Monday, June 30, 2008

The Undead Novel

Having read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, I went on to read Jim Crace's Being Dead. I liked them both - the Crace slightly more - though neither with wild enthusiasm. They are both - a poor word but I can't think of another - poetic novels. By this I mean they put the surface of the prose, mood, evocation, suggestion and a single, vivid central idea before narrative, character and all the old, solid virtues of fiction. There's also something dandyish about both books, a strong, look-at-me, gestural aspect to the prose. I used to like all these things in fiction, but, perhaps since my involvement with the divine Marilynne and the sublime Shirley, I have lost the taste. Or perhaps the poetic novel is simply showing signs of age. Its twin peaks in the twentieth century were Joyce's Ulysses and Beckett's Ill Seen Ill Said, both masterpieces, and nothing since, at least in the poetic novel category, can compare. The poetic novel - especially in the form of the nouveau roman - was always associated with the death of the novel, as if the form, with all its bourgeois overtones, was being exposed by the 'experiments' of the poetic novelists. But Crace and McCarthy aren't writing obituaries, nor are they subverting the form, rather they are adjusting its conventions. Fair enough, but, somehow, both seemed too closed off, too complete. My new taste seems to be for more fictional sprawl, more open-endedness, more unstructured life. Being jet-lagged in London, I just thought, probably wrongly, that this was worth mentioning.

12 comments:

  1. I'm glad you mentioned it. Reminds me that it would be good to re-read Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen. An acquired taste perhaps but I recall it well and even recall being there reading it, a sign that something hit the spot. Another "poetic novel" perhaps but much more a good book that chose me.

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  2. Thanks. but I'm unclear as to whether they're a go or a no. Enthusiasm is important. Nevermind, I have at long last received The Peregrine - was that your review on Amazon under a pseudonym, A. Foulds? It had the ring of Mr. A about it.

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  3. Not me, Ian. And sorry to be vague, it's the jet lag.

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  4. Hmm, I have to say I think "Being Dead" is a brilliant novel. Have you ever seen anyone else use narrative time in the same way?

    Moi, I love "Housekeeping" by Robinson, but I don't think "Gilead" is in the same league and I don't think it's a sprawling novel either. Shirley H. bored me twenty years ago, but maybe I'll find something likable there now.

    Two Western novelists write sprawling novels that I think you'd really love: Ivan Doig and Wallace Stegner. One of Doig's best begins in Scotland and ends in Montana ("Dancing at the Rascal Fair"). Stegner's "Angle of Repose" is a masterpiece, too. These guys don't get enough attention, but they write meaty novels. Try 'em, you'll see.

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  5. I will, Susan, I did Crace on your recommendation and I did like it but not blown away. Thanks for joining the App Appreciation Soc. I think almost everybody else is a friend of my daughter. I have now, at your suggestion posted a picture

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  6. Can you read on board a trans-Atlantic flight Bryan? I find it impossible, although I do fly in cattle-class, where one's concentration tends to be disturbed by the noise of partying stag-doers.

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  7. seconding the Stegner recommendation . . . Crossing to Safety, a later work, might be a good starting point.

    Also, speaking of 'the divine Marilynne', she's got a lengthy essay entitled 'Credo' in the latest edition of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin.

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  8. Um, I'm not a member of the Appreciation Society, though I *do* appreciate you. I'm your friend on Facebook, though. And I love the photo, as you'll see next time you look at your "wall."

    I also became "friends" (sorry, I can't help it with the ironic "" here) with my newspaper's head editor, Bill Marimow, on the same day. Yesterday he strolled into work (yes, he even drops by on his days off to see what's happening) and asked me to explain to him the meaning of "friend" on Facebook.

    We realized that before Facebook, when we said 'friend,' we meant something different than a person we wave to across the newsroom, or met online on a blog briefly. This, I fear, has to do with the fact that we're over 40.

    My daughter has over 300 Facebook "friends" and I'm sure they're all very close. I have 40 and 3/4s of them *are* pretty good friends of mine.

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  9. If you think McCarthy is good try Jim Thompson. He's a hugely underrated writer and his novels are genuinely amoral.

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  10. If you're looking for 'more fictional sprawl, more open-endedness, more unstructured life' then you could do worse than Nicola Barker's 'Darkmans'. Problem is - it's not very good. Surely a writer in need of an editor. I think McCarthy's sparse prose is indeed 'complete' - but nevertheless readable and succinct enough for an audience that may not have the meandering luxury of the 'open-endedness and unstructured life'. He's also very filmable - both in your head at the reading and on screen in the filming (see 'No Country...). I just wish some filmaker would now have the nerve to shoot 'Blood Meridian'. Sean Penn, perhaps?

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  11. George,

    Just thought you'd like to know, Ridley Scott is the director of 'Blood Meridian', due out in 2009.

    It'll be interesting to see who they cast for that.

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  12. Is it wrong to like Micheal Chrichton?

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