When the essay "Why the Novel Matters" is approached as rhetorical systems rather than statements of doctrine, it is, I think, significant as critical conceptions of the novel as those of a writer defining his genre in his own terms - dialogically, rhetorically, and artistically, as a novelist would. ... Obviously, the novel no more addresses the literal blood, bones, and skin of a reader than these other forms of writing do. ... The novel addresses the "whole" man not as literal blood and issue but as a collection of incongruous and contradictory experiences; this "whole" is the one that Lawr...

• Word Count: 1195
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate