PS -
Further to pertinence to novels: I'm not sure what you mean by
"flatness". Maybe the most lyrical novelist I can think of is the
(breathtaking) Michele Desbordes, and her novels are notable for
rather a sense of ... rotund complexity (I can't think of how else to
describe it, although they are also remarkable for their delicacy).
But to get to the point: if lyric is not a category, but a mode or, as
I say, a dimension of writing, then novels must be as hospitable to
lyric as any other kind of writing. This is perhaps why I've had a
great deal of difficulty in thinking what the essential differences
between novels and poetry actually are. That is, to make the
distinction by assigning a particular quality to poetry makes me
realise that it also exists in novels, and vice versa. Even notions
such as novels being cumulative (sentence by sentence, WG Sebald for
instance) while poems are, or at least strive to be, immediate and at
once, end up dissolving on closer inspection. The only difference I
can really fix on is that novels tend to the inclusive while poetry
tends to the exclusive: ie, that when I revise a poem, it almost
always ends up shorter, but when I revise a novel, it always ends up
longer.
xA
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Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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