I imagine autobiographical writers are writers who write about their own lives and their life stories. There’s a difference to me between your life and your memories. Of course I have memories about my own life, my own family, but a lot of memories I carry with me are about the world. And those are not—I don’t think those can be called—autobiographical. Those are really observations. I remember these things, but you have to make sense of these memories by writing other people’s stories, rather than your own stories.
…
My inclination was not to write nonfiction, but what I got from nonfiction was that I can write nonfiction. Because I hate to write about myself and talk about myself, but I realized there are ways to write nonfiction that’s really not about yourself, but about the world. That makes me very happy.
Tag Archives: Fiction
Melancholy
In High Fidelity, Nick Hornby’s pop music-obsessed narrator Rob Fleming asks, following his most recent in a spate of romantic failures, while slumped in his apartment feeling desperately sorry for himself: “What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?”
Thoroughly Flawed
What is naïve and blinkered is the insistence that fictional characters be held to the same moral and behavioral standards we expect of our friends. It seems to me that part of the point of literature is to enlighten and expand, and there are few pleasures in fiction that expand our consciousness further than getting to observe the world from the perspective of characters so different from us, so thoroughly flawed, that if we were to encounter them in real life we wouldn’t like them very much.
19: Anything Considered
Anything Considered by Peter Mayle
From the library book sale in the spring. Read Peter Mayle’s Provence books a long time ago, thought I’d give this a go. Same setting, but Anything Considered is a novel rather than a memoir.
This was (I’ll say it) total dick lit, i.e. the male equivalent of chick lit. I think they call it “lad lit” in the UK.
The MC is Luciano Bennett, because he’s half-Italian, so he tans nicely, and half-English, so he’s… English-y. Of course, he’s called Bennett, because Luciano is too twee. He’s mid-30s, doesn’t really have a job, lives in France. He’s broke—he alludes to some misadventure in the past where someone made off with his life savings—but this really isn’t an impediment to his lifestyle. He lives for free (IIRC) in the house of some guy who’s on sabbatical or something. I guess you could say he’s house-sitting? Except a housekeeper came with the deal.
Anyhow, the premise is that he places an ambiguous ad looking for work, and a Really Rich Dude answers it. A job is offered, and Bennett accepts, thinking he’s essentially getting a paid vacay in Monaco where he can work on the aforementioned tan. (Silly characters! Don’t they know nothing is ever as it seems?) Instead, hijinx ensue. Naturally, he partners up with a chick who happens to be both formerly a model and formerly in the Israeli Army. So she’s hot and she can kick (his) ass. Of course! (What other kind of woman would be worthy of an unemployed middle-aged dude our esteemed hero? ;-))
Well, I won’t tell you any more. This had the potential to be terrible, but it was not. It was total cheese, but the good kind. The writing was good, and I think that makes the difference between fluff and dreck. It’d make an entertaining cheesy TV movie.
18: The Glass Cell
The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith
Hmm, I haven’t read any Highsmith since 2005? How did that happen? Hmm. Well, I picked up two at The Book Shop this summer so I can now rectify that. (Although, I have to say there’s something to be said for consuming a favorite author’s work slowly, especially when you know their ouevre is finite.)
In the The Glass Cell, the MC is an ordinary guy who is wrongly convicted of a crime. The first half of the book covers his six years in prison; the second half what happens when he returns “home” (i.e. to where his wife now lives). This being Highsmith, I don’t think I’m being spoilery by saying there is no cheesy TV movie–style happy ending. What happens is pretty much what you expect to happen when you’re not expecting a happy ending.
TGC is billed as a psychological thriller, but that’s not really accurate. It works as a psychological study, but it’s lacking the sense of suspense (I was never surprised or on the edge of my seat, er, pillow) that Highsmith’s more well-known books have. It’s not thrilling. It is sad. It was almost like reading long-form journalism (where you already know the outcome, but you’re reading to see how the MC went from A to B), rather than a novel. If you’re looking for cheery escapism, this is not your book.
Revelling in the novel
Crimes novels/detective fiction … are the only kind of “genre” that has ever won me over, and I think it’s because these are novels that wear themselves on their sleeves. The same mechanics are present as in any novel, but their workings are much less subtle, and I think that when we revel in detective fiction that we are revelling in the novel in general.
17: Heart and Soul
Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy
This was also from the spring library book sale. It’s a hardcover (most of the library books are). To be honest, it felt weird to be reading Maeve Binchy in hardcover. Every other Binchy I’ve read has been a mass market paperback, and that definitely feels like how they should be read.
Back in the day (high school/university), I read a lot of Binchy, but I haven’t read any in a long time.
The first Binchy I read was Light a Penny Candle (her first novel). I have a strong memory of sitting at the kitchen counter reading the mass market paperback version, completely addicted. This would be when LaPC was fresh in paperback (1983/4, Amazon tells me). My mom was reading it and I picked it up. I don’t even think she was finished reading it, but I just couldn’t put it down. Totally engrossing. Re-read it a bunch of times.
Heart and Soul wasn’t like that at all. It was pleasant, but that’s about it. She still makes you believe in her characters and their world, but the story is lacking.
First, there are too many characters. Each gets a chapter or so of attention, so there’s not enough time to get attached to anyone.
Second, it relies too much on prior knowledge. The book is chock-full of cameos from Binchy’s prior books. I could tell that, by the way she mentioned the characters and because some of the names were vaguely familiar, but I read her previous books too long ago for them to have any real meaning for me.
Third, there’s no conflict. Oh, there’s some faux-conflict, but it’s all essentially misunderstandings. Everyone’s nice! It all works out in the end! I think she can’t be mean to her characters anymore. And that’s a problem. Writers need to be able to be mean to their characters.
In conclusion, I know it’s in part nostalgia for a time when all did was devour paperbacks, but I think her early books were much better than this one. I should re-read Light a Penny Candle to confirm.
Quirky Choices
The idea that as a literary person there are a certain set of books you must read because they are important parts of the literary conversation is constantly implied, yet quite ridiculous. Once you get done with the Musts — the Franzens, Mitchells, Vollmanns, Roths, Shteyngarts — and then get through the Booker long list, and the same half-dozen memoirs everyone else is reading this year (crack addiction and face blindness seem incredibly important this year), you have time for maybe two quirky choices, if you are a hardcore reader. Or a critic. And then congratulations, you have had the same conversations as everyone else in the literary world.
Or, you could join me on the Dark Side aka the Side that Consists Almost Entirely of Quirky Choices (I’ll allow you one or two Must reads, if you’re hardcore). Come on, I dare ya. It’s toasty warm and cheesy over here…
Reading as fast as you can
As we sit over a hardcover copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Will and I try to articulate what we love about this series and about The Hunger Games. It is difficult to express the emotionally charged relinquishing of reality and the fervor and flush that comes with truly inhabiting a fictional world. “Just the idea of the book,” he shrugs, stumped. “Just the story.”
With imaginative and driving plots that are both similar and alien to your everyday world, in the really good books, the characters are rich and complicated, but when they are not, it doesn’t really matter. They are doing, and you are reading as fast as you can.
Of course, one of the reasons you can read this fast is that the language doesn’t always delight your synapses or persuade you to kick off your shoes and stay awhile. When I’m reading Collins’ writing, I’m not savoring a sentence like I do when I’m reading Michael Chabon. The plainspoken pulse of The Hunger Games doesn’t beg a reread like the poetry of The God of Small Things, or set you still like a scene of Cormac McCarthy’s. But I’m not reading Mockingjay for those reasons.
16: Not in the Flesh
Not in the Flesh by Ruth Rendell
This was also from the library book sale. Yes, I read two Ruth Rendells in a row. Mysteries are just so cozy and comforting. Even with all the dead bodies 😉
Not in the Flesh had a weird juxtaposition with An Unkindness of Ravens. AUoR was all about typewriters; NitF was all about computers! As in, transferring records to them, getting used to using them, etc. Just kind of funny.
This was also an Inspector Wexford mystery, so had many of the same characters from AUoR. The main plot involves the finding of two long-dead bodies (not at the same time. first one, then later the other). Despite a large cast of quirky characters, the plot in this one wasn’t that difficult to figure out.
There was also a side plot about Somali immigrants and female genital mutilation, but unlike the social issue in AUoR (feminism), which was integrated into the plot, this wasn’t tied into the main plot at all as far as I could see.
The Remainder Table 