21st Century Literature discussion
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Why Read New Books by Tim Parks- New York Review of Books blog
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Interesting essay, but I have the opposite problem -- I need encouragement to read the "classics" instead of "new" books. I tend to do the literature classics in audio rather than print because I have problems with more than one page paragraphs and more than four line sentences!
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Linda, interesting, I have the opposite problem from you. I need to read complex sentences, as I get little out of them on audio. In discussions with my friends who prefer audio, there seems to be something of a "left brain / right brain" split when it comes to people's preferences.
Based on this article, I don't think Parks particularly values modern historical fiction. He really seems to be value contemporary fiction set in places and cultures that the reader has personal experience with. I feel that one of the things that literature can do for us is to let us experience living in a foreign place, time or culture. To interpret the past (or the future) for the present. It can be a misleading project, of course, but that doesn't make it not worthwhile.
I read new novels the same reason I go to cinema art houses for movies to discover something new. With it is hit and miss. Both are usually low budget affairs with more misses than hits. When you do run into an on target hit it is worth all the misses. Actually I find more misses when it comes to art houses films then with novels.As a whole, I like to alternate between established literary classics and contemporary literary novels.
Art is subjective, and literature is not an exception. Stating this, one should also remember that two or three hundreds years ago, and even one hundred years ago, there were only a selected few who were literate, and the number decreases when we are talking about writers. Yes, the emotional depth is immeasurable and thus subjective, but structurally, modern writers are better equipped with modern techniques and know how to control the plot and where to speed up to add edginess and where to slow down to add melancholy to the narrative. They also have massive cultural heritage to study and iconic and classic examples to follow and emulate. In addition, modern writers most certainly rely on editors who help them structurally and semantically with novels and short-stories. As a result, modern literary fiction does not suffer from the problems Dickens and the ilk did - inconsistent plot, lost characters who suddenly and unwillingly turn into Deux ex machina, pointless ramblings, and other irrelevant passages.
The problem with modern literary fiction is the ever increasing number of people who are literate and are often looking for an emotional outlet of creative writing. So we live in the world that generates an ever- growing number of good writers due to a number of circumstances (life expectancy, exposure to other literary masterpieces, education, 'literary literacy'. etc) who have to fight for a smaller audience.
One day we might live in the world with the ratio 1:1 (reader:writer). It would be indeed a pain in the neck to choose what book to read next.
On the other hand, the emotional depth of fiction is hard to classify, and as we all are able to experience the same emotions as people did hundreds and thousands years ago, the talent to capture the spirit of human existence is as rare as it was.
I know my post might sound somewhat irrelevant, but there are people who do not feel comfortable reading modern literary fiction, believing that nothing, NOTHING will surpass the quality of the classics. They stick to their own comfort zone and discard immediately literary fiction as pretentious.
In my humble opinion, modern fiction is definitely an uncharted territory even if there are excellent reviews, but that feeling of novelty, freshness, simultaneity, new things to come is very tantalizing.
With all due respect and love, classical novels are mostly finite in number while with modern literary fiction there is always the promise of new things, better things, more exciting things to come.
Just yesterday or so I was thinking, well, if I'm not inclined to "give" a book 5 stars, maybe a finger of my own was burnt in the reading. Such fingers might be emotional and personal -- and I want them both to be fiddling around in my reading and the writer's writing -- but the useless ones are conceptual, all loaded up with demandations.
Adding: those demandations are to be encountered and addressed in one's own writing. But to read well, first we accept what's found. (On the page, under falling leaves, within another's psyche, etc.)