Introduction: Form and Medium

This is the second issue of Novel to draw from papers originally accepted by Society for Studies conference that was due take place in April 2020 but one early casualties COVID-19 pandemic, with some additional essays address our themes. We selected spoke a fundamental question scholars novel: how and why do we still recognize textual entity made familiar term novel when novels have been so generative other forms discourse? Since Michael McKeon's Origins English Novel, used plotting heterogeneity start (from whenever may date novel). Novels, know, are composite things, drawing on forms, driven rapidly changing demands readers material technologies publishing. The has taken many shapes—serial publication, triple-decker, graphic novel—whereby formal flexibility ensured its ability respond endlessly diverse conditions production.The form paradoxical—both most recognized modern yet least stable. However much it adapts changes as genre, remains available cultural marker, recognizable thing which can plot historical, cultural, personal experience. From heterogeneity, mixing letters, journals, newspapers, travelogues, recent challenges form, like Olga Tokarczuk's Flights or crowd-sourced translation Moby-Dick into emojis, Emoji Dick, edited Fred Benenson, refuses submit singular form. Yet call them reach out understand narrative forms—the verse, suggestion admired television series such Wire successors Victorian serial novel. significance work seems evade understanding until be brought view culturally shape. As Kent Puckett's essay this argues, individual (in case original Moby-Dick) act reference points way think contours, while Caroline Levine shows us seemingly contrived ends novels—the marriage convenient inheritance—may real social political value.In his introduction John Frow wrote: “We tend ‘the novel’ better genres,’ collection whose common core almost impossible define” (Frow 1–2). But if focus not genre itself, argument becomes less identify more something presents itself reader novels. demonstrates certain shape—whether terms story, narrative, arrangement—and they exist describable media, whether these paper, film, tangible. That is, novel's ontology medium. And although an intensely object, medium open up deep questions what ontological status is—questions ask underlies volatility sensitivity markets pressures. It perhaps, surprising number contributors go back structural about nature stories invoked earlier twentieth-century theorists narratology (Victor Shklovsky Gérard Genette) well uses realism historical (Georg Lukács).The invite consider both strange. see it, recognition process constant mutation. In book Human Forms: Age Evolution, Ian Duncan even delineated identifiable example, bildungsroman, European contained own internal destabilization Bildung (and generally Duncan's study) “always formation, surging toward unrealized future; infinity, totality” (24).There forms—form shape, evolutionary stage, condition. course interdependent. thinks shape matter—though always possible differentiate between two. speak “reading matter” body texts consumed referred to—an abstract quantity precedes any reading. matter also through read present. So Rajeswari Sunder Rajan explores relationship museum, constructed Orhan Pamuk; Garrett Stewart's places imagination reading confined space alongside apparent expansiveness virtual reality technology astute account Richard Powers's Plowing Dark; Puckett sees at documents; Phillip Brian Harper inclusion photographs Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo forces function African American novel; Deidre Lynch turns scrapbooks loosen grip blends conceptual status.In order must further distinction To return modeling (an idea picked Yoon Sun Lee issue), necessary where elusive. Form, after all, exists everywhere. her Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network, makes she calls “affordances”—the actions uses—that “latent materials designs” (6); all kinds (literary, philosophical, sociopolitical) contains potential exert undertake work. specific literary text or, say, institution, there never dominant form; instead multiple patterns compete another, unraveling claims semantic priority. For Levine, attentiveness shapes collisions, central criticism seeks engage possibilities effective change. Levine's generated discussion disagreement (see, instance, collected PMLA 312.5 [2017]); special raises remain, consciously otherwise, provocation. What valences? How does form—with endless flexibility, refusal finally, formally, stabilize—respond posed other, especially digital, able claim ongoing relevance itself? does—indeed, can—the generate alternative structures knowledge meaning beyond page, face technology's apparently all-pervasive phenomenological force?In opening essay, ethical expressed She revisits happy ending asks reconsider necessarily conservative reductive. These once political. present age precarity—whether terms, labor environment—the neoliberalism open-endedness fiction sit uneasy relationship. notes “[t]he only truly radical conclusions, critics working over past century, determinate negation open-ended pause.” happens to, nineteenth-century lives protagonists? Why should we, critics, deny Oliver Twist Jane Eyre financial security might make orphans single women precarious? On view, notorious endings inheritance plots seem closure “a hinge plotted instability repetitive pleasures reliable food, sleep, study.” Closure here really continuity—the imagines future precarious protagonists.James Draney's finds implicit dialogue with, departure from, premises piece. He impact digital technology—the assumption transparently readable, therefore controllable, spaces—as threatens very foundations upon historically itself. focuses J. M. Coetzee Tom McCarthy ways grapples economic created surveillance capitalism big data, diagnosed recently writers Shoshanna Zuboff Antoinette Rouvroy. If realist took challenge interpreting world “presumed lawlessness, disharmony, sheer contingency,” how, contemporary moment, “to narrate describe already diagrams archives dizzying detail”? Draney wonders find oppositional strategies counter environment diminishing freedom privacy. offer two test cases considering question, “What intellectual do?”David Sergeant similarly considers new manifest themselves Dave Eggers Kim Stanley Robinson. extent position counterforce—what describes “the constructive aesthetic relation world”—lies heart essay. carefully unpicks assumptions underwrite Eggers's Circle reveal valorization “individual embodied life” site resistance aligns politics understood privileging bourgeois self. succinctly summarizes position: “Fictional exemplifies kind contingent, interweaving, existence main redoubt against corporation's takeover example would lost victory.” Politics kind, he merely repeating processes atomization fragmentation requires, divested revolutionary power. By contrast, Robinson's Red Moon emphasis squarely exploration object reading, reminds us, added injunction carries necessity acting, taking part collective composition history.”Yoon breaks down “form” “type” addresses theme recurs issue—how distinguish flux. gives another recognizing demonstrated unfolding generates, rather than reflects, reader—what “an aura empirical.” charges different thinking form: debates species discourse, historicist theory Georg Lukács. former, types priori given, their identification cognitive continual examining reexamining similarities differences. Lukács possibility capture volatilities midst temporal flow—the typology history contradictions easily everyday life. focusing observed sense, observation takes place, typicality event: “[T]ypes felt disembodied pattern positioned within system heightened conveyed experienced sort appearance.” Directing ideas study Balzac Austen, produce affective reactions. Sense Sensibility, type sexually vulnerable female, static. Readers presented moral judgment experience unsettled reactions characters.Phillip Harper's engages allegorical pertains construction context suggests “what written read,” establishes “correspondential parallelism” across instances racial oppression. Through Jumbo, book's deployment mixture tense, conjoin setting time it. bravura use anachronism, likewise, scrambles coordinates, vary, depending edition reading) creates visual analogues moments those primarily concerned. fact images substituted others, suggests, gesture renovation implies perennial ‘nowness’ thus themes 1920s germane, just 1970s 1980s forever” (emphasis added). claim, then, space.In Romantic Capabilities Mike Goode approaches “Whereas newest versions formalist scholarship provocatively set aside mean . insufficiently reckoned forms' capacities re-form, deform, fall apart openness medial use” (2). Lynch's full meditation “dispersive reading” congregate around Walter Scott. Scott dispel novel—even novel—can “contain” story world. Scott's directions characters, author, Möbius strip making unmaking tap “fissiparous energy lodged codex form.” Interspersing Waverley Novels practice scrapbooking commonplacing, whereby extracts were repurposed readers, texts, narrators, quotations, epigraphs, prized pinnacle literature knocked off reader-users “detaching, decontextualizing, recycling lines, incidents” scrapbooks. Setting trace ethics closure. actual (or anonymous traces) users Novels—mainly women—were cocreators “dividing up, remixing, sharing wealth” economy.Kent point Leslie Gelb's characterization Pentagon Papers, acted coordinator, historicizing compare “chance, free will, necessity” saw Melville's Moby-Dick. ends—at end, famous fit, beginning, witnesses first place. itself—it metaphor and, puts “that encourages thwarts metaphor, allegory, narrative.” difficulty Papers faces scholar, sifting Jerome McGann famously “social text.” At same time, heterogeneous assemblage three published exist, praxis, albeit unstable example. “novelistic model history, agency, character” added) look like, states “institutional crisis representation”—that situation best questionable. loosest baggiest monsters, proliferating hydra response guesswork had opaque writing could represented narratives increasing complexity. (using recur throughout issue): “[T]here too narratives, discourses enough content” don't only) happened. narrative. practices reading—both narratological—to unfold massive contested tells Vietnam War impossibility sometimes, mendacity explanation.Rajeswari explicitly Pamuk's Museum Innocence unique afterlife. Following publication 2008, Pamuk opened museum 2012 name containing artifacts daily life Istanbul half twentieth period coincides scheme reproduces project characters. Rajan's led verbal description incarnation objects implications times.” Our sense iterability, closure, tangible decision extend contours text: “[N]arrative incompleteness,” Rahan demand expression analogue fill it,” becoming element completion.”Our final Stewart, returns contests, mapped Forms. detailed Dark, degree novel—and indeed itself—might said characterized “shapings, linguistic often figurative,” precede attempt locate ideological contexts. undergirding circuity wording” advance interpretative moves politically; thereby resists easy conflation of, equivalence between, “literary design, novelistic architecture, imposed governance.” unpromising given technological-capitalist expansion (virtual reality) terrorist incarceration. Stewart devices prose “no true parity existing imperialist military control”: enactment scale own.”* * *We end sad note. Laura Marcus, who contributed issue, passed away September 22, 2021. outstanding modernist generation former colleague dear friend editors. Laura's titled “Time Pieces: Encounters Contemporary Film” considered interrelations moving image fiction. deeply regret loss wonderful fortunate give annual Susan Manning Memorial Lecture University Edinburgh May 2021, “The Noise Time: Autobiography History 1930s.” dedicate memory quotation Lecture, turned Benjamin urgency intensity memories charged friends encountered times spaces: “I afternoon Paris I owe insights my came flash, force illumination. biographical relationships people, friendships comradeships, passions love affairs, revealed me vivid hidden intertwinings” (Benjamin 614).