John Berger's 'G' as a Cubist novel

Although it is commonly acknowledged that there is a profound connection between John Berger's art criticism and his fiction, this relationship has not been explored in any depth. Taking as theoretical core his essay "The Moment of Cubism," and his book The Success and Failure of Picasso, this thesis argues that Berger's interpretation of Cubism has shaped his novel G in its broad conception and in many of its details. G can be seen as a Marxist modernist narrative which enacts Berger's definition of Cubism as "dialectical materialism in painting" within its text. The novel characterizes G's lovers in terms that evoke Berger's art-critical interpretation of Picasso's painting as effecting a synthesis between what he sees as Courbet's materialism and Cezanne's dialectical view. The narrative also enlists the dialectical theories of Marx, Benjamin, Brecht, and Lukas in its depiction of character and setting. By incorporating notions of heterogeneity and totality within its text, G manages to straddle both sides of the "Marxist modernist" debate: the Marxist and the poststructuralist. Thus the novel serves to interpret the literary Cubist genre in an explicitly political way. For not only does G exemplify all of the stylistic features characteristic of the genre--multiple perspectives, fragmented form, an analytical stance, self reflexivity, and an ambiguity of reference--but it is also Cubist in its content, since Cubism has informed G's theoretical presuppositions to a profound extent. The principal protagonist bears a strong resemblance to Picasso in his life and work as Berger has represented him in his art criticism. Indeed, the reciprocity between Berger's novel and his writing on art is so marked we could say that G qualifies as an example of Cubist "dialectical materialism in writing." Because of the complexity of the relationship between Berger's novel and his theories of Cubism, and because G occupies an anomalous position within Berger's oeuvre, on account of its Marxist modernist narrative strategies, I have chosen to focus my study upon this one novel.