Some Absolutely Original Thing

“How is the English novel faring today? Has it degenerated to the point where the only options are imitation or eccentricity?”

Isle Au Haut Lighthouse, Dell Davis-Batt

Sagar Castleman is a 22-year-old undergraduate studying English at Columbia University.

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In an interview with The New York Times in 2014, the recent Nobel laureate Laszlo Krasznahorkai said that he “wanted always to make some absolutely original thing.” This meant being “free to stray far from my literary ancestors, and not make some new version of Kafka or Dostoyevsky or Faulkner.”

This may seem a somewhat strange and presumptuous thing to say. Would it really have been that bad if Krasznahorkai had ended up as a modern-day Dostoevsky? This seems especially true considering that Krasznahorkai writes in a different language from his three ancestors — to be a Hungarian Kafka seems like something to strive for, not worry about. And the question of how similar or different Krasznahorkai is from those who influenced him may appear somewhat irrelevant; what really matters, many would say, is how good his books are in themselves.

This skepticism towards the pursuit of originality is unsurprising, considering that formal individuality is rarely discussed as a serious criterion for assessing contemporary novels. When we talk about a new book that we’ve just read, we tend to discuss whether the characters were interesting and likeable, whether we found the plot plausible and compelling, and whether we felt moved in any way (for many people “I cried at the end” is the highest imaginable praise for a novel). But to talk about whether a work of fiction is doing something unprecedented on a formal level seems both to be an unreasonably high bar and to require a great deal of knowledge about the history of the novel.

But the truth is that originality has always been a criterion for art and arguably the most important one. It would be hard to find a better example of what Harold Bloom called the anxiety of influence than Krasznahorkai’s worry about not differentiating himself enough from his forebears. But the anxiety of influence can only be felt by writers who want to be original; if you don’t mind sounding just like your contemporaries or predecessors, then there’s nothing to be anxious about.

It is not only most readers who would prefer not to think about literary originality. Most novelists (and this has always been true) would find the task of creating something stylistically different from everything that has come before them to be overwhelmingly daunting — it is hard enough to come up with a structurally sound, well-paced, and thought-provoking novel that is formally familiar. Krasznahorkai’s work makes more sense once we know that originality has always been on his mind. Anyone who has read even a few pages of one of his books will quickly see the dizzying extremes to which he went in his quest for originality — one of his many acclaimed novels, Herscht 07769, contains only a single sentence that runs on for four hundred pages. And they will also see that, whether they like what they are reading or not, there is no other writer like Krasznahorkai: he has achieved his goal of uniqueness. But at what cost?

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Only one book by the relatively obscure Roman historian Velleius Paterculus has survived. Although it is meant to be a history of Rome, at the end of the first volume its writer tells us that there is something unrelated to his subject which “has often occupied my thoughts but has never been clearly reasoned out.” This is the strange fact that “the most distinguished minds in a branch of human achievement” inevitably seem to live “within the same narrow space of time.” Some of Velleius’s examples still resonate today: Isn’t it odd that the three great tragedians of the classical world were all born within fifty years of each other? The same goes for the three major philosophers of the day, the ones who are still studied in universities around the world thousands of years later. This pattern would continue long after Velleius’s time. The two greatest Russian writers are surely Tolstoy (1828-1910) and Dostoevsky (1821-1881), and the country has existed for over a thousand years. England is just as old, and its finest painters are undoubtedly Constable (1776-1837) and Turner (1775-1851). And so on.

This phenomenon might be explained by imagining something “in the air” during these eras of concentrated talent, a kind of intellectual fervor that the geniuses of the time both fed on and helped create. This is the explanation that the Victorian critic Matthew Arnold makes in sweeping terms in his famous essay “The Function of Criticism in the Present Time”: “In the Greece of Pindar and Sophocles, in the England of Shakspeare, the poet lived in a current of ideas in the highest degree animating and nourishing to the creative power; society was, in the fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought, intelligent and alive; and this state of things is the true basis for the creative power’s exercise.” This is a plausible and unsurprising explanation, but it was not Velleius’s. Instead of focusing on the brief periods of creativity themselves, he tried to understand the relatively barren times that followed them. Why had the artists and thinkers of these times been unable to do what those of the previous generation had done? Velleius put forward a breathtaking answer:

That which is cultivated with the highest zeal advances to the highest perfection; but it is difficult to continue at the point of perfection, and naturally that which cannot advance must recede. And as in the beginning we are fired with the ambition to overtake those whom we regard as leaders, so when we have despaired of being able either to surpass or even to equal them, our zeal wanes with our hope; it ceases to follow what it cannot overtake, and abandoning the old field as though preempted, it seeks a new one.

Here, in the words of an obscure Roman historian, we have a beautiful description of what would later be called the anxiety of influence. Although Velleius does not tie genius to originality (it was not until the Enlightenment that this would happen), there is an implicit admission that the greatest art cannot only be imitation: if it could, then there would be no reason why perfection could not simply be copied. Instead, Velleius says that when an art has attained perfection, there is nowhere to go but down; when we realize the extent of what has already been created, we lose hope and quit. It is an astonishingly modern idea.

In The Oxford History of the Classical World, Richard Jenkyns notes that this passage is particularly surprising considering that Velleius himself “wrote second-rate history” and “was no genius.” But perhaps this is exactly what enabled him to see this truth. In his catalog of great periods he notes that “in the case of the historians also… a single epoch, comprised within the limits of eighty years, produced them all.” Crippled by the anxiety of influence himself, Velleius perhaps felt that although he could not overcome it, he could at least give the first real description of it. And in doing so, he was truly original.

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It was in the 1750s that three different thinkers began, either consciously or not, to expand on Velleius’s idea. In Scotland, David Hume had read and been inspired by Velleius, and several of the essays in his 1758 collection concerned the arts. In “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” he wrote that “when the arts and sciences come to perfection in any state, from that moment they naturally, or rather necessarily decline, and seldom or never revive in that nation, where they formerly flourished.” He went on to describe how a young artist will naturally compare his own work with what has already been created and eventually feel “discouraged.” This is all a sharper and more expansive paraphrase of Velleius. But the essay ended on a more dire note: “In short, the arts and sciences, like some plants, require a fresh soil; and however rich the land may be, and however you may recruit it by art or care, it will never, when once exhausted, produce any thing that is perfect or finished in the kind.” Here Hume seems to be suggesting that there is a finite number of things that can be done in an art form of a particular culture (say, the English novel), and once these things have been done it is all over. After this, it is only natural for young artists to look with dismay at what has already been done and, in Velleius’s phrase, “abandon the field.”

It is notable that Hume was still not writing about originality. In “Rise and Progress” he wrote that “a noble emulation is the source of every excellence.” But in another essay in the same collection, “Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing,” he worried about what might happen when writers and artists tried to differentiate themselves from each other. “The excess of refinement is now more to be guarded against than ever…the endeavour to please by novelty leads men wide of simplicity and nature, and fills their writings with affectation and conceit.” Although he did not see originality as a virtue, Hume was clearly worried about what might happen when artists, perhaps trying to avoid the barrenness that naturally follows perfection, rushed after novelty at the expense of beauty.

Meanwhile in France, Voltaire (probably inadvertently) took a page from Velleius Paterculus when, in the thirty-second chapter of his 1751 history The Century of Louis XIV, he snuck in some thoughts about the future of art. Looking back at the 1600s, he mused that “the great men of the last century taught us to think and to speak; they said what we did not know. Those who have succeeded them can hardly say anything except what we already know. A type of disgust has finally appeared at the multitude of masterpieces.” Like Hume, Voltaire emphasized the finiteness of what can ever be created in a certain art form; he wrote that “we must not believe that the great tragic passions and great feelings can vary themselves infinitely in a new and striking manner. Everything has its limits.” Eventually, everything important “becomes commonplace, [and] we are reduced either to imitate or to go astray…genius has only one century, after which it must degenerate.”

Voltaire’s forecast is just as ominous as Hume’s: eventually, in any art form of any culture, a time will come when there is simply nothing new left to be done. It is not an idea that we are accustomed to think about, but there is a logic to it. How can a single kind of art be original forever? How many ways are there to express universal feelings? To see some evidence of this today, we might read some of the early Romantic poems, like Wordsworth’s in Lyrical Ballads. They are beautiful and moving, but the emotions that they express and the way in which they express them seem a little simple. We cannot help but feel that if someone wrote poems like them now they would feel trite and stale. Of course we have to express these feelings in more complicated ways, but isn’t there a limit to how complicatedly they can be expressed?

Perhaps the most striking part of Voltaire’s assessment is the two options he gives at the end. What he means by “imitate” is fairly clear, but what about “to go astray”? He does not explain himself, but I think the sense is probably similar to what Hume called “the excess of refinement.” The twentieth century critic W.J. Bate, writing about these lines, translated “s’égarer” not as “to go astray,” which is the literal meaning, but as “senseless eccentricity.”¹ This captures the idea well — we are approaching a point where the only remaining options are to imitate other writers or to be eccentric for the sake of being eccentric. When an art form reaches this point, real artistic originality becomes impossible and the form withers away.

The only remaining puzzle piece was the idea of originality itself, which came in a 1759 pamphlet published in London by the poet Edward Young, titled Conjectures on Original Composition. Young began his essay by boldly declaring that all writers were either originals or imitators, and that originals were always better: “All must allow that some compositions are more [original] than others; and the more they are so, I say, the better.” Even an excellent imitator “but nobly builds on another’s foundation; his debt is, at least, equal to his glory; which therefore, on the balance, cannot be very great. On the contrary, an Original, tho’ but indifferent (its Originality being set aside), yet has something to boast.” For Young, the best imitation was not as impressive as even a mediocre original.

Young made two other points. First, he noted that in the long run originality will be rewarded with fame, while imitations cannot be. “We may as well grow good by another’s virtue, or fat by another’s food… The world will pay its debt of praise but once; and instead of applauding, explode a second demand as a cheat.” Second, he explained why it was that, originality being superior to imitation, there were so few original works: “Illustrious examples… intimidate us with the splendor of their renown, and thus under diffidence bury our strength.” But rather than ending with gloom, as Voltaire and Hume did, Young gave contemporary writers a heartening choice: “They may soar in the regions of liberty or move in the soft fetters of easy imitation; and imitation has as many plausible reasons to urge as Pleasure had to offer to Hercules. Hercules made the choice of an hero, and so became immortal.” To write imitatively was easy and enjoyable, but it meant being forgotten. To write originally was very difficult — and according to Voltaire, it was becoming increasingly impossible. But it was also heroic: the truly original writer, like Hercules, would gain immortality.

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Where does this leave us now? In particular, if we accept that there is some truth to what Velleius, Hume, Voltaire, and Young wrote — and I think there is a great deal of truth to it — how is the English novel faring today?² Has it degenerated to the point where the only options are imitation or eccentricity? Is real formal literary originality — the kind that builds meaningfully on what has come before while doing something recognizably different but also necessary — still possible?

Let me paint with very broad and somewhat subjective strokes for a moment. The English novel developed in the eighteenth century (Defoe, Richardson, Sterne); at this point it was still uneven, but steadily finding itself as a form. In the nineteenth century, it found structural perfection and, many would say, reached its formal peak (Austen, Dickens, Eliot). At this point it may have seemed like there was little left to do, until some geniuses (James, Woolf, Joyce) realized that there was still a great deal to achieve in terms of capturing and conveying human interiority. (It is easy to find signs of these writers feeling burdened by the past: consider Virginia Woolf reading Proust and then wondering, “Well — what remains to be written after that?”) Velleius, Hume, and Voltaire all describe every art form having a high point, a concentrated period of around a century where it achieves perfection and after which there must be a decline. I think that for the English novel this was the period that included these last two waves of writers, around 1800-1930. This is not to say that no very good novels were written before or after this time, only that this was when the novel most completely fulfilled the potential of its form.

Luckily, there has always been one more way to be new and interesting in the aftermath of great achievement: irony. This was where the English novel went next (Nabokov, Pynchon, Roth). I don’t think that the work of these novelists is as powerful or beautiful as their predecessors, but they succeeded at creating unique imaginative identities that built on the previous accomplishments of the form. I think it is fair to say that the time of the ironic, funny, clever, twisty, punny novel is over (or at least very nearly over), but what comes next? Is it possible that these novels were the last gasps of a dying art form?

Kraznahorkai appears to defy this assessment by being an example of contemporary originality, someone who has continued to move within the tradition of the novel while doing something distinctive. But I can’t determine this, mostly because — I guess it’s time to fess up — I’ve never actually read any of his books, only a few pages in bookstores. I suppose that I should, and I suppose that at some point I probably will, but somehow the prospect of reading a four-hundred-page sentence has never appealed to me all that much. Maybe this makes me a timid and conservative reader, but maybe there’s also another reason for my reluctance. Perhaps writers like Kraznahorkai were what Hume meant when he warned about “the excess of refinement” that would come from constantly pursuing novelty, or what Voltaire meant by going astray. (It’s a telling little coincidence that Kraznahorkai himself talked about wanting “to stray far from my literary ancestors.”)

Of course I can’t criticize a writer whose books I haven’t read, but it’s certainly possible for the quest for originality to lead to gimmicky eccentricity, even if it’s not the case for Kraznahorkai. Everyone can come up with their own example of a recent book like this, the kind of novel that seems to be trying to be different for the sake of being different. (This phenomenon has become especially common in the visual arts.) There are two ways to explain these strange, experimental books: first, they could really be the next step for the novel, a new way for the form to capture the strange times that we live in. If this is the case, then it is clear we are living through a very late stage of the novel — even if you think that a book like Fuccboi is the next frontier for fiction, can you really say with a straight face that it’s as good as any of the great nineteenth-century novels? Or second, these books aren’t actually original but just bizarre, and the novels of our time are elsewhere.

Another kind of acclaimed contemporary novel does not try to be formally innovative but instead pairs new content with a polished but familiar form. Two novelists doing this are Elena Ferrante and Jhumpa Lahiri. Books like My Brilliant Friend and The Namesake are well-written, enjoyable, filled with compelling characters, and extremely well-crafted. By this I mean that they have many intricate and meaningful threads of plot that lace carefully through the book and eventually come together in a satisfying way. It is hard to write books like this, and they are good novels by any definition, even if there is nothing really new about their form. Coleridge once wrote that part of a Wordsworth poem was so quintessentially Wordsworth that had he “met these lines running wild in the deserts of Arabia, I should have instantly screamed out ‘Wordsworth!’” It is a bizarre comment that also rings true — one of the clearest signs of originality is recognizability. But unfortunately I do not think that there is any paragraph by Lahiri that, encountered in the Arabian desert, would make us scream out “Lahiri!” Perhaps it would make us say something about The New Yorker or MFAs, but probably not Lahiri.

This does not detract from her accomplishment. As the child of an Indian immigrant Lahiri’s books have especially resonated with me, ever since I first read The Interpreter of Maladies in eighth grade. And there has always been art like Lahiri’s and Ferrante’s — enjoyable and technically accomplished, but not formally different from its contemporaries. In the world of the novel, these books sometimes fade away and are forgotten, like those of Arnold Bennett, and other times they are resurrected by presses like New York Review Books and read again by a small and appreciative audience, like those of John Williams. But they are never part of the main line of the novel’s evolution, which depends on originality for its existence.

All this may sound quite pessimistic. But there is one novelist working today who has convinced me that the English novel is not dead or dying, but still has space for original and important writing: Rachel Cusk. Cusk’s books are completely her own — take almost any two sentences and their writer will be recognizable — but this does not seem like it is because she has tried very hard to be different, but rather because this was the only way for her to tell the stories that she was trying to tell. Like many great writers she can be easily parodied, but this is a sign of her extraordinary individuality. We can sense the tradition that Cusk is working in and expanding, but also the newness that she brings to it. She has simultaneously stripped away two of the apparently most important mechanisms of the novel — character and plot — in a beautiful minimalism, while also writing sentences that are filled with insights. And importantly, like all truly great novels, her books are a delight to read: there is no other contemporary English novelist I know of whose books bring the same combination of aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional pleasure — the same combination that exists to a somewhat greater degree in Tolstoy and Henry James and Virginia Woolf.

To show that an art form is still alive and well, all a culture needs is one or two truly original artists. For me, Cusk is that artist for the novel, a heartening sign of the enduring potential for real literary originality. I don’t think that the English novel will last forever, nor that we are living in its golden age, which ended a long time ago. As Hume said, after each art’s perfection there must be a decline from which there is “seldom or never” a revival. But although we are in the second half of the novel’s arc, it is not over yet, and it will be exciting to see how, alongside and after Cusk, the form continues to grow and change in our lifetimes.

And when it does finally die out, as any art of a particular culture must, other arts will appear to take its place. As Velleius said, when an art becomes barren the great thinkers of the time do not just “abandon the field” but also “seek a new one.” At the same time that Voltaire and Hume were mourning the impossibility of artistic originality after the seventeenth century, the novel was just beginning. Who knows what lies beyond it now?

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1. The Burden of the Past and the English Poet (1970). I am indebted to this book and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the ideas in this essay.

2. I realize that I blur the line between the English novel and the Western novel more broadly. I am uncertain which category is more helpful in understanding the contemporary novel — in the past, literature usually developed within the tradition of a single language, while today influences and traditions seem more global. For instance, in the quote at the start of this essay the Hungarian Kraznahorkai suggests that his three biggest influences are German, Russian, and American.