The title contains a pun, for which I apologize.

Consider a crime novel, for instance, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. We can reduce the novel as follows.
-> Novel composed of
-> Chapters composed of
-> Paragraphs composed of
-> Sentences composed of
-> Words composed of
-> Symbols (letters of the alphabet, spaces, periods, commas, etc.)

But at the level of symbols, the novel has evaporated in that the same symbols arranged differently could conceivably create a harlequin romance novel, or a spy novel. It seems the novel is the particular pattern of symbols which compose words which . . . chapters which compose the novel.

But The Maltese Falcon as consisting of symbols in a particular pattern isn’t quite right either because we could encode the novel in a pattern of zeros and ones. In fact, that’s exactly how the novel would be stored on a computer in ASCII format. But there’s nothing sacred about ASCII format; The Maltese Falcon could be encoded in Unicode format. Or in Morse Code. Or imagine there were two chemical elements which can be joined in arbitrarily long strings to form a molecule. If we let element 1 represent zero and element 2 represent one, then a very long molecule could encode the novel. In fact, there are probably innumerable ways to encode a novel.

So, what is the novel itself? Yes, it can be encoded in symbols, in bits, whatever; but what is it irrespective of any encoding? What is the novel in itself? It appears to be a sequence of thoughts, of ideas. The opening sentence—Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth—describes the facial features of a man. It contains the ideas of a man, a man’s jaw which is long and bony, etc.

If, in fact, a novel is a sequence of particular ideas, then a novel is an immaterial entity. Yes, it can be encoded in matter, in black print on white paper, in the electrical state of computer bits, in our hypothetical chemical molecule. But it’s immaterial. We might call it an abstract object.

But abstract objects are often said to lack causal power. The number 2, on its own, can’t cause anything to happen in the physical universe. But if The Maltese Falcon is indeed an abstract object, then an abstract object can have causal powers. For instance, the novel can entertain, cause me to feel suspense, happy, sad, etc.

If, on the other hand, a novel is not an abstract object, then what is it?