Full Disclosure: For the last 30 years or so of my classroom teaching career I always opted for evening 3-hour blocks. A couple of advantages. First, I could screen long chunks of content - video or film for class discussions. Or I could actually do a 3-hour lecture. Really. Some of you remember - well maybe not the specific content, but the three hours! There was a mid-point break, but still 3 hours of content! I tell you this because this post got really long. You might want to schedule a mid-point break. OK, here we go.
Given that writing first burst upon humanity some 5 or 6 thousand years ago, primarily to keep track of who bought what from whom, and how much anything was worth, the novel is a relatively new form of literature. The Tale of Genji, written by Marusaki Shikibu, the Japanese woman who wrote it about a thousand years ago, is often cited as the author of the world’s first novel. It took the English speaking world a while to catch up, possibly with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, circa 1719.
Be that as it may, the novel has always been my favorite form of literature, but then second on my list is poetry - strange stuff like The Mountain Whippoorwill or How Hillbilly Jim Won the Great Fiddlers Prize, and The Ballad of William Sycamore both by Stephen Vincent Benet. His name might not spring quickly to mind, but he did win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry; John Brown’s Body, 1928. Anyhow, my own literature choices are, dare I say it, novel. But, let’s get back to the novel as literary form. There is a DNA connection to novels in my family. I believe it is a direct line from my mother who had a great stash of novels from the early 1900s in a big green bookcase in the basement. She shared them with her three children turning us all into readers of varying intensity. My older brother Jim went through a period of “dog stories,” Lad, a Dog and other tail-waggers by Albert Payson Terhune. But, Jim soon moved on to think deeper thoughts.
My sister Margaret and I, however, were more deeply afflicted, well, perhaps, addicted is a more truthful description. To this day we read more novels than can be reasonably expected from two otherwise normal adults in their 7th decade. And again, full disclosure, this obsession did not raise its head as a manifestation of retirement. No, we have done it all our lives. But in our defense I need to point out that reading novels at the dinner table was normal, almost expected, behavior as we were growing up.
Recently I have been thinking about the more unique aspect of our novel addiction, which, I should admit before going any further, has been fully passed on to my older daughter, Andrea, who, as I type this, texted me about a new set of novels, The Lady Sherlock Series by Sherry Thomas, that has caught her eye. So it is no surprise that I am talking about serialized fiction, same author, same characters, etc. evolving in their “real world,” albeit an imaginary one. I devoted an entire post, what, two years ago? to this unique sub-genre. If I can run down the link I will post it at the end of this post.
But there is serialized fiction, good serialized fiction, and truly wonderful serialized fiction. I thought I might share some thoughts on same with you. Back in dusty days of junior high school, thoughtful English teachers would occasionally ask us the “monkeys and Shakespeare” question: “If you locked a few hundred monkeys - who could type - in a room with hundreds of typewriters, [remember this is very pre-word processors] would they ever create a Shakespearean sonnet?” The correct answer, of course, was no, and the prof would then launch into the canned lecture on the awesomeness of the human mind. No argument there. But what never really got touched upon was, to me at least, the obvious correlation between results from the monkey typing pool and early versions of serialized fiction. Should the monkeys manage to come up with a series of novels, they might well come up with something like the serialized novels from the late 1800s or early 1900s. The fact that those end products were at best, mediocre, did not prevent Margaret and I from wading in that particular, rather stagnant pond.
In those unenlightened days, Margaret inherited the “girl’s series” The Polly Pendleton Series, by Dorothy Whitehill. This series first published by Barse & Hopkins on January 1st 1916, eventually expanded to 13 additional novels, centered on Polly Pendleton, “a resourceful, wide-awake American girl who goes to boarding school on the Hudson River some miles from New York. By her pluck and resourcefulness, she soon makes a place for herself and this she holds right through the course.”
I got the “boy version.” The Rover Boys Series for Young Americans, was a popular juvenile series written by Arthur M. Winfield, a pseudonym for Edward Stratemeyer. Thirty titles were published between 1899 and 1926 and the books remained in print for years afterward. The Rover Boys was one of the many series produced by Stratemeyer Syndicate, a publishing entity whose contracted ghostwriters eventually delivered more 1400 titles for “young Americans.” The Rover Boys dealt with the adventures of a band of brothers away at a military boarding school. Dorothy Whitehill seems to have written the entire Polly series on her own, with a personal list of 36 authored works.
Point is both Margaret and I were hooked on serial fiction at an early age, and Margaret must take responsibility for passing Polly down to my older daughter, Andrea. Polly now lives with Andrea, while The Rover Boys are safely boxed away with the other treasures of my youth. I do need to point out that neither series, certainly not The Rover Boys, could be published nowadays. The self-appointed censors who would lock Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn away from innocent young eyes would suffer massive coronaries when perusing TRB! I’ll have to check with Margaret and Andrea about Polly’s enlightened perspective or lack thereof.
But that is not the point. The point is that both series were utterly predictable. In the mid-1850s a German dramatist named Gustav Frietag came up with a model for the “well-made play,” sometimes called Frietag’s Pyramid. The structure is quite simple: introduction, rising action, climax, and demouement - which combines any falling action leading to a final resolution. Early serial novels used the model - most clearly evidenced in contemporary half-hour comedies, Friends, etc. The introduction would introduce, or reintroduce the major characters - our protagonists - would live their normal lives until some sort of conflict arose, usually instigated by some misunderstanding with the antagonists. The protagonists (our heroes or heroines) would struggle with the antagonists (aka the bad guys) besting them at the climax, and this final step is important, affecting a resolution that returns the world to something very similar to the world that existed at the beginning of the drama.
The model quickly moved beyond literature and plays to early movies that would show up in “new stories” of Batman, Superman, The Lone Ranger, etc., all of which were early examples of the “content” or “product” mentality that dominates todays screens and bookstore shelves. The works are formulaic, repetitive, predictable. Heavy sigh. I find myself truly torn between my love of excellent writing, and the dirty secret that I love series, book after book, after book. What’s a guy to do?
First, I find myself worrying that the “series genre” seems tailor made for AI. Train them on the plethora of series that have been written since Polly and The Rover Boys and turn them loose. Thankfully there are still some touch points that I think, I hope, I believe will always separate AI serial fiction from fiction that springs from human genius. Yes, a Turing Test for serialized fiction. I don’t know if one exists, but here are some thoughts on what should be addressed were we to create one.
First, the “read aloud” test. Truthfully, I did not fully understand why everyone considered Shakespeare such a big deal until, as a young actor I had to perform him. Or as the Bard himself bids Hamlet inform us, “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.” and, as our director required, “make sense, so that even your physics major roommate will understand what you mean.” It is true that reading aloud - while making sense - reveals the magic of truly great writing. Give it a try. You need not jump right into Shakespeare. Try Jane Austin, or even A. A. Milne whose Winnie the Pooh transports those seemingly simple tales to a truly rarified realm.
Secondly, and it really should be first as it is the most important, the mark of genius in serial novels is the ability to surprise, but surprise within the logic of the narrative. The protagonist is not magically transformed into a robot, an alien, or a psychopath who begins to behave in ways totally contrary to their established identity. That is just the easy way out. Our AI Serial Production Studio would see that coming a mile away. No, the genius would, and does, surprise us in a way that is genuinely - well, surprising. It occurs, and we stop. Back up. Make sure we read it right. And sit back and process. And yes, that makes sense. We just never thought of it.
And perhaps this is, if not the central core of genius in creativity, it is certainly one of them. The ability to surprise within a context where we are not expecting to be surprised. We are certain to encounter virtuosity in any creative endeavor. We sink comfortably into the narrative, the music, the image, reveling in the excellence of the execution of the form, when suddenly the artist steps outside the expected - they surprise us. That is the hallmark of genius. And the hallmark of genius in serial fiction is that they do it again and again. It is one of the main reasons we are drawn to the form. We want to see how they do it. It is why we will go back and read the whole series over again, just to experience the surprise over and over again. Yes, guilty.
Here, at the end of this post, and yes, I promise that if this isn’t the actual end of the post, you can see it from here - you may just have to squint a bit. Anyhow, here is where I should do the “for example” conclusion. What series do I feel reflect “genius in serial fiction.” Well, to sort of cop out, this is a very subjective exercise. If you agree with the central premise you should create your own list. I should point out that these are "genius series." I do still wade around in pure entertainment works - like Spenser and the Stone Barrington series. They are sort of the M&Ms of serial fiction. But since it is pretty easy to jut skip five or ten pages since you know that this is the "mandatory recap" or the "obligatory semi-steamy flirtation scene," I must admit it is obvious that the AI Series Production Studio probably could whip these out pretty easily. But here goes the genius list, mostly, simply, in the order they occur to me.
- The Harry Potter books by JK Rowling. Several reasons beyond its ability to surprise, Rowling has managed to create a series that appeals to an audience ranging from young readers to young-at-heart adults. Also, the amount, and complexity of the “fan fiction” generated by the series is truly exceptional. For example, I wonder why Harry acknowledged Draco Malfoy waiting on the train platform for the Hogwarts Express at the very end of the Harry Potter series. This question has undoubtedly been addressed many times in the aforementioned fan fiction.
- The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. While I will confess to skipping over some of the long bits of poetry, particularly the Elvish pieces, I have read the entire series several times, enchanted by the complex interactions of good and evil, courage and affection. The theme of cultures learning from the narratives of their ancestors is another that intrigued me.
- Dune by Frank Herbert et. al. I was “surprised,” and not necessarily in a good way, to encounter a shelf of maybe a dozen different "Dune" volumes during a recent visit to a bookstore. The series, I’m afraid fell victim to its own success. Here I refer to the first three novels, Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune. The others I view with some suspicion.
- The Pendergast Series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. "The books are about the story of FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast." This is the rather sketchy online description for a series of almost 21 neatly written novels. They sort of blend Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil , Double Indemnity and Sherlock Holmes.
No doubt others will occur to me as soon as I post this already-too-long piece. At this point I should really defer to my sister who actually keeps a spread sheet of the series she has read and to whom I turn for "surprise" suggestions to feed our habit.
Here is a related post to which I referred earlier. I don't think this is exactly the one I had in mind, but it is close. I will keep looking.
http://schragwall.blogspot.com/2020/01/to-binge-or-not-to-binge.html
I never could get into Dune. I enjoyed the first book, but the others... nah.
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