Deborah Levy on the novel

 Human beings must live with kindness and intelligence, but they also must live with imagination. That’s why some of us read fiction.

Deborah Levy gets to that point in her new essay on the novel: 

 

During my father’s dying days he summoned me to his sick bed and requested I find a pen and paper. I believed that, at last, he was going to express his wishes for his funeral and its various rituals. In fact, he wanted to dictate a menu for the week. It turned out that he was not satisfied with his meals. For Tuesday he suggested fish curry, Thursday lamb chops, Friday roast chicken. My father was 91, fatally ill and could only swallow liquids. By the time he reached Saturday, I began to admire his bid to be alive for a whole week (unlikely) and to live imaginatively to the very end.

 

I’ve said grumpy things about the novel in this collection of notes. It seems only fair to point out the obvious fact that I’m frequently wrong. 

• Source: Deborah Levy, “Why the Novel Matters”; The New Statesman, Dec. 5, 2024. The article is here:

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2024/12/deborah-levy-on-why-the-novel-matters

For my quarrel with the novel, see “Give me fiction, but hold the novel,” Nov. 5, 2022.