The Guardian's Blog, page 214

A brief survey of the short story part 46: Roberto Bolaño

Invested with a rare belief in literature's importance, his enigmatic stories encompass deep feeling and extreme violence

When he died of liver failure in Spain in 2003, aged 50, Chilean author Roberto Bolaño had published 13 books in just 10 years, and his third short-story collection was with his publisher. He also left behind several works in various stages of completion, including the enormous, engulfing novel 2666. His fame was burgeoning around the world at the time of his death, and posthumous publications continue to appear: remains of "a supernova of creativity," in Giles Harvey's description, "whose light is still arriving at our shores."

It is impossible to write about any one strand of Bolaño's work in isolation, because nearly all of it inhabits one sprawling intertextual territory. Speaking in 1998 he said, "I consider, in a very humble way, all my prose, and even some of my poetry, to be a whole. Not only stylistically, but also as a narrative." Enjoying contrariness, Bolaño rowed back from this statement elsewhere, but the recurrence of characters, themes and incidents in his work is undeniable. His alter ego Arturo Belano, for example, features in or narrates many of the short stories, as well as being a lead character in the novel The Savage Detectives, and the narrator of the novels Distant Star and – according to a note in Bolaño's papers – 2666.

Bolaño's stories take the form of fragments of memoir ("Sensini", "The Grub"), unsolvable detective stories ("Phone Calls"), or anxious transmissions from a region between dream and reality ("The Dentist"). Sometimes, as in "Gómez Palacio", they feel like all three at once. An account of a writer going to a remote town in northern Mexico to interview for a teaching post, the story establishes its strange air of lassitude and dread at once: "I went to Gómez Palacio during one of the worst periods of my life. I was twenty-three years old and I knew that my days in Mexico were numbered." The narrator discusses poetry with the director of the art school, has bad dreams (Bolaño's work is clotted with dreams), and stands in the room of his isolated motel "looking at the desert stretching off into the dark". Parked at dusk in the desert in the director's car, a situation with a vague sexual potential that perhaps neither party wants to realise, a man pulls in a few metres ahead of them. "It's my husband, the director said with her eyes fixed on the stationary car, as if she were talking to herself." The cars sit in silence. When the writer drives away the man in the other car "turned his back to us and I couldn't see his face." The director then tells the writer she was joking, that it wasn't her husband after all.

This admission at first works to defuse the tension, but as the scene lingers the anonymity of the faceless driver becomes more menacing. His identity and motives tantalise. Bolaño once said that if he hadn't been a writer he would have been a homicide detective, "the sort of person who comes back alone to the scene of a crime by night, unafraid of ghosts", and his stories make us detectives at the scene, too, although the culprit and often even the crime remain shrouded. This roadside scene is consummate Bolaño: an event suspended between mundanity and threat that endures in the memory.

In "Mauricio 'The Eye' Silva", Bolaño writes, "violence, real violence, is unavoidable, at least for those of us who were born in Latin America during the 50s and were about 20 years old at the time of Salvador Allende's death. That's just the way it goes." Violence, implied or actual, is an unbroken bass tone running through his work. "The Part About the Crimes", the longest section of 2666, is the most bluntly violent piece of writing I've ever read. Given this, his irony, the intertextual games that connect one distant corner of his fiction to another, and the recurring themes that form the churning centres of his work (exile, idealism, power relations, art), it's surprising to note how moving his writing can be. In "Last Evenings on Earth", B (presumably Belano) goes on a disastrous holiday to Acapulco with his father. They haven't been getting on, but when B looks down from his hotel window one night,

"he makes out his father's silhouette climbing the stairs. First his head, then his broad shoulders, then the rest of his body, and finally the shoes, a pair of white moccasins that B, as a rule, finds profoundly disgusting, but the feeling they provoke in him now is something like tenderness."

In the unfinished story "Colonia Lindavista", the narrator remembers the period when his family moved from Chile to Mexico City: "When I think back to that time, I see my parents and my sister, and then I see myself, and the little group we compose looks overwhelmingly desolate." These moments of tenderness and lament, so simply declared, arrive with an uncommon force, a function of Bolaño's ability to invest his stories with palpable significance, even though what is at stake may remain mysterious.

This is true even, or perhaps especially, when in summary they sound ridiculous. For example, in "Enrique Martín Arturo", Belano and the eponymous poet fall out over poetry. At some point Martín renounces it and goes to work reporting UFO sightings for a paranormal magazine. He re-establishes contact by sending Belano cryptic postcards, pays him a paranoid visit in the middle of the night to entrust him with a box of papers, and hangs himself. The reader is primed for conspiracy. But when, at the story's end, Belano opens the box and reads the papers, "There were no maps or coded messages on any of them, just poems, mainly in the style of Miguel Hernández, but there were also some imitations of León Felipe, Blas de Otero, and Gabriel Celaya. That night I couldn't get to sleep. Now it was my turn to escape." Yet in Bolaño's hands, what might have been a sardonic punchline is instead desperately mournful, a thing of beauty.

Bolaño can pull this off because of the conviction, universal in his work, that literature is as much about ethics as aesthetics: "It goes beyond the page," he told an Argentinian journalist, "… and establishes itself in the area of risk". In a short, playful essay about writing short stories he states, "the short-story writer should be brave. It's a sad fact to acknowledge, but that's the way it is." Beyond that, Bolaño exemplified the truth of every writer being a reader first: "Reading is always more important than writing", he said. His influences and idols included Poe, Perec, Nicanor Parra, Roque Dalton and Enrique Lihn, Kafka, Carver, Chekhov and Borges ("I could live under a table reading Borges"). "Basically," he once said, "I'm interested in western literature and I'm fairly familiar with all of it." Or, as Javier Cercas has him say in the novel Soldiers of Salamis, in which he appears as a character, "I read everything, even bits of paper I find blowing down the street."

Quotations from the stories are translated by Chris Andrews

Next: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Roberto BolañoFictionChris Power
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Open thread: Which phrases have your family 'caught' from reading?

Site commenter rosereads has found lines from favourite books making their way into her family's vocabulary. Which phrases have caught on in your household?

We spotted this great conversation starter on our new Family reviewers thread, and thought it deserved a blog of its own. Thanks to rosereads for the post.

The astonishing variety of books for children is one of the wonders of our world. Phrases from picture books especially, passed into our family's sayings. 'Don't forget the bacon' we say when trying to remember what's needed at the shops - thanks to Pat Hutchins. A shiver goes up our spines when we remember the threat of games against Captain Najork and his hired sportsmen, summoned by Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong to teach Tom a lesson about fooling around: "They play hard games and they play them jolly hard". One of Russell Hoban's life lessons for us all.

I'd love to hear what phrases other families have 'caught' from reading with their children.

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Tips, links and suggestions: What are you reading today?

A weekly space for us talk about what you're reading this week, and our review list

davidchrichton is looking for a supply of new funny books:

Last Sunday A A Gill wrote an article in the Times about the decline in sales for P G Wodehouse's books and it and me think about how badly we seem to be served these days with humorous books by anybody at all. I don't claim to be an expert and stand to be shot down in flames by those in the know, but who do we have these days turning out books we can simply laugh at and enjoy?

Being a bookaholic I'm into just about every genre so I'm rarely short of a good read in general but there are times in this dark world when we need a bit of light escapism, and if anybody knows of someone turning out the modern equivalent of Blandings Castle, please let me know.

R042 suggested Ned Beauman's The Teleportation Accident and Fpol recommended Timothy Mo's Sour Sweet, but if you have other suggestions of books that raise a smile, do post them in the thread below.

New community member AsBigAsABiscuit (welcome to TLS) decided to revisit a series:

I picked up the third in Bryan Talbot's Grandville series of graphic novels over Christmas. Deciding to make a triple bill of it, I sat down with the first two and re-read them before moving on to the most recent one. These are all beautifully drawn books with fantastic dialogue, and packed full of details which reward repeated reading, however I don't feel that the plot of Grandville Bete Noire quite stands up to previous standards. It's a minor quibble, since there is so much else to celebrate in this series, but it would be interesting to see LeBrock forced into new territory if the series continues, as I hope it does.

Helen Ogbourn (welcome to you to TLS too!) is also rereading a favourite series:

I've decided to re-visit my childhood by working my way through the Chronicles of Narnia and have just finished 'Voyage of the Dawntreader'. I understand C.S. Lewis' biblical references much more as an adult and I've I have found the stories far more magical than I ever did as a child. I had the full set of books as when I was younger but never read The Magician's Nephew or The Last Battle. It's been great to discover just how that lamp post found it's way into the Narnian woods and I can't wait to see how everything comes to and end in the final book of the series.
The experience of re-reading childrens' stories has been very refreshing - wonderful, simple escapism.

Jessaca Carey - yet another new and very welcome face - was bowled over by her choice:

Just wanted to applaud Carlos Ruiz Zafon for The Angels Game. I loved Shadow of the Wind and so gave the second book in the series a try...it lingered with me for days after finishing. A true modern gothic, with a noir flair. I could smell the Barcelona air as I read it. There is romance, treachery, horror, and heart break. All of this under a slow decent into presumed madness from the main character. I had to sit and breathe slowly after I finished the last page.

Before I move onto this week's review list, thanks to PaulBowes01 who posted two very interesting links:

A list of interesting books to be published in the first six months of 2013, from the editors of Writers No One Reads.

An interesting interview with Lars Iyer, ahead of publication of Exodus, at Full Stop. Learn more about the exciting lifestyle of the contemporary writer! Secrets of literary success!

If you come across an interesting article, video, blog of tweet you think we'd enjoy, please do post it in the thread.

Now, here are the books we are writing about this week, subject to last minute changes. What are you reading?

Non-Fiction

• Brian on Fire by Susanna Cahalan
• Return of a King by William Dalrymple
• Fat Chance by Robert Lustig
• Fanny and Stella: The Young Men who Shocked Victorian England by Neil McKenna
• Soldaten: On Fighting Killing and Dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWS by Sonke Neitzel
• Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to be a Pop Star by Tracy Thorn

Fiction

• The Emperor's Tomb by Joseph Roth
• Clay by Melissa Harrison
• The Engagement by Chloe Hooper
• The Goddess Chronicle by Natsuo Kirino
• The Gurkha's Daughter by Prajwal Parajuly

Guardian readersHannah Freeman
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Choose February's Reading group book

Next month is LGBT history month, so we have a theme. But which of the huge range of possible books should we choose?

February is LGBT history month here in the UK. This year we're going to join in the celebration at the Reading group by choosing a book that in one way or another says something about lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender history.

That's a gloriously broad, rainbow-coloured spectrum, I know – encompassing anything from The Symposium to Brokeback Mountain, anyone from Genet to Jeanette Winterson to Alan Hollinghurst. It could be a book that helps us feel pride that we have progressed far enough as a society to embrace equal marriage rights, or one that reminds us that for many, the struggle goes on. Or, more simply, it could just be camp and fun. The choice is yours – with a little help from the Reading group's famous sorting hat …

To get the ball rolling, we're giving away 10 copies of Neil McKenna's wonderful Fanny and Stella, a new history of the sensational trial of Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park – known to friends as Fanny and Stella – who in 1871 were arrested while wearing women's clothing and charged with "conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence". It's a gripping and shocking account, frequently tragic, but ultimately triumphant – not least because the book itself marks a final vindication and victory for the two heroes, describing them with the eloquence, good humour and the dignity they have so long deserved. A treat, in other words. The first 10 people from the UK to post an "I want, please" below the line will get a copy. Although, don't forget to email ginny.hooker@guardian.co.uk afterwards, letting us know your address and your user name. We can't track you down ourselves!

In the meantime, there's still plenty more Sylvia Plath to come …

Sam Jordison
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Richard Blanco's inaugural poem for Obama is a valiant flop

'One Today' has some fine lines, but writing good poetry for a grand national celebration is an impossible feat

The celebratory public poem is an extinct genre in our sceptical postmodern times, and probably ought to stay that way. It presents the writer with insurmountable challenges in form, tone and content. How do you praise your nation wisely – with honesty and caution? How do you root that public voice in the personal and private spaces where thoughts grow? How do you write a mass-market poem?

Richard Blanco's new inauguration poem, "One Today", composed to usher in Barack Obama's second term, is a valiant but not always convincing attempt to square the circles.

Ambitious in its length (69 lines), "One Today" reveals a novelistic eye for detail and broad, sweeping description. It begins, slightly heavy-handedly, with daybreak: "One sun rose on us today …" The rhymed spondee of "One sun" sets the recurrent motif, the theme of unity, picked up as the speaker moves through the day: "One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story/ told by our silent gestures moving behind windows." Later on, we have "one ground", "one wind" and, repeated in the last three stanzas "one sky", followed by "one moon" and (you saw it coming), "one country".

Parallelism is a useful device for creating an incantatory lift and narrative logic to a poem in danger of becoming a sprawl of lists, but what if the motif itself isn't strong enough to bear so much repetition? There's a logical problem here that a child could point out: it's not only America but the world which has one sky, one sun, one moon. The unity that pulls diversity together and gives everyone hope is an ideal rather than the reality being urged on us. The imaginative possibilities run down until there's really nothing to say, except the unexceptional: "… all of us –/ facing the stars / hope – a new constellation / waiting for us to map it, / waiting for us to name it – together."

The writing's not always this tired. As he takes us through the working day, Blanco quick-sketches in vivid strokes the "pencil-yellow school buses" and the "silver trucks heavy with oil or paper –/ bricks or milk". These bustling scenes are idealised, of course, but the descriptive simplicity is fresh and engaging. Later on, "we head home: through the gloss of rain or weight / of snow, or the plum-blush of dusk …" Here, a real unity of aspiration (if only to get home) is sensuously rendered.

Blanco dips into personal experience at times – most movingly when remembering his mother, ringing up groceries for 20 years "so I could write this poem". There is a little more strain when, alluding to the school-shooting at Newtown, he refers to "the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain/ the empty desks of children marked absent/ today, and forever". There are other moments of trying too hard. How does the sky yield "to our resilience" in the lines about the Freedom Tower? As the writer hauls himself from poetry into public accountability, he loses some of his sureness of touch.

Jahan Ramazani, an editor of The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, has said of "One Today" that "a more knotty or abstruse poem … would have missed the mark as an act of public address as well as poetry". I agree, but it's perfectly possible to avoid the abstruse and not fall into banality, either. Blanco's poem achieves this delicate balance at times. There are lines simple in language and thought, and still effective as poetry, often because of the force of a single word: "mothers watch children slide into the day", "the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs" (my italics). But, as it goes on, the poem seems to be exhausted by its own energy. The use of imperatives ("breathe", "hear") rather desperately forces the pace.

It might seem that the biggest problem with writing a public poem is that crude simplifications are forced on a reluctant poet. Blanco, it seems, is able to write in this "genre" with more natural conviction than most. A shorter poem, and above all one with a tighter form, might have helped maintain a consistently high verbal pressure, with no sacrifice of accessibility.

PoetryBarack ObamaObama inaugurationUnited StatesCarol Rumens
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The Great American Novelist tournament: opening matches

Faulkner squares up to Gaddis, and DeLillo dukes it out with Dos Passos in the first bouts of our big books beasts' knockout

John Updike once noted that within American fiction "the slot between the fantastic and the drab seems too narrow". Well, my playground is an even narrower slot: the slot between the terrific and the truly great. I am looking for the Greatest American Novelist of the last 100 years and

When reading around literature one hopes to enhance the reading experience by getting a better grasp of the writer, their intentions and their oeuvre, without succumbing to any influence or building any trammelling structures of preconception. Unfortunately, on this occasion, I built a structure of trepidation – as most of the articles pertaining to Messrs Faulkner and Gaddis advertised their difficulty.

Jonathan Franzen's essay about Gaddis, entitled Mr Difficult, is a case in point. Franzen, a man with an eggier head than me, didn't finish JR:

"One night, I gave up in the middle of a four-page paragraph and for the next few nights I was out late. When I opened JR again I was lost. I set it aside, hoping to pick up the threads some other night. Two months later, I quietly reshelved it. The bookmark remained stuck on page 469, attesting to my defeat by JR or to JR's defeat by my noisy life."

Yikes! I thought, I have a noisy life – it's positively deafening.

It's a massive book, littered with obscure references, and is written almost entirely in unattributed speech, with no chapter breaks and very little paragraphing. So, I left it on my chest of drawers. The beautiful Dalkey Archive edition, a great monochrome monolith, haunted my bedroom like a baleful Groke. One day I ventured closer to the book I'd been avoiding for months, and upon opening I found this piloerecting dedication:

"For Matthew. Once more unto the breach, dear friend, once more."

That's me! My name's Matthew, he's talking to me! If he'd added "noblest English", I might really have thought it was written for me and not for his son. It girded my loins nevertheless, and I summoned up, not blood, but the Gaddis Annotations and dived in. The Gaddis Annotations is a wonderful resource that comprehensively explains the obscure references that underpin the book. Although it could be enjoyed without it, I feel it would be peevish, like refusing to dunk one's biscuit in a cup of tea.

JR is about the dangers of free-market enterprises running wild. If the financial system is left unchecked, it argues, and people focus only on profits, social, educational and artistic degradation are inevitable. First published more than 40 years ago, it stands as an unheeded prophecy of the financial turmoil in which the world now finds itself. At the centre of the novel is scruffy 11-year-old JR Vansant, who, on a school trip to Wall Street, becomes fascinated with stocks and shares and by applying some basic capitalist principles, turns a simple mail order enterprise into a financial conglomerate. He's motivated by childish greed and begins to believe he is something of a genius (even though he thinks the Jamaica, Queens subway stop is a Caribbean island and that Native American Indians live on a "preservation"). He is not immoral like the businessmen he is desperate to emulate, but amoral, like any prepubescent boy. He thinks greed is good because he doesn't know any better. Although he mostly stays within the letter of the law, he's very rarely within the spirit, and when it all collapses he wonders, "Why are they blaming me?" He feels as if he's part of the American dream – he wants to get ahead, and quickly – but he has little consideration for the ordinary Americans his machinations may affect.

JR requires dedication. This is a book best read in great chunks in great silence, sitting under a great, bright window. Within the multi-layered conversations and one-sided telephone calls is a deeply funny, shrewd novel, coloured by the palpable anger Gaddis felt over the seeming indifference with which his first novel, The Recognitions, was met. At one point in the book, a writer is asked if his novel is difficult. He replies: "'As difficult as I can make it.'" And this novel certainly is difficult, too. The length alone is off-putting and there are only so many sequestered Sundays to pore over it. So, inevitably, I lost the thread sometimes; I became bored and confused on more than one occasion and eventually this became a book that was sometimes endured rather than enjoyed, but always admired.

Faulkner is also synonymous with difficulty but I was encouraged by Sarah Churchwell's assessment of Absalom, Absalom! as Faulkner's crowning masterpiece and steeled by Faulkner's sound (and maybe furious) advice to those who claim not to understand his writing, even after they read it two or three times: "Read it four times."

This is the humour that pervades the book, not in subject matter but in the style; the tangential, logorrheic sentences whirl around one's head like bejewelled dancers, mocking and laughing, and we begin to see how Quentin feels. Quentin is the conduit; he's us and we're him. He is sitting at the knees of the multifarious storytellers and he takes turns at relaying the story too, to his Harvard roommate. The story troubles and bullies him. This is the bud of an arc to another of Faulkner's works – and who doesn't love an arc?

I followed Faulkner's advice and pored over the text, reading and re-reading and imbibing again. I'm not always taken by a modernist style but his is impressive and beautiful and buries the plot deep within itself.

The book is irrigated with colons, semi-colons and parentheses punctuating lengthy paragraphs, to the point where little faces appear, (perhaps Faulkner was the first purveyor of emoticons ;). I wouldn't put anything past him). The writing is mellifluous and intoxicating and depicts the thrilling story of the ruthless Thomas Sutpen and his determined Southern settlement. It takes us up to and through the Civil War and the rise and demise of Sutpen and his family. The story is brilliantly revealed through many overlapping accounts, tales told from different points of view in the Southern tradition like stories on the porch but all washed in the same, high-coloured prose. Only a poor settler, Wash Jones, is allowed to speak in his natural "yokel voice" and for him Faulkner reserves a special role.

It's a book that deals with race, slavery, incest, war, ambition and greed. It attacks the self-righteousness of the Southern aristocracy and left me soaked to the skin, sweaty with "the South". This was a difficult book that was still thoroughly enjoyable. It had to be fine to beat JR and this is certainly a great, great novel by an epicure of language.

Winner: Absalom, Absalom!

The Other Results

That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx vs Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs

In That Old Ace in the Hole, Annie Proulx introduces us to a legion of idiosyncratic characters all with crazy names that combine to produce a pleasing but unspectacular plot. It's more a collection of short stories, a "marshalling of facts", than the flowing novel that her superlative style deserves.

Naked Lunch is a bare-back, drug-fuelled, violently sexual romp through dystopian urban settings. It's a work that defies classification but also defies understanding. It is occasionally humorous and visceral but mostly repetitive and confusing. It is an important novel that smashed apart the American censorship laws but I found reading Burroughs' letters and interviews far more pleasing and interesting than deciphering his art.

There is a fine line between genius and madness and in Burroughs's frenzied attempt to produce both he totally baffled this reader. So, whilst That Old Ace in the Hole is by no means "great", Proulx's style and dry, backwater wit win through.

Winner: That Old Ace in the Hole

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton vs Something Happened by Joseph Heller

Wharton's satire of early 20th-century marriage and a woman's role in the upper echelons of American and French society, is a piece of sheer aesthetic beauty. The plot unravels elegantly but the greatest delight is her unparalleled prose. Everything is so perfectly intoned, so brilliantly expressed; it is an utter joy to read.

"It was after the war that the struggles began." Joseph Heller switches from war to middle-class suburban misery. His jaundiced views of work and family life are so relatable and yet so terrifying: "I don't know how I got here and I don't know how I'm going to get out." This novel is a dark beast of desolate nostalgia but imbued with Heller's trademark sardonic humour and a gnawing and worrying truth.

It came down to the beautiful versus the beastly and as the man said, "Twas Beauty killed the Beast".

Winner: The Custom of the Country

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway vs Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

I was taken by the bitter beauty of both these novels; stories about love affairs that show how strange, delightful and dangerous love can be. Giovanni's Room is the story of David, a young American who sails to France to "find himself". He meets the intoxicating Giovanni and embarks on a troubled love affair. But when David's girlfriend returns to Paris, he is unable to admit the truth and his dishonesty results in tragedy.

A Farewell to Arms tells of a love affair between an injured American lieutenant and his nurse, set in the midst and confusion of the first world war. Dialogue, action, drama; Hemingway does them all with precision and power to produce a novel that lives long in the memory.

It was a close thing but Hemingway takes the day, not least for that devastating passage: "The world breaks everyone …"

Winner: A Farewell to Arms

Rabbit, Run by John Updike vs The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K Le Guin

Le Guin rises above the perceived limitations of her genre to produce a thought-provoking tale tinged with melancholy and wonder. George Orr has vivid dreams that can retroactively alter reality. His psychiatrist tries to harness these dreams to "make things better" with fascinating and destructive consequences. Le Guin creates many alternative realities with relish and aplomb and great style, but cannot avoid the inevitable inconsistencies that come when a writer dabbles with causality. Worse still are the inconsistencies of character and the occasionally clunky plot devices.

As Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom knows only too well, "after you've been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate". This is a first-rate novel with a second-rate subject: the American man's suburban malaise. It feels a little old-fashioned now, and perhaps Heller's Something Happened is a more original rendering of a man trapped in his own life. But, Updike has that special sheen, a filigree of wisdom and style so pleasing that it transcends its subject matter. I decided that I'd like to see where Rabbit will run to and so the winner by a (twitching) nose is Updike.

Winner: Rabbit, Run

Billy Bathgate by EL Doctorow vs We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

Billy Bathgate is resourceful, smart as a whip and has an ambition to become part of the famous Dutch Schultz gang. He is the perfect narrator, a quiet 15-year-old who lives by his bold instincts and for whom observing, evaluating and learning has become an occupation. Although he starts merely as a vessel for the story, he's drawn into the brutal, visceral, fascinating world of the gangsters.

Doctorow's achievement here is, for me, astonishing. His plot is so tight it allows him the freedom to create extreme beauty out of viciousness. There is eroticism without lasciviousness, nostalgia without sentimentality. Billy Bathgate is a packed novel that supplies immense pleasure.

Oates gives us a true family saga. The Mulvaneys are the American dream family until an ugly incident sends their lives spiralling out of their control. Oates's garrulous style builds true depth behind her characters so that we really care about their plight. It is entertaining and vivacious but just could not live with the brilliance of Billy Bathgate.

Winner: Billy Bathgate

Libra by Don DeLillo vs 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos

42nd Parallel and Libra are based around real events. The first shows the early part of the 20th century, up to the outbreak of the first world war, and the latter zooms in on the hinge of the American century: the assassination of John F Kennedy. Both writers use fiction to tickle the belly of history and produce novels of high art and enjoyment.

Dos Passos's novel, the first in his USA trilogy, is composed of four distinct components that together create an atmospheric and fragmented "chronicle" of the time. Dos Passos tells the stories of a few different characters and shows us how people lived and loved as the century grew. In order to locate his characters he adds other distinct sections: Newsreel, The Camera Eye and potted biographies of important figures that helped to sculpt the age. Dos Passos's writing is impressive but the real star here is Libra; a brilliant portrayal of Lee Harvey Oswald's life, around which he weaves a dark and creeping conspiracy. Such humour, wisdom, style and entertainment.

Winner: Libra

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck vs The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster

I fear that Auster was done for before a single page was turned. The Grapes of Wrath is rightly considered a masterpiece; a clarion call for proletarian America and an example of what people mean when they try to define the Great American Novel. Its flaws are well documented – clanging symbolism, an over-egging of the socialist pudding and accusations of sentimentality – but when a diamond is this big, you don't see the flaws. The Joads' dramatic exodus from the dust bowls of Oklahoma is written with great power and emotion. A wonderful novel.

I also really enjoyed The Book of Illusions. Auster is an irresistible storyteller and this novel fairly skipped along. It's a two-stranded novel of tragedy and the redemption one finds in love and artistic inspiration. The two threads meet in a thrilling and fraught conclusion. But it could not hold up against a true American classic.

Winner: The Grapes of Wrath

Coming up in blog three

Next time I'll explore the bottom half of the first round draw

• Saul Bellow (2) - Herzog vs Raymond Chandler - The Long Goodbye

• Vladimir Nabokov (15) - Pale Fire vs Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions

• Cormac Mccarthy (10) - The Road vs John Fante - Wait Until Spring, Bandini

• Toni Morrison (7) - The Bluest Eye vs William Styron - Set This House on Fire

• Philip Roth (3) - The Human Stain vs Richard Ford - Independence Day

• Thomas Pynchon (14) - The Crying of Lot 49 vs Carson Mccullers - The Member of the Wedding

• Willa Cather (11) - Death Comes for the Archbishop vs F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Beautiful and Damned

• Sinclair Lewis (6) - Elmer Gantry vs Wallace Stegner- The Spectator Bird

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PG Wodehouse's sparkle fades on screen

Blandings – as currently seen on TV – is fun, but much duller than in prose

PG Wodehouse is widely recognised as a master of English prose at its purest and most brilliant. But he also owed his success as a comic writer to an important commercial factor: a brand-new audience of magazine readers. Indeed, looking back more than a century to his first books, we can see that Wodehouse was lucky with the technology of the day. He began his career as a writer at the beginnings of a new mass culture.

As well as magazines, his career also coincided with the beginnings of the silver (originally, silent) screen. As early as 1919, American film-makers had begun the difficult task of adapting Wodehouse's prose for cinema audiences, but from the first, the results were mixed. The long history of Wodehouse's association with film and television is a dispiriting catalogue of comic disappointment.

Several unfunny Jeeves and Wooster movies were made in the 1930s, one of them starring the young David Niven as Bertie. Wodehouse himself also had two fruitless screenwriting stints in Hollywood during the 1930s, but generally, his "idyllic world" resisted the translation to celluloid. In particular, no one could find a way to render the interior monologues, so essential to his style, in script form.

When TV came along, the problems of adaptation did not go away. In the 1960s, the BBC cast Ian Carmichael as Bertie and Dennis Price as Jeeves, with a cost of many sacrifices in nuance and mood. A more durable breakthrough occurred in the 1990s with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (an established comedy duo) playing Jeeves and Wooster in a clever blending of some the best Wodehouse stories, but there were still some disasters, notably Julian Fellowes' adaptation of Piccadilly Jim (straight to DVD), to remind audiences and producers of the perennial "Wodehouse problem".

But hope springs eternal. Now the BBC is doing Blandings, starring Timothy Spall and Jennifer Saunders. If you've never read the Wodehouse stories on which the series is based, you'll probably have had an enjoyable half-hour. But if you know the work, you'll have mourned what has been lost – the comic subtlety, the innocence and the air of lunatic irresponsibility surrounding Wodehouse at his best.

After viewing two episodes (out of six), it must be said that, like the Bourbons, the new team has learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. There are a number of elementary Do's and Don'ts in adaptating Wodehouse. Blandings seems to have broken all of them.

1. Don't let your cast behave as if they are acting in a comedy. Wodehouse depends on all the characters taking their predicaments very seriously.

2. Don't burden the plot and/or characterisation with excessive period detail. Wodehouse was at his peak in the 1920s and 30s, but making your cast into clothes horses for an exhibition at the V & A is fatally to emphasise style over content.

3. Ditto period music. Don't punctuate the script with snatches of jazz and palm court orchestral music. Jeeves & Wooster have done this already: it's become a cliché.

4. Don't treat Wodehouse's characters simply as puppets. They were genuine enough to him. Timothy Spall is particularly successful in playing Lord Emsworth as if he had been born to Blandings Castle.

5. Don't try to out-Wodehouse Wodehouse. His dialogue is inimitable. Best to cut it to script size, not re-write it for modern audiences.

6. Don't fall too much in love with the Empress of Blandings. A pig is just a pig – or, if you prefer, a Berkshire sow.

Part of the problem, I think, is that film-makers and the BBC are fatally drawn to the famous story series – Blandings or Jeeves. Actually, Wodehouse wrote about 100 books, and scores of short stories. Why not adapt one of the little-known works, involving fewer famous characters?

One prime candidate is the novel Hot Water, which Wodehouse completed in 1932. He himself believed in its dramatic potential, adapting it for the stage as The Inside Stand. It had only a modest success on the boards, but from many points of view, it's tailor-made for the screen.

Briefly, Hot Water is set in the 1920s in a fictional French seaside town, St Rocque. The action takes place over a long weekend in and around Chateau Blissac, leased by Mrs Gedge, a pushy Californian millionaire, to promote the claims of her hopeless husband as a potential US French ambassador.

The other main characters are Senator Opal and his daughter, Jane. She is engaged to a "Bloomsbury novelist" Blair Eggleston, but is secretly in love with Yale football star Packy Franklin, who is himself engaged to the coldly beautiful Lady Beatrice Bracken … All the young people are also mixed up in various ways with the heir to the Chateau, the Vicomte de Blissac, known as "the Veek". In turn, they are joined by two Chicago low-lifes, a confidence trickster and a safe-breaker. These characters are one-offs, unburdened by the responsibilities of a Jeeves or a Lord Emsworth.

Hot Water is part romcom, part caper. The plot turns on the attempts made by almost all the cast to break into the safe of the Chateau Blissac to steal a) a compromising letter and b) some extravagant diamonds belonging to Mrs Gedge, while at the same time finding true love. From a cinematic point of view, the action is fast-moving and farcical. The characters are recognisable types, affording plenty of opportunity for cameo performances. There is just one main location – a Brittany seaside town. It would not be costly to make.

Some enterprising film-maker should commission a treatment. Why not invest the Downton Abbey windfall in period comedy – and teach the BBC how to do it?

PG WodehouseRobert McCrum
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Poem of the week: Tam O'Shanter by Robert Burns

To mark the Bard's birthday week, one of his own favourites, describing a celidh to remember

This week, the Scottish Bard's birthday will be celebrated around the world, and what better relish to accompany your dram of usquabae than the mock-heroic, hero-mocking "Tam o'Shanter, a Tale", said to have been Burns's own favourite among his poems. It's a substantial feast of 224 lines, so I've chosen an extract, some verses from the climax of the narrative.

Burns wrote it for his friend Francis Grose, who had asked for a few lines to accompany the illustration of Alloway Kirk intended for volume two of his book The Antiquities of Scotland. Burns remembered the Ayrshire tale from his boyhood. A farmer from Carrick, detained after a long market-day, rides his mare home in the early hours, his course unavoidably passing by the haunted Alloway Kirk. Through the brightly-lit church windows he watches a demonic ceilidh, with Old Nick himself playing the pipes. One young witch, dancing in an under-slip too short for her, so impresses the farmer that he shouts, "Weel luppen, Maggy wei' the short sark!" – with the result that the demonic crew rounds on him and gives furious chase. In the poem, Burns changes the witch's name to Nannie Dee, and gives her an inspired nickname, having the irrepressible Tam call out "Weel done, Cutty-sark" ("Well-done, Mini-skirt!" in rough modern translation). Cutty-sark gave her name and figurehead to the Clyde-built tea-clipper and "tam o'shanter" (the surname probably derived from the Scots noun, mishanter) entered the language to denote a flat-crowned woollen hat with a pom-pom. Poetic immortality can take some strange twists and turns.

A clever exposition sets the scene of booze and bonhomie but works up a few Gothic expectations with warnings about "the mosses, waters, slaps and styles / That lie between us and our hame." After that, it's impossible to resist following the tale to – well, the tail-end – which, for the benefit of new readers, I won't divulge.

Among the sprightly innovations of the narrative, the way it frequently engages directly with Tam is especially piquant. There's no doubt Burns loves the character he has invented. He scolds Tam near the beginning for not heeding his wife's advice and here, in the third segment of our extract, where Tam stares transfixed by the "rigwoodie hags", challenges his taste in women. It's a chance for a sexual boast, too: if the witches had been handsomer, the narrator asserts, he'd have lent them his own once-plush "breeks".

Burns is always conscious of his readers. He draws us into the joke, whatever our gender, because the joke is ultimately on human frailty. His laughter is never cruel, his occasional deliveries of homely wisdom never self-righteous. The poem is not without moments of pathos, and may even have given its first readers a shudder or two in its gleeful summary of the "horrible and awefu',/ Which even to name wad be unlawfu'…" but there's never a doubt that the comic spirit presides. The rhymed tetrameter couplet seems the perfect vehicle for such uniquely rollicking irony. Burns's pace is carefully varied – headlong when it needs to be, sometimes reined-in, but never lacking momentum – and the Scots-English diction is unco' rich, packing the lines with colloquial grittiness and dense harmonies. Enjoy!

From Tam o'Shanter, a Tale

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn!
What dangers thou canst make us scorn!
Wi' tippeny, we fear nae evil;
Wi' usquabae, we'll face the devil!—
The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddle,
Fair play, he car'd na deils a boddle.
But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd,
Till, by the heel and hand admonish'd,
She ventured forward on the light;
And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight!
Warlocks and witches in a dance;
Nae cotillion brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
A winnock-bunker in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.—
Coffins stood round, like open presses,
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantraip slight
Each in its cauld hand held a light.—
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,
A murderer's banes in gibbet airns;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns;
A thief, new-cutted frae a rape
Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape;
Five tomahawks, wi' blude red-rusted;
Five scymitars, wi' murder crusted;
A garter, which a babe had strangled;
A knife, a father's throat had mangled,
Whom his ain son o' life bereft,
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft;
Wi' mair o' horrible and awefu',
Which even to name wad be unlawfu'.

     As Tammie glow'rd, amaz'd, and curious,
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious:
The piper loud and louder blew;
The dancers quick and quicker flew;
They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,
And coost her duddies to the wark,
And linket at it in her sark!

     Now, Tam, O Tam! had thae been queans,
A' plump and strapping in their teens,
Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen,
Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linnen!
Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair,
That ance were plush, o' gude blue hair,
I wad hae gi'en them off my hurdies,
For ae blink o' the bonie burdies!

     But wither'd beldams, auld and droll,
Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal,
Lowping and flinging on a crummock,
I wonder didna turn thy stomach.

     But Tam kend what was what fu' brawlie,
There was ae winsome wench and wawlie,
That night enlisted in the core,
(Lang after kend on Carrick shore;
For mony a beast to dead she shot,
And perish'd mony a bony boat,
And shook baith meikle corn and bear,
And kept the country-side in fear:)
Her cutty sark, o' Paisley harn,
That while a lassie she had worn,
In longitude tho' sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vauntie.—
Ah! little kend thy reverend grannie,
That sark she coft for her wee Nannie,
Wi' twa pund Scots, ('twas a' her riches),
Wad ever grac'd a dance of witches!

     But here my Muse her wing maun cour;
Sic flights are far beyond her pow'r;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was, and strang),
And how Tam stood, like ane bewitch'd,
And thought his very een enrich'd;
Even Satan glowr'd, and fidg'd fu' fain,
And hotch'd an blew wi' might and main:
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason a' thegither,
And roars out, 'Weel done, Cutty-sark!'
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied.
When out the hellish legion sallied.

Glossary
Tippeny – ale at tuppence a pint
usquabae – whisky
boddle – a worthless coin
brent new – brand new
winnock-bunker – window-seat
towzie tyke – ragged mongrel,
gart them skirl – made them shriek
dirl – shake
cantraip – trick
cleekit – linked arms
carlin – witch
duddies – rags
sark – shift
queans – young girls
creashie flannen – greasy flannel
hurdies – buttocks
rigwoodie – withered
spean – wean
crummock – crook
fu' brawlie – full well
wawlie – good-looking
cutty – short
harn – linen
coft – bought
cour – cower
fidg'd fu' fain – twitched with excitement
hotch'd – fidgeted
tint – lost

Robert BurnsPoetryCarol Rumens
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Reader reviews roundup

This week: Rebecca West's novel of a shell-shocked soldier, the award-winning English Passages and a collection of ghost stories to snuggle up with during the cold weather

Gripping our reviewers this week have been a range of penetrating psychological narratives, leaving some readers with chilling afterthoughts.

Julian6 was impressed by Rebecca West's The Return of the Solider, a haunting tale of a soldier coming home after the first world war suffering from shell-shock. The story follows the three women in his life and the decision they must make as to whether to 'cure' the soldier with their love or abandon him for their own sake. Julian6 praised West's poetic narrative, in which there is "always a sense of music unheard but somewhere sounding or else a verbal music in the words." He also noted West's ability to subtly expose the minds of her characters with "a sure grasp of simile and metaphor" and compared her work to that of Henry James.

MythicalMagpie, meanwhile, was blown away by the 2000 Whitbread award winning historical novel English Passages by Matthew Kneale, praising its careful blend of fact and fiction, and various impactful narrative voices.

MythicalMagpie writes:

" ... It was so well researched, and not in a way that jarred with the plot. The real history of British colonialism in Tasmania was woven perfectly and seamlessly into the narrative, so that I really felt I was learning something as well as being helplessly drawn in by the different characters relating their life stories in their own distinctive voices."

Finally this week, stpauli admires Jeremy Dyson's collection of short stories, The Hunted Book: a chilling and horrifying selection of tales.

Stpauli says:

"One that has continued to nag at my subconscious since I finished the book over a week ago features no actual 'ghosts' at all, but rather a family trying to find an abandoned amusement park they once visited but have never been able to locate again. It's a story where what remains unsaid and unexplained is more disturbing than what is. And most – perhaps all – the stories have a strong psychological undercurrent that suggests that what we're really frightened of most of all is ourselves."

As ever, if we have included you in our roundup this week, email claire.armitstead@guardian.co.uk and we'll send you a book from our cupboards.

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The Kitschies: a joyous SF shortlist

This year's finalists offer another very broad choice of 2012's best speculative fiction

Of all the things you could give a writer, booze, money and awards probably come top of most wish-lists – which is why the annual Kitschies for "progressive, intelligent and entertaining science fiction" are always a joyful affair.

The Kitschies – born out of the Pornokitsch books website – despite being for SF, are a broad church: the only rule is that the prizes go to "novels containing elements of the speculative and fantastic". The shortlists for the awards are just out, featuring the judging panel's choices for the top five novels of 2012, along with five debuts and a special category for cover art.

The awards are a very tentacular affair, the ubiquitous pseudopod somehow neatly summing up the Kitschies ethos – Lovecraftian horrors have tentacles, and so do bug-eyed monsters from outer space. Shadowy conspiracies wrap their tentacles around the innocent, and sea-monsters use them to drag unwary ships to the depths. Which, presumably, is why the Kitschies are sponsored by the achingly cool Kraken Rum, who help enable a £2,000 prize money pot and a stylish bottle of grog for the winners. Of course, there's also the handmade tentacle trophy itself, which in previous years has been draped around the grateful necks of China Miéville and Lauren Beukes.

Another former winner is Patrick Ness, author of The Knife of Never Letting Go, who is also on this year's judging panel. He says: "It's been sheer pleasure to be part of such a generous, joyous prize. The Kitschies has always seemed to be the award with mischief in its eye, and we think each of these books – from all kinds of different genres and publishers – has that something extra that makes speculative fiction such a vital pleasure. Which is all really just to say how much fun this has been.

"And the books! Everything from wry and funny hard SF to genre-as-metaphor to several that defy five-word summary. Just such a reminder of what a rich world of fiction, in all its vast and varied plumages, waits out there for the daring reader. Which I kind of think is what the Kitschies is all about."

Jared Shurin – who founded the Pornokitsch website and the awards, along with Anne Perry – adds: "We always look for books that challenge people's expectations of the speculative and fantastic. Although the pool of publishers and authors grows more diverse every year, there's still a lot of work to be done. We hope that the Kitschies helps spur more discussion about what makes great fiction."

Joining Shurin and Ness on the judging panel this year is author and editor Rebecca Levene, Lauren O'Farrell, Gary Northfield and Ed Warren. Levene says: "Each title on these shortlists surprised me. There are settings I've never seen used before, viewpoints I've never considered, ideas I'd never thought and worlds too weird for anyone but their particular author to have invented them. For me that's the essence of speculative fiction."

The winners will be announced in a ceremony at London's Free Word Centre on 26 February. The shortlists follow – what do you think of the choices? And which should win?

The Red Tentacle (best novel)

The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington (Orbit)
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway (Heinemann)
A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan)
Jack Glass by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
The Method by Juli Zeh (translated by Sally-Ann Spencer) (Harvill Secker)

The Golden Tentacle (best debut)

vN by Madeline Ashby (Angry Robot)
The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan (Heinemann)
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (Doubleday)
Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord (Jo Fletcher Books)
The City's Son by Tom Pollock (Jo Fletcher Books)

The Inky Tentacle (best cover art)

Tom Gauld for Costume Not Included by Matthew Hughes (Angry Robot)
Oliver Jeffers for The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket by John Boyne (Doubleday)
Dave Shelton for A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton (David Fickling Books)
Peter Mendelsund for The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus (Granta)
La Boca for The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman (Sceptre)

Science fictionFantasyFictionAwards and prizesDavid Barnett
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