SOURCE: "The Responsibility of the Novelist: The Critical Reception of Ship of Fools," in Criticism, Vol. VIII, No. 4, Fall, 1966, pp. 377-88.

In the following essay, Liberman examines the critical reception of Ship of Fools and considers the essential characteristics of the novel as a literary form.

The title of this essay is, I suppose, somewhat misleading, in the way that a title can be, when it seems to promise a discourse on an arguable concept. In this instance it suggests a certain premise: namely, that the question, "What does the author owe society?" is one which still lives and breathes. In fact, I think it does not. I suspect, rather, that its grave can be located somewhere between two contentions: Andre Gide's that the artist is under no moral obligation to present a useful idea, but that he is under a moral obligation to present an idea well...