Customer Reviews

The Novel: Language and Narrative from Cervantes to Calvino

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This is a magnificent and original book, and one that merits reading. Unlike the previous commentary, I don't believe it was the author's intention to make an encyclopaedic coverage of every great author/work of literature (the list given by the comentator is an extremely Western-centered view of the "important" pieces of literature anyway), but rather grasps at specific significant authors/works, and uses that to support his thesis.

In any case, instead of indulging in an egotistical and narcissistic rant of his knowledge of European and American literature, the previous commentator should rather make an educated critique of the book, actually commenting on its content (as opposed to what he thought the author should have included).

All I can say is that this book must be read in order to be judged. I found its arguments rather convincing, and quite enjoyed it. Moreover I love Brink's writing style, and found that the book flowed with ease. Give the book a try...

Andre Brink is a South African novelist/scholar/teacher with some knowledge of European novelists. He lived in France for years - yet he seems to have no interest in Camus or Sartre [Nobel Laureates]. He discusses Flaubert at some length but not Stendhal, not Hugo. He makes a passing reference to Proust with no discussion of Proust's unique structure or style in Remembrance of Things Past.

The German Novel: Brink discusses Death In Venice but he seems to have no interest in Mann's other works: the fine early novel, Buddenbrooks, the magnificent/complex novel, The Magic Mountain.

Brink gives Kafka more than his due - which is interesting because unlike Gunter Grass, Hermann Hesse or Thomas Mann, Kafka never completed a novel. Kafka's editors/publishers blur that fact but Kafka never completed Amerika or The Trial or The Castle. If you read Kafka's diaries, you will understand he lacked the resilience and perseverance and organizational concentration to complete long works.

The Russian Novel: Brink makes one reference to Tolstoy with no comment on War and Peace; he discusses Crime and Punishment briefly with no discussion of The Idiot, or of the monumental Brothers Karamazov or of the seminal and unforgettable Underground Man.

Brink's lack of attention to these great French, German and Russian authors is an egregious fault for a man trying to teach the reader the novel from Cervantes to Calvino.

The American Novel: Brink disdains the American novel. He never mentions any American novelist, even in passing. It is impossible to discuss the novel from Cervantes to Calvino and leave out Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn. He leaves out Carson McCullers and Pearl Buck. Buck, like Faulkner and Hemingway and Steinbeck, won the Nobel Prize.

To discuss structural/stylistic innovation without mentioning John Barth is foolish. No one, including the wonderful Calvino, has been more innovative, more challenging to previous novelistic forms than John Barth. He does not seem to know Barth's superb early novel, The End of the Road or The Sot-Weed Factor [a novel written in 18th Century English] or Giles Goat-Boy [which was written by a computer -although the computer denies it] or Lost In The Funhouse [which includes a riff on John Cage] or Chimera [in which Barth uses six, seven and eight sets of quotation marks to focus on ambiguity and the story within the story].

Before Barth, Faulkner and Hemingway provided many fine works. In discussing the novel from Cervantes to Calvino, you can not leave out the structural uniqueness of The Sound and The Fury or of As I Lay Dying; you can not leave out the stylistic innovations of Hemingway, which many have tried to imitate.

I will mention one other American novelist who still has not received his due, the late John Gardner. Grendel is one of the deepest most fascinating novels in literature. Gardner, unlike anyone from Cervantes to Calvino, enables us to empathize with and to understand a monster and by doing so, we learn Gardner's cynical view of life and culture.

The Irish Novel: He discusses Joyce and Beckett. Although he has little knowledge of Beckett and he fails to see the pathology that dominates all of Beckett's work, in particular, the bizarre, schizophrenic How It Is.

The British Novel: Brink discusses Henry Fielding and Jane Austen. That's it.

How can you discuss the history of the novel - in any fashion - and leave out Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, E.M. Forster, Iris Murdoch and on and on? Ford's Parade's End, a tetralogy, is one of the best [possibly the best] novel in English literature.

And there is no discussion, of course, of D.H. Lawrence's works: Sons and Lovers, Women In Love or the little known, great novel called St. Mawr in which the main character is a horse.

Brink has no discussion of the great European writer Arthur Koestler; yet, Darkness At Noon is as good as they come. Nor does Brink discuss the wonderful, unique novel by T.E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Lastly, as a South African, Brink should have at least nodded respect toward Alan Paton. Paton does not have Barth's inovation nor Faulkner's inspired brilliance. But Cry, The Beloved Country is a great novel - a solid, beautifully structured, deeply moving book.

Paton writes, "The small child opened the door, carefully like one who is afraid to open carelessly the door of so important a house, and stepped timidly in." From that sentence on, I knew I was reading a master.