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Verisimilitude

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Form and Function in the Diary Novel

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Abstract

The recording of such disordered states as that of Underhill the vampire obviously poses a major problem in terms of verisimilitude — particularly so in a novel where Underhill calmly describes the exhumation and involuntary cremation of a thousand infant bodies a fortnight after the event and later escapes from his own coffin! Given that few diary novels are as extreme in this regard as Tonkin’s, it has to be admitted that sustained verisimilitude of style is always difficult to achieve. If the reader is to accept a great number of entries over a couple of hundred pages, there has to be a reasonable balance between the conventions of real diaries and real novels, even though the ways in which this balance may be achieved are infinitely variable. In this chapter we shall examine a range of typical problems and their attempted resolution, involving openings and endings, the length and style of the entries, and the whole notion of a possible readership.

‘In form and feature really most uncommon.’1

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Notes

  1. The quotation is borrowed from one of the characters in William Golding’s Close Quarters (Faber and Faber, 1987) p. 148.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Aberdeen, UK

    Trevor Field (Lecturer in French)

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  1. Trevor Field
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© 1989 Trevor Field

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Field, T. (1989). Verisimilitude. In: Form and Function in the Diary Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10209-9_4

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