science

Systems novel

Systems novel is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Systems novel rather than just read about it. In short: Systems novel is a literary genre named by Tom LeClair in his 1987 book In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel, and explored further in LeClair's 1989 book, The Art of Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction. LeClair used systems theory to critique novels by authors including Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis and Ursula K.

Key takeaways

Systems novel belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Systems novel to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Systems novel from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Systems novel is a literary genre named by Tom LeClair in his 1987 book In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel, and explored further in LeClair's 1989 book, The Art of Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction. LeClair used systems theory to critique novels by authors including Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis and Ursula K. Le Guin. Citing Fritjof Capra's description of systems theory as a "new vision of reality", LeClair invoked ideas from thinkers such as James Lovelock, Gregory Bateson and Douglas Hofstadter to analyse how the novels in question depicted processes and relationships within social, cultural, economic and political systems. LeClair's systems novels were all "long, large and dense" and all in some way striving for "mastery", showing similarity to Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom! in "range of reference, artistic sophistication, and desire for profound effect." Subsequent critics widened the geographical range but mostly adhered to the notion that systems novels were typically large and dense, making the concept overlap with other critical terms such as encyclopedic novel and maximalism. This weakened its usefulness as a genre definition, but with the rise of the internet, the systems novel has come to be seen as reflecting the conditions of network culture. The term is now used in at least two different ways, stemming from LeClair's thesis though with different emphases. One highlights bulk, broadness of scope, range of content and greatness of ambition. The other highlights engagement with scientific and technological concepts such as information theory, complexity and emergence. Some systems novels fit both categories, though not all.

Original examples Having introduced the term in relation to Don DeLillo, Tom LeClair chose seven novels as the focus of The Art of Excess. They were: Gravity's Rainbow (by Thomas Pynchon), Something Happened (by Joseph Heller), J R (by William Gaddis), The Public Burning (by Robert Coover), Women and Men (by Joseph McElroy), LETTERS (by John Barth) and Always Coming Home (by Ursula Le Guin). LeClair wrote, "These seven novels are about mastery, about excesses of power, force, and authority in arenas small and large: the self's mastery of itself, economic and political hegemony, force in history and culture, the transforming power of science and technology, the control of information and art. These novels are also about the size and scale of contemporary experience: how multiplicity and magnitude create new relations and new proportions among persons and entities, how quantity affects quality, how massiveness is related to mastery." LeClair saw the systems novel as a reaction to the "postmodern collapse of high and modern culture", while at the same time being postmodern itself. "Authoritative in their mastery of contemporary information and postmodern techniques, systems novels admit from within themselves their own limitations – the relativity of categories, the arbitrariness of all models and fictions, the constraints of languages, the limitation of a single metadiscourse, and authorial perspectivism. Widely selected, imaginatively structured, oddly proportioned, and strangely scaled, the plenitude of information in systems novels demands from the reader a systemic understanding, a recognition of the homologies between the systems novels and the ecosystem in which they are published, the world they master." In 1996 LeClair applied the term to Richard Powers' The Gold Bug Variations, William Vollmann's You Bright and Risen Angels and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. LeClair highlighted all three authors' experience or interest in computing and mathematics. He wrote, "I am not suggesting only that Powers, Vollmann, and Wallace write more explicitly about information than the earlier systems novelists or that their fluency with technical or mathematical languages distinguishes their work. Rather I believe these younger writers more thoroughly conceive their fictions as information systems, as long-running programs of data with a collaborative genesis."

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Systems novel

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Systems novel claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Systems novel before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Systems novel ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Systems novel

In research: Systems novel appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Systems novel in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Systems novel is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1980s in literature, 1990s in literature, 2000s in literature, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Systems novel outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Systems novel in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Systems novel means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Systems novel out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Systems novel in simple terms?

Why does Systems novel matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Systems novel?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Systems novel.