“The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don’t know — Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel — the quality of philosophy.”

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.

Review of One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/tick, 2018
2010s

Collected PDFs (2013)

Fully Booked: Q & A with John Banville (2012)

Source: Cold Comfort Farm

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Autobiographical Notes (1952)
Context: I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.