Who writes a novel?

I was mowing the lawn today thinking about my upcoming dissertation proposal presentation, and the thought occurred to me: who writes a novel? I'm working on Atlantic Canadian literature and the theme of religion though and in it, and what is coming to the fore is that Catholics are writing novels like they are going out of style. When you look back into the history of Can lit and At-can lit, you find that this is somewhat of a new thing. So I've been wondering why now? What makes one want to write a novel? What political and economic forces must be in place to make writing a novel something you might do? What follows is a conversation over gmail between me and my colleague, Holly (who works on Jews is film), about what gave rise to the novel:

1:22 PM me: who writes a novel?
1:23 PM Holly: a-a-an authour?
well, in biblical lit, we have the debate - "a person creates a document, not a community"
me: this is the big question that hit me while mowing the lawn....
Holly: but then again I don't know if that is true
1:24 PM a text is created FOR a community
me: that seems to be a debate with german romantic ancestry...and a novel isn't really any old document
Holly: no published authour creates just for him or herself
1:25 PM me: no author creates ex nihlo
Holly: yes - that is my take with film
I like Berger's theory of internalization, externalization
1:26 PM me: you know that is Berger's retelling of Marx's dialectic of production - worker makes product and becomes alienated from it though the process of production
1:27 PM Holly: yes
me: but back to the novel. it seems to me that the novel has a particular place in history
Holly: but the idea that a person consumes the product - that is important
1:28 PM novels both document and create history
me: it's kind of like the car... you don't have it until the 20th century...with the novel you don't really have it in full force until the 19th century
Holly: yes - but you had things that led up to it
1:29 PM the stage led to the novel, as well as the essay, the sermon, the poem and the song
me: yes, certainly biblical literature, as well as greek and roman epics lead up to it
1:30 PM The stage...the play
uh huh... is a novel a private 5 act play?
Holly: it is the frustration
poem are too short, sermons too dusty, and plays not internal enough
1:31 PM and, yes, too corporate
me: the european epic to clunky
Holly: the novel is a drawing room intrigue laid bare
a false memoir
me: yes the novel comes to rise after europe is tired of trying to organize communities to act their ideas
Holly: yes
1:32 PM I think I see what you mean
me: the novel also needs the printing press, where the play doesn't
Holly: it is the individual, not the chorus
yes
but with the enlightenment, the emphasis placed on internal reason...
you can't just show after that
you have to let the reader into the mind
1:33 PM since that is what "really matters"
me: wow, this is the question, or the impulse that lead to the unconscious
1:34 PM since the novel is the presentation of one's own imagination, housed in the mind, plus one's own theory of external organization - say Jane Austen's communities and the play of marriage
1:35 PM Holly: yes
1:36 PM me: it can't be wholly about the social, or the community, it has to also be about the depth and complexity of ones internal realm. it has to be exibihitionist
Holly: it is the digesting of what is around you - not the Truth, but the digested matter
people cannot get away from their showing roots
they still must show
but the mode of shoing is different
me: this is why scatological tropes are so common
1:37 PM Holly: through the novel, you can create a play, but you get more than action to do it with
that is why film bridges the gap - it is a play, but with tighter angles so you can show the internal, as well
1:38 PM me: well shakespeare certainly had more then action. Hamlets whole to be or not to be is internal reasoning at its finest
Holly: yes, but it is still rare and short
with a novel, there is more room to develope
and you don't have to rely on artificail things like silloquies
1:39 PM Shakespeare is to the novel as musicals are to personal films
me: so beyond the psychological and the formal, what has to be happening in your state to create a novel?
1:40 PM Holly: a need to express
me: I'm thinking that the novel is tied to the rise of nationalism in europe
Holly: a need to reflect what you see
a need to find others who feel the same
perhaps a need to pursuade
me: perhaps reflect is the wrong word, maybe dominate would do better?
1:41 PM yes, a need to persuade one to your way of thinking... this must come after everyone's unified, catholic way of thinking has been ruptured
1:42 PM Holly: well, that is the function of the nation state
me: The novel is a protestant apolegetic invention
Holly: to unifiy individuals
me: it is made to create communities
audiences (here the parallel with film is strong, yet different)
1:44 PM so we started by saying that a novel was created by an individual who was not interested in organizing and persuading other individuals to take the time to act out their particular imaginative thing. Now we see that the novel does still have a communal impulse - it longs to draw people together under it in affirmation of the author's individual mastery of the known world and the interior drama of self.
1:45 PM It is the drive to political leadership internalized, privatized...
1:46 PM when margaret atwood travels around canada to audiences that gawk at her she is actual demonstrating her leadership of a certain community within a nation. She has created a party
1:48 PM Have you read mrs. Dalloway or seen the film the hours?
1:49 PM Holly: read
me: you know how she bustles around all day trying to create a party, which happens at the end...I think this is an analogy for the novel and its function in society
1:51 PM VW was trying to create an audience of readers, a party in both the upper class and political sense.
do you think this is the same with film?
1:52 PM Holly: maybe