
“Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?”
Source: Life is Elsewhere
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?”
Source: Life is Elsewhere
Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 25: 'The Glow-Worm'
“The great modern novel of the comic-pathetic illusion of freedom is Confessions of Zeno.”
James Wood in London Review of Books, January 3, 2002. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n01/wood02_.html.
Criticism
“The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness.”
Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 1"<!-- p. 59 -->
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves, reflecting the world, that they reach out desperately, not knowing they do it, for information about other groups inside their own country, let alone about groups in other countries. It is a blind grasping out for their own wholeness, and the novel-report is a means toward it.
“A confession has to be part of your new life.”
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 18e
“History is a novel whose author is the people.”
L'histoire est un roman dont le peuple est l'auteur.
"Réflexions sur la vérité dans l'art", p. 6; translation from James H. Johnson Listening in Paris (1995) p. 252.
Cinq-Mars; ou, une conjuration sous Louis XIII (1826)