Erroneous notion that novel is finished: Richard Flanagan

Asserting that a novel cannot be reproduced, renowned Australian author and winner of the 2014 Booker prize Richard Flanagan today said the genre was going to matter more and more in future as it remains the only form that questions.
Considered as the finest Australian novelist of his generation, Flanagan said the general belief that the days of novel are numbered was an erroneous notion that had its origin in the American attitude where people are obsessed with film and television.
"Americans have always disliked the novel, they have always wanted the novel to be a moral grammar. They are uneasy about it. They strongly believe the novel is finished and new forms have ascended. For me novel is nothing more than the courage and talent of the author.

"I think in the next moment and age, writers are going to matter more and more, and so too is the novel going to matter more and more because it is the only form that questions the power.. You cannot reproduce a novel," he said at the ongoing tenth edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival here.
Flanagan, who had won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for his novel "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" in 2014, was participating in a discussion titled 'The Page is Mightier than the Screen' along with another Booker-winning author Allan Hollinghurst, noted Irish director and novelist Neil Jordan and screenwriter and director David Hare.

"It's a journalistic impulse to say that the art forms are going through a bad patch and will die soon. It is absolutely non-sense. I'm sick of dealing with stupid people. If you work in film and television, you have to deal with stupid people," Hare said.

He said, unlike in the past, novelists no longer "condescend" to the screen.
"Novels and films are different. There is no map for writing a novel. Writing for a film can be made quickly. Nothing in common and comparable to novel. Shelf-life of movies is very less in comparison to novels," Jordan said.

Talking about film and television, Flanagan said both had a "tyrannical nature".
"Screenplays are short stories with a handful of characters. TV as an art is not stupid but the form is stupid and it is stupid because of money and power. It is tragic what happens to talent on television," Flanagan said.
"Not many great films have been made from great movies. Some of the good movies have been made from really really bad books and some of the good books have been made into really really bad movies," Jordan said, adding that the film and television media was "anti-intellectual".

Flanagan's Booker-winning book is a chilling account of what it meant to be a prisoner of war forced to work on what has come to be known as the 'Death Railway between Thailand and Burma'.