Nothing easier. There are, after all, only two stories.

A Stranger Comes to Town: The Iliad.

A Man Goes on a Voyage: The Odyssey.

Some say that there is a third story: A boy meets a girl. But that is usually subsumed under the above two stories. Or else it is quite another genre, that of comedy.

In a comedy, boy meets girl, boy is opposed by elder (senex), and triumphs over him. A comedy ends in a wedding, and the boy and girl afterwards live in a cross-hall 1920s house. This might made of brick, but is more often made of wood, painted white. In either case, there will be rose bushes.

There are minor variants on this. Boy meets girl and girl; or girl meets boy and boy and boy. But these tend to belong to a particular genre, and formerly were published only in Paris.

Now, novels also have action and characters. Good or bad things might happen to good or bad people.

In some novels good things happen to good people. This is the genre of hagiography. Recent examples include Bill Clinton’s My Life.

In some novels bad things happen to good people. This is the genre called tragedy. Recent examples include Bill Clinton’s My Life.

In some novels good things happen to bad people. This is the genre called satire.

In some novels bad things happen to bad people. This is the distinctively moden novel. There is no better way to attract readers today than to write about a rotter and make him sympathetic. The logic of this kind of a novel is so strong that the reader may find the character sympathetic even though the author was repelled by him, and in time even the author may come around to admire the character. This is what happened to Camus’ The Stranger.

Have I ever written a novel? No. And what’s your so-called point?

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