Gonzalo Barr

There’s Amis the father and Amis the son, but are they any good? Alan Brownjohn, in The Times Literary Supplement, reviews Neil Powell’s Amis & Son: Two Literary Generations –

So is [Kingsley Amis] any good? Yes, he is still the author of at least five admirable novels which “share an undercurrent of magnificently cussed stoicism”. With Martin, Powell goes much further. For his and Martin’s student generation – freer but less happy than Kingsley’s, he thinks – “prosperity, permissiveness and pop” delayed maturity, leaving the novelist son in a far worse sort of “cultural deprivation”, obsessed in his fictions with “men who haven’t grown up, their games and their fantasies, their toys and their cars”. Martin is (so far, at least) the lesser writer of overambitious neo-American novels in which “an appearance of formal daring masks a kind of evasion”. They are only good in parts.

The rest of the review is here.

Another review of the same book, this one in The Telegraph, is here.

Source:  Alan Brownjohn, “Amis & Amis,” The Times Literary Supplement (July 24, 2008), John Preston, “Kingsley Amis and Martin Amis too,” The Telegraph (May 30, 2008)

Pablo Picasso is quoted as saying that art is the lie that tells the truth. It is a fiction, an illusion, and yet it illuminates a corner of our world more powerfully than any report. The factual strives toward objectivity and distance, the fictional for immediacy.

For Proust, the writer’s task was to translate nature into art.  For Ralph Waldo Emerson, words are signs of natural facts and natural facts are signs of spiritual facts.  It is not a coincidence that so many beliefs deemed sacred are told in the manner of a story.

In Sophie’s Choice, much of the novel relates Sophie’s years as a Polish prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. You can watch documentaries and films, read history books, or attend lectures about the Nazis and none of it carries the power of Styron’s novel. A novel works differently from any other artistic medium. It conveys sensations that no other means can do. Because the novelist recruits the reader to create the characters, places, and action, novels are more real to the reader than any film can be to the viewer. I can only think of two films that were better than the books they were based on.

Christopher Vogler, in The Writer’s Journey, put it this way –

One of the magic powers of writing is its ability to lure each member of the audience into projecting a part of their ego into the character on the page, screen, or stage.

Strip away the psychobabble and PC language and what we have is essentially the same idea — the reader becomes invested in the work.  The difference is that Vogler places reading and viewing as equivalent activities and I disagree.  One is active, the other passive.  The two films I think were better than the novels they were based on say more about the weaknesses of the books than the strengths of the movies.

Mexican novelist, Jorge Volpi, was quoted recently as claiming that novels have value in society today because, through them, one creates fictions based on “lies” which allow us to show that the human condition is universal. Through these lies we have new truths. (I don’t agree at all that fiction is a “lie” and will explain myself below).

Volpi is a member of the “Crack” group of Mexican writers who, like the McOndo phenomenon, eschew both the magical realism and “commitment” (code word for literature colored by if not dedicated to the left-wing ideologies) of the previous generation of Latin American writers, known collectively as part of the literary “Boom.” If the Boom generation felt that “commitment” required writing about social conditions in one’s own country and time, the Cracks and McOndos believe that all writers are free to write about any place and any time. Volpi’s trilogy about the twentieth century, which includes En busca de Klingsor (translated into English as, In Search of Klingsor), El fin de la locura (The End of Madness), and No será la tierra (It Shan’t be the Earth or It May Not Be The Earth), looks at the Nazis, Communists, and Psychoanalysis. The novels do not take place in Mexico and the author’s homeland has little to do with the themes he covers.

It is heartening for these writers to be claiming their right to mine all of humanity’s stories as a basis for their work. To get back to Styron, when he published The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), he was vociferously criticized by some blacks for writing a story they claimed did not “belong” to him. The novel was based on the purported “confessions” made by Nat Turner, a black slave and rebel in early 1800s Virginia, who claimed to be divinely inspired and had a mission to destroy the whites. If you follow the logic of Styron’s critics, only a black can write about blacks. To be complete here, Styron was strongly defended by James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. He also won the Pulitzer in 1967 for the novel.

This idea that certain stories belong to a people and can be told only by those people is not just silly, it is dangerous and self-defeating. The misplaced sense of ownership denies the story the very universality that would otherwise give it currency and strength. Claims of ownership often come accompanied by another claim of exceptionalism.  “You can never understand our plight because you are not one of us,” is not a complaint limited to any one group. But it does have the immediate effect of shutting off all attempts at inquiry and understanding, both necessary before one can have empathy. It is one of the best ways a group can marginalize themselves. It has no place in literature.

Now, here’s my problem with calling “fiction” a “lie.” Fiction is not true because the characters are made up or the story is made up.  Even if the characters and stories are generally true, as in historical fiction, the thoughts and dialogue are often made up. Still, fiction has to be true or there is no illusion. All works of art that are grounded in some form of representation of the natural world must have the quality of verisimilitude or the narrative will fall apart.

Moreover, to call fiction a “lie” is to misuse the word. We know what a lie is — it is a deliberate attempt by one to person to mislead another, through action or omission, where the other is unaware of that attempt and may even rely on the “lie.” It is the child telling his mother that he finished his homework at school and can now watch TV when he has not done his homework. A reader does not rely on a novel for the “truth” of the actions related within it. Both writer and reader work together to create the fictional world of the novel.  There is no deceit either in intent or execution.

It bothers me when people start using words loosely. To do so is to dilute the language of any real significance. That’s what politicians do.

Let’s leave the lying to the liars, OK? Storytelling is too valuable an expression of culture to get ourselves mixed up with that bunch.

Photo:  Jorge Volpi, (cc) soljaguar, wikipedia; Sources: Pablo Picasso quote, quotedb.com, Proust and Emerson cites, Peter Brooks, “Paperoles,” Times Literary Supplement (July 11, 2008), Vogler quote, Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers & Screenwriters (1992), Jorge Volpi quoted in Alberto Cabezas (EFE), “Para cualquier novelista mentir es un gran placer,” in El nuevo Herald (Miami)(July 6, 2008), articles on Jorge Volpi and the Cracks, Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia articles on Sophie’s Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner

Some titles, though not odd and even beautiful, have a history of their own that is worth noting.

Yukio Mishima wrote The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea in 1963, at the age of 38 years.  The story is about a sailor who falls in love with a woman who has a son.  The young boy is part of a savage gang of teenagers.  When the boy realizes that he may lose his mother, he and his gang kill the sailor.

According to Gary Dexter, writing in The Telegraph, the title in Japanese, 午後の曳航 (Gogo no Eikō) can be rendered in English either as “An Afternoon Grace” or “An Afternoon Towing,” given that “grace” and “towing” in Japanese are homonyms.  When Mishima’s English translator could not figure out how to render the title accurately, he asked the author for help.  Rather than offer a solution, Mishima rewrote the title into what it is today.

Titles are how we remember a book usually.  Yet editors, translators, and the authors themselves have been known to change them.

Come to think of it, Mishima even “re-titled” himself.  Although his given name was Kimitake Hiraoka, he changed his name to Yukio Mishima and invented a samurai background that never belonged to him or his family.

Sources:  Gary Dexter, “How The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea got its name,” The Telegraph (July 20, 2008), John Nathan, Mishima: A Biography (2000)

The works of Roberto Bolaño, coming as they have in a tumble after his death, have attracted almost hagiographic attention.  Where did he live?  How did he become a writer?  What did he read?

El Mundo in Spain reports on the premiere in Barcelona of a 40-minute documentary by Eric Hasnoot titled, Bolaño cercano (Bolaño Up Close). The documentary is made up mostly of interviews with his family and friends who share with the camera their remembrances of the deceased Chilean author with some footage of the author himself. Oh, and in case you wondered, Bolaño refused to read anything by Isabel Allende or Paulo Coelho.

Here is the trailer (in Spanish) –

Source: El Mundo (July 24, 2008)

The Times Literary Supplement last week had an article on Ian Fleming and noted that –

He “wrote fast, the words pouring out at the rate of 2000 a day, crammed into the space between dawn and the first cocktail, a great rush of creativity conceived in haste and a miasma of tobacco smoke.”

For other fast writers, see here, here and here, and here. If I am going to pursue this line of thought, I suppose I should post something about Georges Simenon. Stay tuned.

Source: Isaac Chotiner, “Cocktail Hours,” The Times Literary Supplement (July 18, 2008), quoting Ben Macintyre, For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond (2008)

Oscar Hijuelos is completing the sequel to his novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990. The sequel will be titled, Beautiful Maria of My Soul, just like fictional hit song by the Mambo Kings. The book is due out next year.

In 2010, he will publish a memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes.

In 2006, Hijuelos sold many of his manuscripts to the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Sources:  Authors Guild Bulletin (Spring 2008), Columbia University website

Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his wife have been working on preparing the definitive edition of the author’s complete works in Russian. (My post on that is here.) The latest edition of The First Circle (В круге первом), for example, contains many passages that were censored by the Soviets when it was first published in the USSR. (The novel was first published outside the USSR in 1968. It was severely censored and published in the USSR ten years later.) The censored passages have been restored in the revised edition.

Better news yet, a new translation into English of the restored novel is due out in 2009.

Source: publisherslunchdeluxe blog, article on The First Circle, Wikipedia

In 1935, Gertrude Stein was asked whether her system of writing was purely automatic or required some use of the intellect. Her answer –

The conclusion of any sensible human being is that everybody writes the way everybody writes.

Did you get that? Good, because there’s more –

When you have something in your head, it isn’t always what comes out at the end of your pencil.

OK.

They say that Ringo Starr is the luckiest man alive. The statement is an uncharitable one based on the belief that Starr has no talent as a drummer or a singer and that only luck put him in the right place at the right time. I suspect Ringo Starr has gotten short shrift. I hope that we will some day see someone stand up and correct this.

On the other hand, Gertrude Stein has been given way more credit than she ever deserved. To characterize her writing as unintelligible is like calling water wet. The sound of rain falling on big green leaves is unintelligible, but it is still pleasant to the ear. The same cannot be said of Stein’s prose, which sounds like autistic babbling.

If there has ever been anyone who was at the right place at the right time, well, ladies and gentlemen, please give a big hand to Mademoiselle Stein!

Source:  Authors Guild Bulletin (Spring 2008)

Ernest Hemingway was born July 21, 1899. Today is the 109th anniversary of his birth.

I have quoted or posted about Hemingway too many times to pingback to all of them.  But if you like, you can write “Hemingway” in the search box to the left and the posts will come up.

Photo: Ernest Hemingway at fifty, John F. Kennedy Library

There is a question mark at the end of the title of this post because I am not sure the book was auctioned after all. The Times Literary Supplement, in the July 11, 2008 issue, reported that a scarce copy of Nabokov’s Camera Obscura would be auctioned July 17 by Sotheby’s in London. But if you go to Sotheby’s website, the book is not listed among the items auctioned that night.

Let’s start at the beginning: In 1933, Nabokov published Kamera Obskura (Камера Обскура) in Russian. The novel was translated into French and published as Rires dans la nuit. In 1936, Winifred Roy translated the novel from the French (not the Russian original) to English as Camera Obscura. Unhappy with the result, Nabokov wrote his own translation from the Russian to English and published it in 1938 as Laughter in the Dark. The book being auctioned was the 1936 translation by Roy.

According to the TLS, Camera Obscura was recently offered for sale twice at Sotheby’s. The first time was in 2002, the second 2005. The book was described as one of only three known extant copies with dust jackets. Most of the stock was destroyed in WWII. J.C., in the TLS, concluded that the book offered for sale in 2002, 2005, and this year are the same copy.

In 2002, the estimated sale price was GBP 20,000-30,000. In 2005, the estimated price had shrunk to GBP 18,000-22,000. This time, the estimated price had shrunk yet again to GBP 9,000-12,000.

I searched Sotheby’s website and could not find any information about the book. I looked at the list of items auctioned July 17, which included letter by John Fowles and a seemingly inexhaustible number of Beatrix Potter books, and did not find any mention of Nabokov or Roy or John Lane, the publisher. I also looked in the archives and queried “English Literature” (which is the category under which the work was offered) from January 1, 2002 through the present. Nothing. Maybe I looked in the wrong place. But I can tell you that I tried different queries and they all came up blank.

Was the copy offered three times and then withdrawn? Was it withdrawn each time because the bids were too low or because there were no bids?

The world of book collecting is interesting, but it is a bit surreal. I value books for the words that are between the covers. It’s much simpler that way.

Sources: J.C., “N.B., Times Literary Supplement (July 11, 2008), sothebys.com, The International Vladimir Nabokov Society webpage on Kamera Obscura