Did I say in my review of Kate Jennings‘ Trouble that she’s not backward in coming forward? If not, I do now and will cite as an example her essay “Gutless fiction” which was first published in The Australian Financial Review in 2005. The article was inspired by her becoming aware of “prejudices against so-called business fiction”.
Business fiction? Have you ever heard of – or thought about – business fiction? Must say that it’s not something I’ve thought enough about to have a prejudice against. Apparently neither had she until she wrote Moral hazard, her novel drawing from her experiences on Wall Street. So, she did some research and among the writers she read were Anthony Trollope, Theodore Dreiser, Zola, H.G.Wells, William Dean Howells, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, Louis Auchincloss and Christina Stead. Hmmm…maybe I do have a subconscious prejudice against business fiction because, with a couple of notable exceptions, these are not writers I’ve read or read much of. I have not read, for example, Christina Stead’s House of all nations which, she says, is one of the best novels ever written about banking.
As I was reading her article, the novel that popped immediately into my head was Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the vanities. Sure enough she mentions this one a little way into the essay. She says that her research suggested that “as the century [20th I presume] progressed, fiction where business or businesspeople were either subjects or drove the plot was all but abandoned by serious novelists” but she does recognise that there have been satires “that fall under the business novel rubric”. Other modern satires she mentiond, besides Wolfe’s, include Money by Martin Amis, England England by Julian Barnes, and Nice work by David Lodge. Oh-oh … I’ve read these three authors but not these particular books! Am I one of the prejudiced ones (without knowing it?)
Satires are all very well, she says, but her concern is that “sober [my stress] fictional treatments of business are scarcer than conservatives who are pro-regulation”! “How,” she asks, “did we go from Trollope, Dreiser, Lewis and Zola to Sebold, Eggers, Foer and Cunningham, from full-blooded questioning fiction to a tottery, homogenised, gutless, ingrown ‘produce’? Not to put too fine a point on it.” Tell us what you feel Kate!
She believes, quite rightly I’m sure, that there are fashions in fiction and that this particular issue can be partly explained through the long-running argument between HG Wells and Henry James over what was “the proper stuff” of fiction. Wells, she says, was about the “larger world” whereas James argued for “feeling and characterisation”. One, I suppose, you could describe as more exterior, and the other interior. James won she says, and so our fiction turned to “dysfunctional families, psychological malaise, affairs of the heart, eccentricities, freaks”. As a result, the exterior – or the “scene” as she calls it – which still interests us has become the province of non-fiction, of memoir in particular. But, she says, as good as some of these works are, these books
are no substitute for unflinching works of fiction that engage our public and private selves, our intellect and emotions. More able to inhabit the skins of its characters, fiction can capture the ambiguity and caprice inherent in human behaviour and then give it context and causality in ways that nonfiction rarely can.
She gives some reasons why she thinks fiction has lost its punch – writing schools, an over reliance on irony, and marketing – but I won’t go into those here. I’ll just leave you to think about whether you agree with her. Is contemporary fiction gutless? Is it all “too self-aware, too self-conscious, too knowing. Too clever“? While I can see her point, I don’t totally agree, and wonder if she has looked too narrowly. Sebold and Cunningham, for example, would not be among the first authors off my tongue as my pick of contemporary “literary” fiction. What about you?
Whispering Gums 
I would put W G Sebald up there with the best of literary writers, if you are referring to him, but perhaps you are referring to Alice Sebold who I must admit I haven’t read, so can’t comment on whether or not she fits the category, but she does strike me as more a writer of popular fiction than literary fiction. Is it Michael Cunningham she’s referring to? I’ve not read him either or Eggers or Foer.
I believe she was referring to Alice Sebold and Michael Cunningham. I agree with you re Sebald though have only read one of his books so far. I haven’t read Eggers but I did rather like the Foer I read – though it is one of those “clever” self-conscious postmodern works, and it sounds as though she doesn’t those.
This is the kind of debate I’m too terrified to engage in for fear I’ll be uncovered as a literary incompetent with no taste or good judgement! That said, I do think there is good literary fiction out there today, just as there was bad literary fiction in the past. (No one shall ever convince me to enjoy Henry Rider Haggard, for example, no matter how “good” he is said to be…)
Still, got to give her points for coming out swinging!
Yes, I reckon too … essayists like this give us something to get out teeth into at least. I haven’t yet read Haggard so will not take you up on that one.
I think there may be gutless fiction and there may be fiction about capitalism, but I’m not sure you can lump the two together. Two novels spring to mind – Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came To The End and Iain Pear’s Stone’s Fall, both of which treat business in a literary fashion, although the former certainly belongs more to the school of satire. But that may be because business (as it is currently being accomplished) deserves satire, and calls out for it, in a way that it doesn’t deserve ‘serious’ treatment – if of course you don’t think that satire isn’t actually very serious at base. Iain Pear’s novel is very serious about business and banking, but it has to locate its action over the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century to do so. I think its possible that contemporary novels understand capitalism as a distraction from their real concerns with meaning, significance, truth and justice, and I’m not sure that should be understood as being ‘gutless’.
But still, there’s no reason not to have a debate about these things, and fierce articles are good at encouraging all kinds of perspectives and points of view.
Absolutely litlove – this is particularly what I enjoyed about Jennings, she has so many opinions that you want to think about and discuss. I’m glad you said that about satire because I think it is serious – I thought Bonfire of the vanities was very serious. Interesting point you make about contemporary novels and capitalism. I guess she’s saying you can “use” stories about capitalism to get to these concerns and that people aren’t doing this anymore. Her main concern though is, I think, that when people DO write about business/capitalism, it is not seen as valid in the way it once was. Makes me more keen than ever to read her Moral hazard and see how she approached the issue.
Business fiction? I can’t say that I have ever heard of such a category so I think I can be excused from prejudice 😉 It is interesting that she accuses writing programs as one of the causes of gutless fiction. I’ve come across numerous critics in the past couple of years who claim something similar. I just read an article recently that tries to argue that writing programs have not been bad for fiction. I don’t know if I agree or not. I think there is definitely a worksop style that I notice more in poetry and short stories and these do tend to be rather bland. But I am not certain about the larger novel scale.
Thanks Stefanie. Must admit I’ve heard a lot of negatives about writing school fiction too – and very occasionally positives. I heard a panel discussion recently in which only one of the three panelists saw some validity in writing schools saying that many composers study composition, many artists go to art school, so why not writers. Must admit I don’t know how many contemporary composers and artists have studied versus those who haven’t.
Part of the fun in talking about books is that we can categorise them is several ways. I would classify the American writers Sinclair Lewis, Dreiser, Upton Sinclair etc as exposers of social injustice. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle exposed the horrendous conditions of the meat packing industry. Sinclair Lewis’s novel Oil! isn’t so much about the inner-workings of the oil biz as much as how it impacts the lives of those who work in it (esp, the son of the oil mogul). Many of these novels are (sadly) no longer read.
I’m a Trollope fan. And you know how I feel about Zola.
Thanks Guy … I haven’t read some of those American writers yet but certainly she made me think of social injustice writers like Dickens and, to a different degree, Elizabeth Gaskell too. I’m keen to read Main Street. Would you recommend it? I love Trollope too and must read more.
I agree there’s a lot of gutless stuff out there. Hard to avoid it when the marketing is so relentless, but there’s good stuff out there too. As for whether there’s more or less rotten stuff these days, it’s hard to say without being some sort of historian. How many new titles are published each year compared to 100 or 200 years ago? What % is trash?
I’m glad you raised this Guy because it’s a point I was going to make. We readers of contemporary fiction are at the beginning of that sifting out that will result in some moving on to last through the decades whereas when we read fiction of the past we are reading, for better or worse, what’s lasted all that sifting. Unfortunately I guess we won’t be around to see who will be next century’s Dickens’s, Trollopes etc. Wouldn’t you love to know though?
I wonder if she would include Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End in business fiction (almost entirely set in an office) or gutless fiction? I suspect she might regard it as too self-aware. I loved it, but it is extremely smooth and well-shaped. I admire craftsmanship, but some people argue that authenticity rests only in a kind of rough spontaneity, which may be what Jennings is aiming at with her ‘too knowing, too clever’ criticisms. I distrust the word ‘gutless’ too – like ‘loser’, it seems a bit of a compassionless, bullying word to me.
I also wonder if ‘feeling and characterisation’ had to become fiction’s main realm because the larger world is now so vividly depicted by the moving image?
Thanks zmkc, I haven’t read Ferris but I do admit to liking many “crafted” novels. I can enjoy a bit of cleverness, if it’s well done – and rather liked Foer’s Extremely loud and incredibly close. I can’t help thinking she’s been a little too selective in her examples to argue her point of view. DH Lawrence was born the same year as Sinclair Lewis and surely he was about “feeling and characterisation”. Is it all that was then, this is now, do you think?
I imagine Jennings may not be Proust’s biggest fan.
LOL, probably not!
I loved Ferris’ Then We Came to the End, but I agree that it might not be considered to have too much gut. One correction to Guy’s comment above, Upton Sinclair wrote both The Jungle and Oil!. Sinclair Lewis’ brilliant business novels would include Babbitt and Dodsworth with Arrowsmith (about the business of medicine) and Elmer Gantry (about the business of evangelism) even more brilliant. I think there is much “gut” if you will when it comes issues other than business (race, the environment, religion, abuse, etc.) I think Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Dreiser and Trollope, to name those I am most familiar with, were very self-aware and self-conscious. They set out to write muck-raking pot boilers that would get people stirred up. As Guy alludes to above, The Jungle actually prompted changes in US policy on meat packing and helped reform the whole industry. Maybe I misunderstand the use of self-aware and too knowing. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Thanks Thomas for all this … I think Jennings was referring to the self-aware/self-conscious way post-modern writers write ie they are self-conscious about the actual writing process, about the concept of fiction, rather than in terms of being sure and planned about what they are doing. I have to say I rather like it, but not to the exclusion of the more “traditional” narrative style that I suspect Sinclair and Lewis use.
Well, this most certainly isn’t my area of expertise, but I think it is rather precious for post-modern writers and their critical observers to think that their awareness of the writing process and the concept of fiction is somehow so different from what came before them. Maybe because they sit around and talk about it endlessly with their peers rather than getting down to it? Granted, I doubt that Trollope, with the thousands of words he wrote every day before going off to his real job, thought much about the writing process other than to say “Okay Anthony time to write 2,500 words.”
Even though I find it fascinating, I don’t think I will go out of my way to actually educate myself on this topic. That would take time away from reading fiction. It would be fun, however, to have a conversation with knowledgable folks about it in real time. I guess a virtual life can only take one so far.
Thanks for starting the discussion.
…and I have only read Trollopes ecclesiastical fiction but it definitely focuses on the business of church that is for sure. And Main Street is brilliant but not one of his business novels.
One more thought on business novels. I think we all have become too comfortable with the status quo–or for those still struggling, with the idea of breaking into the comfortable status quo–to get mad about anything related to big bad business. Part of the reason, at least here in the US is that big business absolutely owns government these days in a way the general public is willing to overlook. The middle class has been getting the shaft for the past 30 years under liberal and conservative governments alike. And companies have become soooo expert at hoodwinking the unquestioning public. Here in the US at least British Petroleum spent the past decade rebranding themselves simply “BP” with a green logo that evokes nature and tons of advertising that made it seem like petroleum was a side business and they spent all their time and money developing alternative energy sources. Until of course the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico reminded the world that they are just a giant oil company that did everything they could to cut corners and get out from under regulation.
Many of us were sick to our stomachs seeing the devastation in the Gulf, but now that the well is capped how many of us have forgotten the horror already? And publishers in both news and book publishing are more a part of these corporate webs than ever before. Nobody wants to rock the boat.
Great comments too Thomas (and thanks for the correction re Main Street – I guess I just assumed from the title that it might be a “business” one). Your comments about hoodwinking made me think of Ian McEwan’s Solar. It certainly explores some issues about the intersection between government, business and the environment doesn’t it. In some ways it may look back a bit to those older novels?
Oh and as for self-awareness, I think what is somewhat typical of post-modernism (though this doesn’t mean ONLY they do it OR noone else does it) is that they include this self-awareness IN their work. That said, Jane Austen near the end of Northanger Abbey, as I recollect, makes some comment to the effect that you can see the pages running out so know that the resolution is coming soon. If that isn’t self-conscious I don’t know what is! And I love it – particularly because this novel includes her famous defence of the novel.