INVERSIONS, INVENTIONS
The synoptic novel
The ‘synoptic novel’ (Exercise 1) draws on the novel form but also inverts
it. It radically compresses the novel while giving us a strong impression of
the overall content. Finola Moorhead is an Australian writer whose ‘Novel
in Ten Lines’ we will use as a model:
Example 9.1
Leone’s room is not near the left bank of the river where
she drowned. Harold walked by the park bench, thinking.
Thoughts of how and when and guilt were his and we are
interested, also, in the clothes he wears, the trench coat
with Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin in the pocket. Leone
came from the country with blond hair that turned dark in
the city—her cotton print dresses turned to brown pleated
skirts. Leone was lonely. And Harold felt sorry, that’s all.
He had other friends, and lots of nights with other men:
his own problems.
‘Novel in Ten Lines’ (Moorhead 1985, p. 142)This text poses the question: can you really write a ‘novel in ten lines’ when
a novel is by definition lengthy? Isn’t this text a complete inversion of the
novel, the opposite of what we expect the novel to be? In fact Moorhead’s
text is both a compressed version and parody of the novel form—usually
a synopsis precedes, rather than substitutes for, the writing of such a work.
And unlike most novels it draws our attention to the creative process: its
improvisational and sketchy beginnings. It includes the author’s reflec-
tions on the writing process: ‘Thoughts of how and when and guilt were
his and we are interested, also, in the clothes he wears, the trench coat with
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin in the pocket.’
Although the ‘Novel in Ten Lines’ subverts the novel genre, it does so by
exploiting its conventions but to different ends. The realisation of charac-
ter, plot and setting in such a small space is entirely different from how it
would be in a novel, because the brevity requires compression rather like
poetry. Complex situations have to be alluded to in passing, so the piece is
highly elliptical and fast moving. It gives us, in a very short space, an
overall impression of the novel, and hints at developments which would
appear in detail in the longer form.
The piece uses a surprisingly wide range of the fictional techniques
which were discussed in Chapters 5 and 7. For example, it focalises the
194 The Writing Experiment