How to read a novel.

by Caroline Gordon

How to Read a Novel [paperback] Caroline Gordon [Jan 01, 1966]

Genres: Nonfiction, Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Caroline Gordon was an American novelist and literary critic who, while still in her thirties, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1932 and an O. Henry Award in 1934.

Reviews

[Drew Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should have worn a dunce cap while reading this one. This is the type of book that makes you feel incompetent, but in a positive way. Caroline Gordon tells how an mature reader and a skilled writer should approach the novel. She shows you the broad vistas awaiting those who learn the art of fiction, but she doesn't necessarily explain how to get there.

Gordon was intent on stooping to the "general reader," to assist the uneducated in the skill of reading a novel. But she didn't stoop quite far enough. The book still feels like it is written for someone with a PhD in literature. That said, it was still powerful to see how much someone who knows the "craft of fiction" can pick up when they read a novel. It's like a Homeric scholar reading the Odyssey, with the proper meter and pronunciation, versus the student who is trying to pick up the language for the first time. The scholar is able to enjoy the poem at a level that the neophyte can only dream of. I can only hope that one day I'll have half the comprehension that she displays in this book.

One main point this book makes is that the novel is a form of art. And good art does not to take you out of the world (escapism) but plunges you deeper into the realities of the world we inhabit. But the novel is increasing becoming simply an amusement. Novels are read for entertainment *only* and people come to them expecting to be thrilled and pleased and not tasked with too much strain, which means that most writers write toward condition responses and cheap emotional tugs. This is unfortunate, and there is a real loss in the exchange. Gordon uses the metaphor of a mountaintop picnic: “He [the person seeking amusement, rather than enjoyment, in his reading] is like the person who prefers to picnic at the foot of a mountain and forgo the view he would get from the summit rather than undergo the rigors of the climb to the top. . . If we spend all our time picknicking in the valley we may come to feel that there is nothing worth seeing outside of it, may be tempted to dismiss as vain imaginations the wonders that our more energetic friends tell us they have viewed from the mountaintop and, losing touch with reality, become prisoners of our own imagination."

"A book--a well-composed book--is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way. Yet, in another sense, all true works of fiction have their scenes laid in the same country, and the events take place in the same climate: that country, that climate which we all long for and in our several ways strive to reach--the region where truth is eternal and man immortal and flowers never fade."

[DanO · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book that provides a simple explanation, with good examples, of how to analyze a well-written novel. If more than a few contemporary "authors" spent a few days reading this book before spitting out their trash, we would all suffer less from much of the poorly written detritus that gums up the shelves of bookstores - physical and electronic. Sadly, Gordon's book has been out of print for many decades.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a lot of things, but a treatise on how to read a novel? That it definitely wasn't. It was a very interesting analysis of what makes a good novel, written by surely the most well-read woman in the world (not only had she read all the works of the various authors she discussed, she was also well-versed in their published journals and letters. Even Henry James! It was awe-inspiring, really). There was a lot to contemplate, and admittedly some of it was over my head (the section on André Gide just about did me in), but I was hoping for more information on...how to read a novel. Toward the end, the author makes a distinction between the more shallow pleasure of reading for amusement vs. the deeper pursuit of reading for enjoyment. I would have liked the book better if she had devoted more time to delineating the two.

[E.M. Welsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that makes me want to write novels again. It distinguishes what makes a novel more than entertainment, but art, and why that is valuable. It calls out books that are written for sheer entertainment and positive emotion, and how they may not be bad, but they certainly don't evoke change in the reader the way art should. It'll be too pretentious for some, but for me it reminded me why I don't mind being a literary snob, and gave me the ammunition I've long missed to defend this.

[NDH · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting idea; big fail. Kind of presumptuous of her to imagine she could tell someone else “how to read a novel.” It would have been better had she called the book “Some novels I like and why I like them.”
And I think her approach is all wrong. If one is going to address “how to read a novel”, it needs to be in contrast to how to read other genres. How to read a Poem; a Play; a Biography.
Maybe not such an interesting idea after all, but nonetheless a big fail.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

More references to Kierkegaard (1) than expected and calling out Southern Scolds for going infra dig? Kicked my feet like a dang baby. Now to read my first "novel"...

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well-written but off.

Quoting John Senior: "'Ulysses' is a severe symptom of a deadly disease in modern culture," and again,"'Madame Bovary' is not a bore...but boredom is its origin and consequence." Gordon holds both as the pinnacle of novel-writing. I think Senior has it right.