The Guardian's Blog, page 91
December 4, 2014
Do good characters inevitably make for bad fiction?
The books blog has been hosting a series of posts on readers’ favourite villains in literature. It strikes me that a list of virtuous characters would be a far more challenging proposition. It’s almost a critical commonplace that Lovelace in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa is fascinating despite his crimes and misdemeanours, but the eponymous Sir Charles Grandison in the novel which followed it almost unspeakably dull in his goodness. Satan is thrilling in Paradise Lost, Jesus is a bit of a prig in Paradise Regained. “Good” characters are often despicable in their moral certainty: the hypocritical Chadbands, Jellybys and Pecksniffs in Dickens; Tietjens in Parade’s End, the sanctimoniously liberal family at the heart of AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book.
How can a writer make goodness interesting? George Eliot tried with to do so by examining redemption in Silas Marner. The only problem is that the narrative jumps ahead, giving us the miserly misanthrope before and the radiant saint after he adopts a lost child, with no charting of the gradual change between the two. Naivety has often been used, whether in the “holy fool” Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot or the hero of Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk (or, further down the literary scale, Forrest Gump). There are the suicidal gallants, in love with someone they know loves another, best exemplified by Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities (it helps if they have a louche past that can be redeemed).
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December 3, 2014
Readers' love letters to libraries
After leading authors showed their love for libraries in written and graphic form, it’s readers’ turn. From life-defining visits to treasured childhood memories, these are some of our favourite tributes
Love letters to libraries: authors from AL Kennedy to Michael Morpurgo share their love for libraries and librariansSee all the readers’ contributions and submit your own on GuardianWitnessLibraries won’t be going out of fashion any day soon, if readers’ love for them is anything to go by. They are nonetheless an endangered species, with demolitions and closures planned across the UK and beyond.
On the Guardian books blog we’ve taken Book Week Scotland as a prompt to celebrate everything that’s great about them. Michael Morpurgo made a passionate plea for free books for kids in all communities, especially deprived ones; Chris Riddell drew a beautiful account of the books that changed his life; Jacqueline Wilson talked about the Kingston library where she discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder and Virginia Woolf; the Etherington Brothers’ comic strip was an eccentric homage to Arundel library; AL Kennedy praised her own for helping her discover who she was; and Alexander McCall Smith wrote a letter to a 17th-century Scottish public library.
There’s a camaraderie about the library too. Barring the odd sulky schoolchild forced there for an assignment, everybody is there by choice and has a shared interest. Like cyclists nodding to one another as they pass on a snowy day, people are friendly – we know we have something in common just by dint of being there.
If chocolate is the food of love, I saw someone hand in an actual love letter to a library once. A homeless man ahead of me in the queue for the desk handed the librarians a family-size bar of chocolate. “Because I’m always happy to be here,” he said, hand physically on heart.
The only library we had access to was the mobile library which came once a week. As a primary school child visiting it was the highlight of my week. My sister and I went with our mother and stocked up on our week’s reading matter. The sheer thrill of getting home and unpacking the bag of books and deciding what to read first is one of my best childhood memories. Now the mobile library no longer visits the village so we frequent charity shops to provide my 80+ year-old mother with the reading matter she devours.
I’ve just written back to my local library to thank them for the autumn they gave me a place of refuge when I’d broken my hand and couldn’t work. I wrote a book in there, which has just been published. The library gave me a place to work, people to be surrounded by, and most importantly, shelves full of books to read when I was struggling with my own.
Libraries aren’t trying to sell you anything for money. But they are trying to sell you the idea that learning is wonderful and reading is wonderful, sometimes even with no purpose or aim in mind except for getting lost in books. Some people might think that’s overrated and useless, but a lot of us would find our lives a lot poorer if we weren’t allowed to think like that.
Austen, the Brontës and Dickens in a Hong Kong village
As Ray Bradbury, I was also raised by the library. A one-room facility in an island village off Hong Kong, there I first read Austen, the Brontës, Dickens, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Kafka, Shakespeare … (in Chinese). I didn’t understand some of them but I read them anyway.
I live in Canada now and will pass on my love for the library to my family. A photo of Vancouver Public Library where we visit every week:
As a very young child I remember my mother clutching my hand as I walked wide-eyed through the fog towards this blazing liner of a building which much later I realised was the large local branch library. So the habit was deeply ingrained and when many years later I worked in a busy reference library it was second nature to me. It was pre-internet and was used as a valuable resource by the community.
However, I do remember one day dealing with a phone enquiry from a woman who wanted the answer to the last clue in her crossword. I was half amused by her casual admission that she couldn’t be bothered to come in and look it up herself. Presumably reference librarians would now say “Google it” to her and go back to examining Facebook. Libraries, like society, have evolved and many councils prefer an all-singing all-dancing “learning hub/creche/IT room/coffee bar” environment. A centralised location keeps costs down and from their perspective it’s easier to close down outlying inefficient branch libraries.
Grew up near this forward-thinking library during a golden age in Chicago when park districts, museums, and public libraries were still funded generously by city and state government. Honestly cannot imagine how my life might have turned out otherwise because, like Neil Gaiman, I too was a feral child who sought and found refuge in these safe spaces where I could explore and read freely. This set the tone for the rest of my life and libraries and their collections remain a great source of contentment and succour to this day.
‘The lower the shelves, the more chaotic the filing’
When I was young my idea of a great day out was to spend the day in our local library, Barnsley Central. It was recently built in a very modern (then) style, with vast open space and places to sit and read. It was an almost unbelievable treasure trove, full of books on any and every subject, which you could just pick up and browse through, picking up morsels of arcane and obscure knowledge.
I suppose it was inevitable that my first job, a Saturday job, was in that library. Spending every Saturday shelving books was perfect, making me Queen of the Library, knowing where to find books on any subject.
There is nothing like the smell of a library. That combination of wood, polish and bound paper. It is an aroma that transports me back to my small, local library in the middle of a large council estate in Redcar in the north east of England.
I was the only kid in there every Saturday morning from the age of about nine years old. This was in the days when you had to be silent in the library, on pain of receiving a stern, dark frown from the other readers. My shoes on the highly polished wood floor made such a loud click-click that I walked around on tiptoes for the whole hour that I was there.
My mother was a librarian at the local public library in our small town when I was a child. I would go there after school until one of my parents was done with work and could take me home. It was my second home, my daycare, my playground, and my dreamscape. I’ve never felt so cocooned in safety and imaginatively liberated at any other time in my life. It was here that I learned that learning didn’t have to be work or a chore, but could be fun and the best use of your time. I will take these lessons with me until my dying day. Thank you.
I love this little library which is just round the corner from where I live. The telephone box was bought by the Brockley Society and converted into a library. It is managed by volunteers and is incredibly well-used. Open 24 hours a day, completely free and no fines to pay. What’s not to like?
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December 2, 2014
A brief survey of the short story: Nikolai Leskov
Perennially falling into and out of fashion, he is a stunningly versatile writer and a very un-Russian Russian great
A brief survey of the short story: read more blogposts“I calculated once,” Vladimir Nabokov told an audience at Cornell University in the spring of 1958, “that the acknowledged best in the way of Russian fiction and poetry which had been produced since the beginning of the last century runs to about 23,000 pages of ordinary print.” Readers with a basic grounding in Russian literature will be able to reel off many of the writers in Nabokov’s notional anthology: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Chekhov. But there was no place for Nikolai Leskov, of whom, the occasional beautiful image aside, Nabokov didn’t think much.
Those who disagree have made numerous attempts, over the last hundred years, to install Leskov in the Russian literary pantheon. The pantheon itself approved: Dostoevsky published him, Chekhov acknowledged a debt to his work, and Tolstoy admired it. Yet he has fallen, repeatedly, into obscurity. Last year saw the launch of another offensive in the long war over his reputation: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the current powerhouse of Russian-to-English translation, published a collection of his stories named for one of his great masterpieces, The Enchanted Wanderer. But despite the latest round of articles and reviews, there is no reason to believe this revival will be any more lasting than those before.
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Why is American book publishing so white?
If squabbles over format, pricing and Amazon have led the US publishing industry to neglect an ever more diverse audience, we have forgotten why people read books in the first place
The true price of publishingAt the recent National Book Awards ceremony in New York City, presenter and bestselling author Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket, made comments intended as humorous – though widely heard as offensive and racist – after presenting an award in the young adult category to author Jacqueline Woodson. Apparently, not even a ripple of discomfort crossed the room as Handler made his comments, which centered on the African American author’s allergy to watermelon. I wasn’t present that night, but I’ve been at past NBAs and countless similar events, and can well imagine the sea of white faces turned up to the podium, the thousand white hands applauding. (Handler later apologized and contributed to a fund for diversity in children’s literature).
The matter would never have become public at all if social media hadn’t erupted during the livestream of the event: people were tuning in and listening in a way that mainstream US publishing was not, and hasn’t for some time.
Choose December’s Reading group: Noir Christmas
The month of May, as I’m sure you know, is merry. And this year, it was especially happy for the Reading group because we were looking at the great PG Wodehouse. It was joy and sunshine and light and I loved it. But as Reading group regular JudgeDamnNation pointed out, the opposite end of the spectrum also has its appeal:
“The further I get on with Psmith, the more impressed I am with the twists and turns, and even when you see them coming you have to admire the way it all comes together. As for the prose itself, it seems to me that Wodehouse’s style is almost a twin of Raymond Chandler: their way with words and metaphors is similarly unique yet always spot on, but while Chandler’s is acerbic and acid-tongued, Wodehouse is frothy and high-spirited. Maybe for next month we could drop from the jollities of Blandings into the murky depths of noir, with some Dashiell Hammett or James M Cain or something. Bit of a contrast, what?”
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December 1, 2014
Baddies in books: Patrick Bateman, the all-American psycho
I’ve been a big Bret Easton Ellis fan since the release of his debut novel, Less Than Zero in 1985. Written in a semi-autobiographical style, and based on his own adventures at university, the book is a drug-fuelled romp through a degenerate Los Angeles. He didn’t break any new ground with the follow up, Rules of Attraction (1987), which felt like retreading ground he had already visited, but then he quickly broke those boundaries with American Psycho (1991). It was here that the presence of his more satirical voice became stronger and stronger, more dominant in amongst the obviously improved sense of narrative control.
His characters were all terrible people: cold and vacant, lost in the consumerism of their own version of New York, but none more so than the novel’s extravagant centre, Patrick Bateman. Where most novels are concerned with delivering a protagonist that the reader is compelled to associate with, to try and understand, Bateman is a monster with a nice business card. He’s dressed in suits that he explicitly talks about, going into terrific detail about every thread, picking them out with delicate precision. His relationships, his drug use, his slightly demented sexual encounters – all are sold as the products of his job (which is what, exactly?) and the crude balance of his social group – identical businessmen with their identically drug-dependent girlfriends.
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Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
Oranje14 expressed joy for Ali Smith’s writing in a rather cheerful way:
Really enjoying The Accidental by Ali Smith. One of the passages in the book was so well written I wanted to shout out and share it with everyone on the bus. But I didn’t.
This week I was stunned by the gorgeous, unblinking precision of Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays. It’s a book that plunges straight into the louche world of California in the early 1970s, teasing you with unspoken gaps that seem slight but dig deep. I actually felt woozy while reading it. Amazing.
I picked this book up after seeing it on one of those lists of fiction titles that have a political bent - one of the characters is a campaigner for votes for women. I’m currently two thirds of the way through and desperate for the pace of the story to quicken. Woolf obviously writes beautifully but a whole page can be devoted to accessing someone’s bearing or interpreting a slightly haughty look. Progress in the relationship between the three central characters is therefore slow. However it is an enjoyable, if slightly trying read, and the dated references to catching the “omnibus” on the Strand are quite charming. I don’t feel particularly connected to the characters - they aren’t particularly sympathetic - but I am looking forward to seeing what choices they do, eventually, make.
Re-reading Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which I found in its graphic novel adaptation a few weeks ago. A lot of noir thriller along with the science fiction. The scene where the three fugitives take refuge in the almost abandoned apartment complex deserves the same praise that Chandler gave to Hammet: “he wrote scenes that never seemed to have been written before.” (The graphic series has new illustrations but only 1960s Dick prose, and has a number of short essays by writers who knew Dick or were influenced by him. A few odd loose ends, though.
I Burn Paris by Bruno Jasienski.
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By doctorwalex
1 December 2014, 17:19
I’ve read all three of Macfarlane’s books, and for me it’s The Wild Places which is, in MsCarey’s words, the real stunner. I might even go so far as to say that it approaches Kathleen Jamie’s dizzying heights.
Mountains of the Mind was also great, but not as spectacular. But The Old Ways had some big problems as far as I was concerned. It was, without doubt, beautifully written throughout, with no end of exquisite set-pieces.
Looking for a way into W.H. Auden I stumbled across this "small book" by Alexander McCall Smith on the Internet. I may have been seduced by its de Bottonian-like title, but it has started rather well.
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By caminoamigo
20 November 2014, 18:16
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Poem of the week: Cat by John Gallas
In this modern take on Baudelaire, a moment of sensual connection with a pet resonates with a lover’s unknowability
The New Zealand-born poet John Gallas recently published an enticing and timely collection of translations, 52 Euros. The “Euros”, 26 male and 26 female poets, range from Akhmatova and Apukhtin (“the Russian Oscar Wilde”) to Zhadovskaya and Jens Zetlitz, the latter represented by a splendidly raucous drinking song, Grapes Were Made to Grin the World (“Fillerup! … Gedditdown!”) Gallas stamps his translations with the vitality and lexical daring exhibited in his own poetry. A quieter poem such as this week’s choice, Cat (Gallas’s version, with Kurt Ganzl, of Baudelaire’s sonnet, Le Chat) is no exception, although its technical interventions are subtle.
Unrhymed, the translation is rich in assonance, the relationship of its sounds emphasised by the rhythmic compression. The several coined words make their presence felt, but they also participate in the alliterative melody: they are audible but without jarring.
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November 29, 2014
Love letters to libraries: Michael Morpurgo
The author of War Horse makes a passionate plea for free books for children - and demonstrates their importance with a scene from his novel I Believe in Unicorns, in which a very special librarian inspires a small boy’s love for books and reading
Share a tribute to your favourite libraryOur celebration of libraries, librarians and free access to culture
Michael Morpurgo is the last of five distinguished authors to share his love of libraries with us this week to mark Book Week Scotland. In place of a letter to a particular library, the former children’s laureate, author of War Horse and Private Peaceful, pays tribute to all librarians through an excerpt from his book I Believe in Unicorns. In it, the inspiring “unicorn lady” tells a group of children how a fairytale survived the book-burners. Morpurgo also wrote the following introduction to the passage for the Guardian:
Knowing as we do that reading is the key to knowledge and understanding, essential to the fulfilling of young lives, and knowing too there are at least a million children in this country not fully literate when they leave primary school, we all accept that not enough has been done to bring children to books and books to children.
It is the task of all of us as parents, grandparents and teachers to do all we can to encourage their enjoyment of reading. But it is the task of the community to support this endeavour. Illiteracy is most common, we know, amongst those who live in poverty or close to poverty. It is particularly those families that need libraries. The price of a book from a shop may seem cheap to many. For many, such a purchase is simply not possible. We have a duty surely as a society to make sure that no child is denied access to literacy and literature because of social and financial deprivation. Every one of them has a right to be literate.
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November 28, 2014
Hilary Mantel on judging the Hilary Mantel prize
Kingston University has endowed a new short fiction prize, worth £3,000 to the winner. As it’s called The Kingston Writing School Hilary Mantel short story competition, I was unsurprised, if honoured, to be asked to judge the final round. Reading the longlist was a bracing experience. Of the first five stories I picked up, four contained a suicide. The quality, however, was cheering and I selected three finalists.
Annemarie Neary is a London-based lawyer and a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. She has published a novel, A Parachute in the Lime Tree, set in Ireland in 1941. She has a master’s degree in art history, specialising in Venetian art of the Renaissance. Venice seems a long way from the sombre setting of her story One Day in Sarajevo, but no doubt her experience there has sharpened her eye for the process by which history is made over into tourist spectacle.
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