Philip Larkin’s Three Questions

             In a letter to Philip Larkin Barbara Pym expressed her admiration for his opinion (given at a Booker Prize ceremony in 1977) as to what a novel needs to be successful:

           

            Could I read it?

            Did I believe it?

            Did it move me?

           

            Authors aren’t illiterate; they can compose intelligible sentences. The problem is, some choose not to. For them obscurity is considered to be a merit. Clarity? — anybody, even Arnold Bennett for God’s sake, can write with clarity. So we get Gaddis and Pynchon and Wallace and a host of others doing odd things with language (even engaging in typographical tomfoolery). To follow them is a feat, and many young intellectuals on campuses carry, as sign of their advanced state of perceptiveness, copies of novels that are impenetrable to ordinary mortals. (Or is that an outdated sight on campuses today, now that the novel is dead?)

            I have to confess to being mighty impressed with myself when, in my teens, I managed to read The Sound and the Fury. My attitude toward Faulkner has changed. Why bother with a self indulgent author who demands that you plow through his dense convolutions?

            Some authors begin in clarity and later move into obscurity. And it’s notable that this change is almost always accompanied by a lengthiness (another barrier to readability). Barth is one example. The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy are enormous, whereas his early novel, End of the Road , was short and accessible and quite good.

            Obscurity, of course, has the seal of genius stemming from such “masterpieces” as Moby Dick, Remembrance of Things Past and Ulysses. I use quotation marks because I’ve never read those novels. I’ve tried, but didn’t get far. I don’t feel that there’s a lack in me, or that I’ve failed. My days of being impressed with myself are over. I unabashedly read for pleasure, and an author who can’t provide that has failed me. I’ll give a difficult novel a chance, and sometimes I get into the flow and am rewarded. Elias Canetti’s Auto-da-Fe had a quality that caused me to persist. And there are books that give many people problems but were a piece of cake for me (including Kazou Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, which I consider to be his finest work).

            Besides stylistic obscurity, there are other reasons for not reading a book. It may be badly written or boring. It may be — for your taste — too vulgar or violent. And even with good novels you may not be interested in the subject matter. But I think Larkin, in his first question, was aiming at obscurity. Clarity should never be derided, or abandoned. Clarity, sweet clarity! It demands that a writer show his or her cards.

            When you show your cards, what have you got? Believable characters involved in situations that are real? What a good writer needs is a knowledge of human nature. I’ve long thought that the best novels offer studies worthy of inclusion in university psychology classes. A sense of authenticity becomes established — or it doesn’t. And even when characters have the authority of fully-created beings, and then act in opposition to what they are, the work will begin to fail. A writer must hold the line.

            The people on the pages of many novels seem fabricated. The realization sets in when there’s no basis established for emotions and no valid motivation for actions. Characters love and hate, this and that happens, but it all exists only to move the story line to some contrived (rather than naturally evolving) destination. None of it matters.

            Sometimes a novel has its origins in the intimate feelings of its creator. Richard Yates knew the ache of failure, Evan Connell knew Mrs. Bridge, William Trevor knew people who skulk on the dark edges of society. But a writer who feels something strongly must be honest and retain an artistic detachment. All the sincerity in the world cannot a good novel make. 

            Others prefer to move outside themselves. Thomas Berger didn’t need to have any strong personal connection with his Little Big Man, or Edith Wharton with Ethan Frome. In capable hands a general understanding of human nature is enough. Some writers can create a cornucopia of characters and do justice to them all (the people that Katherine Anne Porter crowded aboard her Ship of Fools, or the slices of lives that make up John Dos Passos USA). Even in the case of authors with a purely workman-like approach, the results can be rewarding. W. R. Burnett was a writer of crime fiction, but in his The Asphalt Jungle the formula is deepened because the characters have depth.

            Often there’s no compelling reason to write. When someone must search around in their imagination for what their next (or first) novel will be about, the possibility of failure grows. Authors with a long list of novels, some of which are excellent, have lackluster works and outright clunkers in the mix. John Updike was capable of writing Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest, but he could also produce something as dismally empty and false as S.

            Authors who are unable to find anything of interest in the world around them (and why is this?) reach to exotic locales, or the distant past, or the future, or go for bizarreness (such as monsters and monstrous events). It has become a trend, but the results are most often paltry. To move into alternate worlds one must fully conceive their reality. Richard Adams brought to life a place called Watership Down; John Fowles understood the distorted logic of his collector; Robert Graves spoke through the voice of Claudius to tell us of the intrigues of ancient Rome; Karel Capek let his newts loose to do battle with humans.

            Did I believe it? Of Larkin’s three questions, it’s the key one. I’ve given a wide range of examples in which believability was established, and in not one case cited was it arrived at easily. To write something excellent requires a gift that’s not granted to many.

            Does one know when they’re gifted? I believe that those who have that quality do know; but I also think that those who don’t have it think they do. And if they have the proper credentials they’re encouraged in this misconception by agents and editors and publishers. So we have a proliferation of the false and the phony appearing on the shelves. That they come replete with ecstatic blurbs from reviewers and fellow authors adds insult to injury.

            What does it mean to be moved by a novel? Must one shed tears, or whoop with laughter, or become elated? I think Larkin was referring to something much less dramatic — simply to a feeling of emotional involvement in the plight of the characters. A level of caring must exist; sometimes the level is high, sometimes moderate. Of course, when the level is high the novel has more power, and thus it’s a more important work. Some novels simply interested me; but being interested is a form of caring. As is the feeling of being impressed by the expertise or scope of an accomplishment. When one is not moved to any degree — and this can happen even with novels that are readable and believable — the result is a ho-hum feeling. Why read on, if that’s all there is?

            Three simple questions. And who won the Booker Prize in 1977, when Larkin proposed them? Paul Scott did, for Staying On. Barbara Pym’s Quartet in Autumn was a runner-up. In the case of both these novels, the answer to Larkin’s three questions was a resounding “Yes.” But that was once upon a time (as fairy tales begin).