§77 Concerning the Challenge of Prolific Fiction Writing

When the philosopher, literary critic, feminist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva added ‘novelist’ to her list of designations with The Samurai in 1992, she was asked in an interview with Elisabeth Bélorgey how she accounts for a shift from theory to narrative fiction. Kristeva replied:

“While reading Proust’s manuscript notebooks I recently noticed the following question in notebook one, leaf twelve: “Should this be turned into a novel. A philosophical essay?” Knowing how to deal with a topic that preoccupies us is an ever-recurring problem, should we treat it theoretically or fictionally? Is there are choice? Is it legitimate to favor one procedure over the other?” (1993, 77)

She continued, by way of example, that “Sartre’s Being and Nothingness did not prevent Nausea from being written.” Indeed, Sartre, like Kristeva (who has since consolidated on Samurai with four further novels) succeeded in pursuing both forms, however Being and Nothingness was written in 1943, Nausea in 1938. Beyond the ability of the individual to turn their hand to such different forms are questions concerning what is required of that individual to juggle such intellectual tasks.

In an underdeveloped thought, Isaac Asimov might provide a kernel of an answer to this question. Despite writing for mass market appeal, Asimov chose ‘hard science fiction’ as the basis of his narrative fiction. The required theoretical rigour, research and scholarship of this genre didn’t prevent him from becoming one of the most prolific writers of his day, publishing more than 500 authored and edited collections (fiction and non-fiction) in his lifetime.

In an interview with David Letterman (October 21st1980) Asimov explains that it is possible to write more than one non-fiction book at a time, but not fiction.

The challenge he notes for writing simultaneous works at any one time is a fascinating insight, and there is much that could be explored further relating to what Asimov suggests regarding how the nature of ‘character’ and ‘plot’ are the facets of fiction-writing that prevents simultaneity. In doing so he suggests that no matter how close the subject-matter between projects, it is the form of the work that contains the challenge.

To explain this challenge further, in psychoanalytical terms, we might once again return to Kristeva:

“The imagination could be considered as the deep structure of concepts and their systems. It may be that the crucible of the symbolic is the drive-related basis of the signifier, in other words, sensations, perceptions, and emotions; and to translate them is to leave the realm of ideas for that of fiction …” (ibid. 78)

/Pete Watt

References:

Kristeva, J. (1993) Nations without Nationalism. (New York: Columbia University Press).

Originally published at anowmedia.com on November 29, 2018.