Pretty much ‘done in’ I’d say – all this talk about the future of the novel. Why not leave such worries to the big daddies like Naipaul to proclaim whether it's dead, or will die, stagnate or just simply live on. The instinct to tell stories is pre-mordial, it’s never going to die as long as we live so the future of the novel is where it was, like the past of the novel. We’ve heard folks cluck and talk gravely of the ‘rise of non-fiction’. But in a world of lateral co-existences, different genres do different things, serve different needs, have different goals and provoke different reactions. The spin-off spins off another spin-off, like chips of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope.
So what will the novel be in the future? Sci-fi, detective, reality fiction, adventure yarns, fantasy? The sub-genres will remain like they have in the past. Only that the novel will fine tune itself, in order to escape being dated. It will belt up to run with the world, for change is the order of the day. Even if the publishing trend is tilted towards non-fiction today, “a good story will find its way in the world. Someone said, all good fiction is like gossip, as long as people enjoy that fiction will survive. I look forward to reading great stories, rooted in places and cultures that are still a mystery to me,” said Advaita Kala, author of Almost Single.
Periods of great change have always been periods of great literature and we are seeing it already in an increase in Indians writing in English about the Indian /urban /middle class experience. “People are a lot more willing to read stories that have aspirations invested in their own personal experiences and trials,” she said.
Anshumani Ruddra, writing his debut fantasy fiction, feels, “We’re still trying to break away from the conventional form of the novel. Most of the experimental work in terms of structure has happened in Europe (Calvino, Georges Perec, Baricco) or in Latin America. We’ve just taken our first steps towards the genre fiction,” adding that he looks forward to “what Samit Basu writes next and Amruta Patil’s sequential art work. We live in a time where fantasy is coming closer to reality with every technological advancement. I want more authors like Douglas Adams. People who can make sense of the world we live in and predict the future in crazy ways. An SF writer called Vernor Vinge comes closest to this. His futuristic SF hits very close to home.” What kind of exciting new fiction can we anticipate? “A mixing of genres and mediums is what I am looking forward to. Story telling with real sound, a splash of performance, the internet, flash fiction, music, etc. Especially with improvements in technology this inter-mixing is possible. On http://wetellstories.co.uk/ you will find some samples here of online interactive story telling. I personally want to work on interactive story telling in the future,” said Anshumani.
Life moves sideways in this age of networked everything. We are spending our days processing electronic signals. When Peter James’ book, Host, was released in 1998 in two floppies, people were horrified and said this is the end of the novel. Over seven per cent of the books sold in UK are audio books. Americans are spending more than 1.5 billion on audio books. In India, it’s a fist-full of buyers and we are still mulling over it. Will we ever get used to scrolling pages instead of turning them? Won’t the simplicity of a printed novel overrule all these new fangled techy stuff, because anything electronic needs being computer savvy, before you get to page one!
What is scary is the familiar ease with which today’s kids access the world of learning through computer keyboards. One wonders whether in another fifty years, will the smell of silicon fire their emotional nuerons?
Says Advaita, “I identify with the younger generation and have never been daunted by the size of a novel. If the story holds, I will read it. The younger generation is experimental in their literary choices. The tyranny of taste doesn’t hold true for them as much.”
Although the future is electronic but for the novel, “E-readers and e-books still have a long way to go. Sony has come up with some good products. So has Amazon (Kindle).
Reading complete books online hurts the eyes. A lot of writers are putting up their work for free online, some even under a creative commons license. Neil Gaiman’s publishers recently put his bestselling American Gods online for free for a few weeks. It actually increased his book sales.Vernor Vinge put up his award winning Rainbows End as a free download. But readers still need the feel of paper between their fingers. So the physical form of the book can survive along with its electronic form.”
The ways in which we can read are going to increase. This hopefully will lead to more people reading and should be good for writers. With more demand for the written word more boundaries will be broken. The traditional form I think will survive this. Perhaps even grow stronger. E-novels might unlock a large reading population.”
Attention span
Given the shorter attention spans of the young generation, the jumbo sized novel still has a future, Anshumani feels, “With writers like Dave Eggers (Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) around the jumbo sized novel will never die. In fact there is a push from certain quarters towards maximalist fiction. On the other hand minimalist fiction is also on the rise. Thanks to the internet a lot of people are working on short shorts, or 55 word stories. This for example http://55-words.blogspot.com/ has two stories by me. It started as a meme, but there are some good examples of flash fiction in there.”
Interestingly, I received a wise observation, ‘the future is tele-fiction’. The ‘wise one’ went back to the time when fiction (Dickens and his contemporaries) was serialised in magazines. Fielding’s novels excited mass reactions (Tom Jones). With Henry James, James Joyce, it became more intellectual, the audiences thinned out. Tracing the ups and downs only helps to fall into patterns of following the novel’s ‘living status’. “The novel is elitist, so tele-fiction is the new novel,” added this wise one.
“We insist on doing the ostrich act, but the novel is going the multi-media way.” So is Ekta Kapoor the new George Eliot (aargh!)? Is technology writing the new novel? “The parallels between the spread of tele-fiction and the novel do exist, “we are seeing that happen in the blogosphere, where good writers are being approached to convert their blogs into novels,” said Advaita. Is the world of fiction becoming a pie where a whole lot of fingers can fit in?
