Theatre of the absurd

Some novels gaze and report and argue: others just sing. There are some writers who love and respect the visual arts, and want to bring them into prose — Henry James is one. A work freezes into an act of contemplation and description, as in the Bronzino set piece in The Wings of the Dove. And there are novelists who have a fascination with music, whose prose moves dynamically in response to musical form and sound.

These writers can have set pieces, too, like the performance of Beethoven’s Fifth in Howards End, but can also pattern their work in imitation of another art form that moves through time, has climaxes and a crescendo.  Joyce, a knowledgeable musician and competent tenor, wrote a very detailed fugue as a chapter in Ulysses, and another good tenor, Vikram Seth, wrote a lovely book around a string quintet in An Equal Music.

Telegraph Avenue is a wonderful novel of song and sound, in love with its art form, but also with many qualities of evanescence and improvisation, of cadenza and response.