The Novel

As I think I've written before, I don't necessarily read a great number of books, but I do read about a great number of books. I read the book reviews, principally in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

I'm not much for novels, but I do quickly see if a review of a novel convinces me the novel sounds promising. To me, most of them aren't.  But that's not where we're going.

Dwight Garner, in his NYT review of Ben Lerner's '10:40' opens with a breath-taking cantilevered narrative of having read Tin House, a literary quarterly, where he encounters "a terrific conversation--conducted on Google Chat--between Annie Nugent Baker, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, and the novelist Benjamin Baker Nugent, her brother. (Only Dick Schaap could drop more names in such a small space.)

"At one point, Ms Baker says, nearly out of the blue, 'I'm so scared of contemporary fiction that isn't Ben Lerner.' Her brother asks why, and her reply commences this way. 'I'm scared of contemporary fiction because it often seems to me like the author is trying to write something that could be easily adapted into a movie.' Fie on intense plot. She wants intense language and intellection."

Whew.

I remember a Russell Baker 'Observer' column, probably decades ago, where he expressed concern that novelists were just trying to write a book that could be turned into a movie, and they were hoping they'd be the one to write the screenplay as well and make even more money from the book.

I don't exactly remember if Mr. Baker's thoughts on novelists came in the same column he did about the emerging software of word processing (thus, decades ago) and how writers seemed to now turn out huge books, only because computer typing was easier than a typewriter, and certainly easier than longhand. His feeling was that books needed to go on a diet, but the technology was aiding word consumption to appear on many pages. (I think I just provided an example.)

But it appears that Mr. Lerner's book is being given credit for not being a potential screenplay, and really has some old-fashioned literary merit. The book's 244 pages certainly don't qualify it as a doorstopper. And, there are illustrations.

Having read the review, I'm not sure the novel is for me. One of the excerpts that Mr. Garner uses to demonstrate the book's merit goes: "At one point in '10:04' the narrator is having dinner with his agent. They consume baby octopuses "massaged gently but relentlessly with unrefined salt until their biological functions cease." The book's timeline is between Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Sandy, in New York City.

It all sounds over my IQ, my last level of education, and my last pay grade.

But it does sound like Mr. Lerner will be headed for the best seller list and won't be holding any doors open while being there.

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