At 10:35 on an early summer's morning, John Lanchester sat down at his study desk, switched on his new Dell computer, opened up the word processing programme that the computer had come with and began

great american novel had a specific coinage and critical freight at one time, i want to say fiedler but i suspect that is wrong

okay no, though fiedler does complain about 'our endemic fantasy of writing the G.A.N.' in 'love and death...' ; it made more sense when american fiction was a young and new thing, and the idea was that at some point there'd be american men of letters the equal of their european antecedents, or some other, new, interesting thing

now that english-language fiction basically is american fiction the term's usefulness is limited by comparison

State of the Nation ancestor is maybe Condition of England novel?

yeah but Lanchester is no Gaskell

The only author I've read who suceeds at the 'state of the nation' thing is Thomas Bernhard: his novels are ultimately about Austria (they may include Glenn Gould fan or Wittgenstein or whatever), but it only works if you are prepared to believe they are all closet Nazi types. That's him showing he is always at war and in opposition when he's writing...

But it tries to map a psyche onto a people...tries to give a sense of what a specific place might be really like. If that's what 'state of the nation' aims for, that is, don't think he would ever conciously attempt this bcz I reckon he'd think its bullshit literary claptrap.

All his novels are no more than 200 pages. However it is the same thing over and over again - all adds up. xxp

I suppose David Peace's GB sequence adds up to some kind of state of the nation novel? Peace is probably the anti-Lanchester really.

whatabout whatsername. elfride jelinek.

i think a lot of people have an ouevre that, when you look back on it all in a kind of retrospective arrangement, emerges as doing this, or appearing to do this

i don't think there's anything wrong with the ambition to write the Big Novel, to be honest. i don't know that that's the lanchester's failings - don't know in that i haven't read it, obviously, but also i mean: the flaws we're talking about could exist as easily in a novel that wasn't About Big Things; they'd just be markedly less bathetic

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/book/literary-treats-for-2012-7304502.html

John Lanchester publishes a 630-page whopper of a novel, Capital (March), which locates itself in one south London street where the properties have risen to more than £1million in value. It describes what it is to be a Londoner now, on a broad canvas that takes in a greedy banker with a greedier wife, a young African footballer, an edgy young artist, an illegal immigrant parking warden and a family of Muslim shopkeepers. The ambition is nothing less than Dickensian.

In September, Zadie Smith publishes her first fiction for seven years. Called NW, it is, as the postcode title suggests, set in her old patch of Brent. All she has disclosed about it so far is that it is about class, as it affects "a few people in north-west London" and that it's a "very, very small book".

Martin Amis looks to be playing to his strengths with his new novel Lionel Asbo (July), a satire on the scummy state of Britain. His anti-hero is a skinhead crim who wins £90million on the lottery while in prison, and spends it grossly. Other characters include a Katie Price lookalike called Threnody

In Skagboys (April), Irvine Welsh has written a prequel to his 1993 debut, Trainspotting, showing how Mark Renton et al first descended into heroin addiction in the Eighties. Even more keenly awaited will be Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel's sequel to her Tudor masterpiece, Wolf Hall, due in the autumn. It continues the story of Thomas Cromwell, focusing this time on the fall of Anne Boleyn.

Lionel Shriver's work in progress, said to be an assault on the culture of obesity in the States, is much anticipated.

fucking kill me.

Spring ILB bk club is set! :-)

I dunno, enjoying the title as it stands, above all "that the computer had come with"

― woof, Friday, March 9, 2012 9:53 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd like to try that word processing programme!

I didn't much like On Beauty, but the London bits were much better than the rest iirc, so I can imagine NW working. Does she live here nowadays?

Lionel Shriver's work in progress, said to be an assault on the culture of obesity in the States, is much anticipated.

outright lies.

South of the River by Blake Morrison. There's another SoN novel I'd forgotten about. People just love writing these fuckers.

what is lionel shriver's work actually like, i feel like i ought to read her just to, you know, keep my finger on the pulse of the corpse, sort of thing

I am really curious about the one that followed We Need to Talk, where it's a sliding-doors double narrative about a sophisticated middle-class woman having/not having an affair with a professional snooker player and being drawn/not being drawn into the world of the pro snooker circuit.

People just love writing these fuckers

all the way through this thread i've been thinking - does anybody not associated with the lit mafia actually want to READ these books??

oh i'm all for a good social problem novel

can you suggest some examples of that, nv ('modern' ones, i mean)?

xp that guardian review of Capital seems to think Faulks did well with his version of a banker, a footballer, an asian, but ikwym, we're not listing smash hits here mostly.

lol modern ones i have a problem with. Money is probably the modern-est thing I like in this ilk. 2666's long central catalogue of the disappeared? most of my reading is at the very very least stuff from 20 plus years ago.

Houellebecq is doing a deranged-masquerading-as-clearsighted version of this too, i guess. can't think of Englishes. sort of like Peace but think he's over-rated in some quarters not least of which is maybe his own.

I was just thinking about how lit-world often acts as though there's a kind of social explanatory force that people want from novels, when it looks on the tube like people actually want sexy vampires (STILL!), game of thrones and thrillers in which women are tortured or in danger of torture, but I am abandoning this line of thought because I think a sexy vampire state of the nation novel might be a goer and I need to get plotting & think about how a 2nd generation Bangladeshi immigrant vampire who runs a corner shop would actually think, actually feel.

sexy obese vampire state of the nation novel featuring romance with 2nd gen south asian corner shop manager = winner

twist: the sexy obese vampire is wall street

dunno if Dhabihah wd make being a vampire easier or harder tbh

xps (lol)

I struggle to think of Englishes too. Don't know much about this, but Scotland seems better at The Social Aspect of The Novel.

a greedy banker with a greedier wife, a young African footballer, an edgy young artist, an illegal immigrant parking warden and a family of Muslim shopkeepers. The ambition is nothing less than Dickensian.

fuck off

picked to live in a house

to find out what happens

when people stop being polite

and start getting real

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/book/literary-treats-for-2012-7304502.html

John Lanchester publishes a 630-page whopper of a novel, Capital (March), which locates itself in one south London street where the properties have risen to more than £1million in value. It describes what it is to be a Londoner now, on a broad canvas that takes in a greedy banker with a greedier wife, a young African footballer, an edgy young artist, an illegal immigrant parking warden and a family of Muslim shopkeepers. The ambition is nothing less than Dickensian.

In September, Zadie Smith publishes her first fiction for seven years. Called NW, it is, as the postcode title suggests, set in her old patch of Brent. All she has disclosed about it so far is that it is about class, as it affects "a few people in north-west London" and that it's a "very, very small book".

Martin Amis looks to be playing to his strengths with his new novel Lionel Asbo (July), a satire on the scummy state of Britain. His anti-hero is a skinhead crim who wins £90million on the lottery while in prison, and spends it grossly. Other characters include a Katie Price lookalike called Threnody

In Skagboys (April), Irvine Welsh has written a prequel to his 1993 debut, Trainspotting, showing how Mark Renton et al first descended into heroin addiction in the Eighties. Even more keenly awaited will be Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel's sequel to her Tudor masterpiece, Wolf Hall, due in the autumn. It continues the story of Thomas Cromwell, focusing this time on the fall of Anne Boleyn.

Lionel Shriver's work in progress, said to be an assault on the culture of obesity in the States, is much anticipated.

fucking kill me.

― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Friday, March 9, 2012 3:21 PM (3 hours ago)

the first few posts of this thread caused me to look up the names & led to that ES article & i copied the same four paragraphs ready to post itt

not the shriver line tho

Kinda think China Miéville believes he is writing sexie 2nd gen bangladeshi vampire state of nation novels and he is practically as bad as Lanchester :(

harsh!

I was thinking that lit eco-niche must be filled, couldn't think who it would be.

whatabout whatsername. elfride jelinek.

More about the failures of feminism bcz-capitalism-gets-in-the-way-of -anything-progressive thing, I think. She does hate Austria but still stays there, like Bernhard, but not as pathological.

lol modern ones i have a problem with. Money is probably the modern-est thing I like in this ilk. 2666's long central catalogue of the disappeared? most of my reading is at the very very least stuff from 20 plus years ago.

― Nultified Ancients of Man U (Noodle Vague), Friday, 9 March 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not sure: you get one section that I guess can be looked at (esp in light of what is happening in Mexico these days) as state of the nation but there is much more to that bk. Guess I'm doing the 'this author in retrospect is about this' that thomp describes.

Sorta of a point I'm arriving at is you can't be state of the nation and be any good. Most authors I like will have a specific field of things they talk about (which is why when an author publishes a study on jazz or whatever, etc.) but they'll find room for manoeuvre around that.

But they are narrow-minded. Its good to be like that.

i agree that 2666 isn't a SotN book, i singled out that section because i was floundering for contemporary novels i like that might fall into the category.

i'm all for a novel having tight focus but i wdn't want to say it has to be the case, i have a lot of time for the rambling and capacious and picaresque but feel like for some reason those things aren't being done well, now.

I kind of feel it should be possible, and in a way inevitable, just by having a set of characters with varied interests. You'll not get anything comprehensive, but that's okay because neither author nor reader is ever socially omniscient.

What you shouldn't consciously do is aim for it, because then you end up with ciphers instead of characters.

I dunno, maybe I'm not getting at the same thing - but to me 'state of the nation' shouldn't just mean 'what you find in the Home section of a broadsheet'.

Random thughts

broadly speaking I'm with xyzzz, & think this is unlikely to work here and now – one of the reasons it's irresistable I suppose is that the part of lit London with eng lit degrees all know that this sort of thing is backbone of the English novl's victorian heyday.

feel like there's almost inevitably going to be some patrician ventriloquism as member of literary class decides to 'do' a struggling single mother or whatever (oh, 'an illegal immigrant parking warden'. I see); I mean I know 'doing' people is part of the point of The Novel, but the odds just seem so against you pulling it off or multiple voices if you're stalwart of literary london.

'home section' is right, i think - It's a v. journalistic conception of the novel - like it's muddled up with hack 'first draft of history' pomp (eg The Blake Morrison one mentioned upthread is set around the 97 election), and an elevated conception of what novel can/should do.

When is Capital set, Fizzles? I mean apart from while Flouressa Glunt is polishing her sideboard at 11.15 on a Wednesday morning in mid-May etc. Is it 'The Eve Of The Crash' 07/08 or anything?

Alternative/additional genealogy: Feel like Bonfire of the Vanities is nearest american equiv of this form, and might be directly to blame for a good few of the British versions of the last 25 years.

Definitely right re Bonfire. I had a go at it myself recently and was appalled. Wolfe writes amusingly, but not with the care or sympathy a novel demands. The number of times I read the phrase 'aquiline nose'.

has tom wolfe been, like, rehabilitated while i wasn't looking

nah, nothing like, but there's a literary journalist sort who's never quite let go of Bonfire of the Vanities.

maybe we build and knock down stereotypes so quickly now that by the time novelists come to explore them they're stale? I'm not sure. I do remember liking Mr Phillips very much but I think that was due to the affectionate portrait rather than the cultural references.

I enjoyed this book from a few years ago, more in the Peace vein than anything else. It's not 100% successful (he can't really write female characters) but it works pretty well, maybe because its focus is less State of the Nation and more State of Post-Industrial Midlands.

i suddenly remembered Matt Thorne's Eight Minutes Idle which I enjoyed when it was published and is at least partly addressed to a section of "modern life". turns out it's been turned into a movie, i'm not sure how that'll work.

xps the difficulty in getting near 9/11 etc as a thing-for-fiction - there have been attempts, but mostly clunky - suggests that maybe instead we're looking for novelists to move too quickly, if anything

I'd agree with that, there's too much noise around massive events like that as it is, and we don't yet understand where they fit in a historical context - probably more the case with the economic crisis than 9/11 at this juncture, although we're still a bit too close to 9/11 as well. Someone like Roth is usually writing at a distance of at least a couple of decades when he's putting on his Serious Historical Face.

Also the problem I find with modern British state-of-nation fiction is that it usually feels like the author is thinly laying the viewpoints of three or four newspapers up against one another.

agree, and if good novels use fiction to reveal truth, then with 9/11 that's a difficult space to move in while all the conspiracy theories are still circulating. Out of interest, is there a decent novel around the Kennedy assassination, even now?

Libra by Don DeLillo is incredible, I haven't read any others. I doubt I'll need to.

American Tabloid by James Ellroy is a p gd kennedy assassination nov told mainly from the crim's POV

haven't read either but will on those recommendations. they were 25 and 32 years after the event respectively, perhaps the good 9/11 novels will be published after 2026?