Turning non-fiction into narrative

Photo by Ben Griffiths on Unsplash

An interesting article by Michael Gorra (TLS, 2 October 2020) explains the thinking behind his 2012 book Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the making of an American Masterpiece:

I wanted to tell the story, not of a life but of a work. I wanted to turn criticism itself into a narrative act.

I haven’t read Gorra’s book, but I am fascinated by what he was trying to do. Gorra articulates something that has been taking place for several years in non-fiction publishing, although I haven’t seen it so clearly stated as here. 

1. “Literary Criticism in the 1950s had an artificially large audience, one fed by the paperback revolution, the expansion of higher education, and the mid-century aspirations of middlebrow culture …[but] these conditions will not return”.
2. But the general public still reads – just different things. Gorra states “A lot of people will sit still for the time it takes to read a 2,000-word review”. This is true (it tallies with my estimate for review length of around 1,400 words for a review in the TLS, and 3,000 words for reviews in the London Review of Books; the former is similar in length to a blog post, but the latter strays into essay territory, and I get bored).
3. Beyond that, readers want narrative! “If readers go for biography, they do so … because they want narrative, and prefer that narrative to discursive forms of argument.”.
4. “I wanted to turn criticism itself into a narrative act … hoping it might then reclaim some fraction of the readership that critics such as Edmund Wilson once had.”

Gorra is correct that the lit crit market for books has all but disappeared. as a book genre for non-specialists has more or less disappeared.  Critics who wrote for a wide audience, such as Edmund Wilson or John Bayley, have no successors. Books of literary criticism published today are typically by academics looking to gain or keep a tenured position. 

I can think of several examples of non-fiction books, not all of them literary, that combine narrative with more of an exposition. Frances Pryor’s The Fens (2019) is an excellent combination of the author’s archaeological excavations, with the work of others, combined with his own experience of living in the Fens. It makes for a remarkable work, that as a reader you relate to, rather than simply following a researcher’s project (for example Cat Jarman’s River Kings, 2021, which simply doesn’t have the same tone of personal involvement as Pryor’s work). 

Most lit crit titles (and humanities works generally) have no narrative drive. But it’s surprising to think of classic non-fiction books you have read, and to realise how many of them did have some kind of story-telling thread to them. Peter Gay’s The Enlightenment (1966-69); Paul Hazard’s The European Mind 1680-1715; R.R. Palmer’s Twelve who ruled (1970) and yes, the biggest page-turner of all, Edmund Wilson’s To the Finland Station (1940), all have an addictive quality – even over multiple volumes, in Gay’s case. 

One note of caution: when autobiography takes over, and the author starts describing the queues at the airport as they fly off to their latest excavation, this reader is not overwhelmed with engagement. Yes, I want a narrative, and yes, I want to learn things, but no, I don’t want a blow-by-blow account of the minutiae of the writing and research process – unless it is, say, Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle, which is a classic narration that reveals the author’s thinking as he begins to formulate his ideas about evolution. 

Excitingly, Michael Gorra continues his article about narrative criticism by giving several examples of works that he likes. I’m not familiar with most of the books he mentions, but they will certainly be worth following up. Gorra broadens his discussion to include books about films and their making, as well as texts about art. He mentions Julian Barnes, one of the few writers on literary topics I find worth reading when I don’t have to read fiction for examination purposes. Barnes on Flaubert’s parrot (in the book of the same name), and on Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa, are examples of the approach Gorra advocates. 

On reflection, the mixing of genres has been around for many years. Novelists have frequently used their engagement with the reader to air their interests and prejudices about topics they feel are important. How many readers of Anna Karenina enjoy all the lengthy chapters about land reform and the organisation of local government? Clearly, Tolstoy thought they were important for him. Better at combining social issues with fiction is Dickens, in Hard Times and Bleak House, for example. A less successful (because too obvious) mixture of fiction and presentation of the 19th-century debate about evolution is Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered (2018), which leaves me slightly uncomfortable because I feel the joins between the two aspects are too visible. Reading Darwin himself adds the process of genuine discovery to a historical narrative.

My thanks to Michael Gorra for outlining this approach. I certainly intend to follow up his recommendations for further reading. And don’t be surprised if my account of what I have read takes the form of a narrative…