Nancy Lebovitz asked a very interesting question on her livejournal today. She wondered:
whether there are any good nominees for the Great World Novel, and whether it’s viewed as a worthy artistic ambition.
Obviously, you can’t fit the whole world into a novel (you can’t fit America in, either, and if you’re really paying attention, you’ll realize that you can’t even do full justice to Lichtenstein), but it isn’t crazy to think that a long novel could have a decent range of geography, time, and sub-cultures across the whole planet.
The Great American Novel is a joke everyone has heard at this point. But in case you haven’t, the idea is that the novel would encapsulate the American experience, not just be set in the USA. As Nancy says, hard to do even with somewhere the size of Lichtenstein. As for a Great World Novel—what would it be like? I can think of lots of great novels set in particular places. Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy is a Great Indian Novel and so is Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. S.P. Somtow’s Jasmine Nights is a great Thai novel. But it’s hard to think of anything that has enough of the planet in it to meet Nancy’s requirements.
To answer Nancy’s first question, no, I don’t think this is something people are especially trying to do, or we’d see more possibilities. I think it would be an interesting thing for people to try to do. I can’t think of anything at all that qualifies if you need characters coming from lots of different countries. It’s hard to think what sort of plot you could have. I suppose one of those sprawling plots where people meet somewhere and then meet up again somewhere else much later and things have happened to them? But you’d need to know so much about so many different cultures. A lot of people don’t feel comfortable writing outside their own culture, because no matter how much research you do you’re bound to get things wrong, so that’s going to limit attempts.
If you allow things with protagonists all from one place wandering around the world, I have some thoughts.
The first thing is Jon Evans Dark Places. It’s a thriller, and the protagonist is a Canadian who starts off in Nepal, with a history in Africa, and during the book travels to Europe, North America and other parts of Africa. The sequel Blood Price starts in Bosnia and visits lots of places including South America. If you take both books together they might qualify.
Then there’s Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. These three books are set in the seventeenth century, and while large chunks of them are set in England, characters also visit Africa, Japan, the American Colonies, France, Germany, other parts of Europe, Russia, the Ottoman Empire and I’m sure I’m forgetting somewhere. Their only disqualification would be that they’re historical novels, so they show a lot of the planet, but a long time ago. Also in historical fiction, Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolo books get around most of the discovered planet at the time they were set—Iceland to Timbuktu.
For a more contemporary picture, there’s Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. This has largely American characters, but is set in California, the Phillipines, Australia, England, Shanghai, Princeton and assorted other places. I’d think it qualified. And it’s just as well, because what else is there? Seth’s brilliant Two Lives might qualify, if it were a novel rather than a memoir.
To go back to the translation thread, there may be lots of brilliant things out there that qualify but which I don’t know about because they’re not translated. But most of what I can think of that is translated is trying to be the Great Novel of its own culture, not a Great World Novel.
In SF, there’s Stand on Zanzibar, which has the US, Britain, France, Africa and Indonesia. You’d think SF, which does acknowledge that Earth is a planet, would try harder to set stories there. But I can’t really think of anything that does—again, lots of stories set in one place. Maybe people want to preserve Aristotelean unities?
So, any more suggestions for Great World Novels, in any genre? Remember it ought to be great—and it also has to have a “decent range of geography, time and sub-cultures” which I’m thinking means at least four countries on at least two continents, at least two of them not English-speaking.
Well, it’s called the Great American Novel, not the Great America Novel — i.e. a story that captures the essence of Americans, and one that by necessity doesn’t show off the entire country. Huckleberry Finn would have been a much thicker novel had it followed Huck into the Indian Territory as he declared he was going to do. Then he heads to California? Alaska? Back to the east coast? Thicker and likely not a Great American Novel. If geography is the only consideration, then a James Bond novel qualifies.
So, Great Earthling Novel, perhaps, not Great World Novel? What about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Moby Dick?
I think Neil Stephenson has been busily working on exactly this idea for the past ten years or so at this point.
Yes, I think Moby Dick is a legitimate contender. Carlos Fuentes’s “Terra Nostra”? Roberto Bolano’s “2666”? “War and Peace”? The world novel is perhaps a stronger tradition for Spanish- and German- and Russian-language authors than for English…
How about David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas? It takes in an American in the Pacific in 1850, an Englishman in Belgium in 1931, a journalist in California in 1975, someone in Britain about now, a fabricant in Korea in a dystopian future, and people in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii.
I have read it, though for the purposes of this comment I got those details off Wikipedia. Even so, it is kind of Western-centric – not much Africa, South America, Central Asia etc.
If the Baroque Cycle counts, perhaps also Naomi Novik’s Temeraire books? They take place in England, Continental Europe, China, Africa, and at sea, with bits in Turkey and somewhere else I’m forgetting. Also, the next novel is apparently going to Australia.
I have to agree with Celsius1414 @1: does the “Great World Novel” simply need to be a travelogue that hits as many countries as possible? It makes more sense to me that it addresses the human condition in as wide a way as possible. This is the goal of all literature, isn’t it? The ‘Great American Novel’ is what it is because it supposedly uniquely addresses the concerns of America/Americans and is in that sense rather insular.
The Great World novel should be something that transcends borders…not one that includes as many of them as possible.
Perhaps a better choice than Mitchell is Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt.
Again, I have read it, honest, but cut & pasted the details off Wikipedia. It covers the 600 years after 1405 in alternative-history mode and includes: Christendom, imperial China, Mughal India and the colonisation of empty Europe, discovery of the New World by the Chinese military, the Islamic renaissance in Samarqand, Native Americans aligning with the Samurai, Qing dynasty meets Islam in western China, industrialism in Southern India, Japanese diaspora to North America, a world-wide Long War, fought with ‘modern’ weapons, and science, urban life and feminism in Islamic Europe’s post-war metropolis.
Certainly covers your “decent range of geography, time and sub-cultures” anyway.
Heart of Darkness? Thematically, at least. Also, Graham Greene might have written the Great World Oeuvre.
Friday is sort of a World Novel, but I’m not sure I’d call it Great. (Good, sure.) But of all the nominees to date I think I like Stand on Zanzibar best.
It strikes me that the Great Indian Novels and the Great Thai Novel you mention are written by (at least partial) expatriates. Perhaps the impulse to write a novel which encapsulates a nation or culture is one that arises when one is partially outside that culture, or is in dialogue with outsiders. In that case, the Great World Novel may have to wait until we are in dialogue with people from outside Earth.
Another Andrew: That’s such a cool idea. I really like that. I also like Celsius’s idea that it should be the novel defining what it is to be human — there are more contenders for that. Dying Inside comes to mind right away.