Folio Prize comment: Prof David Brauner says 'reports of the death of the literary novel have been greatly exaggerated'
Release Date 20 March 2015
Ahead of the Folio Prize announcement on Monday 23 March, David Brauner, Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of Reading, gives his view on the runners and riders and the health of global fiction writing.
Kermode, Roth and Self were wide of the mark
"To adapt a famous remark from the great Mark Twain, recent reports of the death of the literary novel have been greatly exaggerated.
"Eminent novelists have been queuing up of late to predict the end of the novel as we know it. From Philip Roth's prediction that ‘two decades on, the size of the audience for the literary novel will be about the size of the group who read Latin poetry" to Will Self's claim last year that ‘the literary novel as an art work and a narrative art form central to our culture is indeed dying before our eyes'.
"This is nothing new of course. The famous literary critic Frank Kermode wrote in 1960s, that ‘the special fate of the novel, considered as a genre, is to be always dying'. If the Folio Prize shortlist is anything to go by, however, there is plenty of life left in this now-not-so-novel form."
A wonderful blur between fiction and non-fiction
"In contrast to last year's damp squib that was the Man Booker, the Folio has followed up last year's fine inaugural shortlist with another vibrant and varied selection of fiction. There isn't a dud among them and it's hard to pick a likely winner. However there are some fascinating trends and recurring preoccupations.
"Particularly notable is the way in which most of the shortlisted works blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction in one way or another. This was the case on last year's list but wasn't evident in the disappointing shortlist for the Booker and longlist for the Bailey's Prize.
"The Folio list provides further evidence, if any was needed, of the embarrassment of riches of North American fiction."
Runners and Riders - Cusk is the dark horse of the field
"10:04 by US author Ben Lerner is a metafictional tour de force, a post-postmodernist exploration of the writer's struggle to capture consciousness authentically on the page and to live authentically in an unwritten world that paradoxically feels less real than the written one.
"All My Puny Sorrows by the Canadian Miriam Toews is a tragicomic novel partly based on her own family history. Toews is a brilliant, quirky writer who deserves a wider readership. This might be the novel that delivers it for her. I think it deserves to win the Prize.
"Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill, another highly original US writer, is a strange novel that seems at first to consist only of inconsequential fragments but which gradually accrues a cumulative power and becomes quite startling.
"Dust by Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and Family Life by the Indian-American author Akhil Sharma are probably the most conventional books on the list: sweeping family sagas that are moving but don't really break new ground formally.
"The same might be said of Irish author Colm Tóibín's Nora Webster: it's a very accomplished novel, but it's nothing Tóibín hasn't done just as well, if not better, before.
"Conversely, the two British contenders - How to Be Both by Ali Smith and Outline by Rachel Cusk - are formally ambitious and represent new departures for both writers. Ali Smith has already won two major awards this year but may win again, while Cusk (whose novel is perhaps the most boldly autobiographical on the list) is the dark horse of the field.
"Overall, this list justifies William Fiennes' observation that ‘many novelists' on the list are ‘reaching out for new ways of telling stories' and ‘experimenting with form'. The novel is in rude health."