How to Be Selective with Ideas?nMary McCarthy: Ideas and thenNovel; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich;nNew York.nby Stephen L. Tannernrle had a mind so fine that no ideancould violate it.” This reference to HenrynJames by T. S. Eliot is offered bynMary McCarthy as a countermotto fornthis transcription of the NorthcliffenLectures she delivered last year at UniversitynCollege. London. Her thesis isnthat novelists of the 19th century, particularlynthose on the continent, generouslynand consciously used ideas in theirnfiction. They had a philosophy of lifenand desired to communicate it to thenpublic and did so, either directly ornthrough the mouths of their characters.nAnd the public was interested; it expectednand appreciated ideas in novels.n”So intrinsic to the novelistic mediumnwere ideas and other forms of commentary,”nsays McCarthy, “that it wouldnhave been impossible in former days tonspeak of ‘the novel of ideas,’ It wouldnhave seemed to be a tautology.”nBut things are different now. she argues.nNowadays. “Ideas are held not tonbelong in the novel: in the art of fictionnwe have progressed beyond such simplicities.”nThe modern novel “is a formal,npriestly exercise whose first greatncelebrant was James. ” And even ifnJamesian novels are not being written,nhis model “remains the standard, annarchetype, against which contemporarynimpurities and laxities are measured.”nA novel with ideas in it marks itself asndated. Even with her preference for then19th-century approach, she admits thatnin writing novels herself she has had tonaccede and adapt to “progress” in thengenre.nThe arguments, which are restatementsnand extensions of those pub-nDr. Tanner is professor of English atnBrigham Young University.n»>*>:nChronicles of Culturenlished nearly 20 years ago in the literarynessays in On the Contrary, are unconvincing.nShe has a gift for the strikingngeneralization and memorablenphrase, but not for profound and sustainednthought and analysis. Consider,nfor example, this statement: “In thenU.S.A., a special license has alwaysnbeen granted to the Jewish novel, whichnis free to juggle ideas in full view of thenpublic; Bellow, Malamud, Philip Rothnstill avail themselves of the right, whichnis never conceded to us goys.” Thisnsticks in the reader’s mind, but it won’tnbear close scrutiny. Granted that Bellownloves to treat ideas (and his case alonenseems to go far in refuting her thesisnof a modern fiction that has scrappednideas); is that fact explained solely bynhis Jewishness.” Do Malamud and Rothnreally use more ideas than their Gentilencounterparts.’ “Who is it, anyway, whongrants the special license.”nThe fundamental problem with hernarguments lies in her use of the wordnidea. Idea is a slippery term that is appliednto things as different as a concept,nan impression, a topic, an opinion, anplan of action, an intention, a design,na mental image and so on. She nevernspecifies precisely what she means by itnand obviously shifts from one meaningnto another. Sometimes she uses ideanto refer to the central theme of a novel;nother times she uses the term to refernto subjects treated or issues discussednby characters.nMost often she has in mind politicalnor social ideas, although she nevernmakes this explicit. For example, shenclaims that George Eliot’s novels do notntreat ideas; a possible exception: FelixnHolt, the Radical. Ideas for GeorgenEliot, she says condescendingly, weren”wholesome moral reflections.” Therenare few ideas in Dickens because “thenincubus or succuba preying on Dickens’snpeople is usually nothing clearly identifiablenas a theory or concise program”;na possible exception: Hard Times. Hernnnnotion of ideas functioning importantlynin a novel seems most aptly realized innthe discussions of socialism in Dostoyevsky’snThe Possessed. Her bias is implicit,nbut clear enough to the carefulnreader. And once the bias is recognized,nher generalizations about ideas and thennovel begin to fall apart of their ownnweight. For example, she claims HenrynJames banished ideas from his novels.nThat is true enough for political ideas,nI suppose, particularly when politicalnideas are simply viewed as current eventsnand issues; but his novels are filled withnother kinds of ideas.nC>onnected with the problems erenated by an amorphous or idiosyncraticnuse of the term idea are those creatednby a false distinction between the novelnof ideas and the novel of images. Thendistinction is not meaningful becausenalthough a novelist might emphasizeneither ideas or images, he cannot totallynseparate the two. They stick to eachnother and lose force as they come unglued.nAlthough McCarthy is not precise andnaccurate in delineating and accountingnfor the differences between pre-Jamesiannand post-Jamesian novels, her generalnsense of that difference is correct. Thenquestion of ideas is part of it. but thenmore fundamental elements have to donwith a shift in world views and the risenof antimimetic literary theories. DavidnDaiches is more illuminating when hendiscusses in The Novel and the ModernnWorld the breakdown of communalnstandards and values in the late 19thnand early 20th centuries: “The modernnnovelist is born when [a] publicly sharednprinciple of selection and significancenis no longer felt to exist, can no longernbe depended upon.” Daiches impliesnthat if a culture can no longer providena sense of what is significant and valuablenin life (and therefore in fiction,nwhich according to the traditional viewnimitates life), the artist is forced to sub-n