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I was reading Susan Sontag’s essays Against Interpretation (1964) and On Style (1965) (as you do), and it got me thinking about Georgette Heyer (nearly everything does) so I thought I'd write a little bit about it. 1/10
What Sontag's essays particularly made me think about was the notion of FORM in Heyer. It’s in the area of form where I think she shows her true quality as a writer. 2/10
In Heyer-twitter-land, a lot of our enjoyment is in the content. We love the period detail, the prose, the fascinating cast of characters, the love story. But it’s in the long-form of the Heyer novel which is where I think she surpasses so many other writers. 3/10
At her best, Heyer is a master of the long-form of the novel, and it’s one of the chief satisfactions of reading her. It’s hard to put into words: it transcends technique, even though technique is involved - eg in sentence structure, language, changes of POV. 4/10
The long-form is something to do with being taken by the hand on an emotional journey, it’s more like the sensual experience of poetry or music which speaks to feelings and perceptions beyond the fiddle-de-dee of content. It’s a temporal rather than a static experience. 5/10
At her best, Heyer takes you into a world and holds you there, and you can (mostly) safely submit yourself to it. It’s so satisfying because it works at a level beyond the pleasures of detail, setting etc. 6/10
The books that immediately come to mind in this category are - Frederica, The Masqueraders, These Old Shades, Cotillion, Arabella. There will be others - let me know which you think express this command of the form of the novel. 7/10
Personally I don’t find any other writers of similar stories who can do this as well. I would be delighted to have my ignorance corrected. 8/10
When occasionally Heyer doesn’t quite manage it - eg with a rubbish plot moment, or too much research shoehorned in, I can feel jolted out of the world of the book. 9/10
But her rare false steps only show how incredibly good she is at turning this unwieldy long-winded thing called a novel into an artifact that feels like a single complete object. Anyway, that’s it on this topic. As usual, Heyer RULES. 10/10
If you’re interested in this kind of thing, I recommend Sontag’s essays Against Interpretation, and On Style. I found them very inspiring. There’s also a podcast discussion about them on @PartiallyExLife podcast which is where I first heard about them. 11/10
