Daily Blague

In the current issue of The New Yorker, Milan Kundera has compiled some notes in answer to the question, which is also the title of his piece, "What Is A Novelist?" He begins by determining what the novelist is not, id est a lyric poet. The following passage rings true as a bell (never mind what it is that we can make deductions from - Hegel, actually):

From this we can deduce that the notion of lyricism is not limited to a branch of literature (lyric poetry) but, rather, designates a certain way of being, and that, from this standpoint, a lyric poet is only the most exemplary incarnation of man dazzled by his own soul and by the desire to make it heard.

I have long seen youth as the lyrical age - that is, the age when the individual, focused almost exclusively on himself, is unable to see, to comprehend, to judge clearly the world around him. If we start with that hypothesis (necessarily schematic, but which, as a schema, I find accurate), then to pass from immaturity to maturity is to move beyond the lyrical attitude.

If I imagine the genesis of a novelist in the form of an exemplary tale, a "myth," that genesis looks to me like a conversion story: Saul becoming Paul; the novelist being born from the ruins of his lyrical world.*

It must be observed, first of all, that the world is awash in lyrical novels. I dislike them as a rule; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is one of the few exceptions that I can think of, and even then the extent to which that book is a novel is uncertain. Young writers, like young people, are self-absorbed because they're busy absorbing the world, or enough of it to convey a sense of their own place, their own limits, their own follies. The world is new, fresh, and exciting. And it's a struggle. Lyrical people usually have a somewhat difficult time building a career. (Better to outgrow lyricism in the natural way. Mid-life crisis, which is nothing but the eruption of stifled lyrical impulses in creaky middle age, can cause real damage, and it is usually fairly ridiculous.) Only irresponsible types find the conditions of youth amusing. But, as Mr Kundera goes on to say, it is only when we can make out the "soft gleam of the comical" on the surface of every human ego (especially our own) that we can call ourselves mature. 

Sadly, the piece is not available online, so hunt down the October 9, 2006 issue in any way you can.

* Translated from the French by Linda Asher.