a reader's interest across a novel, while true stupidity might come at the expense of developed plots and characters. Our heroine, however, is not simply a dum-dum; it would be too easy to dismiss the idiocy of her cavorting, and the book itself as a mere vessel for a batty phraseology. For one thing that language is genuinely entertaining in its outré imagery and syntactical constructions, often managing to marry the ebullience and abjection of 21st-century girldom. READ MORE But while it's fun to fall into Kemp's 'cracked-up' universe, something else lies beyond the crass first-person narration, a hyperbolic riff on the unreliability of the 'I'. By its end, Kemp isn't skewering misogyny in heterosexual romance as much as showing the lengths a girl will go to in her quest to remain 'delulu' and avoid a hard truth about love. Is it a perfect novel? No. But following an era of self-consciously clever narrators, it's a valiant attempt to try something new.
