Michael Schmidt (1) (1947–)

Should I confess to being underwhelmed by Schmidt's well-praised volume? It is an admirable achievement but one that left me cold. In surveying the novel from its early proto-novel stages to the present day, he encompasses a wide variety of readers, but I'm uncertain about target audience or purpose. Especially in the first half, chapters offer potted biographies of noted (and sometimes forgotten) authors, along with anecdotes and ruminations on their books. But it feels like each chapter is a handful of Guardian thinkpieces mashed together in book form, without any broader structure. The title is misleading, perhaps that's the problem: this is not a biography of the novel, but rather a tour of people who've written novels. Those are two very different things.

I have a university degree in this stuff, and write about books myself, so I felt I was too educated to gain much from Schmidt's writing. Although the latter half of the book was more engaging to me, his thoughts seemed more personal than academic, more introductory than investigative. At the other end of the spectrum, though, Schmidt is prone to referencing other authors, plots, or characters out of context, and it is clear that he is writing for a learned audience. So I would not recommend this book to the young student wanting to discover how the novel has evolved. This leads me to think the best place for this volume is the university library, where individual chapters can be read by those interested in specific subject matters. I echo some of the smart reviews already on Goodreads that this book is evidently brilliant, but it would make a lot more sense if we were in Schmidt's head. He often writes comments that he sees as self-evident, but which need a bit of convincing for the lay reader.

Also, a pet peeve which may have biased me against this book: Schmidt has chosen not to cite his references. I accept that I am an extremist, a lover of indices and footnotes. But even if he didn't want to have cumbersome annotations everywhere, he could have gone with the pop-academic form of endnotes that reference back to the page numbers even though there is no corresponding number on the main page. Simply put, when every chapter contains numerous anecdotes and much gossip about the authors and the books, it's even more vital that we know where this came from. We can look up obvious book quotes ourselves if we must, but critical comments (reporting when a modern author said something about an older author, for instance) and salacious biography need to be cited. I say this not as a stickler (although I am) but because anyone keen enough to read through a 1,200 page book on novelists as diverse as Fanny Burney and Martin Amis is giong to need to track down many of the quotes and passing comments. Please!
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What a fantastic book this is, the perfect introduction to that strange, one of the oldest narrative texts we know (the oldest fragments date from the end of the 3rd millennium BCE). I read the Gilgamesh story for the first time 25 years ago in a heavily edited version and then it didn't mean much to me, it seemed like a hero story like there are dime a dozen. But the past five months I read a great amount of studies on ancient Mesopotamian history, and a few of the ancient stories of that time, and that made me reconsider.
Schmidt convinced me of the enormous value and the unique quality of the Gilgamesh story., especially in its more coherent ‘Standard Babylonian’ version, composed at the end of the 2nd millennium. Another strong point of this book is that Schmidt zooms in on the different and often very diverging translations (in English). Quite a few of them take great liberty with the historical and textual reality of the story. Especially the translation of N.K. Sandars, dating from 1960 but still popular, is the culprit: she deliberately distorted the story to give it more dramatic power. His preference is clearly for the rather extensive, very academic translation by Andrew George (versions in 1999, 2003 and 2016), although I suspect that it will be too detailed for the average reader. In any case: this is a gem of a book, about a gem of a story! More extensive review in my History account on Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4918492711… (more)