An idea on every page

Sebald! oh, wait, current. damn, foiled again.

is there any novelist ever, julio? gimme examples, i can't think of any, not from the stock i read; i don't like ideas novels too much though.

What do you mean by an idea?

I think I've got a fair enough notion of what's meant here--each page or other small unit containing some new impression/ application/ literary or extraliterary pensée that extends outside of the text-- that these are scattershot-sprayed all over the place, in high volume, rather than developed in small numbers over the course of an entire book, a la Camus or Graham Greene or other "philosophical" novelists? That kind of thing? There's plenty.

Borges seems obvious, and Calvino quite literally has an idea a page in Invisible Cities. Ron Sukenick and some of the other Fiction Collective/FC2 types, with all their touch-of-lightness critical batteries, approach that as well.

Then there are the more "conventional" novelists that skew this way in certain novels. Herzog by Saul Bellow and The Promisekeeper by Charles Newman come to mind in relatively similar fashion, both of which, because of their emphasis on a wealth of outside/inside texts, bring in a wealth of social/literary commentary that resonates with the more novelistic elements (and which, in Herzog, are used to fully develop the condition and character of the narrator).

Elkin's full of everything, really, thousands of true and false epiphanies that sum to some overabundant feeling of the world's unabating novelty. DeLillo strains a bit to achieve this, sometimes in an awful way, with all his desperate groping for "significance", but it often also comes out beautifully.

But, hell, I suppose it could be Proust you're looking for, or Robert Musil, or Harold Brodkey for that matter. Maybe you do want Brodkey, come to think of it, the mid-period Brodkey constantly bristling overthinking. Were you looking to be convinced that life was full? That's what it's good for.

M.

I was thinking of philip dick: and it was basically about scattering of 'philosophy' and putting that above characterisation or a sophisticated plot.

I posted this just before I was about to go sleep so sorry for not explaining it properly.

matthew- thanks for the recommendations.

I'd say Saul, with his recent 'Doubter's Companion', which isn't exactly a novel but certainly isn't non-fiction. Anyway.

I wouldn't by any means compare him to Philip Dick, but Richard Powers' work is well-written and intellectually challenging.

Powers is a great example. He really makes me use that atrophied pea-brain of mine on every page.

Hardly a current novelist but Stanislaw Witkiewicz's 1927 novel Insatiability fits right in to this category. Endless bizarre digressions on dozens of topics: drugs, politics, sex, noise music... Here's a review.

nick- that book is really interesting and it doesn't really need to be current actually.

keep it coming if you can.

Neal Stephenson. If you're a Dick fan, start with The Diamond Age and Snow Crash.

i can't think of a novel with an idea on every page, but i'm reading manny farber's negative space (supposedly a book of film criticism) right now, and i've never read anything like it - there's like three ideas in every fucking SENTENCE! i recommend it to anyone who's even mildly interested in movies, but it's worth checking out on the basis of farber's style, which is absolutely indescribable and unlike anything else i've ever seen.

do entend it to criticism: J.D. I've only read pauline kael as far as film crit goes but am getting more interested in it: will check this out.

Ballard's 'Atrocity Exhibition' seems to fit what you're getting at, each chapter having enough ideas for a whole novel, especially since chapter 7 (8?) is Crash v.0

Julio

William Gass fits the bill for me. Either his fiction, but his essays are my favourite (perhaps because they feel closer to pure thought, or maybe even something like spontaneous poetry, with some v. smart ideas, bypassing all the scaffolding a novel generally requires).

As for others: Donald Antrim, DF Wallace (though it feels like his star's receding), and as Mathew says, Brodkey.

-- D

I have actually got a collection of William gass essays about a month ago but haven't got round to it.

Revive.

I thought of this thread on the bus this morning while reading Borges' Fictions. Ideas on every page, inventions in every paragraph, philosophy in every sentence. You feel knackered reading a short story. Some of it is over my head, but the bits I caught were truely wonderful.

Richard Powers fits the bill here I think. I am finding his latest novel and bit dense and hardgoing at the mo. (And I like dense books!)

Apart from novels, seems like plenty of contemporary playwrighting is philosophy/idea-driven. Stoppard, Frayn, Auburn...

Orhan Pamuk fits into this category I think, especially 'My Name is Red' (though 'The New Life' is his best book)

Seconding Musil, although not current. If you haven't read him, do. More than one idea per page, though.

Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim At Tinker Creek." Every page is a gem.

calvino seconded. if on a winters night a traveller maybe?