Article,
The novel: Disclosing the self in a creative social act
(2005)
Abstract
We view novelists as people who work alone through the night typing away at their keyboards while deeply absorbed in thought. Although no novel could be published without the performance of the solitary role of the writer, the publication of a novel involves far more than merely the performance of this one role. Book agents must screen writers’ novels for possible representation by their agency, acquisition editors must screen them for possible publication by their publishing houses, and production editors must prepare them for distribution; therefore, the publication of a novel is a genuine “social act.” Nevertheless, a novel's publication is a distinctively creative social act because it affords greater opportunity than most social acts for people to express their “selves” or, more precisely, “phantom communities,” which are etched from their past “significant social actions.” A novelist's phantom community primarily discloses itself through the “voice” in which she tells her story. Thus, the “voice” that an author uses while writing her novel can provide telltale signs of not only her phantom community, but also of the past significant social actions in which she has and has not participated during the course of her life.
