What Is A Good Novel?

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Term Paper Title	What Is A Good Novel?
# of Words	1360
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.44

What is a Good Novel?

     Modernism is a generic term applied to the beginnings of the "new literature" that came with the twentieth century.  In Great Britain, it followed Victorian period, steeped with grandiose subject matter and moralizing, didactic themes and lessons.  In 1901 Arnold Bennet published The "Average Reader" and  the  Recipe for Popularity.  He describes in this short essay somewhat satirically, what to do when one wants to write a novel that will have mass appeal.  In this essay it will be supposed that the goal of the novel is either to entertain, enlighten, or to do both.   This depending on whether it is a purely entertaining novel, or one that is written with some aesthetic technique or value with an effect beyond mere entertainment.  It is worth noting that the contemporary British novelist Anthony Burgess has said writing novels should entertain the novelist more than any one during the composition stage.  This makes sense to me and I can apply the same maxim to writing scholarly papers for academic merit.  When enjoyment in the process of creation exists, then perhaps this spirit is transferred to the reception by the art-patron.
     I will take for granted that the serious fiction-writer has a harder time getting money for his or her writing than the popular novelist, who writes perhaps with a formula or with simple, easy-to-understand sentence structure.  My example for this (the post-modern era), Danielle Steele.  I have never read a book by Ms. Steele, and I do not think I ever will.  Danielle Steele will probably never win a Nobel prize for literature.  She will not be immortalized by her writing like Shakespeare.  She will not have scholars praising her works in two-hundred years with terms like "great" and "masterpiece."  She writes entertaining novels directed at middle-aged white females, and she gets on the best-seller lists a lot.  I cannot know if Steele has ever read Bennett’s essay, but I am sure some of his proofs ring true in the tale of her success.  One of the reasons I am an English major is that I want to be directed in my reading towards great works.  I hope to gain from this reading stimulation a sharper, more clearly defined sense of myself and the world around me.
Bennett says that "the average reader likes an imposing plot, heroical characters, and fine actions.  Grandeur of subjects will always be his first demand."  In his book Anna of the Five Towns, I find none of these features to be prominent, besides...

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