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The novel since 1945<br />

491<br />

in recognisably realistic people and places; for example, Ulysses, The<br />

Rainbow, Heart of Darkness.<br />

In the titles of a number of post-war British novels another trend is<br />

discernible. Some titles carry a clearly marked imprint of the speaking<br />

voice. The voice may or may not be that of the author, suggesting in<br />

turn that the author’s voice may only be one among several voices in<br />

the novel and may not necessarily be the most authoritative or the<br />

one which offers a secure and stable vantage point. It may not be the<br />

singular voice of the moral centre from which the world of the novel<br />

can be interpreted. Here are some representative titles from this period:<br />

An Awfully Big Adventure (1990) Beryl Bainbridge<br />

How Late It Was, How Late (1994) James Kelman<br />

Now That You’re Back (1994) A.L. Kennedy<br />

Take A Girl Like You (1960) Kingsley Amis<br />

You Can’t Do Both (1994) Kingsley Amis<br />

Ginger, You’re Barmy (1962) David Lodge<br />

How Far Can You Go? (1980) David Lodge<br />

Burning Your Boats (1995) Angela Carter<br />

A Far Cry From Kensington (1988) Muriel Spark<br />

The titles are stylistically marked by features which recur more frequently<br />

in spoken than in written discourse. Personal pronouns, in particular,<br />

set up a tone of involvement and the use of imperatives and interrogatives<br />

establish dialogic interaction. Titles such as these also draw, however,<br />

on formulaic, idiomatic phrases ( ‘a far cry from..’; ‘burn your boats’)<br />

and everyday spoken lexis (‘barmy’, ‘awfully big’) in ways which suggest<br />

a direct and evaluative tone of voice. It is not immediately clear where<br />

the voice is coming from and a point of view cannot be easily established.<br />

Such a voice is, however, not expected and is perceived by most readers<br />

to be deliberately intrusive and unsettling.<br />

The terms ‘discourse’ and ‘dialogue’ are regularly used in the literary<br />

theoretical writings of the Russian literary critic and theorist Mikhail<br />

Bakhtin (1895–1975). For Bakhtin, the novel in its most basic form is<br />

characterised by a collage of different styles, voices, and points of<br />

view. There is thus no such thing as the language or a unitary style of<br />

the novel. In contrast with conventional lyric or epic poetry, the novel<br />

is a ‘dialogic’ form and in this respect no one voice can ever be seen

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