The One vs. The Many

[Dave Monroe]

Woloch, Alex.  The One vs. the Many: Minor
   Characters and the Space of the Protagonist
   in the Novel.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2003.

Does a novel focus on one life or many? Alex Woloch
uses this simple question to develop a powerful new
theory of the realist novel, based on how narratives
distribute limited attention among a crowded field of
characters. His argument has important implications
for both literary studies and narrative theory.

Characterization has long been a troubled and
neglected problem within literary theory. Through
close readings of such novels as Pride and Prejudice,
Great Expectations, and Le Père Goriot, Woloch
demonstrates that the representation of any character
takes place within a shifting field of narrative
attention and obscurity. Each individual--whether the
central figure or a radically subordinated
one--emerges as a character only through his or her
distinct and contingent space within the narrative as
a whole. The "character-space," as Woloch defines it,
marks the dramatic interaction between an implied
person and his or her delimited position within a
narrative structure. The organization of, and clashes
between, many character-spaces within a single
narrative totality is essential to the novel's very
achievement and concerns, striking at issues central
to narrative poetics, the aesthetics of realism, and
the dynamics of literary representation.

Woloch's discussion of character-space allows for a
different history of the novel and a new definition of
characterization itself. By making the implied person
indispensable to our understanding of literary form,
this book offers a forward-looking avenue for
contemporary narrative theory.

http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7622.html

"Introduction" as PDF file @ ...

http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/i7622.pdf

But he doesn't seem to take on Pynchon.  Wimp ...

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