more on "novel"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Thanks, Mark. But I wouldn't say _The Prince_ "reads like a good novel."

  I agree completely that the usage in question should be discouraged - but if Ph.D.'s are using it (see earlier posts) it's far, far too late.

  Anyway, every time a school teacher explains the distinction between "novels" and "nonfiction," the evil usage is being discouraged. But since such explanations have done no good in halting the semantic shift in the past, they should do no good in the future.

  WARNING: SARCASM FOLLOWS :

  Hey, it's all just "story-telling" anyway, with many beautiful competing "voices." If somebody wants to "demystify" history because they don't feel like believing it happened the way elitist _soi-disant_ "historians" (i.e., exclusionary gate-keepers of establishment "knowledge") say, "our" First Amendment allows that, despite being the self-serving construct of a privileged, slave-holding, misogynist DWM class. (Not as crafty as you thought you were - eh, Founding "Fathers" [sic] ? ) Poststructuralists know that all communication is meaningless fiction, and the more words (books contain lots) the more fiction. "Lacan's Equation" proves it :

  SERIOUS REPORTING RECURS :

  S (signifier)
  s (signified)    =  s (statement),

  With S = -1, produces s = sq. root of  -1.

  An imaginary number.

  [Source: Francis Wheen, _How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World_ (Public Affairs, 2005), p. 85.]

  JL

"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mark A. Mandel"
Subject: more on "novel"
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I sent the thread on "novel" referring to nonfiction to my wife, who replied
as follows (posted here by her permission):
>>>>>

I've seen it used, too, and I think Jesse Sheidlower is quite right in that
it usually occurs when referring to a non-fiction work that is so compelling
it reads like a good novel - _The Great Escape_ is one, as is _The Longest
Day_ or _The Perfect Storm_. Actually, in general, well written accounts of
war, travels,disasters or other adventures tend to read like that.

However, there is also much to be said for discouraging such confusion. I am
not just concerned about someone who can't distinguish a short story from an
essay from a poem. I am much more concerned about those who deny history. If
you can't distinguish between a novel about the Holocaust and a memoir, and
everything in between (i.e., a survivor choosing to write his memoirs and
those of others as a novel), then how far is it to believing the Holocaust
itself is fiction?

<<<<<

-- Mark A. Mandel
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]

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