Books, Arts & Manners: The Character Issue

The Porcupine, by Julian Barnes (Knopf, 138 pp., $17)

THE so-called “literary novel” is a curious kind of artifact. You might think that all novels were, by definition, “literary,” but the term actually excludes most novels. To read one of these highly revered and much reviewed volumes for the story (which is surely what novels are primarily about) would entail the urgent need of a fast-forward button. For colorful characters then? But very few modern novelists seem even to have entered themselves in the Dickens Stakes. Should we read them, as the Church of England says we should read the Apocrypha, “for example of life and instruction of manners,” or for a social and political message? Perhaps: but there must be more efficient and quicker methods of study. In fact, much “literary” writing appears to be phrase-making for its own sake.

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Anthony Lejeune

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The Porcupine, by Julian Barnes (Knopf, 138 pp., $17)

THE so-called “literary novel” is a curious kind of artifact. You might think that all novels were, by definition, “literary,” but the term actually excludes most novels. To read one of these highly revered and much reviewed volumes for the story (which is surely what novels are primarily about) would entail the urgent need of a fast-forward button. For colorful characters then? But very few modern novelists seem even to have entered themselves in the Dickens Stakes. Should we read them, as the Church of England says we should read the Apocrypha, “for example of life and instruction of manners,” or for a social and political message? Perhaps: but there must be more efficient and quicker methods of study. In fact, much “literary” writing appears to be phrase-making for its own sake.