Customer Reviews

13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

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Acclaimed novelist Jane Smiley has written a loving, intelligent analysis of the form, function, and reading experience of the novel that will appeal to teachers, readers, and writers. She examines aspects of the novel from different perspectives and illustrates her points with examples, from Alcott's Little Women to Munro's Lives of Girls and Women, from Proust's In Search of Lost Time to Mitford's The Pursuit of Love, from Richardson's Pamela to Nabokov's Lolita, from Austen's Persuasion to McEwan's Atonement, from Thackeray's Vanity Fair to Egan's Look at Me-- a hundred novels in all.

Smiley begins her 568 page elegy begin with the basics: What is a Novel? Who is a Novelist? These seemingly simple questions receive intricate answers, as Smiley delves into theories put forth by writers such as Virginia Woolf and Henry James, and into the works of fiction themselves. Academics and students of literature will find themselves engrossed in the author's meaty discussions of the history of the novel, its psychology, its use of morality, its role as a historical document, and the art of it. Perhaps the most accessible chapters, however, are also the most personal. Smiley addresses the reader as though a writing peer in her two chapters, "A Novel of Your Own I" and "A Novel of Your Own II," 45 pages of writing advice and conversation. Even more intimate is her revealing look into the writing of her novel Good Faith. In this chapter, she gives the reader a rare glimpse into the creative process.

Avid readers will be especially delighted by Smiley's "mini-essay(s)" of the hundred novels she selected as a reading exercise, which she uses as her conclusion. She states that these novels are meant to be representative, not comprehensive, since it is impossible to construct a top 100 list without omitting fine literary works. Readers who, say, were put off by the academic nature of A.S. Byatt's Possession, or by the unlikable characters of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, or by the comic distance created by Zadie Smith in White Teeth will find new reasons to appreciate those works, and all the others included here.

13 Ways of Looking at the Novel is not an easy read since Smiley approaches her topic not only as a writer but as an intellectual. Her analysis is both sensible and brilliant--a delight for serious readers and students. -- Debbie Lee Wesselmann

Today I had the privilege of hearing an author I greatly admire, Jane Smiley, read excerpts from her book as well as wonderful asides about her experiences teaching, being a scholar, and writing. She is such a hoot, and as entertaining to hear live as to read. She reminded us of how the novel has evolved through the ages and how well written novels can encourage us to suspend our disbelief to find out what happens next, even if we think what happens next is a total crock. In her Literature classes, The Metamorphoses is often on the syllabus. There is always one student who cannot accept the premise that the protagonist has become an insect, and therefore cannot enjoy or appreciate the book. This does not discourage our Jane. No. She feels better as a writer remembering that, "Nobody is that good. Not even Kafka." This was her step father's saying. And it is true, of course.

She reminded us that early novels were often morality tales. As in the Norse sagas, which Smiley winningly argues have all the themes to later appear in actual novels, there is usually a man who does not fit into his society. This antagonizes the society and forces a confrontation which changes the world as that society knew it. Cool. Early novels are not about normal people with no anguish or passion or problems. The inner lives of humans didn't figure into the themes of novels until more recent times. Novels have done exactly what the Church and the Establishment once feared. They have caused women and men to think differently and outside the box of their little worlds or economic stratas. They encouraged people to marry for love. They encouraged people to think well of difference in others, or at the very least , give people credit for character and not caste. And novels have given many of us who treasure them comfort and consolation and perspective in life's difficult times, whether a personal crises or a global one of the proportions of September 11, 2001.

Smiley amused us all when she told us that well into Proust's Remembrance of Things Past told so matter of factly one can miss the connection he shares with De Sade, she put the book aside for a week and read a Sue Grafton thriller. This was enjoyable escapism and reminded her how good it would be to return to the joys of reading Proust. Proust was an early inspiration for Smiley to speak in the deceptively natural, non threatening conversational voice she uses in her novels.

Jane is not a snob. She told us that as a girl she loved the Bobbsy Twins and Nancy Drew. This was in answer to a teacher's question about how to encourage reading of "great" literature. Smiley told us. "Have books in your home. Read to your children or not, but have books in your home. And try a little reverse psychology. Forbid them to read in bed. And then when you know they are under the covers with a flash light, run to the room every half hour and insist that they stop that nonsense and go to sleep." Perhaps that's how her parents encouraged her to read. She also made it clear that with young people we just need to be glad they read. If your girls are reading Sweet Valley High, they are reading for crying out loud! If you are lucky they will soon be reading To Kill A Mocking Bird or Member of the Wedding. And then they will be unstoppable. Try not to judge the material. Readers usually seek a higher level when left to their own devices. It's like collecting. Your tastes become more refined with time and practice.

Smiley's book goes into all this in much more detail and with much clearer scope. She offers 100 great novels from several cultures and talks about them in new and refreshing ways. She gives the reader a reason to want to read or even read a novel again. She provides a bibliography that would be a good guide to any home book shelf, and she told us that she can't wait to select another 100 novels and to consider the process all over again.

Even if you have been reading forever, even if you think you know it all already, even if you are a self proclaimed brainiac, get over yourself. This book can open up new areas to consider as you read. Start with Tales of the Genji, a novel concerned with the ephemeral nature of being. It's so old it's modern, and everything that was to come 1000 years later is in it, and still worth pondering. Enjoy.

One of the ways to consider this unusual book by Pulitzer-prize winning author Smiley is as an instruction book. I purchased this because it came up as a featured selection of the Writer's Digest Book Club, and its as good a book regarding the process of writing a novel as any I've read, and better than most. Smiley points out that, unlike many other artistic endeavors, the novel is one that doesn't require much equipment (paper and a pen/pencil). What it takes, more than anything is motivatioon and perseverance, as it is simply the accrual of words into sentences into paragraphs into pages. She underscores that getting your novel published is a different matter entirely, but if you want to write one, you likely have the ability.

The writing of this book itself was not necessarily as a textbook for writing programs, although Smiley has taught creative writing, but as therapy for Jane Smiley's own writing. From the text, it seems that Ms. Smiley was having problems with a recent novel of her own, and decided to undergo a course of reading (originally 275 novels, shortened to 101 after she began) that helped break the mental block she had about her novel and also gave insight into the "question of the novel" itself. To get there, though, Smiley covers a number of topics including a history of the novel as an art form: one of her thirteen ways of looking at the novel is through the lens of history, tracing the growth of the novel from Don Quixote. Another interesting portion covers the philosophy of novels, making the case that novel-reading is something of a subversive activity, as it incubates an ability to see multiple points of view (each novel, for example, requires that you try to understand at least one protagonist whose point of view is unique and unlike your own), thus leading to a more liberal view of the world (as opposed to a conservative, one-view-fits-all view of the world).

My favorite part of this book, and what likely will live on with me long after it has become just another book on my writing shelf, is how Smiley sees the novel as a game for both the reader and the writer. The reader expects the writer to follow the rules of the novel game: once a character and a setting are created, that the characters will proceed along the pages according to cause-and-effect relations (i.e., the plot) until a resolution is obtained. This is most apparent in the mystery genre, where the reader even tries to determine from clues presented by the author early on what the likely cause-and-effect resolution will be. But the game metaphor is even stronger for the writer, who gets to "roll the dice" for the characters and make those determinations of cause-and-effect according to what they think the most likely occurance would be. Some writers even complicate this by playing additional games as they write, trying to incorporate themes (in a novel about birth, the writer tries to make sure all the images reflect eggs, for example) or allusions to other works, places or events. As a game-player, I am surprised I had never thought of writing as just another game, but now that I've read Smiley on the matter, I feel like I'm never going to see it any other way, as it has changed my entire view of the process.

Half of the book is given over to a reading diary of those 101 novels that Smiley read on her way to creating the other half of the book. As someone who's been writing such immediate impressions on books as he's just read them, I admire her descriptions and commentary, even while feeling somewhat abashed at how few of these books I've read, although Smiley makes pains to state that her list is not a "Best Novels" list. If anything, it goes to show you that there is an incredible wealth of great literature to be had, and I've already marked a number of books from her list that I want to now read.

I'd highly recommend this book for both aspiring writers as well as anyone who likes to think about what they read.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley is in a unique position to offer her thoughts on the novel. She has written all sorts of novels from many different genres, and her experiences give her a certain authority when considering the novel in all its aspects. In 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE NOVEL, she offers us her thoughts on this expansive topic by reading 100 novels and using them as prisms that emphasize different aspects of the novel, from social force to moral guide to chronicle of the ages.

For all its variety, a novel is a simple thing, requiring only five elements: length, being written (as opposed to oral accounts or performed works), prose (rather than poetry), narrative form, and the inclusion of a protagonist. Yet some novels change the world --- think of the impact Charles Dickens had on child labor laws or how Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons Dangereuses) and the Marquis de Sade (Justine) exposed the arrogance and cruelty of the upper class. 13 WAYS examines how novels gained such power and why, in the face of so many competing demands for our attention, they continue to be read and loved. The point of this book is not to convince you to read more books --- if you're interested in this book at all, you are probably a passionate reader already --- but it's hard to resist Smiley's recommendations.

This is also not a best-of list. Smiley is refreshingly uninterested in telling readers what to buy. Her books are chosen by their ability to illuminate the concepts of a novel as a whole, and she admits that any list of 100 novels might serve that purpose. It's a subjective argument, as anything so personal as reading choices must be, and her candor in revealing her likes and dislikes is one of the charms of 13 WAYS. She likes Boccaccio and Dickens (in fact, one of her own nonfiction books was about Charles Dickens). She dislikes Henry James and Leo Tolstoy, and is not a big fan of Ulysses, but always treats their work with respect. It's an eccentric list in some ways, including obscure works like the Icelandic saga Egilssaga yet snubbing Ernest Hemingway. It ranges from THE TALE OF GENJI, written in Japan in the eleventh century, to novels being published today.

In addition to the chapters on the novel overall and the summaries of the 100 books she chose to read, Jane Smiley offers a chapter on her own experiences publishing a recent novel, GOOD FAITH, and two chapters of useful advice to those readers who are writing their own novel. It's rare to read a book that addresses both readers and writers, although writers usually start out as voracious readers. Acknowledging that appetite and addressing both readers and writers make this a unique book, interesting to all readers, whatever their ambitions.

--- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn (...)

This book is excellent and will repay close reading, but I am of two minds. On one hand, Smiley has examined the development and significance of the novel as only a practicing novelist of depth and talent could. On the strength of her treatment I've resolved to try her novels. Any description I might give of her discussion would not do it justice.

On the other hand, she clearly has a political axe to grind and this comes out most one-sidedly in her descriptions of novels. First, her history of the novel begins with Murasaki Shikibu's "Tale of Genji," leaps to Bocaccio's "Decameron" as a precursor to the novel in its western form, and then holds a steady course through Cervantes, Defoe, Austen, Dickens, and James into the twentieth century. Perhaps because she has identified as a major concern of the novel the question of "what a woman is for" (her words), Smiley ignores Twain, Hemingway, and modern novelists whose work is not animated by that question. She does not claim completeness for her 100 novels and writes more than once that she is not trying to compile a `Best 100' list, but she does claim a certain disinterestedness that is belied by her choices. She (usually) likes European novelists (nothing wrong with that) and woman novelists (ditto) who pursue her favorite question. Novelists who have nothing to say on the question either leave her cold or don't make the list at all. Hence, she claims not to be able to remember her experience of "Moby Dick" and Joyce's "Ulysses" strikes her as a lot of art devoted to a not very interesting premise. About her contemporaries Pynchon, Delillo, and Wolfe she has nothing to say at all.

Second, the idea that failure to read novels caused the badness of our politicians is nonsense. Lincoln wasn't a great reader of novels, nor was Washington. I don't deny that people well-read in good novels might as a result develop empathy but Smiley seems not to believe there are other routes to the same destination. Furthermore, plenty of very good leaders, not to mention good people in general, claim that daily contact with the Bible helps them to love their neighbors as themselves. GWB's treatment of Iraq doesn't strike Smiley as loving enough (one might say "Christian enough"): fine, but this is not grounds for blaming the Bible and Bush's poor education. Where should we believe Mother Theresa or Dietrich Boenhoeffer learned their love of humanity?

Third, J.S.'s history of the novel, though accurate as far as it goes, doesn't make sense given her concerns. She includes "The Tale of Genji," which had zero influence on the novel's early development in the West, but excludes medieval saints' lives, which I expect influenced the "Decameron" and are sources for the reader's experience of interior truth she believes is a defining characteristic of the novel. She will claim she had to start somewhere but why not consider the source of the novel's interiority, since she places so much emphasis on that quality? The primary source of western interiority is the idea that the soul has to answer to God in conscience. This fearful relationship between self and deity was illustrated in hundreds of saints lives. A frequent element in the stories of female saints is the refusal to do the socially expected thing--marry a man--in favor of maintaining chastity. Tales like this dramatize the sense of self against other that grew as Christianity spread. This crisis deepened during the Protestant Reformation and it should not surprise us that the novel's development began as Luther and Calvin were claiming that the soul's isolation was even more absolute than Christians had previously believed.

Finally, had she looked she would have found several long, plotted, prose works that predate "The Tale of Genji" by several centuries: the novel has perfectly fine ancient roots in the Greek romance and other long prose works of antiquity, such as Apuleius' "Metamorphosis" and Petronius' "Satyricon."

So, brilliant and idiosyncratic, just as I believe Smiley wanted it. Buy the book.

This compendium falls into three parts, more or less. The first section offers Smiley's survey of how the novel evolved. Here, she emphasizes the importance of Bocaccio's Decameron and Marguerite de Naverre's Heptameron, two collections of stories grouped around a tale-telling symposium, more or less. The first stresses the humanism and the joy of human relationships; the second cautions humans about the danger of such relationships. Here, Smiley finds the tension that characterizes the subsequent four centuries of what becomes, with the rise of literacy and the spread of affordable books, the novel as we know it.

Her 22 years spent teaching university in Iowa show in her analysis. Some readers may be lulled off to sleep by her rather academic considerations; as a literature lecturer myself for about the same amount of time that she taught, I found these introductory chapters a bit too longwinded--she continues as the pages pile up to elaborate points already made, and at times I felt like she had to stretch her material to fit, well, 13 chapters no matter what. Still, it taught me a lot that I had not learned in the classroom myself, and it's useful for any reader as an overview or summation. Despite the rather too-professorial pace, she does come up with a few memorable remarks in these first 200 pages.

For instance, that Don Quixote, shown to conveniently nod off whenever the talk turned to amours, began a tendency for the novel (for much of its evolution) to avoid explicit depictions of sex. That the English novel tends to lead up to marriage, while the French equivalent starts off with marriage--or its stagnation after the honeymoon's faded. How drama inflates its protagonist while novels deflate their main character's pretensions or aspirations. Or, in her opinion with which I disagree, why Ulysses and what she critiques as too-mannered a fictional rendering distances fatally the novel from its natural milieu where the reader--and the writer--belong.

I never have read a Smiley novel, so that puts me in either an uninformed or fresh reception for her next section. She takes the making of her novel "Good Faith," and shows how she took an anecdote told her from real life and worked it into a novel. I admit that while I have no interest in reading GF after encountering her account of its construction, the process described was told--being from the inside rather than via a critic after the fact--in an informative and insightful manner. But it's still a bit clumsy; if you have not read GF, then the coyness with which she gives some details and withholds others (so as not to spoil the plot) does prove awkward, as this novel's not exactly as familiar for most of us as many of the others she peruses in the 101 listed in the final section. I did find her reactions to reviews, her book tour experiences, and her struggles with knowing when to stop writing informative, however. This led into a chapter in which she addresses the reader as if he/she seeks advice on how to write a novel, too. This chapter felt as if imported from a previous article; it aroused for me absolutely no interest in writing one, and its place in this otherwise reader-oriented collection seemed precarious. But others will no doubt be invigorated by it.

For the final section, the second half roughly in length of the book, the 101 novels she lists and summarizes rather briskly--as she points out, often overlapping with the previous chapters that were written after she had drafted the notes on the 101 novels as she read them, offers far less enticement than I'd have expected. I thought I'd find many novels that I'd never heard of, or always had wondered if I should read but hadn't known enough about to sample. She did get me to search out Gogol's novella "Taras Bulba," one I'd never encountered. But many of her titles are already familiar, standard-issue for reading groups, English majors, or the "common reader" that Virginia Woolf could once expect to find out in the educated public. This is not meant as a put-down, but there were fewer rare and previously hidden or neglected finds in her list than I'd have liked.

Contrast this to the increasingly middlebrow types of novels that populate her list as it moves into the latter 20c. This on the one hand is unsurprising; this is the same category that Smiley herself writes for--the respectable popular "trade paperback" by the classier imprints from usually mass-market publishers. But I found really no new books in the more recent decades to seek out after reading her reviews. She too often does not show the faults of what she reads--such as Ian McEwan's "Atonement" being a refreshing and too rare inclusion of why she did not think a novel "worked"--and her generally sunny acceptance of the stack she plowed through does speak for her optimism and good-natured encouragement of her fellow writers. Again, I tend towards the more difficult novel than most of the people reading this book would, so I admit my snobbish prejudice!

Smiley does enjoy the benefits of much more leisure than most of us, riding horses in Carmel Valley, reading to her heart's delight, and taking the Course in Miracles--a paragraph early on praising this for her own recent transformation still seems baffling to me, alas. For we busier folk, her own foray through a few years of reading her way through the big bedside stack we bibliophiles all dream of having does show her commonsense and accessible approach to explicating how novels are made, why they work, and which ones worked best for her. While each of our stacks would differ from hers, she does provide in this hefty volume (a good value for the price) enough for any reader to learn and debate with her from the comfort of our own armchair or pillow.

I picked this up upon seeing it in the new books section of my local bookstore - I haven't seen it advertised or reviewed in any publications. Which is a shame, because I think a lot of readers would enjoy it if they knew about it. This book does feel a little like a college seminar on fiction - a lively, informal class with an engaging professor. It's not a chore to read. I was unexpected fascinated by the history of the novel section, and I really enjoyed the chapter on the intellectal benefits of reading fiction which ends in a thundering politicized rant. Smiley does not pretend to be objective, which is fine by me.

There are a couple of chapters aimed at writers which I did not read. The 100 book reviews (2-3 pages each) are thought-provoking. I thoroughly disagreed with several of them but I always respected Smiley's position. And, in fact, I've been using the list as a sort of recommendation guide recently. I picked up Mistry's "A Fine Balance" and Austen's "Persuasion" after reading what Smiley had to say. Two books about worlds foreign to my own, completely different, both superb.

Jane Smiley does reference amazon reader reviews in the book (as a barometer for popular reception of "Lolita") so I bet she reads this..... hi Jane!

A great tour of the novel landscape, with Smiley's typical insight and deft use of language. And a nice list of novels everyone should read with thumbnail summaries.

Though this tome is a valuable contribution to the literature on the novel as a form, I can't agree with Smiley's taste for long, florid novels, many of which could be made-for-TV movies in their emotive characterizations, or her contention that some short novels, such as The Great Gatsby, don't measure up in part because they are short and written by a person under 30. Though length and language may be a feminist corrective to the sparse works of some authors, Smiley seems to take this idea too far in preferring that a novel must be long and descriptive to be desirable. Smiley's book itself could have been about three-fourths to one half the length it is, and still offered useful insights. I wanted someone to have edited this book down substantially, rather than allowing it to overflow with the stream-of-consciousness thoughts, some of them rather overblown, of the author.

I bought Smiley's book when it first came out and now, four years later, I find I still return to the pages and reread the essays on writing whenever I'm in need of a little conversation on the writing process. Each time more pencil marks are added, particular passages are emphasized yet again. Smiley's essays are thoughtful and present views seldom discussed in other books on writing. I particularly enjoy the chapters titled Psychology and the Novel and Morality and the Novel. My copy sits on self reserved for my most frequented books on writing. Obviously, I highly recommend this book.