From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

A Window Across The River

Brian Morton

Start date: October 15, 2011

Finish date: November 15, 2011

Discussion leader: Yulia

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Mar 10, 2011 Yulia rated it liked it

Shelves: writers-on-writing

Morton once again challenges us to question whether we would be able to live up to our own ethical standards and ideals. This book also asks, what is ultimately more important to an artist: to live well or to create well? If a writer dies unknown in a forest, is it too late to self-publish?

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Aug 25, 2011 Jane rated it really liked it

I don't remember reading this nine years ago. Remember nothing about it...but I'm on a Brian Morton reading kick and this is the third book of his I've read this month. Long ago, Sue wrote a scathing review about this book..."A problem looking for a character." No, I completely believed Nora as a character. She struggles with relationships, and with her own limitations as a writer. Writing matters more to Nora than anything, but she needs to begin with a character she actually knows about. When I don't remember reading this nine years ago. Remember nothing about it...but I'm on a Brian Morton reading kick and this is the third book of his I've read this month. Long ago, Sue wrote a scathing review about this book..."A problem looking for a character." No, I completely believed Nora as a character. She struggles with relationships, and with her own limitations as a writer. Writing matters more to Nora than anything, but she needs to begin with a character she actually knows about. When her stories are published, or shared with the person who inspired them, Nora loses friends. All of Morton's books have a character who is a writer and is dealing with writing dilemmas. In this one, the main character realizes that "I can I only write about actual people whose failings I explore (even if I try to change their story)?" This necessity comes back to bite Nora when she gets deeply involved with a man, for the second time.

In Breakable You,"I'm a has been, shall I steal a dead friend's manuscript and pass it off as mine?" and in Florence Gordon, Morton explores "What happens when a famous writer begins to lose her physical capacities?"

I get lost in these novels and begin to care about (almost) all of Morton's characters in these three books. Here's an excerpt from A Window Across the River that gives a sense of Morton's wonderful writing, as well as Nora, the protagonist in this book.

"You wake before dawn. You shower, dress and make coffee, and then, without letting anything else intervene, you sit down at the keyboard.
If every morning beings in this fashion, Nora thought, then the rest of the day will be blessed.
'God,' Tolstoy once said, 'is the name of my desire.' Writing was the name of Nora's. Isaac had once told her that photography had taken the place of prayer in his life, and she knew what he meant. It wasn't writing she worshiped; writing, rather, was a way of worshiping. It was the best way she had ever found to express her fascination with life, her quarrels with life, her questions. She sometimes thought that even if what she wrote every day was doomed to disappear, during the night, she would keep writing stories, just to make a daily pilgrimage to the realm of mystery and reverence and play. She didn't always reach that realm when she was writing stories, but merely to turn toward it was a kind of nourishment unlike any other."

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Nov 04, 2011 Lindsey rated it really liked it

Very good. Not plot heavy - introspective in a way that reminded me of Ian McEwan - but never boring or dull. I'd give it 4.5 stars, if I could. ...more

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Oct 22, 2011 Alan rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

A Common Reader selection. Well written, but plotted within a fairly narrow space, and inside the even narrower scope of periphery around the NYC art/literature scene.

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