Dissecting the Novel: Notes on Reproductions and the Fragile Pleasures of Reading

I was 18 and in Italy for the summer. My then-girlfriend had a house in the rolling Tuscan hills, where days were filled only with cooking, enjoying the views and going to dinner with the retired, mysterious British neighbors. I had no idea what I wanted to study, and was tormented by a typical youthful restlessness. Although I found solace in my dormant abilities, the pressures of the outside world weighed heavily on me. Faster than expected, the moment had arrived to choose a path, the moment when I would decide how to fill my only life. Like any vacationer, I had thrown a book into my bag just before leaving, just in case. Stoner by John Williams had been gathering dust in my parents’ bookcase for quite some time, but was said to be quite okay. Consequently, the choice was made.

As I read Stoner, I found my mind wandering to philosophical questions: what is a novel anyway? What are stories? Are books works of art, or do they occupy their own category? Dissecting the novel is a long and complicated process, but also a wonderful one I had come to realize. In this essay, I want to highlight one particular theme that is fundamental to understanding what books are: the reproductivity of the novel.

Reproductions

The history of reproductivity in art is as long as it is philosophically interesting. This idea was described by Walter Benjamin in his 1935 The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction; and it was brought into the world manually by Claude Monet in his Série des Cathédrales de Rouen; and it was later popularized by pop artist Andy Warhol. However, this history is much less developed in thinking about novels, while they make up particularly interesting subjects to explore this question further. Therefore, let us first have a brief glance at reproductions in the visual arts, and from there make the bridge to reproductions of literary artworks.

There are two types of reproductions. First, there are exact reproductions: posters, postcards and magnets that depict certain masterpieces. They are 1-to-1 copies of artworks, albeit in different formats and made with different materials. Then there are the edited reproductions such as the famous, but rather tasteless, artwork L.H.O.O.Q by Marcel Duchamp, which build on an existing artwork to create a new one.

L.H.O.O.Q., to take this work as an example, is a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, in the form of a postcard, with a moustache drawn above the upper lip, accompanied by a silly French pun. A favorite work of the artistic chatterati, it is an edited reproduction depicting the Mona Lisa, but it is not The Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre. The Mona Lisa is characterized by its uniqueness and by its individuality. She stands alone, and her individuality solidifies her value and uniqueness. There is only one Mona Lisa. As a matter of fact, she shares that trait with almost all masterpieces, as Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden already noted: “it belongs to the nature of the work of art to be an individual, in the sense of something qualitatively unique.”

It is not hard to see why Ingarden was correct in his analysis. A postcard you buy at The Met or the Louvre possesses no artistic value whatsoever. Reproductions are not only monetarily worthless, but also spiritually. They are gifts you bring for your family, or souvenirs that guarantee the magnetic link between your shopping list and the fridge. What it certainly isn’t, is art. This is rather remarkable, since Munch’s Scream on my fridge is exactly the same, albeit in a slightly smaller format, as the one hanging in Oslo’s Nasjonalmuseet.

Interesting to note is that even Duchamp’s altered reproduction is again classified under art, since he created something new, while 1-for-1 reproductions of L.H.O.O.Q are again excluded from art, as are other works of art. Consequently, the uniqueness of a work of art is paramount to its artistic value, but how exactly does this apply to novels?

The Reproduction of the Novel

Consider the following thought: There is only one single copy of The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn and there is only one single copy of The Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck, but there are millions of copies of James Joyce’s literary work Ulysses. Now what is the difference between these two?

The reproduction seems to detract nothing from the artistic value of Joyce’s artwork, unlike the Guernica bookmarks they are trying to peddle at the Reina Sofia. A printed PDF version of Ulysses possesses exactly the same artistic value as a beautiful, signed edition from the early 1930s. It even possesses exactly the same artistic value as the very first printing or the original manuscript penned by the slender Irishman.

Does this mean that the artistic aspect of a story transcends the materiality of its medium, the book? It must. Just as musical pieces transcend their score. It is therefore interesting to note that that which elevates the book to a work of art does not coincide with its subjectivity of being a book. The artistry of a painting by Monet, Rothko or Modigliani shows itself in the paint that is put on the canvas, or the powerful workmanship of the marble or bronze as Breker, Brâncuși or Giacometti brought it to life. These works coincide with the substance in which it shows itself: the work of art, is the three-dimensional substance to which one can attribute predicates.

However, the subjectivity of a book in no way coincides with that which elevates it to the status of a work of art, contrary to the above examples. A book with an utterly nonsensical content can be ascribed the same predicates as a literary masterpiece in terms of its subjectivity of being a book. However, it is not possible to say anything about the story or the poem via the substance book. That the book is thick, beautifully made, and printed in black ink with a light blue cover says nothing about the story — and thus, it says nothing about the work of art, as it does in a painting or sculpture. Literature and poetry therefore do not allow themselves to be grasped in the same way that the purely visual arts do. But they are without doubt arts in themselves since they belong neither to the crafts nor to the sciences.

Am I not arguing past the issue? Indeed, one can immediately see that it is the stories that are central to the question of what constitutes a literary masterpiece, and not the physical book that contains the story. But what exactly is a story without its physical medium?

If the story, say Ulysses, was not expressed in this exact material structure — a book made of bound paper, ink and a cardboard cover — it would transform the story from a literary masterpiece into some other art form, for example recitation, opera, music or theatre. An audiobook of Ulysses differs from a print version of Ulysses because the most elementary aspect, the act of reading, is eliminated in its entirety. Suddenly, the narrator’s voice becomes fundamental to the story, the speed at which he reads it aloud, the sound quality and, yes, even the volume of his voice. It is an observation, not a personal view, that audiobooks nullify the art of literature, which is reflected in the individuality of the reader, and his relation towards the printed words.

Let us go even further. The characters developed in a story are fleshed out based on deeply personal experiences. No one reads Ulysses the same way. The tale is the same, sure, but starting point and outcome are not. The story Joyce tells differs from reader to reader, and even from myself at moment X1 and moment X2. When I put down my seasoned Penguin Classic copy and pick it up again after three weeks to start the next chapter, I read the story with fresh eyes, with new experiences, new knowledge, and with different emotions. This is what the beauty of reading revolves around; it constitutes the art of literature. A transcendental art, but profoundly intertwined with the immanent structure in which it is housed.

It is the material thing, the “book-substance,” that makes a story a literary work of art and not a spoken, cinematic or musical work of art. The material foundation of a novel is impossible to separate from its content. Consequently, the question of the whatness of the book, as object, is inextricably linked to the ontological question: what is a work of art? To be a literary masterpiece, a story needs a material support. A carrier that is fundamental but at the same time neither adds to nor detracts from its artistic value. This is an extraordinary insight for those who want to collect “genuine art” on a small budget. They are better off entering a bookstore than a shady nouveau riche gallery or museum gift shop.

The Mystery of Reading and its Fragile Pleasures

Yet reading, and its “ontology,” still remains a mystery to most of us. Which stories are literary works of art? What do we do with the artistic value of books that have never been read? Do stories exist if we don’t tell them? Do books exist if we don’t read them? What place in this world do the poems that disappeared in secret notebooks hold? Do literary works of art owe their existence to consciousness?

Is the novel an independent and self-contained entity, dependent on itself? Does every novel requires the realization of an experience of consciousness for its existence? And is such an intentional experience of consciousness due to a conscious, self-existent subject (a human subject) that is independent of itself and therefore presupposes its existence? Is it these existential moments that function as preconditions for developing a deeper understanding of “the mode of being” of works of art?

Questions like these should be approached with caution. Do they not destroy the mystery that makes reading a wonderful activity? Do they not infringe on the intimate activity of reading? Perhaps so, for the pleasure of reading consists in the relationship between reader and story, in a naive, frilly fairy tale in which knowledge and philosophy play the big bad wolf. Over-theorizing small pleasures, nullify these pleasures in the way audio books nullify the literary part of literary artworks. The illustrious poet and Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky described the splendor of ignorance when he wrote the following about love:

I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear.

Thoughts and notes on reading do not necessarily function as the astronomy of reading pleasure, but as a deepening of this pleasure. Loose concoctions, written down on an insignificant afternoon, can provide the impetus for this deepening, even if you will never look at a book the same way again afterwards.

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