NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction

What if? A response to Walter Benn Michaels What if Michaels, in some small part of himself and irrespective of what he maintains on the page, believes that this forty-year scholarly project might equally have been pursued not in the directi…

From NOVEL's own, Tim Bewes, over at nonsite.

nonsite.org/what-if-a-re...

The Racial Failures of Novel Form: Ralph Ellison's Three Days before the Shooting . . . Abstract. This essay argues that the form of Ralph Ellison's never‐completed novel, posthumously published as Three Days before the Shooting . . . (2010), reflects a fundamental quandary for Ellison, ...

"For all his professed faith in the novel form, it's as if [Ellison] had even more faith in, or perhaps commitment to, the formlessness of the manuscript, so much so that he would add to it at the cost of its completion..."

Dean Franco on Ralph Ellison. Out now in NOVEL 58.2.

The Plot of Racial Data and George Schuyler's Black No More Abstract. The characters of George Schuyler's Black No More (1931) share a problem in common. They cannot read data. Foregrounding these scenes of misreading, this article argues that Black No More is...

"The real irony, however, is that the data does contain an unrealized democratic promise, insofar as it proves that no one is who they say they are."

Mia Florin-Sefton's "George Schulyer and the Plot of Racial Data," out now in NOVEL 58.2.

Fossil Hunts and Fuel Exhaustion in Late Victorian Fiction Abstract. This article offers an ecocritical analysis of the connection between prehistoric fossils and fossil fuels in British novels from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing ...

"The fossil hunt plot.... expresses nostalgia for a mythical, prelapsarian past; it also prefers to salvage an untenable status quo rather than inaugurate a radically new, more sustainable future."

Brian Reinken's "Fossil Hunts and Fuel Exhaustion in Late Victorian Fiction," out now in NOVEL 58.2.

Caron Welch's (@carsonw.bsky.social) "Prehistories of the Present: Conrad, Ngũgĩ, and the Global Historical Novel" - NOV 58.2 on @dukepress.bsky.social.

Prehistories of the Present: Conrad, Ngũgĩ, and the Global Historical Novel Abstract. It has become commonplace to say that history is written by the victors. But in historical novels such as Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (1904) and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat (1967), it ...

"...the novel is 'historical' not because it depicts the influence of past events on the present in a chain of empirical causation, but rather by virtue of the novel's openness to the manifold unforeseen circumstances with which its notion of history is synonymous."

Out now in NOV 58.2.

The Inside Story: Body Language and Free Indirect Discourse in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko Abstract. The narrator of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko not only claims privileged access to what we might now call the eponymous protagonist's “inside story,” but works to validate that claim by invoking evi...

“In Behn's hands, free indirect discourse does not so much render other minds visible as reveal insuperable barriers to knowing what another thinks and how another feels.”

Check out Mark Blackwell's "The Inside Story: Body Language and Free Indirect Discourse in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko" in NOVEL.

@dukepress.bsky.social

The Activist Novel: Pastoral Political Mediations in England and Aotearoa New Zealand Abstract. This essay examines forms of social and political activism in England and Aotearoa New Zealand as they are mediated through disruptions of pastoral in Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain (1856...

"Pastoral is far less innocent than its surface charms may suggest."

Check out Helen Small's recently published piece in NOVEL 58.2, "The Activist Novel: Pastoral Political Mediations in England and Aotearoa New Zealand"

read.dukeupress.edu/novel/articl...

Nuevas Poligrafias Numero 12

proofs! HACIA LA NOVELA CRITICA

the first Spanish translation of a big piece, coming soon, thanks to the careful smarts of @pavelandrade.bsky.social !

Currently reading

Novel | Duke University Press

Issue 58.1 is now live online!

read.dukeupress.edu/novel

Book cover of Realism and the Novel: A Global History, edited by Paul Stasi on Cambridge University Press.

Looking forward to this new collection, Realism and the Novel: A Global History, edited by Paul Stasi and out on Cambridge UP. Looks like it'll be an invaluable resource!

Read an excerpt from the intro here: assets.cambridge.org/97810092/968...

Cover of Patrick Hamilton's novel Hangover Square.

Currently reading!

Great to have you!

Cover of Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing: A Novel

currently reading!

Book reviews by Richard Godden, Marian Eide, Paul Stasi, Bruce Robins, Justin Mitchell, and Tom Perrin!

We've just received the first issue of the year, number 58.1. It should be available online soon. Fantastic articles by Marta Figlerowicz, Peter Sloane, Kelly Yin Nga Tse, Deirdre Canavan, Liam Kruger, and Priya Joshi!

What are you reading at the moment?

Joseph Quinn as Leonard Bast.

Novel is currently soliciting special issue proposals and individual article submissions for general issues! Please send all correspondence to novel_forum@brown.edu.

Title page for proofs of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century

Table of Contents, page 1, for Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, featuring the Introduction and Parts I and II on Scene Setting and Noticing, with contributors Oren Izenberg, Jane Hu, Beci Carver, Robert Stagg, Jeff Dolven and Joshua Kotin, and Adrienne Brown

Second page of TOC for Close Reading for the 21C, end of Part II, and Parts III and IV, with Katie Kadue, Summer Kim Lee, Julie Orlemanski, Lindsay Reckson, Natalia Cecire, Farah Bakaari, Omari Weekes, Elaine Auyoung, and Emily Ogden

Final page of TOC for Close Reading for the 21C, with the end of Part IV and Part V, and Practical Materials. Contributors: Pardis Dabashi, Brian Glavey, Noreen Masud, Stephanie Insley Hershinow, Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, and Christopher Spaide

Digital galleys are HERE for Close Reading for the 21C, which I co-edited with @johannawinant.bsky.social. You know you want it, want to review it. Write to barbara_tonetti [at] press [dot] princeton [dot] edu. Look at that gorgeous slate of contributors! Get it!

It's nearly time for SNS! Looking forward to seeing everyone in North Carolina later this week!

drive.google.com/file/d/1zT_X...

We're very much looking forward to seeing everyone in Durham at the Society for Novel Studies Conference later this month. The schedule is now live, below!

Thanks to the organizers @aarthivadde.bsky.social, Sarah Quesada, Janice Ho, Barbara Halla, and Yeonwoo Koo!

sites.duke.edu/sns2025/samp...

This whole season of NOVEL DIALOGUE is 🔥 and I'm pinching myself that I got to participate.

I just finished the second episode--Lauren Beukes in brilliant form with Andrew Pepper--and am about to start on the 3rd (KSR with @lizmiller.bsky.social!!). Have a listen!

noveldialogue.org/2025/04/10/9...

poster for season 9 of Novel Dialogue podcast.

Season 9 of NOVEL DIALOGUE has begun!

noveldialogue.org @aarthivadde.bsky.social @rosecasey.bsky.social

Novel is currently soliciting submissions for volume 59. Please send all submissions to novel_forum@brown.edu. Looking forward to seeing what you've all been working on!