Total novel
A total novel is an aesthetic maze of stories, pivoting, so to speak around a central one. Sometimes time elongates as if on its own, and sometimes time is a variation on a central theme, very much like Bach's variations. It is just a matter of case, and author to locate, confirm and enjoy these characteristics. To be sure, a total novel is not a linear story—in case there are linear novels, at all—but explicitly a nonlinear set of a number of stories, each one overlapped on the others, each crossing other(s), having some bifurcations that lead nowhere (just like in life, in fact), some fully depicted while others are just sketched or barely suggested.
A good counter-examples help illustrate what has been said, so far. M. Proust's In Search of Lost Time one the one side, but also Lady M. Shikibu's marvelous novel The Tale of Genji are not considered as total novels, in spite of their length and complicated structure, and beauty. Several other examples could be mentioned along the same tenure, past or current.
In an interpretation, literature should be more than literature and be able of a real contribution to the understanding of the world, reality, and nature
Name
Total novel
Description
A total novel is the outcome of a subtle and well-made dynamic balance between fiction and essay, prose and poetry, logos and myth, imagination, and anthropology and history. It is neither more fiction nor sharp analysis of reality, and not more fantasy than research and documentation. Instead, a total novel is an intelligent and creative mixture of both components, the work of a thinker as well as of an artist.
Types
Cover