Don't judge a book by its cover

The Psychology of the Novel – ‘Thirteen Ways of looking at the novel’ by Jane Smiley

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover

As a reader, when I am looking for a new novel I usually pick up one that has an interesting title, a good overview and a nice captivating cover, which might even have colorful drawing or pictures. Judging a book by its cover? Certainly. Should we or should we not judge a book by its first pages or chapter, is the question, and maybe it is necessary, or it might not be. This is the main idea I grasped when reading Jane Smiley’s fifth chapter of Thirteen Ways of looking at the novel, ‘The Psychology of the novel’. The importance of the engagement and the relationship created between the reader, the author and the novel is essential for a novel to turn out well and make a reader achieve its goal and finish the novel he/she started.

Jane Smiley finds that the ‘basic subtance of imaginative literature’, the essence of it, lies in emotion, not reason, and although, once written, people will analyze, ponder, change, learn and know a novel, it will exist not as words but as “images with feelings attached to it”. As Smiley writes, “something in one form in the mind takes another form on the page, something in one form on the page takes another form in the mind”. The author and the reader both experience this pleasure while writing or reading page after page, the creation of a whole new world under their imagination.

After reading this chapter, one comes to the realization that one of most important things in a novel is the psychology of relationships. By psychology of relationships one refers to the social interaction between the author and the reader by means of a narrative voice, the teller. The reader must enjoy, feel comfortable and be drawn to the narrative voice and the characters of the novel. If an author is able to create this atmosphere and establish a relationship with his/her readers a ‘sense of friendliness arouses’, a sense of communication with one another. If the reader does not feel this, they will begin to question themselves whether or not to keep on reading. And believe me, it has happened to me, and it might have happened to you. We leave novels aside as soon as we feel we are not connected with the characters; we feel no closeness, but distance instead.

Sometimes, we never feel this connection and intimacy, but we cannot blame it on the author; it is not their fault that we cannot feel for the novel. Maybe we have different cultural background, or aren’t age appropriate, or perhaps we don’t feel comfortable with the social context of the novel. For numerous reasons we might leave a novel aside. But, as Smiley says, we might have to try to “get used to the novelist’s way of thinking and of expressing himself’. It is their novel, not ours. This incompatibility may take hundreds of pages to cease, in time for us to understand, learn and agree with the author, since anyways, a novel is their way to try to express their ideas and try to persuade us into their beliefs and theories.

This idea has also been proposed by Russian writer, Zamyatin, author of dystopian novel ‘We’. In his paper ‘On Language’, which I have discussed previously, Zamyatin outlines the importance of taking the reader into this fictional world novelists create, doing so by being able to reincarnate themselves into their own characters, period and milieu (physical or social setting). These aspects of a novel, as well as the narrative voice and perspective, are of absolute importance in developing the author-reader relationship. They also allow the reader create the novel in their mind, giving them a sort of ‘possession’ as Smiley sets it, since the reader gives it their own perspective and leaves to their imagination how they visualize what the author describes.

I am not a constant reader. I reader every once in a while, and only, as Jane Smiley has described, if the book grabs my attention and takes me to this fictional world. There is one novel which has definitely made me feel this connection, and that is Susan Hill’s ‘Strange Meeting’, a novel that narrates the platonic love (friendship) two british soldiers share due to their experience in the trenches during WW1. While reading this book, I was able to relate to each character, not because of the setting but by their character and emotions, both portrayed spectacularly by Susan Hill. And maybe innumerable novels have achieved in doing so, but this relies completely on the reader.

So, answering the question, should we or should we not judge a book by its cover? We should try not to. One never knows if the author might be able to persuade us into his/her beliefs and develop this reader-author-narration relationship and communication. We should try not to leave it up to a few couple of pages, but give it a try.