Desiderata for a Good Novel

Looking at a good novel like Finnegans Wake it has some admirable features: i)Vico cyclometer — i.e. depending upon whether a civilization reading it is in a stage of myth, heroic epic, or rationality, or second barbarism the novel will present differently ii)in a made-up language that it teaches the reader iii)in an interesting shape that says something about the theme of time and temporality viz. circular.

Another good novel, Gene Wolfe’s Urth Cycle has good features, namely i)model of temporality based upon modern understandings of time ii)profound and self-reflective musings upon the relationship of religion and the imagination iii)subversion of the relationship between the idea of literary character and human character iv)ultimate metaphor for what it is to live a life.

Novels can do a lot. If I ever write one I’d like AT LEAST for it to accomplish being:

i)a self-diagnostic tool for the Cosmic Anthropos ii)in a new language that it teaches you iii)consistent time paradoxes iv)subvert yet re-create the reciprocal relationship of psychology/character creation v)entertaining!

That said a good start would be to develop a novel that provides a new mythology for the human race, is in a language that does not depend exclusively upon Western languages, and is a RELATIVISTIC Vico cyclometer

An Introduction to Manicasa Danshon Wigge

A lot of people who wanted to get an introduction to Manicasa Danshon Wigge didn’t even now the first thing about procuring such an introduction, but procured one they did, because he (or she) would arrange to be present in their lives, but unobserved, or perhaps, unthematized — a collection of coins in the back of a drawer, the play of light from the sun on a cloudy day, a memory that presented itself as a forgetting but was a memory clear as a bell all the same — they didn’t know that these were their opportunity to be introduced to Mr. MDW, they didn’t know I’m telling you with every last droplet of my eloquence — but HE knew, and was able to take them and split them right in two, brushing to one side the part he did not wish to meet, and grabbing the chickens’ heart between his fingers — “how do you do?”