While I am about to embark on a McEwan exploration, a long time coming really, here's the Booker Prize contenders this year. Not a single book in the list made it to my reading achievements, so far. (woe to me!)
1. The Children's Book, AS Byatt (Chatto and Windus)
2. Summertime, JM Coetzee (Harvill Secker)
3. The Quickening Maze, Adam Foulds (Jonathan Cape)
4. How to paint a dead man, Sarah Hall (Faber)
5. The Wilderness, Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape)
6. Me Cheeta, James Lever (Fourth Estate)
7. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate)
8. The Glass Room, Simon Mawer (Little, Brown)
9. Not Untrue & Not Unkind, Ed O'Loughlin (Penguin - Ireland)
10.Heliopolis, James Scudamore (Harvill Secker)
11. Brooklyn, Colm Toibin (Viking)
12. Love and Summer, William Trevor (Viking)
13. The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters (Virago)
Will Coetzee get his third? It's too much but that would be a treasured feather on the prized cap of a novelist who writes in studied restraint and whose sparse prose is devoid of sentimentality. Well, at least, the Coetzee of old. The numerical trend suggests something - his first came in 1983, then 14 years later in 1997, he scored his second with 'Disgrace'. Well, it's only 12 years from winning his last but it's 2009, he seems to be darn lucky on odd numbers.
Speaking of novels, how many have I started and not finished? Quite a few, just quite a few. One of the things I loathe about myself is the inability to let go, such a pussy. By page 8, one more less, gets a sense that this is a lousy novel - yawn, yawn and the best idea is to throw it and find something worthwhile. But since I am rather committed to it and harbor notions that who knows, by page 72, there will be an epiphany of sorts. Or a beautifully crafted sentence you wished you had written, an unexpected twist, a funny line that reminds you of someone, a phrase evoking memories, an anecdote so close to home. I end up feeling empty and detesting myself more for being kiss-ass to throw a novel away. It's a huge character flaw I have had major battles with - knowing and deciding to give up.
I wish I could wean myself from fiction a little bit. I have friends who I see happier chewing on the fat, so to speak, nourishing their souls with the fattier tissues of political economy, biographies, history, philosophy and I envy them. While here I am, still in fictionland. Some have even become condescending or maybe this is just paranoia on my part but you feel a prejudice-vibe. Somebody asked "what pleasure do you derive from fiction?" I could recite a litany but that would sound defensive.
Yes, I agree that after being familiar with a particular genre, the genre somehow loses its suspense. You can somehow predict the nuances or read into them but as a reader, there's comfort in the thought that you are actually capable of entrusting your imagination to a writer you hardly know. It's the masterful stroke of a writer to let you experience the agony of action until the last page, regardless if you know from the very start how stories usually end.
Fiction to me, feeds that archetypal vulnerability of monkeys swinging from tree to tree, demonstrating faith in their peers to catch them, no matter what. Story plots are trite, contrived, tired, rehashed but so is life. Life finds comfort in patterns and rituals, it's not really an exciting rollercoaster ride but even rollercoasters for the sake of debate, also follow certain patterns, don't they?
Fiction may not offer something new, in the strictest sense of the term. What is more important is having that attitude that you may have heard this already, done this, read about this, knew about this and yet there is something that you can cart away that either sustains or reaffirms your spirit.
And this is not me being defensive, guffaws. To that friend who asked what pleasure I derive from fiction, allow me to drag an ally in John Gardner whose books on crafting fiction are considered major references. He competenly defends "to write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write with the assumption that 1 out of a hundred people who read one's work may be dying, or have some loved one dying....to write so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs.....to write as Shakespeare wrote, so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged, to live on."
Thank you, Mr. Gardner. And to those who have lost their stomach for fiction, maybe you're reading the bad ones.
I wish I could wean myself from fiction a little bit. I have friends who I see happier chewing on the fat, so to speak, nourishing their souls with the fattier tissues of political economy, biographies, history, philosophy and I envy them. While here I am, still in fictionland. Some have even become condescending or maybe this is just paranoia on my part but you feel a prejudice-vibe. Somebody asked "what pleasure do you derive from fiction?" I could recite a litany but that would sound defensive.
Yes, I agree that after being familiar with a particular genre, the genre somehow loses its suspense. You can somehow predict the nuances or read into them but as a reader, there's comfort in the thought that you are actually capable of entrusting your imagination to a writer you hardly know. It's the masterful stroke of a writer to let you experience the agony of action until the last page, regardless if you know from the very start how stories usually end.
Fiction to me, feeds that archetypal vulnerability of monkeys swinging from tree to tree, demonstrating faith in their peers to catch them, no matter what. Story plots are trite, contrived, tired, rehashed but so is life. Life finds comfort in patterns and rituals, it's not really an exciting rollercoaster ride but even rollercoasters for the sake of debate, also follow certain patterns, don't they?
Fiction may not offer something new, in the strictest sense of the term. What is more important is having that attitude that you may have heard this already, done this, read about this, knew about this and yet there is something that you can cart away that either sustains or reaffirms your spirit.
And this is not me being defensive, guffaws. To that friend who asked what pleasure I derive from fiction, allow me to drag an ally in John Gardner whose books on crafting fiction are considered major references. He competenly defends "to write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write with the assumption that 1 out of a hundred people who read one's work may be dying, or have some loved one dying....to write so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs.....to write as Shakespeare wrote, so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged, to live on."
Thank you, Mr. Gardner. And to those who have lost their stomach for fiction, maybe you're reading the bad ones.
2 comments:
you said it. i like much. =)
I remember this cropping up in one of our conversations - this inability to realize that it's okey not to finish some novels, that it's not some form of disrespect to the writer.
But some novels are so bad, they're actually good, hehe. Who's to tell us what's good or bad except our individual taste or in my case, my lack of it.
Thanks, D.
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