{"id":2006111,"date":"2023-08-20T05:16:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-20T09:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/more-fiction-less-phone-time-now-theres-a-novel-idea\/"},"modified":"2023-08-20T05:21:05","modified_gmt":"2023-08-20T09:21:05","slug":"more-fiction-less-phone-time-now-theres-a-novel-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/more-fiction-less-phone-time-now-theres-a-novel-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Less scrolling, more storytelling: A novel approach to reducing phone time."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmore-fiction-less-phone-time-now-theres-a-novel-idea%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2006111&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>In\u2063 Defense of the Novel: Why It\u2064 Still Matters<\/h2>\n<p>In\u2062 his \u2064latest\u2063 book, Joseph Epstein, master of essays \u200bpersonal and literary, makes the case for the novel as our indispensable art form. His timing, comic and otherwise, is excellent.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It has been years, decades even, since any novelist \u200chas riveted the attention of \u2062the\u2064 cultured public. One thinks of all the other candidates put forth as the great artist-explainers of our\u2062 times: the writers and show runners of prestige television, behavioral scientists, pop therapists and positive psychologists, the TED talkers and Silicon Valley savants, a small fraction of podcasters, highbrow journalists, and, of course, the growing militia of pundits, professional and\u2064 amateur, screaming \u200cinto the void \u200dwith their own close reads and loose screeds on what happened at the White House or on cable news or somewhere in \u2064American\u2062 life in \u200dthe last\u200c 10 seconds. The\u2064 process by which we describe and explain ourselves to ourselves \u200cinvolves many new hands, few of them steady and even fewer of \u200bthem students of Henry James.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If not the novel itself, then,\u2064 indeed, the whole culture of deliberation needed to \u200dread <em>Middlemarch<\/em> and not fall asleep seems, rather sadly, a thing of the past. New novels, some quite good,\u200c are still written and published. And during the pandemic one even heard of people\u2014all but locked in \u200ctheir homes,\u200b of course\u2014returning to ambitious novels for connection and intellectual nourishment.<\/p>\n<p>But \u200cthe\u2062 urgency and \u200drecognition are gone. A minor illustration: A well-educated and intelligent friend of mine \u2064wanted me\u200d to recommend contemporary novels for him to read. Had he already \u2064tried Zadie Smith, I asked. No, he said, he\u2019d never heard of her. This I found\u200c amazing and depressing. On the bright\u2062 side, my friend \u2063was quickly converted into\u2064 a fan of Smith\u2019s work, but it \u2064left me with\u200d the bitter reflection that maybe the naysayers are right and\u200c that outside the readership of a few magazines and \u2064a shrinking set of arts sections, \u200cthe writing of serious novels had lost its rightful claim on the attention of thoughtful people.<\/p>\n<p>The world has changed on me, I thought, in the admittedly pathetic manner of an\u2063 aging grumpy newspaper reader. The strongest currents favor other ships. This way novels,\u2063 that way Taylor Swift, \u2064Donald Trump, social media, and woke politics.<\/p>\n<h3>What is lost?<\/h3>\n<p>According to Epstein, quite a lot. Not, of course, just a few readers\u2019 enjoyment of a few writers but a culture that expects and rewards patience, where a mindset for complexity is understood to be the proper tool for probing the mystery of other people.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Novel, Who Needs It?<\/em> is very much \u2064an example of the culture\u200c we seem to be losing. Its discussion builds \u200con a lifetime of literary self-assignments so numerous and of such discrimination that few\u200c of us won\u2019t <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/more-fiction-less-phone-time-now-theres-a-novel-idea\/\" title=\"Less scrolling, more storytelling: A novel approach to reducing phone time.\">find fresh reading suggestions<\/a> within. It aims to\u200c say what\u200c the novel does especially well and what the novel does for its readers. It takes stands within its own discussions, inviting disagreement, under the pressure of evidentiary standards but within a manner \u200dof thinking and speaking that allows for contradiction and\u200d sometimes paradox. And it does so sweetly, with humor and \u200dself-awareness. It treats of literary subjects without becoming \u200da treatise. It helps the reader, in a \u2064literary context, name the appetites and passions that drive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/what-conservatism-must-conserve\/\" title=\"What Conservatism Must Conserve\">human beings<\/a> without inviting the reader to become an \u200cobject of those same irrational forces.<\/p>\n<p>What the novel \u2063does especially well, to gloss Epstein, is it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/terrifier-2-channels-woke-free-80s-horror\/\" title=\"\u201cTerrifier 2\u201d Channels Woke-Free \u201980s Horror\">makes art<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/president-trump-issues-executive-order-for-january-22-two-days-after-bidens-planned-inauguration-proclaiming-the-sanctity-of-life\/\" title=\"President Trump Issues Executive Order for January 22, Two Days After Biden\u2019s Planned Inauguration, Proclaiming the Sanctity of Life\">human existence<\/a> in a way that magnifies the limited,\u200d even self-defeating, perspectives of human beings. It doesn\u2019t explain or state or reduce. It elaborates and shows, dramatizing the illumination of character\u200b through circumstance, action, and events. It is \u200dintimate, a theater of the\u2064 mind and the heart, a drama of households and friendships and loves. It follows us into hidden spaces and gets right up in our business. It draws\u2063 on other areas of knowledge as needed, usually\u200c without \u200dasking permission.<\/p>\n<p>Epstein quotes the Bloomsbury\u2063 critic \u200bDesmond MacCarthy, &#8220;It is the business of literature to \u2062turn facts into\u200d ideas.&#8221; When \u200dhe talks of novels producing ideas, Epstein makes clear he does not have \u200bin mind concepts that might help identify market forces or say why so many marriages fail. He has in mind ideas that take up residence in an individual mind and animate human action\u2014the perceptions and fixations that lead to decisions that lead to us becoming or not becoming, like David Copperfield, the heroes of our\u200c own lives.<\/p>\n<p>Another point Epstein makes is that novels offer an education. There is the benefit of vicarious experience: Right now I am reading <em>City of Angles<\/em> by Jonathan Leaf, which, among other thrills, is updating my knowledge of the\u200d lives of struggling actors in Hollywood. Fine writing also teaches us to notice and name what might seem too subtle for words. I think fictional characters\u2014Dorothea in <em>Middlemarch<\/em>, Sherman McCoy in <em>Bonfire of the Vanities<\/em>, Bigger Thomas in <em>Native Son<\/em>\u2014can make us\u200b better students of human character. We become \u2062less gullible to how people present \u200bthemselves, knowing there is so much more going on. Our sense of the limitations and trials of other people improve with reading, and, one hopes, without eroding our sense \u2064of the new and the curious in\u200c the \u200cactual people we meet.<\/p>\n<p>It \u200bis a pleasure to \u2063follow Epstein\u2019s conversation on the page especially when \u2063it \u200bleads to judgments for and against individual novels and \u200bnovelists. Personally speaking, I disagreed with him more than I expected\u2014like him,\u2063 I adore Willa Cather; unlike him, I rather like \u200bAlice Munro and Graham Greene. Unlike\u200b him, I don\u2019t mind that postwar novelists\u200c entered\u200c the bedroom and even\u2063 the bathroom. Our humping and defecating may not say as much about us as certain authors insist but the \u200dtime we spend naked \u2063and \u2064coiled together is not trivial \u200ceither.<\/p>\n<p>All this said, I would enjoy reading, I think,\u2063 an essay attempting to pull together all available evidence of novelistic vitality in \u200bthe service of describing, in Anthony Trollope\u2019s phrase, &#8220;the way we live now.&#8221; Not just a case for the novel in general but a case\u200c for new novels. \u2063Epstein mentions,\u2062 in addition to\u200c Smith, some other writers making headway \u2064in this direction in recent years. Lionel \u2062Shriver is one: In addition to being a formidable novelist and a serious student of our times, she has \u200ba definite gift \u200dfor \u200cdrawing attention. Michel Houellebecq is \u2062another. These latter two are especially provocative \u2063examples but \u2064there must be others. We have nothing if not strong raw material\u2014the best of times and the worst \u200dof times.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Novel, Who Needs It?<\/em><br \/>  by Joseph Epstein<br \/> Encounter Books, 152 pp., $25.99<\/p>\n<p><em>David Skinner writes \u200babout language \u2062and\u2064 culture. He is the author of<\/em> The Story \u200bof Ain\u2019t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his latest book, Joseph Epstein argues for the novel as our essential art form. With his impeccable timing and wit, he reminds us that it has been ages since a novelist captivated the cultured public. Among the contenders, none have succeeded in grabbing our attention for years, if not decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":2006112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2006111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2006111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2006112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2006111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2006111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2006111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}