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V n .. .1..- _-m .H m JIM/UNI!!!("W/NIH"INHIHUIIHIHIHHIWW 3 1293 0089 14321 This is to certify that the thesis entitled THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE YOUNG NOVELIST: An Historical Survey of Novels by Authors Aged Twenty- Five and Under presented by Peter Morris has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for M.A. English degree in r’7eéu’laifl:74wd%m~taw~z Major professor 0-7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution LIBRARY Michigan State 1 University N..- _ 1‘ PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE '7 ' ‘ I MSU Is An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Inaitution "‘ “E * Mm1 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE YOUNG NOVELIST: An historical survey of novels by authors aged twenty-five and under By Peter Morris A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of English 1990 9754 - ABSTRACT (555 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE YOUNG NOVELIST By Peter Morris The accomplishment of novelists twenty-five and under has been maligned and ignored, but rarely taken seriously. Their detractors include older novelists who assume that young novelists lack experience. Such dismissals, however, fail to account for the many great novels written by young authors. These accomplishments are possible because the authors have experienced the loss of innocence recently enough to describe it poignantly. A survey of fifty-four such novels in various periods and languages shows marked similarities in the way they trace the loss of innocence. These stages include: the entertainment of temptation, distrust of the senses, acute self-consciousness, disillusionment and ennui, and a passion for solitude and wandering. Sorrow finally arrests this degenerative cycle by proving ephemeral, thereby demonstrating that the seeds of corruption are internal. Resolution is finally effected by constructing a double self - one half able to function in society, the other half nurturing the ache for wholeness. Copyright by PETER MORRIS 1990 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis is dedicated to my parents for their unfailing support and encouragement. I am especially indebted to Dr. Howard Anderson who first encouraged me to work on this subject, and has supervised it from its inception. Dr. William Johnsen and Dr. Arthur Sherbo have provided valuable advice in serving as readers. Dr. Jay B. Ludwig afforded me the opportunity to teach an experimental course based on this material, and to see how enthusiastically students responded to these novels. The students in that class - Ken Carps, Chris Cox, Ann Good, Lydia Lovell and Dawn Schmelzer - provided me with inspiration and challenging readings of the texts, as well as introducing me to a number of young novelists. The faculty and graduate students of the English department of Michigan State University have been helpful and supportive in innumerable ways. I am particularly grateful to Robert F. Scott for his help with computer problems, his boundless enthusiasm and his no-look passes. Marguerite Halversen was a great help in preparing the final version. Among the many other people whose support has been invaluable are Peter and Kristiina Overton, Tony Johnston, Dave MacGregor, Janine Preston, Hy Francis, Steve Grob, Dr. Fred Flahiff, Jim Neuberger, Chris Reslock, Dr. Brian Thomas, Kay Kaminski, Brian Bode and Beth Guikema, Kiki Froberg, Barbara Amster, Carl Dalke, Joong Soo Kim, and Dr. Michael Laine. Finally, I would like to thank Dennis i i Rodman and Steffi Graf for the inspiration which, unbeknownst to them, I have derived from their examples. This paper will suggest the possibility of distinguishing trends in the novel which supersede or complement an historical approach. By looking at novels written when the author was under twenty-five, we will see to what extent characteristic features in the works can be illuminated by looking at the origins of the novelist instead of the origins of the novel. This idea that salient features can profitably be isolated from other relevant factors bears in interesting ways upon the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and Northrop Frye, but it also hearkens back to E. M. Forster's notion that we can think of all novelists congregated around a table in a timeless continuum. As Edmund Wilson suggests in "The Historical Interpretation of Literature", looking at literature by considering a single, discrete element can enable us to see likenesses which would not otherwise be apparent and which often cut deeper than historical or national ones. Much earlier, the Marquis de Sade articulated the idea of seeing the novel as the result of a universal impulse which transcends historical factors. He scoffed at the notion that the novel originated in Greece, and was somehow transmitted to the Moors, the Spaniards and finally to French troubadours. Instead, Sade argued that ”there are customs, habits and tastes which cannot be transmitted; inherent in all men, they are part of man's make-up at birth."1 Consequently, he contended that "it was in the countries which first recognized gods that the novel originated; and, to be more specific, in Egypt, the cradle of all divine worship. No sooner did man begin to suspect the existence of immortal beings than he endowed them with both actions and words. Thereafter we find metamorphoses, fables, parables, and novels: in a word, we find works of fiction as soon as fiction seized hold of the minds of men" (Sade,98). Sade elaborated on the importance of looking beyond historical trends for archetypal patterns: Man is prey to two weaknesses, which derive from his existence and characterize it. Wheresoever on earth he dwells, man feels the need to pray, and to love: and herein lies the basis for all novels. Man has written novels in order to portray beings whom he implored; he has written novels to sing the praises of those whom he loves...But as man has prayed, and as he loved, Wheresoever he dwelled on the face of the earth, there were novels, that is, works of fiction, which at times depicted the fanciful objects of his worship, and at times those more concrete objects of his love. One should therefore refrain from trying to trace the source of this kind of writing back to one nation in preference to another; one should be persuaded by what we have just said that all nations have more or less employed this form, depending upon greater or lesser predilection they have either for love or for superstition. (Sade, 99-100) 3 As Sade's approach implies, one of the reasons for the staying power which the novel has shown is this potential to regenerate itself with each succeeding generation. This accords with Bakhtin's description of how man's increasing awareness of time and the fluctuations of history have led to the novel usurping the primacy which once belonged to the epic. Whereas the epic was regarded as almost exclusively the preserve of the old, wise writer who was affirming the universality of his people's moment in time, the novel represents an opportunity to express what is new and distinct about the world. It therefore represents a genre uniquely well-suited to young novelists and, as we shall see, their success tends to increase proportionately with the instability of the times in which they write. The years immediately following the French Revolution, World War I, and World War II all produced flourishes of first-rate novels by young writers. Somerset Maugham has written perceptively of his own efforts to write historical fiction while very young and concluded that a young novelist has to be immersed in his or her own age to have any chance of being "of all time”2.