The last major British novelist?

[Heteronym]

The Spanish have Cervantes, and everything pretty much comes from him, in terms of great novels.

The French have Flaubert and Proust.

The Americans have Melville and Faulkner.

The British have Samuel Richardson, whose 18th century epistolary novels, in the opinion of Milan Kundera, were the first to explore the inner life of a character in depth. Cervantes was a great describer of adventures, but we don't really get inside the head of Don Quixote. Richardson was an important innovator. If he didn't invent stream of consciousness, he at least opened the path to it.

The British also have Henry Fielding, who is important in the field of meta-textuality, since the narrator in Tom Jones keeps breaking the fourth wall to discourse on the art of the novel, a trick commonly used nowadays by writers.

Oh, and the British have Laurence Sterne, whose Tristram Shandy is only the forefather of Ulysses and therefore the precursor of all modernism.

[JCamilo]

I would imagine that the merits of having Samuel Richardson would not represent such big merit...

[Heteronym]

Milan Kundera will disagree with you. But I guess that's the difference between someone who studies the art of the novel deeply and mere readers.

[Seasider]

No mention of Evelyn Waugh. Nor Anthony Powell whose 12 volume work Dance to the Music of Time is an amazing panorama of British cultural, political and academic life from the 20s to the 60s. His character Widmerpool is a major comic creation. I couldn't choose a favourite but I have read Casanova's Chinese Restaurant more times than any other.

[mal4mac]

Mitchell is a something else. I was astonished by the things he pulled off in Cloud Atlas and frequently moved...

I just read "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" - an astonishing novel, Mitchell might (indeed) be 'the one'.

[Patrick_Bateman]

Has Anthony Burgess permeated this debate yet? Or even William Golding, Roald Dahl, John Le Carre, Ian Fleming?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has proven that detective novels have longevity so why not the espionage writings of le Carre and Fleming?

Roald Dahl is arguably the greatest children's author and Burgess and Golding don't need me to do them justice.


And let's not forget Orwell's most well known novels were both published after the war.

The aforementioned authors are not my predictions for who will still be read in the next century but they seem to have fallen through the net in terms of this discussion. It seems you've inexplicably wasted a lot of time on judging Cormac McCarthy's worth in the literature world.

[JCamilo]

Milan Kundera will disagree with you. But I guess that's the difference between someone who studies the art of the novel deeply and mere readers.

Kundera studies the art of the novel deeply? Apparently, he learnt very little from his study.

[Heteronym]

Kundera studies the art of the novel deeply? Apparently, he learnt very little from his study.

Your posturing doesn't impress anyone.

[JCamilo]

Neither Kundera, who claim that a author thousands years after Ovid is exploring the epistolar level or that Quixote is not explored on depth, which any student of Quixote knows it is false to an extreme, specially considering the clear different between the first and the second part. Or that deep exploration of psychological deepth of character is not something limite to romance and Dostoievisky learnt with Cervantes not Samuel Richardson, an author which influence outside england is minimal.

As kundera, he let clear Richardson is a naive and cannt be compared to Laclos, Goethe, and a few others. He would not disagree much about the merit of Richardson in any list, but really, Kundera is not a considerable critic. His authority is not considerable, so using him as shield, wont get much points.

[Heteronym]

Well, using him as a shield at least got you riled up enough to write more than one sentence of criticism.

[JCamilo]

Really? So, yet again, Kundera goes down the drain...

[Heteronym]

Neither Kundera, who claim that a author thousands years after Ovid is exploring the epistolar level or that Quixote is not explored on depth, which any student of Quixote knows it is false to an extreme, specially considering the clear different between the first and the second part. Or that deep exploration of psychological deepth of character is not something limite to romance and Dostoievisky learnt with Cervantes not Samuel Richardson, an author which influence outside england is minimal.

An epistolary poem is not an epistolary novel, and Ovid didn't give the final contribution to the possibilities of the epistolary novel. Your post is beholden to the grander of the classics. Yours is the typical view that because someone did something many centuries ago, someone else centuries later can't improve upon it.

As for Don Quixote's depth, that wasn't Kundera writing, that was me, and I certainly didn't write that Don Quixote lacked depth. What I wrote was that Cervantes only described things externally. Don Quixote is only seen from the outside, through his action and dialogue. The epistolary novel, by the use of the first person narrator, allows for a character to talk about himself, to reveal nuances that merely physical description can't reveal. Cervantes didn't explore all the possibilities of the novel; if he had, there'd be no room for innovation.

I would also disagree that Kundera isn't a considerable critic. He's certainly better read than either of us; thinking about the history of the novel is his reason for being, he's not a mere reader but someone for whom these questions are his life.

[JCamilo]

An epistolary poem is not an epistolary novel, and Ovid didn't give the final contribution to the possibilities of the epistolary novel. Your post is beholden to the grander of the classics. Yours is the typical view that because someone did something many centuries ago, someone else centuries later can't improve upon it.

As for Don Quixote's depth, that wasn't Kundera writing, that was me, and I certainly didn't write that Don Quixote lacked depth. What I wrote was that Cervantes only described things externally. Don Quixote is only seen from the outside, through his action and dialogue. The epistolary novel, by the use of the first person narrator, allows for a character to talk about himself, to reveal nuances that merely physical description can't reveal. Cervantes didn't explore all the possibilities of the novel; if he had, there'd be no room for innovation.

I would also disagree that Kundera isn't a considerable critic. He's certainly better read than either of us; thinking about the history of the novel is his reason for being, he's not a mere reader but someone for whom these questions are his life.

A Novel can be in verses, and it is irrelevant, the form does not make the exploration of psychological deepth of anything first than anything else.

Just a comment: Richardson could not be the one first to do something, if it was done before. It does not imply who will do after or there is anything else to do. It imply it is not the first. There is no claim from Kundera about the quality of Richardson and I really dont comment anything about it reggarding Kundera: yet, if we are considering the merits of english novelists, the place of Richardson in the story is not exactly a top place. Mentioning him even near Sterne or Fielding is not really a great deal.

Kundera do mean that with Quixote's contemporaries learnt about adventures, and Richardson was the one which discovered the psychological posibilities of novels, whic his a kidergarden reduction of Quixote and an exageration of Richardson (which is only because Kundera wrote after him), because Cervantes is the model of modern novels and characters, not Pamela, Clarice, Annabella, or watever.

Of course Cervantes didnt explore all elements of the novel. Nobody did. However, Cervantes didnt need to learn with anyone the capacity of to explore the psychology of characters and epistolary literarature was not such novelty, which would made the importance of Richardson less important... and even so, the inventor of the sonnet is not Petrarca.

Why is Kundera better read than any of us? Because he publish books? His book Art of Novel seems to be a rather limited reading experience, basead on a bias to justify himself and his works. No, by saying that Cervantes contemportaries teached us about adventures, he is either writting very poorly or reading even poorly. Cervantes is not about it, there was centuries of adventures already before Cervantes. And who are those contemporary? Shakespeare??? Yes, an age dedicated to plot...

[Heteronym]

When you have discoursed about Broch, Mussil, Proust, Gombrowicz, Kafka, Beckett, Malaparte, France, Fuentes, Paz, Sartre, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Joyce, Rushdie, Rabelais, Fielding, Sterne, Césaire, Mann, Dostoevsky, García Márquez, Céline, Roth, Goytisolo, Depestre, Diderot and Aragon in these boards, with new insight into their work, I may believe you're better read than Kundera. Until then, I suggest your curb your anti-intellectualism. Although I enjoy your posts from time to time, your thoughts on literature mean nothing outside this forum. And even if Kundera only writes crap about literature, which I don't think he does, it's crap that is establishing a dialogue with millions of people reading him across the world. Who are you establishing a dialogue with? A bunch of anonymous people on a forum. Not exactly setting the world on fire, are you?

So show some respect and be more humble.

[Heteronym]

Oh, and no, novels can't be told in verse. Verse belongs to poetry. The novel belongs to prose. Prose comes from the Latin prosa, or everyday speech. Poetry may be fine for the Gods and heroes of Homer, but to have everday characters speak in verse would be as silly as teaching English to a doormat.