The Story of the Novel, chapter 2
First of all, I switched channels about three minutes into The Story of the Novel broadcast on Channel 4 tonight. Occasionally, I tried to get into it, but it was so unengaging that I switched over again and again. I don’t think I’ll persevere next week. Look at the list of authors: second and third rate novelists included for socio-political reasons; as well as bad taste: John Updike but no Saul Bellow! And there’s not one who writes in a foreign language. So how can this be The Story of the Novel? A story, perhaps …
For an example of the assumptions built into the series, take a look at the website entry for Joyce:
“Greatest novelist of the 20th century, who took modernist experimentation to its ultimate conclusion.”
Even if this were true � and it certainly ain’t � why do they assume modernism has a conclusion? Modernism is not an historical event in culture but the part that escapes it, and which it tries in vain to airbrush into oblivion with fatuous popularity contests and clueless, dim-witted documentaries like this.
The series consultant is Professor John Carey.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- The usual pain
- The Story of the Novel
- Lewis and Eugenides on Joyce, Modernism and formal innovation in general
- Krapp on Channel 4 At last Channel 4 are contin…
- Arnold lame
