As I read Franco Moretti’s essay on trees and evolutionary theory a shadow of a thought crossed my mind that perhaps there are thousands of novels that have been lost to time.  I work in the library and it’s pretty astonishing how many books are categorized and kept there.  If a person were to read a book from the library everyday for their entire life they would only scratch the surface, that’s how many books there are.

With that in mind, the idea of evolutionary theory being applied to novels starts to make a little more sense, but I see several issues existing.  One is that if the novel keeps evolving, if we enjoy just the “drama of the day,” why doesn’t the quality improve?  And yes, when I think of all this I bear the over glamorized YA fiction genre in mind.  It is one of the bestselling genres in contemporary time and has become so predictable that it has it’s own set of tropes.  YA novels increase the quantity for sure and I’m interested to see which novels will be the ones remembered 50 or so years from now.

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I guess if evolutionary theory is applicable to novels then it would make sense that most of these books will be weeded out and forgotten in time.

I’m much more interested in the survivors of literature.  The classics that are reprinted over and over again are the ones to come to mind this time.  What makes us keep the classics in our library?  Even more interesting is what non-classic novels are we holding on to and is making its way through time?  What do the surviving novels say about us as a whole?  These are questions I want to find the answers to.