David Lewis James's Blog: The Scholar's Tale
June 24, 2014
Five Star Reviews and all that
David James June 24, 2014 at 12.25 pm #
I’ve always bleated on about five star reviews, which are frequently supported by useless comments such as ‘couldn’t put it down’, ‘Wow!’ or, my favourite ones: ‘beautifully written,’ or ‘wonderfully crafted.’
I used to subscribe and even review for newbooks and was for a time taken in by such effusions. I’d think, ‘there’s so much wonderful stuff out there and if only I had time …’ And then I ordered some of these marvels and gradually came to realise that 5* was the norm and that the main function of newbooks was … exactly, to sell new books – and they did a pretty good job of it too – took me in at least.
So, to return to the 5* question about 5* reviews: ignore the stars completely, and concentrate on the substance of the review. Most people would give Marcel Proust a one-star rating, with such incisive comment as ‘Boring!’ or ‘This guy is really up himself, isn’t he!’ Within two lines of a review you’ll know whether you’re being given a bum steer or whether the reviewer has really appreciated the quality of the book and has something intelligent to say about it
I’ve always bleated on about five star reviews, which are frequently supported by useless comments such as ‘couldn’t put it down’, ‘Wow!’ or, my favourite ones: ‘beautifully written,’ or ‘wonderfully crafted.’
I used to subscribe and even review for newbooks and was for a time taken in by such effusions. I’d think, ‘there’s so much wonderful stuff out there and if only I had time …’ And then I ordered some of these marvels and gradually came to realise that 5* was the norm and that the main function of newbooks was … exactly, to sell new books – and they did a pretty good job of it too – took me in at least.
So, to return to the 5* question about 5* reviews: ignore the stars completely, and concentrate on the substance of the review. Most people would give Marcel Proust a one-star rating, with such incisive comment as ‘Boring!’ or ‘This guy is really up himself, isn’t he!’ Within two lines of a review you’ll know whether you’re being given a bum steer or whether the reviewer has really appreciated the quality of the book and has something intelligent to say about it
June 22, 2014
What is Literary Fiction?
What is Literary Fiction?
The term ‘Literary Fiction’ is frequently castigated as snobbish and elitist, if not totally meaningless as a category in its own right. Does it then imply that there is something smug and patronising in a writer describing himself or herself as a practitioner of this genre? Is the term as protean and useless as one agent suggested to me some years back when I told him that this was the kind of fiction that I loved best and was aspiring to write? He suggested to me that there were simply good novels and bad novels, and that my categorisation was at best vague and misleading, at worst redolent of intellectual arrogance.
Nevertheless, albeit duly chastened by his comments, I continued to believe that the term had its uses in that at least it served to distinguish two different approaches to writing fiction: writing for the reader and writing for oneself. Reader-directed writing or genre fiction knows where it is going from the start, while literary fiction is bent on self-discovery and reader revelation. The genre addict will be disappointed if the romance or fantasy fails to end with a bang (pun intended.) The reader of literary fiction expects nothing but self-enlightenment. Plot dominates in the first, while character reigns supreme in the second.
This division is plainly arbitrary and less a definition than an intuition, but to me it’s useful and directs me towards the kind of novel I’m most likely to find rewarding. However, this seeming schism seems not to apply to literary icons such as Dickens or Jane Austen. Does it make any sense to say that their work is ruled by considerations of plot rather than character? Are the authors not simply tailoring their work to the needs of their readers? Is there no sense of self-discovery in these two writers where heroes and villains dominate in the first case and lady’s tea parties in the second? Well, oddly enough there is. Pip learns, Emma learns, and most importantly the reader learns; and moreover the writer learns and while writing discovers the ‘theme’ of the novel. It’s not what happens but how and to whom that counts.
I empathise with bloggers on Good Reads who deplore subject categorisation. It begins with the metadata your publisher or publisher-distributor demands. I note on a Good Reads thread on fiction that one needs to place comment in one of the following categories: Children’s fiction, Fantasy, General Fiction, Historical Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, New Age, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Science Fiction, Thrillers and Young Adult. No Literary Fiction category is noted, so presumably General is the default category.
If you try to place a Dickens novel or one by Wilkie Collins, for example, in its correct pigeonhole you are flummoxed. It could belong in almost all the categories. So my agent-provocateur was right after all – there are only good and bad novels? Not quite, I submit.
Let us take the Historical Novel for example. Was Dickens aware when writing A Tale of Two Cities that he was writing something other than General Fiction? No, he was just trying out not a new genre but using a past setting, like popular novelists did in his time. George Eliot did the same with Romola. Bulwer Lytton did it, Scott immersed himself in it. And obviously the reading public has passed over these half-breeds as less worthy than works set in contemporary times. These works are for the antiquarian rather than the reader seeking transportation into perilous lands forlorn, into the bedrock of the human psyche, a place which can be recognised as real and living, somewhere deep and reeking of the stinking conscience in ‘the foul rag and boneshop of the human heart.’ Yes, but I’m thinking not only of Yeats, but of our greatest novelist, Charles Dickens. He is the novelistic equivalent of the poet Dante and Shakespeare the dramatist.
I rejoice to concur with the common reader that, despite Robert Graves and Hilary Mantel, the novel that needs meticulous introductions to historical mores and is supplemented by copious footnotes is flawed from the start. When the author’s research shows, when the reader is invited to bone up on facts before becoming plunged into the consciousness of a central character the novelist has failed in his or her obligation to transport the reader not into time past but into the throbbing skull of the suffering protagonist. And I say all this as one who has been a member of the Historical Novelists Association, one who has written three quasi-historical novels, two of which are set not in the distant past, true, but which do take place in former times.
So why did I venture into such alien territory as the Victorian past? The answer, as you might expect, is in the nature of my two protagonists; one is a resurrection of a real man, Charles Dickens, and the other a recreation of a fictional woman, Becky Sharp. Both were to me individuals of such vibrancy and energy that their nature and verve demanded celebration. Both in very different ways are morally flawed creatures whose spirit nevertheless persists in our consciousness. Why else has Dickens been so profusely adapted to stage and screen? Not just because he has something to say to future generations, but because his way of seeing and saying is unique. Why is it that there have been so many movies featuring Thackeray’s scheming heroine? The answer is because she personifies the arriviste in us all, because we admire and envy her verve, and enjoy her triumph in defying bourgeois values. We wish we could have done it; she does it for us.
I hope my reader, if I still have one, will now get an inkling of what I mean by Literary Fiction. It is a genre - if we must use the word - of high seriousness. It’s found in Henry James and Marcel Proust. It embraces novelists of all styles and preoccupations. Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald and countless others we call ‘classic’ novelists are imbued with its spirit. It demands close and even repeated reading. The pace is often slow and solemn, perhaps too much so for current tastes. It is the antithesis of flash fiction or thrillers that you ‘can’t put down.’ Indeed, one of its characteristics, I suggest, is that it’s fiction you do need to put down, to live with for days on end, and return to years later.
But the most vital feature of the ‘literary,’ as opposed to the genre mode, is that it is usually multi-layered and treats universal problems from an individual perspective; in other words it focusses on character and the baleful influence of the past. Thus retrospect and wrestling with moral problems seem endemic to this mode. And these problems, as often as not remain unsolved at the end. When I think of Nick Calloway in The Great Gatsby (another ironical ‘Great’ like Great Expectations) I understand why he admires Jay Gatsby, since criminal as Jay no doubt has been, he has saving graces; he, like Pip, has sought to become an educated gentleman, and again like Dickens’s protagonist, he falls in love with a woman who is his moral inferior. To Nick, Gatsby is worth the whole damn bunch of his pleasure-seeking rich hangers-on. But is his admiration for the nefarious Jay misplaced? Pip’s adoration of the flawed Estella, is also misplaced and may be attributed to his calf-love of the girl who had despised and humiliated him. Nick is influenced by his father’s caution to remember that not everyone has had the advantages he’s had. Neither novel has heroes or villains; neither has final answers to the questions they pose – a key characteristic of literary fiction.
The term ‘Literary Fiction’ is frequently castigated as snobbish and elitist, if not totally meaningless as a category in its own right. Does it then imply that there is something smug and patronising in a writer describing himself or herself as a practitioner of this genre? Is the term as protean and useless as one agent suggested to me some years back when I told him that this was the kind of fiction that I loved best and was aspiring to write? He suggested to me that there were simply good novels and bad novels, and that my categorisation was at best vague and misleading, at worst redolent of intellectual arrogance.
Nevertheless, albeit duly chastened by his comments, I continued to believe that the term had its uses in that at least it served to distinguish two different approaches to writing fiction: writing for the reader and writing for oneself. Reader-directed writing or genre fiction knows where it is going from the start, while literary fiction is bent on self-discovery and reader revelation. The genre addict will be disappointed if the romance or fantasy fails to end with a bang (pun intended.) The reader of literary fiction expects nothing but self-enlightenment. Plot dominates in the first, while character reigns supreme in the second.
This division is plainly arbitrary and less a definition than an intuition, but to me it’s useful and directs me towards the kind of novel I’m most likely to find rewarding. However, this seeming schism seems not to apply to literary icons such as Dickens or Jane Austen. Does it make any sense to say that their work is ruled by considerations of plot rather than character? Are the authors not simply tailoring their work to the needs of their readers? Is there no sense of self-discovery in these two writers where heroes and villains dominate in the first case and lady’s tea parties in the second? Well, oddly enough there is. Pip learns, Emma learns, and most importantly the reader learns; and moreover the writer learns and while writing discovers the ‘theme’ of the novel. It’s not what happens but how and to whom that counts.
I empathise with bloggers on Good Reads who deplore subject categorisation. It begins with the metadata your publisher or publisher-distributor demands. I note on a Good Reads thread on fiction that one needs to place comment in one of the following categories: Children’s fiction, Fantasy, General Fiction, Historical Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, New Age, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Science Fiction, Thrillers and Young Adult. No Literary Fiction category is noted, so presumably General is the default category.
If you try to place a Dickens novel or one by Wilkie Collins, for example, in its correct pigeonhole you are flummoxed. It could belong in almost all the categories. So my agent-provocateur was right after all – there are only good and bad novels? Not quite, I submit.
Let us take the Historical Novel for example. Was Dickens aware when writing A Tale of Two Cities that he was writing something other than General Fiction? No, he was just trying out not a new genre but using a past setting, like popular novelists did in his time. George Eliot did the same with Romola. Bulwer Lytton did it, Scott immersed himself in it. And obviously the reading public has passed over these half-breeds as less worthy than works set in contemporary times. These works are for the antiquarian rather than the reader seeking transportation into perilous lands forlorn, into the bedrock of the human psyche, a place which can be recognised as real and living, somewhere deep and reeking of the stinking conscience in ‘the foul rag and boneshop of the human heart.’ Yes, but I’m thinking not only of Yeats, but of our greatest novelist, Charles Dickens. He is the novelistic equivalent of the poet Dante and Shakespeare the dramatist.
I rejoice to concur with the common reader that, despite Robert Graves and Hilary Mantel, the novel that needs meticulous introductions to historical mores and is supplemented by copious footnotes is flawed from the start. When the author’s research shows, when the reader is invited to bone up on facts before becoming plunged into the consciousness of a central character the novelist has failed in his or her obligation to transport the reader not into time past but into the throbbing skull of the suffering protagonist. And I say all this as one who has been a member of the Historical Novelists Association, one who has written three quasi-historical novels, two of which are set not in the distant past, true, but which do take place in former times.
So why did I venture into such alien territory as the Victorian past? The answer, as you might expect, is in the nature of my two protagonists; one is a resurrection of a real man, Charles Dickens, and the other a recreation of a fictional woman, Becky Sharp. Both were to me individuals of such vibrancy and energy that their nature and verve demanded celebration. Both in very different ways are morally flawed creatures whose spirit nevertheless persists in our consciousness. Why else has Dickens been so profusely adapted to stage and screen? Not just because he has something to say to future generations, but because his way of seeing and saying is unique. Why is it that there have been so many movies featuring Thackeray’s scheming heroine? The answer is because she personifies the arriviste in us all, because we admire and envy her verve, and enjoy her triumph in defying bourgeois values. We wish we could have done it; she does it for us.
I hope my reader, if I still have one, will now get an inkling of what I mean by Literary Fiction. It is a genre - if we must use the word - of high seriousness. It’s found in Henry James and Marcel Proust. It embraces novelists of all styles and preoccupations. Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald and countless others we call ‘classic’ novelists are imbued with its spirit. It demands close and even repeated reading. The pace is often slow and solemn, perhaps too much so for current tastes. It is the antithesis of flash fiction or thrillers that you ‘can’t put down.’ Indeed, one of its characteristics, I suggest, is that it’s fiction you do need to put down, to live with for days on end, and return to years later.
But the most vital feature of the ‘literary,’ as opposed to the genre mode, is that it is usually multi-layered and treats universal problems from an individual perspective; in other words it focusses on character and the baleful influence of the past. Thus retrospect and wrestling with moral problems seem endemic to this mode. And these problems, as often as not remain unsolved at the end. When I think of Nick Calloway in The Great Gatsby (another ironical ‘Great’ like Great Expectations) I understand why he admires Jay Gatsby, since criminal as Jay no doubt has been, he has saving graces; he, like Pip, has sought to become an educated gentleman, and again like Dickens’s protagonist, he falls in love with a woman who is his moral inferior. To Nick, Gatsby is worth the whole damn bunch of his pleasure-seeking rich hangers-on. But is his admiration for the nefarious Jay misplaced? Pip’s adoration of the flawed Estella, is also misplaced and may be attributed to his calf-love of the girl who had despised and humiliated him. Nick is influenced by his father’s caution to remember that not everyone has had the advantages he’s had. Neither novel has heroes or villains; neither has final answers to the questions they pose – a key characteristic of literary fiction.
June 8, 2014
The Proust Project. Days 5 and6
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The Proust Project (Day 6)
Posted on June 7, 2014 by davetherave2
Day 6 (Vol 6) The Fugitive; Time Regained
Proust never finished his monumental work, but he came close to it; his publisher was awaiting his final revisions when he died. The final pages as we have them probe the question of reality as perceived through time, the way in which memory becomes real, more real to consciousness even than the thinker’s surroundings. This time it is not the madeleine, as in volume one, that brings back the past but the sound of the bell on the garden gate, ‘the funeral gate.’ The narrator is at a party, whose noise distracts him from his journey back into the past so that he has to block his ears. This notion of time embodied, of years past but not separated from us, it was now my intention to emphasise as strongly as possible in my work. And at this very moment, in the house of the Prince de Guermantes, as though to strengthen me in my resolve, the noise of my parents’ footsteps as they accompanied M. Swann to the door and the peal – resilient, ferruginous, interminable, fresh and shrill – of the bell on the garden gate which informed me that at last he had gone and that Mamma would presently come upstairs, these sounds rang again in my ears, yes unmistakably I heard these very sounds, situated though they were in a remote past. The reader who has persevered to the end of the book, will now recall its opening pages of Marcel as boy, tortured by his mother’s delay in coming up to kiss him goodnight.
At the end of the book, Proust thinks of his own fast-approaching end: In my awareness of the approach of death I resembled a dying soldier, and like him too, before I died, I had something to write. But my task was longer than his, my words had to reach more than a single person. But ultimately it matters not. Everything passes. Note, as I did in a Freethinker article some years ago, although Proust allegedly died clutching a rosary, throughout the whole length of the novel there is no invocation to an Almighty Being, and a general acceptance of the mortality not only of humans but all their works and reputations: No doubt my books too, like my fleshly being, would in the end one day die. But death is a thing that we must resign ourselves to. We accept the thought that in ten years we ourselves, in a hundred years our books, will have ceased to exist. Eternal duration is promised no more to men’s work than to men.
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The Proust Project (Day 5)
Posted on June 6, 2014 by davetherave2
The Captive
At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall, and before I had seen above the big window-curtains, what shade of colour the first streaks assumed, I could already tell what the weather was like. The first sounds from the street had told me, according to whether they came to my ears deadened and distorted by the moisture of the atmosphere or quivering like arrows in the resonant, empty expanses of a spacious, frosty, pure morning; as soon as I heard the rumble of the first tram-car, I could tell whether it was sodden with rain or setting forth into the blue. And perhaps these sounds had themselves been forestalled by some swifter and more pervasive emanation which, stealing into my sleep, diffused in it a melancholy that announced snow or else (through a certain intermittent little person) burst into so many hymns to the glory of the sun that, having first of all begun to smile in my sleep, having prepared my eyes, behind their shut lids, to be dazzled, I would awake finally to clarion peals of music. It was, in fact, principally from my bedroom that I took in the life of the outer world during this period. I noted that Bloch reported that, when he called to see me in the evenings, he could hear the sound of conversations; as my mother was at Combray and he never found anybody in my room, he concluded that I was talking to myself. When, much later, he learned that Albertine had been staying with me at the time, and realised that I had concealed her presence from everybody, he declared that at last he saw the reason why, during that phase of my life, I had always refused to go out of doors. He was wrong. His mistake was, however, perfectly excusable, for reality, even though it is necessary, is not always foreseeable as a whole. People who learn some correct detail about another person’s life at once draw conclusions from it which are not accurate, and see in the newly discovered fact an explanation of things that have no connection with it whatsoever.
Thus the opening paragraph of ‘The Captive,’ translated cleverly but less appropriately by the original translator C K Scott Moncrieff, as ‘Sweet Cheat Gone,’ the ‘cheat’ suggesting the eidolon Albertine, Marcel’s let us say close companion or the vision that occupies his mind sporadically throughout this volume. Bloch, here, assumes, perfectly understandably, that his friend is engaged in a clandestine affair, but the reader, knowing Marcel as he does in this tortuous essay-cum-memoir-cum novel, knows better. The ‘affair’ is not with a real person so much as with a shadow of almost infinite possibilities – a ‘cheat’ indeed, the substance of thought and meditation, the impossible dream, the unfaithful woman, the spectre that haunts those grappling with the relationship between form and memory.
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Home
About
The Proust Project (Day 6)
Posted on June 7, 2014 by davetherave2
Day 6 (Vol 6) The Fugitive; Time Regained
Proust never finished his monumental work, but he came close to it; his publisher was awaiting his final revisions when he died. The final pages as we have them probe the question of reality as perceived through time, the way in which memory becomes real, more real to consciousness even than the thinker’s surroundings. This time it is not the madeleine, as in volume one, that brings back the past but the sound of the bell on the garden gate, ‘the funeral gate.’ The narrator is at a party, whose noise distracts him from his journey back into the past so that he has to block his ears. This notion of time embodied, of years past but not separated from us, it was now my intention to emphasise as strongly as possible in my work. And at this very moment, in the house of the Prince de Guermantes, as though to strengthen me in my resolve, the noise of my parents’ footsteps as they accompanied M. Swann to the door and the peal – resilient, ferruginous, interminable, fresh and shrill – of the bell on the garden gate which informed me that at last he had gone and that Mamma would presently come upstairs, these sounds rang again in my ears, yes unmistakably I heard these very sounds, situated though they were in a remote past. The reader who has persevered to the end of the book, will now recall its opening pages of Marcel as boy, tortured by his mother’s delay in coming up to kiss him goodnight.
At the end of the book, Proust thinks of his own fast-approaching end: In my awareness of the approach of death I resembled a dying soldier, and like him too, before I died, I had something to write. But my task was longer than his, my words had to reach more than a single person. But ultimately it matters not. Everything passes. Note, as I did in a Freethinker article some years ago, although Proust allegedly died clutching a rosary, throughout the whole length of the novel there is no invocation to an Almighty Being, and a general acceptance of the mortality not only of humans but all their works and reputations: No doubt my books too, like my fleshly being, would in the end one day die. But death is a thing that we must resign ourselves to. We accept the thought that in ten years we ourselves, in a hundred years our books, will have ceased to exist. Eternal duration is promised no more to men’s work than to men.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
The Proust Project (Day 5)
Posted on June 6, 2014 by davetherave2
The Captive
At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall, and before I had seen above the big window-curtains, what shade of colour the first streaks assumed, I could already tell what the weather was like. The first sounds from the street had told me, according to whether they came to my ears deadened and distorted by the moisture of the atmosphere or quivering like arrows in the resonant, empty expanses of a spacious, frosty, pure morning; as soon as I heard the rumble of the first tram-car, I could tell whether it was sodden with rain or setting forth into the blue. And perhaps these sounds had themselves been forestalled by some swifter and more pervasive emanation which, stealing into my sleep, diffused in it a melancholy that announced snow or else (through a certain intermittent little person) burst into so many hymns to the glory of the sun that, having first of all begun to smile in my sleep, having prepared my eyes, behind their shut lids, to be dazzled, I would awake finally to clarion peals of music. It was, in fact, principally from my bedroom that I took in the life of the outer world during this period. I noted that Bloch reported that, when he called to see me in the evenings, he could hear the sound of conversations; as my mother was at Combray and he never found anybody in my room, he concluded that I was talking to myself. When, much later, he learned that Albertine had been staying with me at the time, and realised that I had concealed her presence from everybody, he declared that at last he saw the reason why, during that phase of my life, I had always refused to go out of doors. He was wrong. His mistake was, however, perfectly excusable, for reality, even though it is necessary, is not always foreseeable as a whole. People who learn some correct detail about another person’s life at once draw conclusions from it which are not accurate, and see in the newly discovered fact an explanation of things that have no connection with it whatsoever.
Thus the opening paragraph of ‘The Captive,’ translated cleverly but less appropriately by the original translator C K Scott Moncrieff, as ‘Sweet Cheat Gone,’ the ‘cheat’ suggesting the eidolon Albertine, Marcel’s let us say close companion or the vision that occupies his mind sporadically throughout this volume. Bloch, here, assumes, perfectly understandably, that his friend is engaged in a clandestine affair, but the reader, knowing Marcel as he does in this tortuous essay-cum-memoir-cum novel, knows better. The ‘affair’ is not with a real person so much as with a shadow of almost infinite possibilities – a ‘cheat’ indeed, the substance of thought and meditation, the impossible dream, the unfaithful woman, the spectre that haunts those grappling with the relationship between form and memory.
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June 6, 2014
The Proust Project. Days 3 and4
by davetherave2
DAY 4 (Vol 4) Sodom and Gomorrah
Marcel listens politely to his guests’ pretentious twaddle. At this august gathering of statesmen and barristers in his house our narrator exposes us the flummery of Mme de Combremer-Legrandin as she gives her latest opinions on art and music. Her mother-in-law the Dowager Mme de Combremet senior, owner of two estates at times modestly intercedes. When Marcel seeks to know the origin of the name of one of the estates, the Dowager explains, telling him it came from her grandmother, admitting it was ‘not an illustrious family, but good and very old country stock.’
‘What! Not illustrious!’ her daughter-in-law tartly interrupted her. ‘A whole window in Bayeux Cathedral is filled with their arms, and the principal church at Avranches has all their tombs.’
At the end of her spiel on ‘our old Raspeliere,’ the old Dowager points out that it no longer belongs to the family. The discussion is cut short though by the daughter-in-law when she switches to ‘more interesting topics.’ She addressed her mother-in-law as ‘Mother’ but ‘with the passing of the years had come to treat her with insolence.’
‘You mentioned water-lillies. I suppose you know Claude Monet’s pictures of them. What a genius! They interest me particularly because near Combray, that place where I told you I had some land …’
We soon understand what art means to this empty, rude and selfish arriviste when she adopts as her favourite Claude Monet. ‘I used at one time to prefer Manet. Nowadays, I still admire Manet of course, but I believe I like Monet even more. Ah, the cathedrals!’ As with painting, so with music she treats her audience to banal commentaries on her likes and dislikes, as if turning over rubies or diamond necklaces at a jeweller’s deciding which flatters her the most.
When it comes to music, Mme de Combremer’s comments are either rapturous or dismissive. She hates Chopin, but loves Debussy whom she calls ‘a super Wagner.’ Challenged occasionally by Marcel, she will agree and then retract. Marcel finds her simplistic notion that music as an art progresses in a straight line quite ridiculous. He concludes with a biological analogy that ‘theories and schools, like microbes and corpuscles, devour one another and by their strife ensure the continuity of life.’
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DAY 3 (Vol 3) The Guermantes Way
Posted on June 4, 2014 by davetherave2
From a family gathering Marcel’s friend Robert seeks to eschew the company of his mother Mme de Marsantes in order to meet his mistress, Rachel. ‘She treated me with a deference that I found almost painful because I felt it to be prompted by her fear of falling out because of me with this son whom she had not seen all day.’ Finally, Robert escapes: ‘Goodbye,’ he said to her. I’ve got to go now. I don’t know when I shall get leave again.’ ‘What, Robert, you are not going off?’ she protests. ‘Seriously? My little son – the one day I had a chance to see something of you!’ To which her soldier son snaps, ‘It’s unfortunate, but, nice or not, that’s how it is.’ This anger is most unlike his friend, but who would sacrifice the chance of seeing a lover merely to oblige a mother? ‘ Indeed, ‘he heaped upon his mother the reproaches …that he himself perhaps deserved.’ How typical of our narrator, he draws a general conclusion from this particular incident: ‘thus it is that egoists … may be carried to the utmost degree of cruelty without having any effect in their eyes but to aggravate the culpability of the person who is so indelicate as to be hurt.’
In this little scene, which persists for several pages, one is ever conscious of the narrator weighing and analysing every possible scruple and motive of the disputants. No other novelist displays such subtlety and moral intelligence – not even Henry James. This is the archetypal literary novel, making demands on reader patience and intelligence, but ultimately offering rich rewards.
DAY 4 (Vol 4) Sodom and Gomorrah
Marcel listens politely to his guests’ pretentious twaddle. At this august gathering of statesmen and barristers in his house our narrator exposes us the flummery of Mme de Combremer-Legrandin as she gives her latest opinions on art and music. Her mother-in-law the Dowager Mme de Combremet senior, owner of two estates at times modestly intercedes. When Marcel seeks to know the origin of the name of one of the estates, the Dowager explains, telling him it came from her grandmother, admitting it was ‘not an illustrious family, but good and very old country stock.’
‘What! Not illustrious!’ her daughter-in-law tartly interrupted her. ‘A whole window in Bayeux Cathedral is filled with their arms, and the principal church at Avranches has all their tombs.’
At the end of her spiel on ‘our old Raspeliere,’ the old Dowager points out that it no longer belongs to the family. The discussion is cut short though by the daughter-in-law when she switches to ‘more interesting topics.’ She addressed her mother-in-law as ‘Mother’ but ‘with the passing of the years had come to treat her with insolence.’
‘You mentioned water-lillies. I suppose you know Claude Monet’s pictures of them. What a genius! They interest me particularly because near Combray, that place where I told you I had some land …’
We soon understand what art means to this empty, rude and selfish arriviste when she adopts as her favourite Claude Monet. ‘I used at one time to prefer Manet. Nowadays, I still admire Manet of course, but I believe I like Monet even more. Ah, the cathedrals!’ As with painting, so with music she treats her audience to banal commentaries on her likes and dislikes, as if turning over rubies or diamond necklaces at a jeweller’s deciding which flatters her the most.
When it comes to music, Mme de Combremer’s comments are either rapturous or dismissive. She hates Chopin, but loves Debussy whom she calls ‘a super Wagner.’ Challenged occasionally by Marcel, she will agree and then retract. Marcel finds her simplistic notion that music as an art progresses in a straight line quite ridiculous. He concludes with a biological analogy that ‘theories and schools, like microbes and corpuscles, devour one another and by their strife ensure the continuity of life.’
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
DAY 3 (Vol 3) The Guermantes Way
Posted on June 4, 2014 by davetherave2
From a family gathering Marcel’s friend Robert seeks to eschew the company of his mother Mme de Marsantes in order to meet his mistress, Rachel. ‘She treated me with a deference that I found almost painful because I felt it to be prompted by her fear of falling out because of me with this son whom she had not seen all day.’ Finally, Robert escapes: ‘Goodbye,’ he said to her. I’ve got to go now. I don’t know when I shall get leave again.’ ‘What, Robert, you are not going off?’ she protests. ‘Seriously? My little son – the one day I had a chance to see something of you!’ To which her soldier son snaps, ‘It’s unfortunate, but, nice or not, that’s how it is.’ This anger is most unlike his friend, but who would sacrifice the chance of seeing a lover merely to oblige a mother? ‘ Indeed, ‘he heaped upon his mother the reproaches …that he himself perhaps deserved.’ How typical of our narrator, he draws a general conclusion from this particular incident: ‘thus it is that egoists … may be carried to the utmost degree of cruelty without having any effect in their eyes but to aggravate the culpability of the person who is so indelicate as to be hurt.’
In this little scene, which persists for several pages, one is ever conscious of the narrator weighing and analysing every possible scruple and motive of the disputants. No other novelist displays such subtlety and moral intelligence – not even Henry James. This is the archetypal literary novel, making demands on reader patience and intelligence, but ultimately offering rich rewards.
June 4, 2014
The Proust Project. Days 1 and 2
The Proust Project
Posted on June 3, 2014 by davetherave2
Over the past 50 years I’ve managed to read Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu twice. Although something of a Francophile I am not fluent in French, so I rely on English translations, lately the Kilmartin version, published by the Folio Society in 2000. These six hefty tomes stare down at me daily from the top shelf of my library with heavy disapproval. I know I ought to spend more time with him, but Time - Proust’s theme, everyone’s theme – is fleeting, and I have other scholarly promises to keep.
I know it’s my duty to read a little Proust each day, in the same way that as a child I used to be reminded to read my Bible each night before going to sleep. I was lax then, and I am equally lax now. Proust is so profound and so meticulous that one can only nibble around the edge of the madeleine a little at a time. It would take me another ten years to read the oeuvre again. But deep down I know that I owe it to myself to suck once more from the immortal vine. Hence the Proust project – to take a little succour each day, or each night, to read at random, as the evangelists used to read the Bible, finding revelation wherever the book opened.
So, in the words of George Peele’s The Owlde Wives Tale, ‘gently dip, but not too deep.’ I resolved to read for no more than an hour each day, beginning with Volume One on Day One, proceeding for six days to reach Volume Six on Day Six, then starting the cycle again. I have found that I can read 4-5 pages in one hour, and 4-5 pages of Proust at a time is feast enough for one day.
DAY ONE (Vol. 1)
I read about Francoise the housemaid and chief cook in the Proust household. Marcel is amazed at the contradiction in her general kindness and her revengeful feeling towards the chicken which she pursues knife in hand and cursing around the kitchen. Even when the bird is dead and streaming with blood she rages at it, shouting ‘Filthy creature!’ Marcel creeps out of the kitchen, ‘trembling all over; I could have prayed, then, for the instant dismissal of Francoise.’
DAY TWO (Vol. 2)
Robert de Saint-Loup is a rich, elegant and sympathetic character, Marcel’s hero and bosom friend. He is kind, generous and devoted to Marcel, and yet, typical in Proust, there is always a downside. After his friend’s departure ‘I felt a sort of remorse, or regret, or weariness at not having remained alone and settled down to work at last.’ His ‘work’ appears to be mainly exploring and defining his feelings. He finds in Robert a ‘pre-existent, ‘immemorial being,’ an aristocrat of the spirit, exemplified in his ‘graces’ and ‘kindnesses,’ and in ‘the ease with which he offered my grandmother his carriage.’
Posted on June 3, 2014 by davetherave2
Over the past 50 years I’ve managed to read Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu twice. Although something of a Francophile I am not fluent in French, so I rely on English translations, lately the Kilmartin version, published by the Folio Society in 2000. These six hefty tomes stare down at me daily from the top shelf of my library with heavy disapproval. I know I ought to spend more time with him, but Time - Proust’s theme, everyone’s theme – is fleeting, and I have other scholarly promises to keep.
I know it’s my duty to read a little Proust each day, in the same way that as a child I used to be reminded to read my Bible each night before going to sleep. I was lax then, and I am equally lax now. Proust is so profound and so meticulous that one can only nibble around the edge of the madeleine a little at a time. It would take me another ten years to read the oeuvre again. But deep down I know that I owe it to myself to suck once more from the immortal vine. Hence the Proust project – to take a little succour each day, or each night, to read at random, as the evangelists used to read the Bible, finding revelation wherever the book opened.
So, in the words of George Peele’s The Owlde Wives Tale, ‘gently dip, but not too deep.’ I resolved to read for no more than an hour each day, beginning with Volume One on Day One, proceeding for six days to reach Volume Six on Day Six, then starting the cycle again. I have found that I can read 4-5 pages in one hour, and 4-5 pages of Proust at a time is feast enough for one day.
DAY ONE (Vol. 1)
I read about Francoise the housemaid and chief cook in the Proust household. Marcel is amazed at the contradiction in her general kindness and her revengeful feeling towards the chicken which she pursues knife in hand and cursing around the kitchen. Even when the bird is dead and streaming with blood she rages at it, shouting ‘Filthy creature!’ Marcel creeps out of the kitchen, ‘trembling all over; I could have prayed, then, for the instant dismissal of Francoise.’
DAY TWO (Vol. 2)
Robert de Saint-Loup is a rich, elegant and sympathetic character, Marcel’s hero and bosom friend. He is kind, generous and devoted to Marcel, and yet, typical in Proust, there is always a downside. After his friend’s departure ‘I felt a sort of remorse, or regret, or weariness at not having remained alone and settled down to work at last.’ His ‘work’ appears to be mainly exploring and defining his feelings. He finds in Robert a ‘pre-existent, ‘immemorial being,’ an aristocrat of the spirit, exemplified in his ‘graces’ and ‘kindnesses,’ and in ‘the ease with which he offered my grandmother his carriage.’
June 2, 2014
Win a Prize!
The Quagga Prize for Literary Fiction is still open for submissions until June 30. £350 for the Gold Medal (Literary Fiction), £100 for Genre fiction. Other prizes, Judge's report.
So, if you've a novel that needs recognition send it in soon.
So, if you've a novel that needs recognition send it in soon.
May 29, 2014
RIP Maya Angelou.
A fine writer and an inspirational person is no longer with us. Maya Angelou, aged 86, died yesterday.
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
This first volume of Maya Angelou’s autobiography is a tribute to the human spirit’s triumph over adversity. It tells the story of Maya’s childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in California, outlining her development as a thinking moral person. It’s very much about the ethos of slavery, of mind and body. For those brought up in the tradition of liberal democracy it’s a revelation. How does it feel to be ignored or treated as an object? How do you react to oppression, constant insult and the ever present threat of violence?
As an eight-year-old Maya is raped by her mother’s boyfriend, the ironically named Mr Freeman. But the little incident is accepted by the child as just one of many ills that flesh is heir to: ‘I wasn’t afraid, a little apprehensive maybe, but not afraid.’ Only gradually does the reader come to realise that Maya’s ‘mother’ is a prostitute. Abandoned by her husband, left with two children, what else is there for her? The word ‘whore’ is generally used as an insult, but here the oldest profession is simply a way of life, if not the only way of life. And her mother, a strict disciplinarian, is the key to Maya’s education in life.
Only in the West, where the family move to in the war, does Maya realise that black and white are not necessarily poles apart. In anger and frustration she gets herself pregnant via one of ‘the most eligible young men in the neighbourhood.’ As with the rape she remains quite matter-of-fact about the sexual act: ‘Would you like to have sexual intercourse with me?’ she asks the boy, who promptly accepts the offer and disappears from her life. Even the unwanted pregnancy is no trauma; she’s still alive, isn’t she? And the birth is easy pie.
Morally supported by Mother, she takes arms against racism and sexism. Maya’s triumph is not simply in gaining diplomas but in forcing others to accept her as a worthwhile human being. In career terms she does this by becoming the first black bus conductress in San Francisco, refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer. Maya Angelou in her own way is as militant as Malcolm X; and she needed to kill nobody. This is an inspiring book.
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
This first volume of Maya Angelou’s autobiography is a tribute to the human spirit’s triumph over adversity. It tells the story of Maya’s childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in California, outlining her development as a thinking moral person. It’s very much about the ethos of slavery, of mind and body. For those brought up in the tradition of liberal democracy it’s a revelation. How does it feel to be ignored or treated as an object? How do you react to oppression, constant insult and the ever present threat of violence?
As an eight-year-old Maya is raped by her mother’s boyfriend, the ironically named Mr Freeman. But the little incident is accepted by the child as just one of many ills that flesh is heir to: ‘I wasn’t afraid, a little apprehensive maybe, but not afraid.’ Only gradually does the reader come to realise that Maya’s ‘mother’ is a prostitute. Abandoned by her husband, left with two children, what else is there for her? The word ‘whore’ is generally used as an insult, but here the oldest profession is simply a way of life, if not the only way of life. And her mother, a strict disciplinarian, is the key to Maya’s education in life.
Only in the West, where the family move to in the war, does Maya realise that black and white are not necessarily poles apart. In anger and frustration she gets herself pregnant via one of ‘the most eligible young men in the neighbourhood.’ As with the rape she remains quite matter-of-fact about the sexual act: ‘Would you like to have sexual intercourse with me?’ she asks the boy, who promptly accepts the offer and disappears from her life. Even the unwanted pregnancy is no trauma; she’s still alive, isn’t she? And the birth is easy pie.
Morally supported by Mother, she takes arms against racism and sexism. Maya’s triumph is not simply in gaining diplomas but in forcing others to accept her as a worthwhile human being. In career terms she does this by becoming the first black bus conductress in San Francisco, refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer. Maya Angelou in her own way is as militant as Malcolm X; and she needed to kill nobody. This is an inspiring book.
May 28, 2014
Intrusive Memory
Leonardo Noto begins the story of his horrendous upbringing with Garfield’s assertion that the truth will set you free, but its recall will first make you miserable. So, in a sense, this book, though at one point called a novel, is in effect yet another agony memoir.
In his preface the author declares that it is 95% true, and the reader is convinced by the details of vicious parenting and indifferent schooling in the Southern states. The violence and neglect of three young lads by both parents is at times horrific. The effect of being beaten and constantly humiliated by a gorgon of a mother and the descent of the narrator (nom de plume Leo) into drugs, crime and consequent incarceration in various institutions is truly shocking.
But this book is more than an exposure; it’s a cri de Coeur demanding not only better parenting but more humane and insightful social services. Our narrator (call him Leo) comes through all the neglect and seemingly motiveless cruelty directed at him from home and sundry educational-cum-reform institutions to become a trained medical practitioner specialising in the treatment of neurasthenics. For Leo admits that he became a loner because of his horrendous childhood, and that he saved himself from suicide through the agency of one or two sympathetic teachers. Psychiatry did nothing for him; in fact it made him worse, so that insomnia, panic attacks and irritable bowel syndrome became his constant companions seemingly for life. Only a determination to live through the pain and exist not through drugs but study to the point of mania saved him. At crisis point he gave up drink, drugs and self-pity to devote his life to helping others. Indeed, this is a heroic story, an example to the deprived and depraved.
The tone of the book is plain and factual, never hysterical and only occasionally rising to anger. It reads like a novel, rather than a case study, which enhances its appeal. Nevertheless the narrator is ever conscious of the aura of social deviance seemingly fostered by institutions such as schools, military academies and even universities in the South. Thus he inveighs against Stony Creek Hospital (names are changed): 'The four men hefted me into a small, barren, white-bricked room and strapped me face down onto a leather-hard restraining bed with a rubber restraint wrapped tightly around each of my appendages. They then started examining my whole body, including my genitals, for wounds and tattoos — examining me none too gently at that. The restraining bed was cold and hard, as were the hands that were violating me, and I was so afraid that I nearly urinated on myself. I said another prayer, begging God to help me, but to no avail. The next thing I remember is a large bore needle being jabbed into my buttocks and the whole world going black as I tried in vain to fight the drug that they had forced into my body.'
So much for the patient’s introduction to the treatment centre. But it gets worse when he leaves, so much so that at times he looks back longingly to his time at the Hospital. More useless schools, a military academy, then finally, amazingly, a university – but one where he is humiliated and victimised as a ‘queer,’ because he prefers study to social life. After fleeing university he finds solace in an osteopathic institution, on which complex procedure he dwells at length, finally returning to his experiences: my mental disorder was now completely out-of-control and the memories, memories which haunted me constantly, were now so realistic that I would often catch myself subconsciously physically reacting to (punching my furniture, etc.) and shouting at them — it felt like waking up after you’ve been sleepwalking and finding yourself in another room of the house, not remembering how you got there.
So there you have it: case study, social document, success-cum-horror story of a man who came through to become despite the odds a useful citizen and advocate for psychiatric reform!
In his preface the author declares that it is 95% true, and the reader is convinced by the details of vicious parenting and indifferent schooling in the Southern states. The violence and neglect of three young lads by both parents is at times horrific. The effect of being beaten and constantly humiliated by a gorgon of a mother and the descent of the narrator (nom de plume Leo) into drugs, crime and consequent incarceration in various institutions is truly shocking.
But this book is more than an exposure; it’s a cri de Coeur demanding not only better parenting but more humane and insightful social services. Our narrator (call him Leo) comes through all the neglect and seemingly motiveless cruelty directed at him from home and sundry educational-cum-reform institutions to become a trained medical practitioner specialising in the treatment of neurasthenics. For Leo admits that he became a loner because of his horrendous childhood, and that he saved himself from suicide through the agency of one or two sympathetic teachers. Psychiatry did nothing for him; in fact it made him worse, so that insomnia, panic attacks and irritable bowel syndrome became his constant companions seemingly for life. Only a determination to live through the pain and exist not through drugs but study to the point of mania saved him. At crisis point he gave up drink, drugs and self-pity to devote his life to helping others. Indeed, this is a heroic story, an example to the deprived and depraved.
The tone of the book is plain and factual, never hysterical and only occasionally rising to anger. It reads like a novel, rather than a case study, which enhances its appeal. Nevertheless the narrator is ever conscious of the aura of social deviance seemingly fostered by institutions such as schools, military academies and even universities in the South. Thus he inveighs against Stony Creek Hospital (names are changed): 'The four men hefted me into a small, barren, white-bricked room and strapped me face down onto a leather-hard restraining bed with a rubber restraint wrapped tightly around each of my appendages. They then started examining my whole body, including my genitals, for wounds and tattoos — examining me none too gently at that. The restraining bed was cold and hard, as were the hands that were violating me, and I was so afraid that I nearly urinated on myself. I said another prayer, begging God to help me, but to no avail. The next thing I remember is a large bore needle being jabbed into my buttocks and the whole world going black as I tried in vain to fight the drug that they had forced into my body.'
So much for the patient’s introduction to the treatment centre. But it gets worse when he leaves, so much so that at times he looks back longingly to his time at the Hospital. More useless schools, a military academy, then finally, amazingly, a university – but one where he is humiliated and victimised as a ‘queer,’ because he prefers study to social life. After fleeing university he finds solace in an osteopathic institution, on which complex procedure he dwells at length, finally returning to his experiences: my mental disorder was now completely out-of-control and the memories, memories which haunted me constantly, were now so realistic that I would often catch myself subconsciously physically reacting to (punching my furniture, etc.) and shouting at them — it felt like waking up after you’ve been sleepwalking and finding yourself in another room of the house, not remembering how you got there.
So there you have it: case study, social document, success-cum-horror story of a man who came through to become despite the odds a useful citizen and advocate for psychiatric reform!
May 12, 2014
THEY DON'T JUST PLAY CRICKET
We taught them how to play the game, but they taught us how to win at it. And not only India, but Pakistan, Sri Lanka and soon no doubt it will be Bangladesh giving England a hard time on rock-hard pitches with their batting flair and demonic spin bowling. But actually I’m not talking about the Indian Cricket League, nor the IPL that transforms great cricketers overnight into multi-millionaires. So I’m not even going to mention the twenty year old rising star, the pace bowler from Punjab, Sandeep Sharma – dammit, I’ve done it! – a young man who, by the time he’s my age, could have gobbled up several thousand books.
Yes, what I’m talking about is not cricket megabucks but megabucks from books. Books? What sort of books are you talking about? I’m talking about e-books and the way in which people from all walks of life – and some who have no walks at all – can create marvellous stories or, for the thinking man or woman, begin to unravel the mysteries of everything from karma to the Kama Sutra. And how would they begin to do that? Well, they’ve probably already started by getting themselves an electronic device that can download e-books.
But how can that make them richer? Well, first and foremost books are not about making money, but about enriching your life. You begin by reading – fiction, philosophy, about film-making or what-have-you, and you end up compelled to write something of your own. You want to be creative, first and foremost. You want to communicate with others, by word of mouth or through print of some kind. Finally, you become famous and make money, not just peanuts but grape nuts, monkey nuts and nuts to squirrel away in bank accounts.
I was reading an article by Laksmi Kruper in The Hindu this morning (May 3, 2014) about the exponential rise in digital book reading and creation in India. Almost everyone seems to have caught the bug. These books are mostly written by young and unknown writers and they sell in hundreds, all around the globe, from New York to New Delhi, from Sing Sing to Singapore. Of course their authors are mostly not household names. But books, once the exclusive property of the idle rich or intellectually gifted, are now available at the touch of a button on everyone’s laptop or mobile phone. Readers who struggle with the English language can at another touch of the button read text in Hindi or whatever tongue they prefer.
I must confess to ignorance of this rich coral bed lying somewhere down there in the thundering ocean of print, but I am sorely tempted to dive down for the treasure that is surely awaiting the intrepid seeker. It’s almost terrifying to think of the amount of fish to be found. The phrase ‘spoilt for choice’ comes to mind. But if you don’t dive down, you’ll never discover the golden fish quietly waiting on the ocean floor.
Why bother, you might say, after adding another half-dozen titles to your ‘to-be-read’ list, based on critiques from the ‘quality’ papers and ‘likes’ by your best friends or favourite reviewers? Well, because the stuff is there, and finding something for yourself is always more exciting than following the crowd along beaten pathways. Moreover, by seeking out an unknown you are not only giving yourself a new experience, but helping into the light a bloom that’s otherwise born to blush unseen.
So I’m about to sample and possibly even purchase via my Kindle one or more of the writers noted by Laksmi Kruper: Sri Vishwanath (ex-accountant), Parvathi Ramkumar (fantasy novelist), Rasana Atreya (computer engineer) and Ajay Jaina (journalist). This I intend to do, and on the books I uncover I intend to report back possibly on this site, certainly my own site http://www.quaggabooks.net and possibly on Amazon. I’m looking forward to the adventure; almost as much as to the upcoming series between England and India. And that’s really saying something!
Yes, what I’m talking about is not cricket megabucks but megabucks from books. Books? What sort of books are you talking about? I’m talking about e-books and the way in which people from all walks of life – and some who have no walks at all – can create marvellous stories or, for the thinking man or woman, begin to unravel the mysteries of everything from karma to the Kama Sutra. And how would they begin to do that? Well, they’ve probably already started by getting themselves an electronic device that can download e-books.
But how can that make them richer? Well, first and foremost books are not about making money, but about enriching your life. You begin by reading – fiction, philosophy, about film-making or what-have-you, and you end up compelled to write something of your own. You want to be creative, first and foremost. You want to communicate with others, by word of mouth or through print of some kind. Finally, you become famous and make money, not just peanuts but grape nuts, monkey nuts and nuts to squirrel away in bank accounts.
I was reading an article by Laksmi Kruper in The Hindu this morning (May 3, 2014) about the exponential rise in digital book reading and creation in India. Almost everyone seems to have caught the bug. These books are mostly written by young and unknown writers and they sell in hundreds, all around the globe, from New York to New Delhi, from Sing Sing to Singapore. Of course their authors are mostly not household names. But books, once the exclusive property of the idle rich or intellectually gifted, are now available at the touch of a button on everyone’s laptop or mobile phone. Readers who struggle with the English language can at another touch of the button read text in Hindi or whatever tongue they prefer.
I must confess to ignorance of this rich coral bed lying somewhere down there in the thundering ocean of print, but I am sorely tempted to dive down for the treasure that is surely awaiting the intrepid seeker. It’s almost terrifying to think of the amount of fish to be found. The phrase ‘spoilt for choice’ comes to mind. But if you don’t dive down, you’ll never discover the golden fish quietly waiting on the ocean floor.
Why bother, you might say, after adding another half-dozen titles to your ‘to-be-read’ list, based on critiques from the ‘quality’ papers and ‘likes’ by your best friends or favourite reviewers? Well, because the stuff is there, and finding something for yourself is always more exciting than following the crowd along beaten pathways. Moreover, by seeking out an unknown you are not only giving yourself a new experience, but helping into the light a bloom that’s otherwise born to blush unseen.
So I’m about to sample and possibly even purchase via my Kindle one or more of the writers noted by Laksmi Kruper: Sri Vishwanath (ex-accountant), Parvathi Ramkumar (fantasy novelist), Rasana Atreya (computer engineer) and Ajay Jaina (journalist). This I intend to do, and on the books I uncover I intend to report back possibly on this site, certainly my own site http://www.quaggabooks.net and possibly on Amazon. I’m looking forward to the adventure; almost as much as to the upcoming series between England and India. And that’s really saying something!
QUAGGA AND THE NOVEL
Quagga and the Novel
Although a much more recent species, unlike the quagga, the novel continues to exist and develop. It had been erroneously declared to be dead, but it refuses to lie down and die. Like the quagga, though, the novel is admittedly a bit of a hodge-podge. Its edges are indeterminate, encroaching upon history, autobiography, fairy tale and such strange breeds as science fiction and something known as magic realism. The novel is a hungry predator, ever on the lookout for new prey, ever-seeking to explore terra incognita.
It wasn't always such a large, loose baggy monster, a sort of rapacious Grendel on the prowl. How it came to take over the writing world is something of a puzzle, especially if we think of its unpromising start as a much despised art. Its protean shape has spawned a whole sub-culture of literary criticism; something we might call 'novelistics,' embracing literary critics such as Ian Watt who sees its rise in the Eighteenth Century with the realistic novel and its 'verisimilitude' and others who take a more long-sighted view. Homer and the Old Testament are invoked by Mssrs Scholes and Kellogg.
If there's a grain of truth in Walter Pater's assertion that all arts aspire to the condition of music, then I declare that all language aspires to the genre of the novel. From nursery rhymes to street gossip, from camp fire songs to Paradise Lost, the listener or reader is held by the notion of sequence, not always a linea sequence but a need to know the ending, the success or failure, the life or death of a hero or heroine. Which is why for me Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy or Joyce's Finnegan's Wake just miss out. Yes, I know I'm being simplistic, but then I only sought to find a grain of truth.
Although a much more recent species, unlike the quagga, the novel continues to exist and develop. It had been erroneously declared to be dead, but it refuses to lie down and die. Like the quagga, though, the novel is admittedly a bit of a hodge-podge. Its edges are indeterminate, encroaching upon history, autobiography, fairy tale and such strange breeds as science fiction and something known as magic realism. The novel is a hungry predator, ever on the lookout for new prey, ever-seeking to explore terra incognita.
It wasn't always such a large, loose baggy monster, a sort of rapacious Grendel on the prowl. How it came to take over the writing world is something of a puzzle, especially if we think of its unpromising start as a much despised art. Its protean shape has spawned a whole sub-culture of literary criticism; something we might call 'novelistics,' embracing literary critics such as Ian Watt who sees its rise in the Eighteenth Century with the realistic novel and its 'verisimilitude' and others who take a more long-sighted view. Homer and the Old Testament are invoked by Mssrs Scholes and Kellogg.
If there's a grain of truth in Walter Pater's assertion that all arts aspire to the condition of music, then I declare that all language aspires to the genre of the novel. From nursery rhymes to street gossip, from camp fire songs to Paradise Lost, the listener or reader is held by the notion of sequence, not always a linea sequence but a need to know the ending, the success or failure, the life or death of a hero or heroine. Which is why for me Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy or Joyce's Finnegan's Wake just miss out. Yes, I know I'm being simplistic, but then I only sought to find a grain of truth.
The Scholar's Tale
The Scholar’s Tale: A Semi-Autobiographical Novel by David James
Readers join Roy Musgrave, a scholar turned biography and fiction writer, as he drags up his past by paying a visit to an old student a ...more
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