The first course in my MFA was an introduction to the program itself. During this introductory course, we were given a list of books on writing and told to select one as a “mentor” text. This text was meant to serve as an entry point to the world of professional writing. I selected Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. As I started the book, I admit, I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting a mechanical “how-to book” that would simply provide the fundamentals of one writer’s writing process. Instead, Smiley’s book feels like one part university lecture, one part creative writing workshop, and one part coffee shop conversation.

Chapters two through eight provide various perspectives on novels and novelists. This is where the book felt like a university lecture with a Smiley as the knowledgeable instructor. She delves into the history and various aspects of the novel as it evolved over time. She also discusses the character of famous authors, inviting the reader to examine their own nature as a writer. This section places novels within an evolutionary context. Smiley notes that all novels have natural limitations and whether a novel is written for a specific market or constructed for the sake of art, it can never achieve perfection. Writers must simply focus on what they want to achieve and try to achieve that goal to the best of their abilities. The work will always be judged for what it is not.

Chapters nine through eleven discuss Smiley’s theory on the construction of the novel and the writing process. Her concept of the circle of the novel was new to me. I never thought of her twelve forms (travel narrative, history, biography, tale, joke, gossip, diary/letter, confession, polemic, essay, epic, and romance) as a type of discourse found within novels. As an English Composition instructor, I drew compassions to the various rhetorical modes I teach students (narrative, cause and effect, comparison, process analysis, argument, etc.). In my composition courses, I focus on a rhetorical approach to writing and how effective writers will use various rhetorical modes within one essay. Smiley’s assertion that multiple forms of discourse are also present in novels felt like a logical observation to me. This is something that I will consider as I outline, draft, and revise my own novel. Which forms am I using? Which ones would be most appropriate for the purpose, audience, and genre?

Chapters twelve and thirteen feel like a coffee house chat with Jane Smiley the author. She discusses her experience writing and marketing her novel Good Faith. I really appreciated her confession that the novel never met her high standards, but she was able to accept what the book had become when her editor’s opinion of the novel was higher than her own. Since many writers struggle with perfectionism, this is a good lesson for some of us who are never quite done with a manuscript.

Overall, I found it to be an interesting book that gave me a broader perspective of the novel as a form of writing. Some of her theories stuck with me even after I put the book down. I love her idea that a novel is a hypothesis that must withstand the test of “reality.” We have all read stories or watched movies where the premise was so difficult to accept that it was possible to enter into that state of “suspended disbelief.” As Smiley states, “Ultimately, the novel has to do what the scientific experiment does—it has to withstand the observation and disagreement of other people” (43). Of course, that does not mean that a story can’t have fantastical elements, but they must be believable within the world of the novel, and they should be true to the genre. Having dragons suddenly appear in a true crime novel is not going to please the reader. Smiley notes that this thesis begins with a central idea that develops into a theme.

In addition, Smiley contends that this thesis can have a big impact on the real world. Smiley sites Harriet Beecher Stowe and her work Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Her novel helped a country see slavery in a different and more intimate way. Even Lincoln acknowledged her contribution to the civil war. When meeting her he said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war” (qtd. in Smiley 120). As a reader, I have always realized the personal impact of literature on the individual, and I am also aware of the impact of novels on popular culture, but I never really thought about the wider impact of books on society. This reality makes me think a little more about the thesis I am putting out into the world.

I imagine this realization could become overwhelming and cause writer’s block if a writer’s goal was to have substantial impact on society, but I think the key is to write for one hypothetical reader. How do you want to change that reader’s life? This awareness of societal impact is also important because it can make a writer think about what they are putting out there.

In the end, I’m glad I had the opportunity to select this book as my mentor text for the introductory course of my MFA. It truly does supply 13 ways of looking at a novel.