Issue-driven novels

Some novels (eg thrillers and whodunnits) are driven by their plot. Some novels (eg many literary novels) are driven by their characters. Some novels are prose-driven: written because the author is trying to do something with prose, such as stream of consciousness novels. Some novels are issue-driven: the author has a point they want to make.

The best books are probably that have an appropriate measure of all four of these drivers although one could certainly say that some novels are excellent because they are incredibly well executed in terms of what the author is trying to do. For example, Ulysses by James Joyce is superbly prose-driven (many chapters are virtuoso displays of the author's expertise in, for example, writing mediaeval prose) and the three principal characters are wonderfully portrayed but the plot is negligible (middle-aged man wanders round Dublin all day). Moby-Dick tells you all you would ever want to know (and then more) about whales which more than makes up for the inconsistent narration.

Another example might be The Brothers Karamazov by Doestoevsky. It has a plot: it’s fundamentally a murder mystery, although the suspect cast is very limited and the main question is whether Dmitri, if he is innocent as he claims, was framed. He also has some fascinating characters. But the main purpose of the book is to explore the nature of God and this drives the construction of the cast list and much of the subplotting (one could even argue that the central murder, of the father of the three and a half brothers, is symbolic of the death of God in an increasingly secular society). The Brothers Karamazov is a classic of Russian literature and I don’t intend to defy a legion of literary connoisseurs by suggesting it’s a bad book. Issue-driven novels can be brilliant. But there are times when Doestoevsky indulges in page after page of theological debate. At these times, the book becomes less than brilliant. The balance between plot, character, prose and issue has become weighted too far in favour of issue and the delicate equilibrium that gives the novel life begins to tip.

Alexandra Lewis, Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle (Australia), talking in 2021 on a BBC Radio 4UK programme 'In Our Time' about Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall has this to say about what she calls 'fiction with a purpose': “It is fiction with a purpose, it is designed to instruct ... but such are Anne Bronte’s literary talents that she avoids the trap of writing from ideas ... she’s writing deeply from character and time and tension and desire which is all the stuff of successful fiction.” 

I think this is along the lines of what I am trying to say. It is when fiction that is "designed to instruct" tips over into becoming overtly didactic that I start to enjoy it less. As with all fiction, the trick is to make your puppets move but not let the reader see the strings. 

In a Gresham College lecture delivered in October 2008, the Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth stated that, although all literature embodies values in its perspective on life, nevertheless “most of us can recognize propaganda when we come across it ... Characters in a work of propaganda seem to have no real life of their own. They are cardboard cutouts to convey a message. The work is schematized in order to reach a desired conclusion, never allowing it to take off with a life of its own.”

I think that we are talking about 'aesthetic distance'. The aesthetic movement believed in 'art for art's sake', that a work of art should be judged as a work of art. To believe that, for example, a 'feel-good' novel is aesthetically good is fallacious (something dubbed the 'affective fallacy'. Aesthetic distance means that a reader (and a critic) should try to judge the work objectively, rather than being swayed by subjective feelings. But equally it is incumbent upon the writer to write so that the 'author's message' isn't intrusive.

Some of the issue-driven novels on my blog:

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. This book can't seem to see an issue without writing about it.

• Progress versus traditionalism, in particular the clash between Cora’s science and Will’s religion but also the clash between Luke’s pioneering surgery and the traditionalists
• Feminism: Martha and Cora are independently-minded ‘liberated’ females; Stella is a wife; Cora roams the countryside, Stella stays at home (though she rather rules her household).
• Domestic abuse: Cora’s husband, dead at the start of the book
• Autism/ Asperger’s syndrome: Francis
• Social conditions: Martha’s drive to improve housing for the poor