The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600

Description

Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious, The Novel: An Alternative History is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote, but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction, in which Moore defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, the book relaxes into a world tour of the pre-modern novel, beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China, with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout, Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction, tracing a continuum between these pre-modern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny.

Steven Moore (Ph.D. Rutgers, 1988) is the author of several books and essays on modern literature. From 1988 to 1996 he was managing editor of the Review of Contemporary Fiction/Dalkey Archive Press, and for decades he has reviewed books for a variety of journals and newspapers, principally The Washington Post. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The Novel: An Alternative History is a breathtaking achievement. Steve Moore isn't just incredibly well read, he's also funny, irreverent, argumentative and sometimes even downright mean. There's nothing dryly academic about his magnificent book--it's as personal as a love affair and just as thrilling. Like Edmund Wilson, Hugh Kenner or Randall Jarrell, Moore writes with real stylish dash, yet backs up what he says with the authority that only comes from vast knowledge. Ancient Greek novels, classics of Asian fiction, medieval romances, Renaissance allegories, Victorian triple-deckers, postmodern experiments--Moore knows them all. For readers, the result isn't just a history of the novel, it's also one of the all-time great literary carnival rides. * Michael Dirda, author of Classics for Pleasure and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism * Moore's range here is staggering. And the intelligence he brings to bear on his materials is awesome, from the subtlest of insights to the boldest of (seemingly always valid) judgments. Add to this Moore's wit, his lucid Orwellian prose, his ability to make a simple plot summary tingle with excitement, the infectious sense of sheer literary pleasure that bubbles through it all-if this isn't a critical masterpiece in the making, there ain't no such animal. * David Markson, author of Wittgenstein's Mistress * Steven Moore, a former managing editor of the Review of Contemporary Fiction, has attempted to trace the roots of the modern novel to the first stories told around campfires in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Moore's survey is splendidly comprehensive and shows a true passion for his subject. Ranging from those early ancestors to the classics of Asian fiction, from the love stories of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the philosophical fables of the Enlightenment, and well into our time, the book displays Moore's impressive knowledge of the world of make-believe. [...] Moore tells his story with erudition and wit, and in doing so restores to the reader of good fiction confidence in the craft. Ultimately, Moore's book is less a genealogical history of the novel than a reader's treasure trove. * The Washington Post * Every now and then a work of general interest on literature, written for a non-specialized audience but filled with citations, comes along that, due to its brashness, perspective, or style re-opens arguments considered settled, inviting us to look anew at this or that subject. In extreme cases it can even encourage us to toss out what we've been taught. For obvious reasons this can arouse hostility in traditional-minded critics and reviewers. Steven Moore's The Novel: An Alternate History is such a book.[...] Moore's analysis of so many previously unheard of (to me) early novels, carried out over nearly 700 pages, collapses the centuries between this or that novel-such that the books written about are simultaneously of our time and the time of their creation-and dismantles the long-taught divisions of genre. We see that the history of the novel that older British critics (and critics from other countries who followed them) came up with is mistaken. The hoary tale that the novel began with Defoe, Swift and Richardson, going on to Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, and so on, is a fabrication that has robbed us of experiencing, or even knowing about, a wider world of literature than English fiction, and a considerably older heritage of the novel than previously posited. [...] Those wanting to discover new old books, or to read a vigorous refutation of a broken and useless idea of when the novel began written in a breezy, informative, style, will find The Novel an essential work. It belongs in personal, community and university libraries. * The Quarterly Conversation * Steven Moore's recent encyclopedic study, The Novel: An Alternative History...dramatically amplifies our understanding of what the novel can and cannot do, and highlights living currents that sprang into existence 40 centuries ago and continue to flow into the contemporary novel. * Stephen Burn, The New York Times Book Review * In this, a dizzyingly ambitious and necessary work of criticism, fed up at last with those who would, out of ignorance, claim the novel as both a fundamentally realist and relatively recent invention, Moore traces the literary form's evolution over much of the past four thousand years ... It remains throughout a wonderfully enjoyable book, written with contagious enthusiasm, and -- despite any appearance to the contrary -- easily accessible to lay audiences. * Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. XXXI, No. 2 * Most literature courses begin the study of the novel in seventeenth century England. But Moore's exhaustive history of the form shows that it started far earlier than that. Moore meticulously explores its evolution as far back as 2000 BC Egypt, proving not only that the novel is a much older invention than previously thought, but that its origins are barely European. This treatise will come as a welcome addition to the library of any literature enthusiast, who will eagerly pour through the critical analysis, commentary, and well written plot summaries and use it as a springboard for their own reading lists. Moore's irreverent and thoughtful style will appeal to readers who want to be challenged by what they read; readers looking for spoon-feeding should look elsewhere. The author's quick dismissal of religion and other organized beliefs can be forgiven in light of the incredible breadth of knowledge about these works that he brings to this book. Moore has done such a superb job that readers will be eager for volume two the moment they put the book down. * Publishers Weekly * Perhaps with the world now so intimately and immediately connected, the only real exoticism we are likely to find is in the past. [...] Moore, an independent scholar in Ann Arbor, Michigan, opens with a scathing attack on critics who would like the novel to remain an expression of nineteenth-century realism, naming as his primary enemies B.R. Myers, Dale Peck, and Jonathan Franzen, all guilty of hostility toward narrative experimentalism; in contrast, Moore believes that the best writers are always more concerned with their performance than their subject matter, literature distinguishing itself from entertainment insofar as its "story is primarily a vehicle for a linguistic display of the writer's rhetorical abilities." Arranged into large blocks of time-ancient Christian fiction, medieval Irish fiction, Renaissance French fiction, Indian fiction, Japanese fiction-Moore's book has the great merit of listing and summarizing scores upon scores of stories. Readers whose teeth are not set on edge by the sound of grinding axes will enjoy it. * New York Review of Books * Moore's analysis of the origins of the novel, before the 18th century and in African, Asian and Mesoamerican contexts, makes some broad claims, but he writes with flair and humour. His focus on literary experimentation in very engaging. * Times Higher Education Supplement * Reviewed in the New York Review of Books, 15th July 2010 * New York Review of Books * Author article on the Guardian website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/jul/23/novel-centuries-older * The Guardian * Moore's take on the prose works written around the time of the English Civil War is illuminating . . .The breadth of Moore's reading results in some keen insights . . . interesting rediscoveries. -- Grace Egan * The Cambridge Quarterly * Good humour to be found in every paragraph. If he's not careful, this man could give scholarship a good name. * South Belfast News * A learned but also very entertaining history of the novel, a story-book in fact, that presents a new perspective to better appreciate contemporary fiction. Departing from conventional surveys, Steven Moore shows, in a Copernican revolution, that innovative fiction has been at the center of the novel throughout the ages. 'Make it new' is the novel's leitmotif from its beginnings. * Julian Rios, author of Larva * I have always wanted a survey such as Moore's. If plot summary is perhaps overly privileged here in relation to analysis, Moore succeeds nonetheless in exciting our desire to explore the darker, more distant chambers of the treasure-house called the novel. Better yet, Moore describes the specific works and traditions in sufficient detail to inform our individual tastes, so that we can choose which novels we'll seek out next. * William T. Vollmann * In this gargantuan volume, Moore's primary goal is to provide a complete history of the novel from its beginnings to the year 1600, giving special attention to "innovative, unconventional" works, while his secondary goal is to respond to literary critics who attack writers for following "the dictates of art rather than those of entertainment." Moore identifies and discusses novels from the ancient, medieval, Renaissance, Eastern, and Far Eastern worlds. He writes authoritatively and enthusiastically about 'the various forms and permutations of the novel' and seeks to 'demonstrate the genre's age and infinite variety.' [...] Moore is serious in his effort to produce a useful work for the general reader. Recommended especially for literature students as well as curious laypersons seeking information and entertainment. * Library Journal * Critics are the private detectives of the book world. Enter book-detective Steven Moore, Moore is like the detective with every crime in a file and a soft spot for the outre, the ludicrous, the lusty, and the unique. This new book is Moore giving us a peek at his dossier of notes and the vast terrain of his musings on the origins of the novel. The Novel: An Alternative History, Beginnings to 1600 is the first part of Moore's complete history of the prose narrative. Think of it as B.D.Q., or Before Don Quixote. It represents everything Moore could cram into a book up to 1600, which is traditionally the point at which critics place the novel's beginnings. Moore's task encompasses the literature of the Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Sanskrit, Chinese, Old French, and Icelandic-speaking worlds, among others. Before we go too far into the shadow of history, note that Moore is a confessed lover of 20th century fiction, so what might be seen as antique by another is surveyed here with a hyper-modern eye. [...] Strange detail rules supreme in Moore's criticism and nuggets of erudition abound. You've got to love the way Moore thinks, not in a timeline, but holistically. This is the comment we get as he muses about Xenophon's An Ephesian Tale (125 C.E.): 'sixteen hundred years later Charles Dickens' would begin Bleak House in the same verbless manner.' When Moore opens any novel it's as if he's opening them all. * Justin McNeil, Bomb * Everything we know about the origins of the novel is wrong. The novel did not spring from the minds of eighteenth-century English writers, nor did Cervantes invent it. Instead, the novel coalesced in the Mediterranean in the fourth century with 'Greek romances and Latin satires.' And writers were creating 'experimental,' internalized, mischievous, and wildly imaginative novels centuries before James Joyce. In his zestfully encyclopedic, avidly opinionated, and dazzlingly fresh history of the most 'elastic' of literary forms, Moore shares his discoveries of ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Christian fiction and analyzes with unflagging enthusiasm the novels of medieval and Renaissance Europe, followed by deep readings of Indian, Tibetan, Arabic, Persian, Japanese, and Chinese fiction. Reveling in the most innovative and daring creations, Moore energetically evaluates tales fantastic, chilling, hilarious, erotic, and tragic, comparing centuries-old novels to those of Barth, Gaddis, Pynchon, and Vollmann. Destined for controversy, Moore's erudite, gargantuan, kaleidoscopic, and venturesome 'alternative history' will leave readers feeling as though they've been viewing literature with blinders on. * Booklist * The best book published this year might be a book about books-specifically, Gaddis scholar Steven Moore's The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600. [...] Moore's enthusiasm for literature is indisputable; his irreverence and excitement and sense of humor and erudition make The Novel essential reading for readers and writers alike. Two things can't be stressed enough: the depth of research and the readability of the work itself. Volume One of Moore's 'alternative history' is an indispensable work of scholarship. * Rain Taxi * This second volume continues the rollicking, wondrous journey begun in the first, starting with Miguel de Cervantes's 1605 Don Quixote and continuing through Hugh Henry Brackenridge's 1792 American satire Modern Chivalry. The depth of scholarship is breathtaking, and readers will appreciate Moore's attempts at levity by interjecting moments of humorous editorializing.... VERDICT Recommended for academic libraries and those interested in an expanded history of the novel. * Library Journal * This excellent examination of the novel is not one to sit down and read at one sitting. Rather, browse around then concentrate on your particular interests. Moore provides such a range of detail over so many novels in so many countries that you will be overwhelmed if you attempt a chronological reading. Its greatest strength is the breadth (and remarkable depth) of Moore's analyses of so many novels few have ever heard of or read...Moore's contribution to our study of the novel is remarkable, a volume that should be on the shelf of every serious student of literature. One hopes he will continue into modern times. -- John M. Formy-Duval * ContemporaryLit.About.com * Bloomsbury clearly believe in the award-winning Moore. They published his conversation-changing works The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600 (2010) and The Novel: An Alternative History: 1600-1800(2013), works that upset many conservative critics with significant buy-in to out-of-date and never-quite-sensible paradigms on the origins of the novel. -- Jeff Bursey * Numero Cinq * The enterprise leaves one quite in awe (if not aghast) at both the vast sweep and minute detail of Mr. Moore's effort. * The Scriblerian *