by Joe Miller,
Director of Development
As I write this column, I’m about halfway through Sleeping Giants, a debut novel from Sylvain Neuvel.
Sleeping Giants is a sort of high-concept thriller that revolves around some science fiction-ish technology but set in the present day. It’s sort of in the vein of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park or Douglas Preston’s Extinction.
But what sets Sleeping Giants apart is that the story unfolds through a series of interview transcripts, journal entries and newspaper articles. The format has the effect of pushing the novel’s action off-page. We hear characters’ after-the-fact recollection of events, but we never see those events unfold in real-time.
Literary scholars call this kind of format an epistolary novel. (Epistol? is the Greek word for letter. It’s the same word that gives us the epistles of St. Paul.)
The epistolary novel is surprisingly old. Scholars tell us that the first true epistolary novel is the Spanish novel Cárcel de amor (Prison of Love), written in 1485. Other famous early examples are Letters to a Portuguese Nun (1669) and Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (published in three volumes between 1684 and 1687).
The form peaked in the 18th century, when writers like Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used epistolary novels for making social and political commentary.
Romantic entanglements were a regular subject for epistolary novels. Jane Austin tinkered with the form in some of her early writing. The letters that comprise Les Liaisons dangereuses allow author Choderlos de Laclos to present events out-of-sequence—a concept that film adaptations like Dangerous Liaisons and Cruel Intentions sadly abandon.
More infamously, English novelist John Cleland embraced the epistolary novel for his 1748 novel, Fanny Hill. The book is generally considered to be the first work of prose pornography to be written in English. The book was outlawed in the United States until 1966.
Who knew that Penthouse Letters were part of a tradition that pre-dates the American Revolution?
Modern versions of the format incorporate new types of media entries. Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s Illuminae—a science fiction novel aimed at young adults—incorporates hacked documents, emails, military records and medical files—along with some unique formatting—to tell a tale of love and military adventure set in the far future.
Those of you who are more into movies than books probably recognize a close cousin of the epistolary novel in the found-footage film.
These are films in which the visuals are recorded by the characters—either literally by the actors or by cinematographers mimicking the effect. The clips are then edited together and presented as if they were discovered after the fact.
It’s an especially common technique in horror films, where budgets tend to be low. The Blair Witch Project (1999) was shot for just $60,000 and went on to earn nearly $250 million. That success kicked off a wave of found-footage films in the ‘00s and early ‘10s, including Paranormal Activity (2007), Coverfield (2008) and Project X (2012).
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of unconventional fiction—works that play with styles or format or genre in unexpected ways. Epistolary novels fall into that category.
Indeed, they hold an extra special place in my heart.
I’m an essayist and a nonfiction writer at heart. But I also love novels. Epistolary novels use nonfiction forms to tell a fictional story. It gives me hope that someday I could write a novel of my own. (I don’t have an idea for a novel. But if I did, it’d probably end up being epistolary.)
As I said, I’m only half-way through Sleeping Giants, but it’s a fun read and I’d recommend it. You can get it through Libby. (Or you can as soon as I return it!)
And, of course, at your local library, you can always find lots of novels—both the epistolary and the traditional variety—as well as plenty of films to check out. It’s a great way to pass a cold and windy March day.
