Novelists, like poets, work in the medium of human language, but some may be said to work in it more than others. There is a kind of novelist (conveniently designated as Class 1), usually popular, sometimes wealthy, in whose work language is a zero quantity, transparent, unseductive, the overtones of connotation and ambiguity totally dumped… Such work is closer to film than poetry, and it invariably films better than it reads. The aim of the Class 1 novel can only properly be fulfilled when the narrated action is transformed into represented action: content being more important than style, the referents ache to be free of their words and to be presented directly as sense-data.
To the other kind of novelist (Class 2) it is important that the opacity of the language be exploited, so that ambiguities, puns and centrifugal connotations are to be enjoyed rather than regretted, and whose books, made out of words as much as characters and incidents, lose a great deal when adapted to a visual medium. Drugstore bestsellers, which overwhelmingly belong to Class 1, sometimes nevertheless admit the other category, but only when the lure of the subject-matter –– invariably erotic –– is stronger than the resistance that the average novel-reader feels towards literary style.
Needless to say, there are stylistic areas where the two classes of fiction overlap. Transparent language… can be elevated to a high level of aesthetic interest through wit, balance, euphony, and other devices of elegance. Elegance, however, is the most that Class 1 prose can achieve; for dandyism one must go to Class 2 writers. But opaque language can be so self-referring that the reader, legitimately seeking some interest of character and action, may become resentful. A novelist who has brought his reader to the brink of action only to put off the action while he engages in a virtuoso prose cadenza is indulging in the ultimate dandyism, which makes the clothes more important than the body beneath. If the promised action is of a violent nature, and the author decides to enjoy a digression on the word itself, finding violent, because of its phonic associations with violet and viol, a somehow unviolent term, then murmurs about artistic irresponsibility will probably be in order. A Class 2 novel, in fact, does not have to be a better work of fiction than a Class 1 novel, but it usually has a better claim to be regarded as literature. The beginning of literary wisdom, at least in the field of the novel, lies in a realisation that Class 1 and Class 2 novelists have somewhat different aims…
Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce (1973)
Use the link below to visit the website of THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, an English-based organisation which 'encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.' It also operates an archive/performance space in his home town of Manchester.
http://www.anthonyburgess.org/
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