Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books, page 9

Forster's Aspects of the Novel

Forster’s Aspects of the Novel is being used in this country by most teachers of creative writing/fiction. While this is a book that has some interesting points, the biggest problem with it, or rather with using it in a class, is that its definition of a good work of fiction only applies to a certain kind of fiction: 19th century realist literature, in particular Anglo-Saxon literature. To define fiction in light of this very limited time and space, by using this one frame as some kind of universal frame, means to think that 19th century American/British literature is universal. It reveals that literature is not thought of as a concept that has changed over time. How can one write literature if one cannot even understand that the way we write is time-and-space specific—not in the sense that we have “different cultural values” (as the cliché would have it) according to the time and space we inhabit, but in the sense that the way we create always follows our understanding of time and space?

Forster’s interpretation of the tale of Scheherazade (in Aspects of the Novel) is the perfect example not only of Anglo-Saxon cause-effect logic but of a cultural appropriation of a tale conceived according to a different structure of thinking. Scheherazade avoided her fate, says Forster, because she has in her power the weapon of suspense; the king spares her life because he wants to find out what happened next. This is one way of looking at things. But one may actually say that the essence of the story of Scheherazade resides not in the “suspense” (i.e., the plot) but in a perpetually postponed climax. A story is here only the beginning to another story, which is itself a part in an endless chain of stories—a Borgesian labyrinthlike view rather than a linear structure underlying the logic of “next.” To think of this story in terms of “suspense” means to imagine a “resolution” of the “plot,” when in fact Scheherazade’s story is anti-climatic. Pleasure comes here from the constant postponement, not from the gradual movement toward an orgasmic ending, as in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. If Scheherazade’s story had been written by an Anglo-Saxon, it would have surely ended with a killing—either of Scheherazade or of the king. It is amazing that Forster can read the following sentence—which he considers the backbone of A Thousand and One Nights—as an example of his theory of suspense and of the universal power of “what’s next:” “At this moment [when the sun rose:] Scheherazade saw the morning appearing and, and discreet, was silent.” For me, this sentence is clearly built on the opposition between night and day; like in old creation myths—Orpheus and Eurydice, to name only one—the power of storytelling is directly linked here to darkness. The sentence tells us quite literally that the light of day kills the story. The power of telling comes from the mysterious dark of the night and not from rational daylight.