TV is filling the gap great novels can’t quite bridge

THIS weekend there will be loads of people dawdling around Dublin wearing straw boaters and eating kidneys and having a jolly fine time celebrating Ulysses.

For a novel which by any definition is tricky to read — and which most Irish people will never attempt — this is a remarkable achievement. For the literary purist, this is evidence of the mammoth influence Joyce’s book wields to this day; for those of a more cynical bent, it just shows how, with the proper marketing, pretty much anything can be turned into a tourist attraction.

World book sales are still healthy, yet there is a sense among many writers that the novel isn’t as culturally relevant as it once was. The American author Jonathan Franzen once penned an essay entitled ‘Why Bother?’ which sadly admitted that, apart from Harry Potter novels, there are few works of fiction that excite the public as they once did; and virtually none which hold up a mirror to the society in which they are created. Twentieth century writers would dream of producing the great American/British/Irish novel. Now they don’t even try, feeling that there are far too many other instant sources of media doing the same thing.

But while the great social novel has all but died out, television has found its voice. Thanks initially to the American channel HBO, television drama is going through a golden age of gently crafted, densely written dramas which do what the old social novels used to do. Like the works of Dickens, they are produced episodically and assume that the viewer has a degree of intelligence. The Sopranos was a portrait of a Shakespearean gangster, which explored ideas of power and success; The Wire demonstrated the workings of a US city from five different angles. And both these and many other TV dramas have been more effective than journalism in showing how the societies they are set in work.

I’m currently reaching the end of a love affair with a series called Friday Night Lights. The end is nigh because I’ve only a few episodes to go of the fifth and final series. (All these great shows do either five or six series). Set in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, the story revolves around the fortunes of the High School football team. Except it’s not about football: it’s about local politics and class and poverty and racism and sex and love and dreams of escape. After five series I still don’t quite understand the rules of American football.

Like many of these other dramas, FNL attracted mediocre audiences on TV, but now has a life on DVD, where the viewer doesn’t have to wait a week to find out what happens next — where they can consume the show as they would a novel. Which does beg the question: if television can do it, why don’t writers give it a try again?