What makes a good novel?

Last week I handed out two pages of Wall Street Journal article ledes to grad students, and I instructed everybody to choose their favorite and least favorite ones. Interestingly, one person's favorite was another one's reject. Which proves only one thing: writing, like romantic attraction, is a subjective deal.

So if writing is subjective, what makes a good novel? As with non-fiction ledes, one person's reject is another person's masterpiece. I don't much care for Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but hey--she won the Pulitzer for it, so what do I know? And I'm not a huge fan of the Left Behind series, but millions love it. Some who have never read the Book of Revelation find the series highly imaginative and original. Some of those who have read Revelation find the series almost literary with its many references to the Bible in the same way East of Eden harkens back to the Book of Books. This makes me scratch my head, but whatever. Yet just about the time I think I must have no sense of aesthetics, I remember that some of my favorite writers--Dostoevsky and Dickens and C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers and John McCullough--are loved by millions, as well.

John Gardner in his work of genius, On Becoming a Novelist, outlines what some workshop leaders consider the standards of good fiction: creation of a vivid and continuous dream, authorial generosity, intellectual and emotional significance, elegance and efficiency, and strangeness.

More on what that means next time.

Oh, and one more thing...I'm told I need to update readers on my clavicle. I asked the doc to let me do my own personal physical therapy rather than having someone else force me into pain. He has given me two months to see how far I progress on my own. So far I'm making a little progress, but probably not nearly as much as I would if someone were grabbing my arm and yanking it hard.

Yesterday in class, I wore a blouse from which my scar peeked out. It was a modest blouse, mind you. It's just that I have this honkin' big scar that's like five inches long at the collarbone. Afterward one of my students, a lovely blonde woman from South Africa, came up and told me, "I want to tell you that I think your scar is lovely. In my country a scar means you survived something."

I'm thinking of moving to South Africa.