The Novel

by James A. Michener

  After considerable thought I decided to start my professional career with a bang, for the new confidence that had come to me after my experiences in Venice and Athens had converted me from a shy fellow into a self-assured scholar with something to say. I told myself: ‘This is a propitious time to unveil my eight choices for the American novel, four commendable, four expendable.’ But how propitious it was going to be I was not aware. Two reporters of local newspapers had slipped in to hear what the newest addition to the faculty had to say, and they heard what they termed ‘an earful.’

  I began on an austere note: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I do not wish to waste your time or mine, so I will launch directly into the heart of what I have wanted to say for a long time. In the steps of my distinguished professor at Columbia, the visiting professor from Cambridge and Oxford in England, F.X.M. Devlan, who in turn borrowed this concept from his own mentor F. R. Leavis, considered the preeminent English literary critic of this century, I invite you to wander with me through the rich meadow of the American novel, picking those blooms that will last forever and others that will fade before sunset. It seems to me, and to many like me who have studied the matter, that there are four American writers who understood what narration was and wrote books of lasting merit from which we can all learn. I’m sure you’re acquainted with them. In chronological order, they are Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton and William Faulkner.’

  After the whispers subsided, I defended my choices, allocating most of my time to Crane and Wharton, as if they required defense while Melville and Faulkner did not. In the course of my remarks I revealed my criteria: honesty of purpose, simplicity of statement, artistry in portrayal and a mysterious, indefinable ‘sense of what the novel should ideally be.’ I managed to convince some of my audience, but less than half, and many of those I did win over deserted me during the second part of my lecture.

  ‘Now, opposed to these four artists, and I think we can accept that they are artists, we have four other writers who have achieved some popularity but whose work is almost laughable from an aesthetic point of view. Again in chronological order: Sinclair Lewis, Pearl Buck, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. From an artistic point of view, they are hardly worth reading.’ With that I stared down the baleful looks being leveled at me, and then proceeded to analyze and downgrade the works of the four. I considered their work facile, meretricious and deceptive in that they promised more than they delivered. My final opinion caused audible protest throughout the hall: ‘Their most deplorable weakness was that they did not approach the novel seriously. They shied away from great challenges. They were too easily satisfied, and that was caused by the popularity and prizes that came to them too easily. They are novelists whom the serious student or reader need not take seriously, for they teach him nothing.’

  When the time came for questions, it seemed that everyone wished to debate, and with what skill I could muster I had my eyes darting about the hall as I designated men and women to speak, and I had good luck in selecting one lively person after another who had something important to say and who said it well. The first set the tone: ‘Professor Streibert, how can you nominate Stephen Crane for the top category? He wrote only one significant book, and many consider it very slight.’

  I nodded, but then pointed out: ‘We do not judge ultimate talent by poundage. If we did, Sir Walter Scott would have to be judged infinitely superior to Gustave Flaubert, which few would concede.

  ‘Also, Crane must be considered in the same category as E. M. Forster in England, who wrote very little but dominated his period, especially when compared with a flatulent type like Hugh Walpole. Crane burned with an incandescent flame, Sinclair Lewis with a smoky smudge that never really caught fire.’

  I was lucky with my next questioner, for the woman, in an agitated voice, pointed out: ‘In the four you reject with scorn stand four of our people who’ve won the Nobel Prize and we’re very proud of them. What do you think that tells us about your opinions?’

  Very gently I replied: ‘I think it tells a great deal more about the Nobel committee than it does about me.’ Fortunately the audience broke into laughter, thawing the ice and allowing me to thrust and parry with my questioners while keeping the debate on a friendly level. At several points I said easily: ‘You’re right. My judgments may be either ill-considered or wrong, and I would certainly never badger you into surrendering yours.’ But drawing upon experience acquired in my long debates with Devlan, I defended my selections, and in such a way that for most of the time the audience was laughing with me. I was forceful but not pompous and at one point won considerable favor by admitting: ‘I realize that I’m throwing a lot of weight around tonight with my opinions and predictions, but I want you to remember that I’m the man who also said, “Pizza will never catch on in the United States. Too doughy.” ’

  The evening ended with applause, the audience having decided that since I had not bullied them into surrendering their love for the four Nobel Prize winners in favor of four others whose books were so unpalatable that few in the audience had ever finished one of them, I could be accepted as a bright young fellow with a mind of his own. They also concluded that I would probably be an excellent teacher. But my real rewards of the evening came from two unexpected quarters. One of the newsmen in the audience wrote an informed and witty report of the lecture and the subsequent discussion, and a wire service picked it up, along with a table entitled HE SAYS GOOD AND BAD, and included photos not only of the eight novelists but also of me. The amusing article was widely reprinted and occasioned a deep debate that put both Mecklenberg College and me in the headlines.

  Then things quieted down, but in 1982 a Philadelphia television company engineered a talk show in which three critics defending traditional values hammered at me, but with witticisms and mannerisms acquired at Columbia I fended them off. The program became a lively affair and was rebroadcast by public television stations.

  A second broadcast in the winter of 1983 was quite different, involving no facile wit or clever comment. A station in Allentown awoke to the fact that if I taught at Mecklenberg, I must operate close to where the popular novelist Lukas Yoder worked, and reporters arranged a half-hour show presenting me as a brash young man and Yoder as the sedate older writer, with both of us responding to questions from a woman professor of English from Bryn Mawr.

  A host of viewers called the station to say: ‘That was a stunning show,’ and the reason was simple. I had never before met Mr. Yoder and was awed by his sales record if not by the quality of his writing, so I did not allow myself to posture as an ill-mannered Young Turk attacking a revered figure. Halfway through the show I thought to myself: I like this old duck, he knows how to handle himself. But the clever professor wanted to ignite fires. When the professor commented: ‘Obviously, Dr. Streibert, if you apply the standards you have in dismissing our four Nobel Prize winners, you’d surely have to dismiss your neighbor Lukas Yoder, who falls in the same category,’ I smiled and said: ‘Anytime I have as my neighbor a man with his distinguished track record, I’m not going to be petty about it. Mr. Yoder is a damned fine writer.’

  ‘But not your type?’

  ‘I must confess, I favor the younger approaches, the newer challenges. But I take my hat off to anyone who can write five good novels. That’s rare.’

  ‘Make that six,’ the woman said. ‘Mr. Yoder told me before we gathered that he’s working on his next book in the series.’

  ‘A sextet!’ I cried, for the first time using that word in connection with his books. ‘I’m sure they’ll be around these parts for a long time.’

  ‘And in the other parts?’ the shrewd professor asked, hoping to goad me into making an offensive statement or Yoder into giving a defensive one. She failed, because before I could respond, Yoder said: ‘I believe a book finds its own level and its own longevity. I’d hate to prophesy what’s going to happen to mine, and I’m sure Professor Streibert wouldn’t want to be put to the test, eith
er.’ Then, with a wink, he added: ‘I find that professors are little better than writers in making predictions about topics that are current. But give them fifty years, they usually make the right judgments.’ And before either of us could speak he nailed down his thoughts: ‘But of course, at the end of fifty years, other critics will be coming along to revise all estimates. I would expect a tremendous revival of Dickens before I die. They’ll see he was truly one of the greats, Streibert.’

  ‘Well, they may,’ I conceded, and the program ended with a display of genuine amity among the three participants, especially when the Bryn Mawr professor said in closing: ‘My friends who have been listening to this discussion, you have heard a rare treat, a gentlemanly conversation between a radical young man who knows where he’s going and a distinguished older writer who knows where he’s been.’ I broke in: ‘And a shrewd professor who knows how to keep us talking without tearing at each other’s throats. It’s been a privilege for me to be here today.’ Yoder said nothing, simply allowing his puckish Dutch smile to convey his approval.

  So my maiden speech achieved two desirable ends: nationally it earned me attention, locally an acquaintanceship with Lukas Yoder, but my most surprising reward came in an unexpected letter from New York. It was from a woman whose name I had never heard, Yvonne Marmelle of Kinetic Press, and it read:

  Dear Professor Streibert,

  Like others, I have followed with keen interest the results of your lecture at Mecklenberg College and find myself supportive of your views about the nature of the novel. If you are soon to be in New York, I hope you can have lunch with me because I would enjoy exploring your ideas in some depth, and I suspect you might also profit from such an exchange. Please call me.

  I did not then know that Ms. Marmelle was Yoder’s editor, but I did know that Kinetic Press published a wide spectrum of books, from the sensational novel of the day to reliable standbys like the works of Lukas Yoder and the experimental novel of the beginning writer. But I was not aware that Kinetic also published some of the best criticism both of literature and of sociopolitical conditions. Nor could I guess what interest Ms. Marmelle might have in me or what concerns we might have in common. But I called promptly, heard a pleasant voice and agreed to come to New York on the first weekday I could break away from teaching, for she had warned: ‘On Saturday or Sunday I would not even see Thomas Mann or Marcel Proust.’

  When I reported to her office on Madison Avenue one Friday in February and saw the early stages of the remarkable wooden panel PORTRAIT OF AN EDITOR I gasped at the pitiful record of Lukas Yoder’s first four books in his Grenzler series: ‘Total sales, 4,961. You mean to tell me Kinetic held on to him with that record?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and look what happened with Number Five.’

  ‘I had no idea! That quiet gray-haired man we see on the campus now and then. A record as dramatic as that.’

  ‘That fifth book is what publishers dream of finding. Maybe one in each decade.’ Flinging wide her right arm, she said gaily: ‘Yoder paid for all this. He also paid for this,’ and she tapped herself on the chest. ‘Men like him keep us operating, and don’t you powerhouse critics forget it.’

  As I looked at her in that moment of free movement and free thought, I saw a woman in her late thirties, some years older than myself, artfully dressed in expensive clothes that proclaimed ‘editor’ and not ‘woman executive.’ She wore her black hair in a neatly trimmed bob, halfway down on her brow in front, barely touching her dress collar in back, and everything about her bespoke a crisp, eager approach to her job, at which she was apparently quite good.

  ‘Give me two more of him,’ she said affectionately as she indicated her board, ‘and I’d be considered a genius. As it is, I’m just a woman who has a keen sense of what’s happening, what ought to happen, what will happen. My interest in you, Professor Streibert, resides in the second category.’

  Accepting a chair that faced her cluttered desk and not the broad picture window, which confirmed her success within the company, I asked: ‘What is the second category, and how do I fit in?’

  ‘You weren’t listening,’ she chided with a warm smile. ‘What ought to happen. You seem like the man who ought to write a book we sorely need. Starting with your notorious lecture on who’s hot, who’s not, you ought to codify and substantiate your thinking on where the American novel is going, and where you think it ought to go.’

  ‘Who would read it?’

  ‘Not many. But among editors and professors and writers there’s an intense interest—a constant speculation about such matters. Reading is becoming more popular than ever, since television is sliding ever deeper into ruts that are beneath contempt. Writers like Saul Bellow, John Cheever, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates have no trouble finding readers, and an honest workman like Lukas Yoder—look at the readers he’s collected.’

  ‘Let’s suppose such an evaluation is necessary. Am I the one to write it?’

  ‘I’m the authority as to whether it’s needed or not, and I say yes. Also, I’m the one who takes a chance every time I recommend a writer for a specific book, and from what I’ve read of you and your ideas, I’m willing to take that risk, to make that commitment right now—or almost right now. I want you to think it over and let me know how secure you feel with the challenge.’

  ‘Do you propose books like this all the time? To all your writers?’ The idea appalled me, and my near disgust must have been so palpable that Ms. Marmelle smiled: ‘With novelists, never. That would be risky and probably self-defeating, that is, of course, unless your writer was someone who wrote whatever schlock was put into his head. I don’t have such authors, but if I did I’d not hesitate to tell them what to write. But real novelists, never. I wouldn’t even dare ask such writers a rhetorical question like “Have you ever thought of doing a novel on the radical changes in modern courtship?” And do you know why I avoid it? Because the novel that resulted would be crap.’

  I winced at her strong language: ‘Professor Devlan said almost the same: “A novel about something is sure to be a bad novel.” ’

  ‘But in nonfiction, Dr. Streibert, thoughtful editors who keep their fingers on the public pulse propose somewhat more than half the successful books, and sometimes three fourths of the big best-sellers. I won’t bore you with my track record, but it isn’t trivial. And I have the gut feeling that a book of the kind I have in mind, and which I hope you’ll get in your mind, could be a substantial success.’

  ‘But you just agreed with me that it might not find many readers.’

  ‘Normally it wouldn’t. Satisfying numbers but not large. Your job and mine is to make it so compelling that it will command ten times the readership you would imagine—five times what I would hope for.’ Before I could reply, she said brightly: ‘I’m starved. Let’s have lunch,’ and in this abrupt manner I had my first literary lunch at the Four Seasons. Senior officers from other publishing houses stopped by our table to pay their respects, and in hopes of meeting whatever new prospect Yvonne had uncovered, but she volunteered no introduction and no one deciphered who I was. Our talk focused on the specifications of the kind of book she wanted: ‘I visualize it as no more than about three hundred pages, no longer. It must be tightly written, punch, punch, punch. A minimum of clever anecdotes, but a wealth of significant frinstances.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You state a major point, then cite at least two powerful short examples. We call them for instances, elided to become one word.’ Before I could respond to any of her suggestions, she put down her fork and asked bluntly: ‘Dr. Streibert, have you the capacity, do you think, of becoming a superior literary critic? A man who truly has something to say?’

  ‘My professors have thought so.’

  ‘But in analyzing whether you’re really intelligent, they wouldn’t have a clue. What do you think?’

  Feeling challenged, I realized that this was a far more penetrating interrogation than I had experienced in my orals f
or the Ph.D. and to my own surprise I wanted to fight back, to prove to this bright woman that in any respect she chose I was her equal: ‘In Athens this summer I argued with Professor Devlan for eleven unbroken days, at the very highest level he could reach, and he’s one of the best. I stayed with him every inch of the way. I believe I could carry on where Auerbach stopped in his Mimesis.’

  At my mention of this name, she smiled: ‘If you say so, I’m inclined to accept your judgment,’ and she began to lay out the eight or nine significant themes my essay would have to deal with if it was to have any merit, watching approvingly as my eyes lit up when each was mentioned in logical order. ‘You can see the outline of each chapter right now, can’t you?’ she asked and I replied: ‘So, obviously, can you. Why don’t you write the book?’ and she replied: ‘I’m fantastic on erecting the superstructure. I fail when it comes to citing the frinstances.’

  As we were about to leave the dining area, she warned: ‘Nothing has been agreed on today. I’m not omnipotent, you know. I have to subject my ideas to an editorial committee. But I feel I can persuade them to allow me to approach you with a serious proposal. That would empower me to come back at you to satisfy myself that you can really do what you think you can. If I’m reassured, you could have a contract by the end of October. I’ll want to talk with you again.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘For your book to have relevance, and for it to gain the initial attention it will need, you must have not only the old-time American novelists that you like and dislike, but also the contemporary ones. Along about Chapter Seven you must say something like: “The reader will have perceived that I am talking about …”—I think this had all better be in the first person, but not aggressively so—“that I am talking about matters of great moment, using criteria that apply to novels in all languages and writers of all decades, especially the current decade in America and our writers.” Then you say that you are going to follow the criteria postulated in Chapter One, and you cite four contemporary writers you approve of because they conform to those criteria and oppose them with four you reject because they don’t even tackle the criteria. And in each category you must use names that are immediately recognizable, and the more frenzy you create, the more your readers will like it, because that’s what attracts attention, and attention is what sells books.’