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Do novels fall into two categories: those A novels about language and those B novels about the world?
In his meditation on the works of James Joyce, Anthony Burgess delineated the two different types of novel, categorised into types A and B. The A novel, to summarise his argument, is completely in thrall to convention, tapping into traditional literary archetypes with a distinct focus on plot and character. The B novel, however, can incorporate plot and character (though it occasionally dispenses with such trivialities altogether) but its ultimate aim is to explore literary form, narrative and language.
Typical examples of the A novel range from Pride and Prejudice and The Hound of the Baskervilles to Portnoy’s Complaint and Saturday. Tellingly, the ultimate B novel is considered to be Finnegan’s Wake. Then there are, of course, those A novels that trespass upon B territory such as Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow which has a linear narrative style (albeit recounted backwards) but in its reversal of conventional speech encroaches upon ideals more common to the B novel.
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July 30th, 2007 at 10:43 am
As I read the excerpt, should your intro not read “those B novels about language and those A novels about the world”? A moot point, since in the end its all about language anyway…
July 30th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
I thought the two kinds were hardcover and softcover.
If I can shift from flippant to surreal, this reminds me of the Chris Chandler line: “There are ten kinds of people in the world – those who understand binary, and those who don’t.”
July 31st, 2007 at 10:45 am
I heard it as “There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who are good at math, those who are good at English, and those who ain’t good at either.”
August 1st, 2007 at 11:03 am
Not to be overly pedantic or anything, but isn’t this simply the contemporary literary manifestation of the original storytelling divide between the dramatic and the lyrical?
Holy crap, I can’t believe I just wrote that. Let me start again — back in the days of the ancient Greeks there were bascially two forms of storytelling; the dramatic (which emphasized plot and turns of events) and the lyrical (which emphasized language style, or “poetry”). Some would argue that those two styles have since defined everything in western literary culture.
If you ask me (and I know you’re asking me, ;-]), it’s not a question of novels being of “two styles.” Rather, it is a question of two ends of a continuum between dramatic and lyrical, with few novels being entirely at one end or the other. Most fall somewhere in between.