The end of the great novel
The ideal of the great novel was an ideal of a monument in
literacy. Despite the technology for writing, such as word
processing machines and the hypertext programs for interactive,
collaborative authoring, writing the great novel is not only
impossible, but irrelevant. Expectations associated with the
great novel are expectations of unity, homogeneity,
universality. Such a novel would address everyone, as the great
novels of the civilization of literacy tended to do. The extreme
segmentation of the world, its heterogeneity, the new rhythms of
change and of human experiences, the continuous decline of the
ideal embodied in literacy, education included, are arguments
against the possibility of such a novel. An all-encompassing
language, which the practical experience of writing such a novel
implies, is simply no longer possible. We live in a civilization
of partial languages, with their corresponding creative,
non-standard writing experiences, in a disembodied domain of
expression, communication, and signification. If, ad absurdum,
various literary works could talk to each other (as their authors
can and do), they would soon conclude that the shared background
is so limited that, beyond the phrases of socializing and some
political statements (more circumstantial than substantial),
little else could be said.
Furthermore, writing itself has changed.
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