not yet: 13 ways of looking at the novel

Jane Smiley faced a dry spell after Horse Heaven and read 100 novels; this book is her ruminations on that process. I was interested to learn how differently A Thousand Acres, Moo, and Greenlanders, the only three of her novels I've read but all three of which I adored, evolved.

I came across this line and read it aloud: "The protagonist is the fulcrum of the author's relationship to the narrator, an the prose, or style, of the novel continuously presents the shifting balances among the three....The author, the narrator, and the protagonist are always in a state of conflict that is always being reconciled as the narrative moves forward." RDC criticized that that sounded very formalist, and the following led him to dismiss.

Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady is a good example of this conflict. The evidence is that James himself is sympathetic to Isabel Archer from the beginning to the end of the novel. He portrays her as especially attractive, having qualities of innocence, beauty, and charm that set her apart from women around her and that appeal to men and women alike. More important, she is potentially courageous—that is, the quality of courage is within her, but she has not had much occasion to exercise it as the novel opens. James the author wants Isabel to demonstrate certain ideas he has about the way the world works in general and about the psychology of women like herself in particular. James the narrator defines and redefines Isabel's qualities by the extensive use of analysis, especially by analogy and extended metaphor. James the narrator deems it his job to talk about Isabel (and everyone else) unceasingly, to characterize everything she does and thinks in relation to some norm of thought and behavior (represented by several of the other characters). This habit of James the narrator does not serve Isabel over the long haul of the novel, in fact eventually works to demean her. Her courage does come into play several times, in her unhappy relationship with Gilbert Osmond, but by that time the fact that James the narrator has always stayed one step ahead of her by so relentlessly characterizing her in a way that she could not characterize herself means that her courage doesn't have the effect of elevating her soul, or showing her growth. What James the author would like to demonstrate about Isabel through an emotional effect upon the reader of pity and terror has been frittered away by the narrator's habits of storytelling.
Authorial intent is a contemporary bugaboo but I'm content enough to assert it in James's case about Isabel, and I don't distinguish between James-the-author from James-the-narrator. Should I? Or should I at least like a novel more and know it better before contemplating the worth of this passage? But sure the author should be able to control the narrator, especially when author (and narrator) have such rigid plans for Isabel as James had.

Nah, I'm going to have to buy this book to read it, because I want to write all over it, e.g. in protest of this:

Most children's books and fantasies are about introverted, highly imaginative heroes or heroines who overcome outsider status, either so they can join the group or so they can transcend the group; children who read a lot of books come to identify with those sorts of protagonists and come to be like those sorts of protagonists. (page 30)

It infuriates and intrigues me by turns, and I need to read it with a pen.