A recently acquired volume with the title, in Portuguese,
which translates as 'The Culture of the Novel" ( from a collection organized by
Franco Moretti, Il romanzo: la cultura del romanzo, 1120 pp,
Einaudi,2001) offers divers authors ( British, American, Italian, French,
Venezuelan) who discuss the role of the novel in our civilization.
Mario Vargas Llose writes: "We, readers of Cervantes or
Shakespeare, Dante or Tolstoy, feel that we are members of the same species
because, in the works these authors created, we learn about what we share, as
human beings, what remains in us as a common trait lying beyond the wide fan of
differences that separate us."
Since the lecturers and contributors had not a project that
would entice them to cover the entire span of "novels," the
omission of certain names is not deliberate. Although Nabokov professed he had
no interest in the "Buildungs Roman" or in "social messages" his philosophy
and interests would certainly place him among the cited hundreds
of novelists. And yet, he wasn't, although Dostoievsky, Joyce, Mann
deserved various entries, together with Cervantes, Shakespeare, Murakami, Twain.
The curious thing is that I didn't encounter Updike, Roth,
John Barth, Highsmith, Oates. There's Genette and no Genet or Robe-Grillet.
There's John dos Passos, D.H.Lawrence, Meredith, Malcom X, no Malraux. There's
Dickens and Diderot, Raymond Roussel, Rousseau. No Pinchon. I found Austen, no
Auster. Quentil Bell and Virginia Woolf. Henri Bergson, Bradbury, Breton,
Broch, Borges. Byatt, Byron, Cazotti. Callado, Campos, Assis,
Flaubert. Marquez. Canetti, Cortazár.
I thought this list (very quickly and capriciously
assmbled) would interest the List... I think we share Llosa's vision of the
novel?
NB: I haven't yet progressed very far in my reading, but it
promises to be quite fascinating.