“…a novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it…”

— Randall Jarrell

“An Unread Book”, p. 50
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

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Randall Jarrell 215

poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965

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“When you review an exhibition of paintings you don't compose a painting about it, when you review a film you don't make a film about it and when you review a new CD you don't make a little CD about it. But when you review a prose-narrative then you write a prose-narrative about that prose-narrative and those who write the secondary prose-narrative, let's face it, must have once had dreams of writing the primary prose-narrative. And so there is a kind of hierarchy of envy and all those other things.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

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“Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.”

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“Speech and prose are not the same thing. They have different wave-lengths, for speech moves at the speed of light, where prose moves at the speed of the alphabet, and must be consecutive and grammatical and word-perfect. Prose cannot gesticulate. Speech can sometimes do nothing else.”

James Stephens (1882–1950) Irish writer

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“A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little different and that is what a novel is.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

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“There is something in Poetry beyond Prose-reason; there are Mysteries in it not to be explained, but admired; which render mere Prose-men Infidels to their Divinity.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

London 1759, p. 28 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=h1IJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA28&dq=mysteries
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“One of the pleasures of writing novels is that my characters usually do something. But in real life we often stay locked in a situation that we know is painful or wrong.”

John Twelve Hawks American writer

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“Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Todo o romance é isso, desespero, intento frustrado de que o passado não seja coisa definitivamente perdida. Só não se acabou ainda de averiguar se é o romance que impede o homem de esquecer-se ou se é a impossibilidade do esquecimento que o leva a escrever romances.
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“The grand narrative has lost its credibility, regardless of what mode of unification is uses, regardless of whether it is a speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.37

“There is something in Poetry beyond Prose-reason; there are Mysteries in it not to be explained, but admired.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

Conjectures on Original Composition (1759) p. 28.

“All art is to some extent shaped by what has gone before. But that is an organic process, not a conscious intention. Novels are made out of novels as much as they are out of life.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

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

“…a novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it…”

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