SOURCE: "The Idea of the Political Novel," in Politics and the Novel, Horizon Press, 1957, pp. 15-24.

In the following essay, Howe finds politics to be a "violent intrusion" in literary art and seeks to examine the effect of such political ideas when writers insert them into a text.

"Politics in a work of literature," wrote Stendhal, "is like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, something loud and vulgar, and yet a thing to which it is not possible to refuse one's attention."

The remark is very shrewd, though one wishes that Stendhal, all of whose concerts are interrupted by bursts of gunfire, had troubled to say a little more. Once the pistol is fired, what happens to the music? Can the noise of the interruption ever become part of the performance? When is the interruption welcome and when is it resented?

To answer such questions one...