Adjustment-style: from H. G. Wells to Ali Smith and the metamodern novel

Masters, Ben

Abstract

The Wells-James debate about the function of the novel has influenced decades of formalist and humanist criticism that has elevated Henry James as the quintessential ethical stylist and struggled to come to terms with H.G. Wells's literary artistry. This article reevaluates Wells's early fiction as the work of a self-conscious stylist who developed a politically and ethically motivated aesthetic that it calls 'adjustment-style.' It then highlights Wells's significance for a modernist-influenced strand of twenty-first-century writing from which critical common sense has excluded him as forebear, by reading the confluences between his work and that of Ali Smith. In doing so it aims to add nuances to the emergent conceptualisation of the metamodern novel which, it argues, is characterised by its own forms of adjustment-style. It contends that a close reading of Smith's metamodern style makes Wells more visible in our view of the contemporary novel; just as placing Smith in a continuum with Wells illuminates her own distinctive style and challenges many of the familiar novelistic binaries that have been extrapolated from the Wells-James debate.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 26, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Jun 14, 2021
• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Jun 10, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 14, 2021
• Journal: Textual Practice
• Print ISSN: 0950-236X
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-1308
• Publisher: Informa UK Limited
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 35
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 967-995
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1935750
• Keywords: H.G. Wells; Ali Smith; Henry James; style; metamodernism; metamodern novel; sublime
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5625593
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1935750
• Additional Information: Peer Review Statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope.; Aim & Scope: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=rtpr20; Received: 2020-02-11; Accepted: 2021-05-25; Published: 2021-06-14