The quiet contemporary American novel

237 Pages·2017·13.154 MB·English

by  Rachel Sykes

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What does it mean to describe a novel as ‘quiet’? mh
The quiet contemporary American novel defines the e
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term as an aesthetic of narrative that is driven by
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reflective principles. While, at first appearance,
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‘quiet’ seems a contradictory description of any c
literary form, because it risks suggesting that the i
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novelist has nothing to say, this book argues that
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the quiet of the novel is better conceived as a mode

of conversation that occurs at a reduced volume nc
than as the failure to speak. o
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The quiet contemporary American novel makes two
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critical interventions. Firstly, it maps the neglected e
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history of quiet fictions and argues that from l
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Hester Prynne to Clarissa Dalloway, from Bartleby
to William Stoner, quiet characters fill the novel in p
the Western tradition. As a phrase, ‘the quiet novel’ o
also has a long and untraced history, dating back
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150 years. Throughout its long history, many critics
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have used ‘the quiet novel’ as a phrase that
dismisses and derides the work of writers whose r
novels seem disengaged from the ‘noise’ of wider y
Rachel Sykes is Lecturer in Contemporary American and Canadian Writers
society. The quiet contemporary American novel Contemporary American
finally takes up the long referred to idea of quiet Literature at the University of
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fiction to ask what it means for a novel to be quiet Birmingham CAC
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www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
The quiet contemporary
American novel
Contemporary American And Canadian Writers
Series Editors
Nahem Yousaf and Sharon Monteith
Also available
Making home: Orphanhood, kinship, and cultural memory in
contemporary American novels Maria Holmgren Troy, Elizabeth
Kella, Helena Wahlstrom
Thomas Pynchon Simon Malpas and Andrew Taylor
Jonathan Lethem James Peacock
Mark Z Danielewski Edited by Joe Bray and Alison Gibbons
Louise Erdrich David Stirrup
Passing into the present: contemporary American fiction of
racial and gender passing Sinéad Moynihan
Paul Auster Mark Brown
Douglas Coupland Andrew Tate
Philip Roth David Brauner
The quiet
contemporary
American novel
Rachel Sykes
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Rachel Sykes 2018
The right of Rachel Sykes to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 15261 0887 6 hardback
First published 2018
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs
for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and
does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Typeset in 10/12 Scala by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
Contents
Series editors’ foreword vi
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 The quiet novel 14
2 ‘9/11’ and the noise of contemporary fiction 48
3 Quiet in time and narrative 80
4 The quiet novel of cognition 116
5 The novel of ‘(dis)quiet’ 151
Conclusion 190
Bibliography 196
Index 223
Series editors’ foreword
This innovative series reflects the breadth and diversity of writing
over the last thirty years, and provides critical evaluations of estab-
lished, emerging and critically neglected writers – mixing the canoni-
cal with the unexpected. It explores notions of the contemporary and
analyses current and developing modes of representation with a focus
on individual writers and their work. The series seeks to reflect both
the growing body of academic research in the field, and the increas-
ing prevalence of contemporary American and Canadian fiction on
programmes of study in institutions of higher education around the
world. Central to the series is a concern that each book should argue
a stimulating thesis, rather than provide an introductory survey, and
that each contemporary writer will be examined across the trajectory
of their literary production. A variety of critical tools and literary and
interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged to illuminate the ways in
which a particular writer contributes to, and helps readers rethink, the
North American literary and cultural landscape in a global context.
Central to debates about the field of contemporary fiction is its role
in interrogating ideas of national exceptionalism and transnational-
ism. This series matches the multivocality of contemporary writing
with wide-ranging and detailed analysis. Contributors examine the
drama of the nation from the perspectives of writers who are mem-
bers of established and new immigrant groups, writers who consider
themselves on the nation’s margins as well as those who chronicle
middle America. National labels are the subject of vociferous debate
and including American and Canadian writers in the same series
is not to flatten the differences between them but to acknowledge
that literary traditions and tensions are cross-cultural and that North
American writers often explore and expose precisely these tensions.
Series editors’ foreword vii
The series recognises that situating a writer in a cultural context
involves a multiplicity of influences, social and geo-political, artistic
and theoretical, and that contemporary fiction defies easy categori-
sation. For example, it examines writers who invigorate the genres
in which they have made their mark alongside writers whose aes-
thetic goal is to subvert the idea of genre altogether. The challenge of
defining the roles of writers and assessing their reception by reading
communities is central to the aims of the series.
Overall, Contemporary American and Canadian Writers aims to
begin to represent something of the diversity of contemporary writ-
ing and seeks to engage students and scholars in stimulating debates
about the contemporary and about fiction.
Nahem Yousaf
Sharon Monteith
Acknowledgements
This project was made possible by the Arts and Humanities Research
Council who funded my research at the University of Nottingham. I
would like to thank them and everyone at Nottingham’s Arts Graduate
Centre and the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies who
provided invaluable training and support. The ideas in this book were
shaped by the supervision and advice of Graham Thompson, who was
always generous and encouraging, and Sharon Monteith, who has
been my greatest critic and ally and without whom this book might
not have been completed. My thanks, also, to Sarah Churchwell and
Tony Hutchison for their thoughtful comments and to Nahem Yousaf
for his support both of me and this project.
Many wonderful writers and editors have been kind enough to lend
their advice and edits. Michael Wolfe and his colleagues at St. John’s
University published my first piece of academic work on ‘9/11’, and
Paul Harding, Emily St. John Mandel, Laura Stanhill and Andrew
Ladd kindly answered my questions about quiet via email. Abridged
versions of Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 appeared in C21 Literature: jour-
nal of 21st-century writings and Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction
respectively; my thanks go to both editors. Finally, I must individually
name the friends and colleagues who gave their time to long dis-
cussions and copy-edits: Katie McGettigan, Erin Greer, Maggie Deli,
Jessica Lowry, Alice Lilly, Diletta De Cristofaro, Ben Pickford, Daniel
King and Hannah Hawkins. To my family, James and David Link,
Jenny Sykes, Rachel Elizabeth Williams and Rob Davy-Cripwell, and
to Imogen and Heather who provide impetus and inspiration, always.
Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to
nothing is no time at all.
John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952)
A much rarer gift – indeed, a most rare one – is the faculty of writing
a quiet novel, whose interest does not depend upon these highly spiced
and stimulating excitements. To write such a novel without lapsing
into insipidity and tameness is one of the most difficult tests to which
a writer of romance can be subjected, and to write one that will be
successful with the public is a genuine triumph of art.
Henry Mills Alden, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
(November 1884)