Struggling to Read a Novel

On the rare occasions when I tackle what is called a literary novel, it usually goes something like this:

I admire the author's voice, the quality that makes him or her unique. In a good literary novel, that voice is present on every page. But after a few minutes of admiring the voice, my interest wanes.

So I read more, this time enjoying the complexity of the characters. In real life, characters are complicated and contradictory and hard to fathom, and the literary novelist, always seeking truth, is often able to capture these things. But after a while, my interest in them wanes.

So I read the literary novel to look for the truths about our social order buried in it. Truths and insights are what separate literary fiction from popular fiction, so I pay attention, wanting to understand the author's philosophy, approach to living, beliefs, and humor. But after a while this pales, and I turn to something else, usually the elegance of language employed by the author, the adroit phrase, the simile, the metaphor, the delicious play on words. But after a while, these pale on me.

In fact the darned literary novel is dead in the water because nothing much happens. What was missing all along was story. In literary fiction, story is a crime. We don't want to see page-turning tension or drama in a literary novel. We want insights and lofty understandings.

So I turn to popular fiction, where story is paramount, and we want tension, page-turning drama, and an eagerness to see what disaster will strike next. But the characters are so thin it is hard to believe they are real, and the drama is so pervasive that there is no meaning. Life is unexamined. I grow bored. The story is there, in spades, but Scotch taped together, so I give up on popular fiction too, and turn to other things.

Mostly now I read nonfiction, biography and history. Those do capture my attention and admiration.