Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age

by Timothy Bewes

Everywhere today, we are urged to “connect.” Literary critics celebrate a new “honesty” in contemporary fiction or call for a return to “realism.” Yet such rhetoric is strikingly reminiscent of earlier theorizations. Two of the most famous injunctions of twentieth-century writing―E. M. Forster’s “Only connect . . .” and Fredric Jameson’s “Always historicize!”―helped establish connection as the purpose of the novel and its reconstruction as the task of criticism. But what if connection was not the novel’s modus operandi but the defining aesthetic ideology of our era―and its most monetizable commodity? What kind of thought is left for the novel when all ideas are acceptable as long as they can be fitted to a consumer profile?

This book develops a new theory of the novel for the twenty-first century. In the works of writers such as J. M. Coetzee, Rachel Cusk, James Kelman, W. G. Sebald, and Zadie Smith, Timothy Bewes identifies a mode of thought that he calls “free indirect,” in which the novel’s refusal of prevailing ideologies can be found. It is not situated in a character or a narrator and does not take a subjective or perceptual form. Far from heralding the arrival of a new literary genre, this development represents the rediscovery of a quality that has been largely ignored by thought at the limits of form. Free Indirect contends that this self-awakening of contemporary fiction represents the most promising solution to the problem of thought today.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Theory, Literature

336 pages, Paperback

Published July 26, 2022

Reviews

[John Fitzgerald · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess if you can't say anything nice...

[riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

a completely insane experience reading this!!!! bewes basically dispenses of all the methods literary critics usually use to go about understanding or analysing a text and rebuilds his own critical mechanism from fragments of lukács, deleuze and rancière. moreso, he demonstrates how the underpinning logics of the novel form — the instantiation relation [exemplarity, referentiality] namely — are in some way broken in contemporary literature (somewhere between 20-50 years).
obviously there is great challenge in reading texts through the lens of postfiction — at times bewes points at certain configurations of language and narration as evidence but does little to bridge the analytical gap in the way of close reading — or, at least, whatever exists of close reading after this book. it is a strange and abstract thing to write about! i had a hard time even knowing where to start when i wrote an essay heavily informed by this text.
also really interested in the implications for theory after this book. obviously, this monograph is hypothetical and presents a provisional schema for understanding the trajectory of the novel. i think bewes’s most convincing account of this trend in theory is his commentary on cora diamond’s concept of the “difficulty of reality,” where, instead of speaking in the first person about the experience of said difficulty (as bewes insists would be easy, logical and expected to do) she instead narrativises how she wants to go about presenting her arguments (“i am concerned with…” “what interests me…” “i say that…”). [i often try to avoid first person in my essays for this reason but that’s besides the point.] what is up with the tentative/provisional/tender mode of narration in theory? what does that reflect? is it singular to/only explicable through the ‘postfictional age’?
who knows! but super super interesting stuff and i can’t wait to write more on it next semester. tim bewes has both permanently ruined my english degree and also made it a thousand times better

[Angbeen · Rating 4 out of 5]

very interesting! and very challenging lol. lots of theory i need to read to confirm if i actually understood any of this

[Mik Tampold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book, but somewhat confusingly argued and a bit too long