Doris Lessing

There seems to be something of a curse when I buy books as a week later the author of said book drops down dead.  Doris Lessing has died at the age of 94 last November.  She was the oldest Nobel Prize Winner when she won it in 2007.  She has left behind her a rich and varied legacy where she explored group politics, feminine identity, the colour bar, the God that failed and cats.

  I have only read two books by Lessing but it certainly seems like a lot more.  The Golden Notebook was highly enjoyable as it contained four aspects of one person and a slightly related novella interweaving.  I enjoyed the scenes when the main character, Anna Wulf, a writer, has lunches with TV people she is trying to sell her story to but they wish to change the more important political messages into something easier to swallow.  I was captivated with sorrow in the scenes where Anna pins up atrocities from the newspaper, and held in pity when her neighbour goes blind.  The scenes when she is in the communist party offices at the time when people were becoming ex-reds is also interesting as a period piece. 

  

 Lessing could always do this; have a lot to offer.  Often she will try to do everything that a novel can do: emotion, ideas, description, comedy, and the whole shebang.

  

 In The Good Terrorist she uses a small Marxist group in Britain to view her condition of England and it becomes an exciting, challenging, novel about delusion and political commitment.

  

 I’ve wanting to read Shikasta for a while but I’ve ended up reading two of her books at the same time: Walking In the Shade and The Grandmothers.  Which one I shall do for her tribute is yet to be seen.     

Selected Stories- Alice Munro

This marks an important moment in this blog’s history; it is the moment I actually respond to the news of a new Nobel Prize Winner.  This year it is Alice Munro and what makes it interesting is that firstly she is Canadian, the first Canadian to win the Prize much to Margaret Atwood’s chagrin, and secondarily she is primarily a short story writer.  The academy is making a bold statement by choosing Munro as a winner highlighting the value and importance of the short story.  Munro has been, I think, working quietly in the backwaters of literature honing her craft to no-one’s particular attention.  One reason why they might have chosen Munro over Atwood is that Atwood, at the moment, is a very obvious choice.  Munro is a surprise.  

   

Here it is my job to sharpen my scepticism and take a close look at the writings of Munro to see whether she does deserve to be better known and whether she does write the most ideal literature in an ideal direction.  I am using the Vintage version of Selected Stories which is big enough to give a good idea of what Munro is like as a writer in her early, middle and mature periods.

   

I have read ten stories by Munro so far and for nine of those stories I liked and thought were good but it was the tenth that made me understand why she had won the Nobel Prize.  The story in question is ‘The Beggar Maid’, which is about a woman’s conflicting feelings towards a man who loves her.  It is a story whose characters are drawn out with the utmost skill and precision where you can have a huge range of emotions towards them from being sympathetic to outright dislike and many, many grey shades in between.

  

 What I really like about her stories is that she packs whole worlds of experience and personal journeys that takes for other writers a whole novel to achieve.  It helps that they are also very readable as well as being very subtle.  These are highly sophisticated and polished stories that readers will get a lot out of.  This is what the ‘ideal direction’ for literature should be as the Nobel Prize Committee sees it.  

 I am reminded of Italo Calvino’s idea of the future of literature, that literature should have ‘lightness’, and though Munro deals with big emotions she does do it in the small form with lightness of touch.  The committee could be saying that the ideal direction for literature at the moment should deal with the local, the details of small town life with the significances that the people have in their lives.  It should be not exactly minimalist but cut back, not simplified but refined.  Comparable winners to Munro would be, to my mind, Henrich Böll and Ernst Hemingway with, perhaps, a bit of Isaac Bashievis Singer without quite so much religion. 

  

 There we go, no controversy here, just a reaffirmation of the committee’s decision but it’s an honest opinion, as honest as I can make it.  Of course this does not make her the greatest writer in history or even the greatest living writer, if there can be such a thing, the giving of the Prize is mostly symbolic of people’s (and by people I mean those who can suggest their chosen writer, Professors of Literature and the like, to the Nobel Prize Committee) prejudices at that particular time.  This is not to suggest that the winner is chosen on a whim as the decision is made methodically and communally with much, I imagine, discussion and argument over the better part of a year.  Munro is simply another writer whom for people wishing to know what the ‘experts’ of literature believe to be an example of ‘great literature’ for their benefit, education and enjoyment.  She also gives me another reason to put up a post on a blog.  

  

 In conducting the predictions I am surprised at just how much interest Umberto Eco has got, who has way, way more page views then any other writer I have written about.  However it was always going to go to the writers who don’t shout their names too loudly, or have too much press time and media coverage.  It is disappointing that the winner was not one of my predictions, though there were many writers I thought about afterwards whom I did not mention who could have won it just as well as Munro.  Next year I will start my predictions about two months before it is announced but I will not repeat any writers that I have predicted this year.  Instead I will be looking at the other writers that I did not get round to this year as well as writers new to me that I might discover between now and then.

Quote

 ‘“Each year Per reads one work by every winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and also the complete works of his favorite from his previous year’s reading.  And you see, each year the task becomes a bit more difficult, because there has been another winner, you see.”…“It’s is safe to say that I have read more deeply into Henrik Pontoppidan than most,” Per Nygren said.’ – fromt The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2013 Announcement

After my late last post I discovered as soon as I posted it the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2013.  It is someone I did not even consider, it is the Canadian Alice Munro.  I say congratulations for the achievement to her whom the Academy have called 'master of the contemporary short story'.  Now it is my job to read one of her books and see if she is as worthy as any of the writers I have forward in the last month or two ago.  I am very much looking forward to it.

Alberto Manguel-Prediction

  

This prediction is based on one book, The Library At Night, and he is included because of his writing about reading and the love of reading.  It’s a great book for bibliophiles as he tackles the subject of libraries from different angels, historical, personal, psychological, and more making an interesting scholarly work that is also clearly a labour of deep love.  This is the only reason why I think he could win the Nobel Prize.  I doubt he will but I wouldn’t mind.  

Milan Kundera-Prediction

  How Milan Kundera hasn’t already got a Nobel Prize amazes me.  I’ve only read The Unbearable Lightness Of Being but that, for me, is enough to say that he deserves the prize.  That book is really one of the very, very few books I’ve read that when reading had thought that what I was actually doing was listening to music.  He is a rhythmical writer who knows how to bring his themes up again and again while putting on the necessary variations to make the whole experience at every point fresh as anything. 

 

He deals with sex as well as philosophy, a combination that has proven popular, living as a self-confessed hedonist.  In Unbearable he analyses the psychology of the concentration camp, of the protest and the use of tanks on civilians but he deals with these heavy themes with the lightness of his wit and his pleasure.  It is this dialogue of the light and the heavy that revolves with peculiar motion that makes it one of the great modern classics that is possible comparable to Italo Calvino.  There is also a stand out moment of tragic comedy involving a celebrity at a protest and a land mine that made me laugh with visceral on a train across Europe (passengers nearby probably looked at me with wonder than saw the book and then thought it was justified).

 

He plays with ideas and offers new ones for stale identities needing a restoration.  Kundera is the breath of fresh air where we may breathe clearly while facing our inherited problems and concerns that comes with the job of being human.  I can’t stress enough how remarkable he is as a writer Unbearable has been one of the best reads in my recent life.  Though he has said that the novelist should only produce seven novels so that there is enough for the casual reader as well as the hardened fan I think he has gone over this limit but then it seems hard for a writer of his caliber to ever stop writing.

He deals with many issues and personalities with searing insight and comprehension of the human condition in an incredibly readable way.  He reminds us of our old humanity in a new way and no doubt is in the ‘ideal direction’ and is, I would argue, the best of writing.  I should make this post a bit longer but what else is there to say other than to state his brilliance?  I yearn to read more of him and I have The Joke, Immortality and The Book of Laughing and Forgetting ready on my bookshelves.

   
So Nobel Prize Committee if you are reading this then give Kundera his deserved Prize and you will have my everlasting thanks.

Now this is where you hit a paywall- well not exactly a paywall more like a moat you can swim across- but what I'm saying is that if you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me by going on Patreon.com and search for Alistair David Todd-Poet. 

I only ask for the lowest possible donation ($1) so that you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night sweating about bills and tax.  Two reasons I ask you of this is 1) It would mean a lot to me and 2) I can buy more Nobel Prize Winning books. 


Another way you can support me is by buying one of the literary books that I write.  The links are on the side of the website, if you are reading this from a mobile phone than switch to web mode to see it.

You can even message me with recommendations of books I should cover that I haven't already have (being that the canon is huge), I'd be really interested in what you have to offer me.  In the meantime stay safe and all the best to you.

Gabriel Josopovici-Prediction

 

My inclusion of Gabriel Josopovici on this list comes down to two things:  The book ‘Contre-Jour’ (with it’s fantastic cover) on my shelf and his other book about modernism.  I’ve not read either of them but what I make my judgment on is the quotes on the back and it’s high praise indeed.  It’s not that his work is good that tips me off but it also the suggestion that he is moving in an interesting fashion.  He is one who not only writes well but also has a vision.  It strikes me that he purposeful writes European literature and knowing how the committee can be euro-centric this may be to his advantage.

  There may not seem to be much to base a prediction on but I think that in not reading Jospipovici’s books I can tell that he would be considered a candidate.  In this fashion he is a bit like Aberto Manguel whom I know little.  He’s a serious thinker of literature demonstrated in his book about modernism asking what happened to it?  So it is likely that he would bring that into his books.  Everything about ‘Contre-Jour’ screams high literature from the Pierre Bonnard painting to Josipovici’s name.  If he is, like the Guardian says, ‘one of the very best writers now at work in the English language’ than there is no reason why he cannot be a candidate for the Nobel Prize.  

Snow by Orhan Pamuk

 An enclosed setting for faulted love and political plots; this is the story of Ka in Kars.  Ka is a writer investigating the recent spate of suicides that have occurred in the area.  While the snow falls his muse also returns and he begins writing poetry again.  Kars, and the people he loves in it, gives him inspiration that, like the snow, will not last.  Blood will be shed at the end of this book but it has many farcical elements of comedy that sits strangely with its politics.  Perhaps Pamuk is trying to imply that the spectrum of the ridiculous to the serious isn’t quite so wide as usually thought.

  There is an interesting idea of the local newspaper that run stories that haven’t happened in order to encourage them to happen.  A sort of self-fulfilling prophesy but imagine what could happen if newspapers had that power, they would only create more events so that they can cover them to sell more papers.  It would be disastrous.

  Religion is a problem in the area as well as fundamentals demand more and more control of the country and is forceful in their attempts.

  Ka encounters a young ambitious sci-fi writer who he takes a roguish liking to but will die before the end.  There is potential in troubled Turkey but it has to look to more successful Western countries to take its cues from without being completely able to shake off its religious dogmas that threaten its existence.  Ka being a ‘westernised’ Turkish is viewed with suspicion and curiosity.  Ka himself seems unable to place him anywhere, not feeling at home in Germany and feeling uncomfortable in Turkey.

  There is an interesting device where Ka is able to write poems, or the poems come to him, in a way he hasn’t been able to for a long time.  There is something about the place that brings out his creativity and poetic insight.  There is something psychogeographic about this.  Turkey, while being troubled, is also a place of inspiration, both romantic and melancholic and while there is the crossfire of politics it is really the poetry that he cares about.  It’s a beautiful concept.

  There is plenty going on in this novel both terror and humor intermingle amongst human love, dreams and disappointment.  Though a lot happens it feels controlled, that Pamuk knows how it all ends and we just have to follow him through it.  It is a beautiful novel full of exquisite pain and possibilities.  You get the feeling that Pamuk has mixed emotions with his own country, which has so much to be proud of and lots to feel unhappy with.  It’s shorter than some of his other stuff (particularly ‘The Museum of Innocence’) and it’s the kind of book that’s good to read when traveling.  I enjoyed it a lot and I hope to read ‘My Name Is Red’ at some point.  He is my kind of writer.

Now it's audience participation time! If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways: - by being my patron on Patreon.com -give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee -Buy one of my literary books -Share this blog on your social media -Leave a comment, you can even recommend me book -Follow me I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog. Live long and prosper.

Death of a Poet

 Seamus Heaney has died at the age of 74.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.  

It's funny how there seems to be pattens in life.  Last week I picked up Seamus Heaney's 'New Selected Poems 1966-1987' and read more of him then I have ever done and now he can no longer write poetry.  Heaney is a poet who is on my radar but always at a distance.  I used to have a signed copy of 'Human Chain' and I've got 'Station Island' on my shelf but I've never really understood him and I could never tell if I liked him or if he really was any good.  The first time I encounted Heaney was at Secondary School and we read 'Blackberry Picking'.  I read it again last week and I remembered that what I liked about it was the concrete sensations he's able to bring with some degree of vividness.
  I don't know much about his life outside of poetry, and I'm not sure there is much more for whom poetry was his bread and butter, apart from the criticism he wrote.  In some ways I'm not really interested in a poet's personal life as I am interested in their poetry.  So in light of that I will set down to read the New Selected for next week as it will give a broader look into his work over the years.  It will be interesting to see how his poetry develops over the years and how he will either enlarge his themes or distill his experience. 
  He has given me, in his poem 'Relic of Memory', the title of a story I'm working on about meteorites, which will be called 'Sudden Birth' and for that I am thankful.

Relic of Memory

The lough waters

Can petrify wood:

Old oars and posts

Over the years

Harden their grain,

Incarcerate ghosts

Of sap and season.

The shallows lap

And give and take:

Constant ablutions,

Such drowning love

Stun a stake

To stalagmite.

Dead lava,

The cooling star

Or sudden birth

Of burnt meteor

Are too simple,

Without the lure

That relic stored-

A piece of stone

On the shelf at school,

Oatmeal coloured

Kazuo Ishiguro- Prediction

  

The two books I have on my self by Kazuo Ishiguro are ‘The Unconsoled’ and ‘The Remains of the Day’, which won the Booker Prize, and beautiful they look too.  I have the ones published by Faber with blue and brown tints that evoke the senses of memory.  They both seem interesting.  ‘The Remains of the Day’ looks like a character study about a butler who takes some time off and ‘The Unconsoled’, about a pianist who has to play a concert whose origins is mysterious to him, which could be an allegory or absurdist drama.  I have read ‘When We Were Orphans’ about a detective looking for his parents and from what I remember it was a wonderful work of art with many striking features.

 So from the little I know what do I think of Ishiguo’s chances of winning the Nobel Prize?  Having won the booker he has in some ways already proved his worth and does not need anything else, and this also plays into the being popular dilemma that I have looked at in other writers.  Each book is in a different literary genre ranging from crime to sci-fi but he overcomes the limitations of genre to say something more profound about human beings.  

This is his main virtue that he uses genre for his own purposes and makes it into something that enlarges genre into something more than the stereotypes it is usually associated with.  He deals with big themes in a subtle and nuanced way and is able to change his moods with every publication.  He is an artist and an interrogator of society and personal identity while providing as story to hook all of this onto.

  
For some reason Ishiguro reminds me of Oran Pamuk though I now how distinct they both are from each other.  What I am reminded of is the attempts of the individual to reconcile him with the world around them.  Like in ‘Snow’ ‘When We Were Orphans’ is about getting caught in political situations when the main characters have personal problems that they would much rather solve than the wider underlying conditions of society.  

It’s not that the characters do not care about the world in which they live but simply they are displaying the fundamental problem of being an individual who acquires personal burdens while expected to be part of something bigger and, almost therefore, more meaningful.  It is a universal trickiness that people have to deal with but the writers’ style is marked into this worldwide condition and therefore making it their own while being applicable to the reader, whoever they might be.

  
As sincere as Ishiguro is as a writer I do not whole heartily believe he could be a candidate for the Nobel Prize as close as he does come to it.  I am not convinced, from what I know, that he is ‘Great’ enough to deserve it but I would also like to argue that this may not be a bad thing for him as the Nobel Prize will change the type of writer he is viewed as.  I do not think he needs to be changed by praise.  

Of course I may be wrong in this as he could be seen as a perfectly acceptable candidate but perhaps not for this year.  I think that there are too many stronger candidates on offer this year but as this list gets whittled down through winning and deaths than he may well be picked and awarded the converted prize.  Or I could read one of the two books on my shelf and find that he is much better than I have previously given him credit for and that would be wonderful.

Does Kazuo Ishiguro deserve the Nobel Prize?  Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Next week I'll be looking at Gabriel Josipovici.

Now this is where you hit a paywall- well not exactly a paywall more like a moat you can swim across- but what I'm saying is that if you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me by going on Patreon.com and search for Alistair David Todd-Poet. 

I only ask for the lowest possible donation ($1) so that you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night sweating about bills and tax.  Two reasons I ask you of this is 1) It would mean a lot to me and 2) I can buy more Nobel Prize Winning books. 


Another way you can support me is by buying one of the literary books that I write.  The links are on the side of the website, if you are reading this from a mobile phone than switch to web mode to see it.

You can even message me with recommendations of books I should cover that I haven't already have (being that the canon is huge), I'd be really interested in what you have to offer me.  In the meantime stay safe and all the best to you.

Michael Frayn- Prediction

 

Michael Frayn is a delightful person.  He has a cleverness and a wit that could match Tom Stoppard (which coming to think of it probably should have a place on this list).  He deals with the philosophical with a light touch, a perfect mixture of comedy and seriousness.  I don’t remember what I read first the play ‘Benefactors’ or the novel ‘Sweet Dreams’?  I read both of them a long time ago but I remember them both with pleasure.  ‘Benefactors’ is about one man planning to knock down a block of flats while his friend decides to protect it.  It’s a serious farce taking domestic politics to a whole new level.  There’s a line I remember distinctly: ‘“Don’t scrape the skies, sweep the streets”, there a whole political philosophy in seven words’, intellectual turnarounds and cerebral juggling is the name of the game for Frayn.  Comedy for him is not a distraction from the difficult world but a way of investigating it.  I said it was time for another Dario Fo.  ‘Sweet Dreams’ takes the idea of a heaven that designs and creates the whole by human beings, a satire of working in an office, so when the main character tries to have a revolution for an alternative life things start to get complicated, especially when the unassuming God turns up.  It’s a playful novel with big ideas.  It’s what I love, knockabout comedies that satirises human beings and the world they live in. 

  He is without question an immensely talented and resourceful writer with keen insight and a sharp sense of humour.  He would, on my fantasy list of dinner guests, sit quite happily beside Sandi Toksvig and Stewart Lee and no doubt be very interesting to talk to.  He seems to have done just about everything in writing, journalism, plays, novels, philosophy, screenplays, in fact I think the only thing he has got left to do is poetry, but I expect he does that privately and for fun.  Yes, philosophy with ‘Constructions’ and ‘The Human Touch’, philosophy that is that rare thing of being enjoyable to read as he is an amusing and informative guide around life’s conundrums.  Really you get the feeling that he is just playing games and that the serious work of life has yet to be done and he’ll get round to it after he’s had his fun.  He is what you want as a communicator, enthusiastic while being erudite, having things to say without being a bore.  So his chances of getting the Nobel Prize are pretty good then, right?

  Well possibly but it depends on who else is around as a candidate at the time.  There are candidates on this list that are arguably conduct themselves more seriously and may look like the better candidate compared to his jesting, but again this comes back down to the fact that humour can get forgotten by the committee.  Understandable but to put Frayn at this disadvantage would be, in my opinion, overlooking his other considerable gifts that he has to offer.  In my mind Frayn is more in the ‘ideal direction’ than, say, Howard Barker, as he provides laughter and hope amidst the complexities found in life, private, public, personal and political, philosophical as well as psychological, every P going.  I think he would be a very good candidate, though he may be embarrassed at the fact people think of him as the year’s best writer as he comes across as a humble writer doing what he does best and not deserving of any special reward for it.  What I would like to see is Frayn awarded the prize only for him to dismiss it with a quip that puts the stupid prize in it’s stupid place.  That would be the best of both worlds.   

Think Michael Frayn should win the Nobel Prize?  Leave a comment to say why.

Next week I'll be looking at Kazuo Ishiguro.

The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter

 Silence is used as an attack in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’  as there are many pauses between words and are as loaded as a gun.  Stanley lives with an older couple, their relationship is never defined, we gather that he is a guest that has become familiar with them and almost like a son.  Then two strangers arrive, strangers with dark intentions for Stanley as they have come to get him.

  Reasons have little place in a Pinter play and interpretation can often be fruitless.  It is absurdest and therefore what is important is the poetic image that forms on the stage rather than the layers of meaning that can become attached to it. 

  It is not Stanley’s birthday but yet the two strangers, Goldberg and McCann, throw him the party in another attempt to break Stanley’s defences down involving a tense game of blind man’s bluff.  Who are these strangers, what did Stanley do in his past becoming lodging in this B&B and what do any of them want?  All hinted at and unresolved, it’s a guessing game of a play, in this comedy of menace.  In a lot of ways the facts are unimportant, it’s the dramatic situation that interests us, it’s claustrophobic sense and it’s ever rising tension between the characters.

  One could say that it is a very English play but apparently it has very good responses in some parts of Eastern Europe where it plays out more like realism then absurdism.

  The interrogation sequence is a brilliant play on words that build and build up into a massive structure that eventually comes crumbling down.  The comedy of this play really helps to create tension and we laugh out of nervousness more than anything else.  Is this play about the cold war?  Is is about spies or inter-governmental politics?  Or is it what it is?  Interpretation is not necessary and in some ways that it makes a change for the audience being allowed to let it be just a dramatic piece without any consequential meaning.  That doesn’t mean that you can’t create meaning but just that you can equally enjoy it without having to put it through the interpretative mill.

Umberto Eco- Prediction

 

Probably the most well known candidate on my list but does he stand a chance?

There is one thing that may hinder Umberto Eco’s chances of winning the Nobel Prize.  His bestseller, ‘The Name of the Rose’, which was very popular, it was made into a film with Sean Connery, for a novel involving semiotics and other academic subjects.  But general popularity is not necessarily help to convince the committee you deserve the Prize, it can actually hinder your chances, partly the reason why Arthur Miller and Salman Rushdie haven’t been given it.  Is this fair?  Yes he is popular but he is also serious about literature and his popularity does not seem to detract from his intellectual pursuits.  

I’ve read ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’ and I was very impressed with it.  I thought it could be two hundred pages shorter but it contained a very well thought out story and some interesting ideas, memorable scenes and great characters.  The story is about a small group of men who devise a system for creating conspiracies involving the Knights Templar, which at first they do as a joke but slowly it becomes something more and actually starts to threaten their lives.  It’s a book about how stories and certain beliefs can become dangerous in the minds of some people.  It’s a great intelluctual thriller that’s worth pursisting with.

  Eco’s greatest strength would be his interested in complex ideas and their relation to ordinary humans and how they work with or agaisnt them.  He’s similar to Orhan Pamuk constructing his stories in a post-modernist world.  I think he would be a very suitable candidate but I would not be surprised if the committee would think of him as being too obvious a choice.  He’s not your usual best seller as he doesn’t compromise, or at least not too much, his scholally ideas.  He is just able to do that rarest of things, to write a highly critically acclaimed novel while being popular with the general public.  

It gives me hope for the reading public if they are putting books like ‘The Prague Cemetary’ on the best selling list.  How has a writer like him become so popular?  He writes thrillers that have driving plots and a certain readability but that does not make him necessarily easy.  He’s more interesting then the usual thriller writer who injects cerebral content to his chases, captures and fight scenes.

 He is also a writer that touches the emotion and writes in moving moments that counteract the mind games.  His female character in ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’ was an island of rational sanity amongst the mounting madness of the male characters and gave a gentle speech about how parts of the body have come to mean many different things and so one ultimate meaning is impossible to construct.  

One of the things that left a bad taste in my mouth was towards the end where Eco had created these wonderfully well rounded character only to then dispose of them one after another.  It seemed careless and insensitive.  That and I think it would be better if it was shorter and more focused but others may think that it’s length gives it layers of possible meaning and that may be justified, just not to me.

  
So Eco is a good candidate and I’m sure he’s been on the list for a while but it’s a question of whether he can overcome the committee’s prejudices of success.  I hope he does and I hope to read more of him, ‘The Island of the Day Before’ looked like a good book, maybe I’ll start with that. 

If you think Umberto Eco should win the Nobel Prize please comment below.

Next week I'll be looking at Michael Frayn.

Now it's audience participation time! If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways: - by being my patron on Patreon.com -give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee -Buy one of my literary books -Share this blog on your social media -Leave a comment, you can even recommend me book -Follow me I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog. Live long and prosper.

The Gods Shall Have Blood by Anatole France

  

It’s funny sometimes how little one can remember of a book even from a great book.  I spent the whole of the first volume of Prousts’ ‘In Search Of Lost Time’ diligently reading, but after I had finished not a single scene could be brought to mind.  It’s similar with ‘The Gods Shall Have Blood’, I know that I enjoyed it but I can’t really remember what happened.  The book is about a young earnest man in the time of the French revolution and his sense of justice is such that he becomes appointed as a judge for the Health and Public Safety Committee sending guilty men to their deaths.  The point of the book is how our noble idea of justice can make people into the worst of criminals.  It certainly would have made Les Mis a more interesting film if it had based it’s story on this.

  I would like to read it again to see if it was a fault of the book for being forgettable or me for not being attentive enough.  I would like to read more of France and blimey is there plenty of him to read.  It is curious how few people read France anymore or even have heard of his name.  If I read more of him I might find out why that is.  It is true that a lot of Nobel Prize Winners do get forgotten but that is part of the reason why I do this blog, to see if I can find out why it is some get forgotten while others, such as Rudyard Kipling, seem like they will always be remembered. 

  I do remember that there is a love story and I think the young man tries to use his new influence and power to get her.  She possibly refuses and so he takes out his disappointment by passing tough sentences on others.

  I will probably do another post on this book if I get round to reading it again, but for now I think I’ll leave it at that.

Jaques Derrida- Prediction

 

It’s not only novelists who can win the Prize but philosophers can too.

I’ve been looking forward to this one.  It should be fun.  I have the task of trying to explain and summerise the philosophy of Jaques Derrida’s Deconstructionism with clairty in just under six hundred words.  Don’t worry, I’ve got this.  Right let’s start with the basics.  Derrida is a French philosopher by trade, he studied at the top schools and got some of the top marks.  He is certifiably, capital S smart.  No question, no doubt.  As to what kind of philosopher he is, well he could be described as dangerous, as an intellectual terrorist as he deconstructs Western philosophy from the ground up.  But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.  Let’s talk about his take on literary criticism, which I am far more comfortable in doing, it is, let’s say, my bag.  Tradional critcism holds it that the writer knows all, that they create a perfect world with unity and cohesion and that this can be, through various methods, be interpreted and understood as the writer intended.  Then along came Derrida who said that the writer does not know all, that their world is not perfect and does not have unity or cohesion and that any one meaning cannot be gained from the text.  Instead the text is rife with contradictions, with fissures and cracks and it is the job of literary critcism to widen these gaps and blow apart the seemingly polished surface. 

  Forgive me if I am off the mark, I have only a brief encounter with Derrida and this is what I have gathered.  I have only glanced at his work but have watched the film with his name for the title, which is about him so that at least is something.  To the lay person his works are quite unreachable, even to the educated person it may be a stretch to be able to really understand him (and the cynics would jeer that of course continental philosophy is nothing but nonsense).  A well read person trained in philosophy would have a better chance and this is his ideal reader as what may seem obscure is only a subtle reference to something Heidegger said or that Hegel had written about, so for the philosopher he is a rich mine to dig in.  He did say, in the film, one thing that has stuck in my mind.  He said that ‘the eyes do not age’ that the eyes remain the same from birth to death.  Though I cannot validate this, and perhaps if a doctor or a medical professional is reading this they can put me straight, but it is an interesting image.  The eyes, whose job is to perceive, are always a child’s and so is the philosopher always asking ‘why?’.  Make of it what you will.

  Is he a Nobel Prize candidate?  Doubtless he is as what may disuade the ordinary person attracts the committee who value complexity, sophistication and productivity, Derrida is a perfect candidate.  Creating you own philosophy is something that the Literature Prize can rival the science prizes, implying a progression of sorts.  It may be a false progression but it is too early to say that and possibly progression in philosophy maybe impossible.

First Love and other Novellas by Samuel Beckett

 

Known for his classic ‘Waiting For Godot’ Samuel Beckett’s prose fiction generally gets less attention and what a shame this is.  Beckett is peerless in prose and works with servre clarity of vision, a master in the manipulation of language combined with a compassion for those at the margins of socitey.  Though this book contains four novellas, ‘The End’, ‘The Expelled’, ‘The Calmative’ and ‘First Love’, I actually think this is really just one story broken up and rearranged.  There are repetitions that give it away such as the cowpat with the love heart drawn in it and the same reaction to a dying plant.  It’s not as complicated as some of his other writings, such as the maddening ‘Play’, evoking a child-like simplicity in a more pastoral time, early Twenith Centuary, in a more pastoral place, Ireland, while combining the streets of the city, Paris.  With these novellas Beckett first uses the French language after making the decsion, to pare down his writing and give him fewer options I think, to write completely in French.  He merges convosational talk with obscure allusions.  His homeless characters seem to be naturally educated but unable to control their lives satisfactorily.  Often they are searching for a place to lay their head ending with a type of trandenscental despair or beign indifference.  ‘So there it is’ he seems to be saying ‘Now what?’.

  It is poetic without being typically lyric but he does possibly romanticise a vagabound life although it can’t be said that his characters are happy with their situation, they just seem to have been born into it and can do little about it.  Written with huge pathos for the human condition to be wandering from philosophy to philosophy without satisfaction trying to find a place between the dirt and the sky where there can be home.  Bleak, yes, but inspiring with such purity that it cleaneses out the pallet leaving it afresh for new possibilities.  It’s very easy to read, I managed it in two days, but it gives you enough to get your teeth into such as how to cope in a loveless world.  The last sentence of the first novella is beautiful where the character after being unable to find anywhere to live sinks in a boat:

‘The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to the end or the strength to go on.’

It is stark and bold and as Harold Pinter has put it: ‘He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going.  He bring forth a body of beauty…’ I couldn’t agree more, for all the dark light there is unmistakable beauty that radiates out from his lonely characters who are alien even to themselves and who walk in a strange universe that is indifferent to their survival.  Not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach, it has guts and strength and determined will.  Writing like polished crystal it is multi-faceted and demands reapeated readings.

  Beckett’s known for his drama but I would highly recommend his prose works as well.  They are rich and rewarding if tough and uncompromising.  These are long poems and would be good if read out loud as each word seems to be carefully chosen for just the right effect.  He has written novels, a so called trilogy, but if you want a quick glimpse into Beckett’s world then this is a good introduction to the French writing Irishman, and of course fail better.

Howard Barker- Prediction

 -->Obscene and challenging is Howard Barker a writer working in the ‘ideal direction’?

I first encounter Barker in my first term of University.  A group was putting on ‘A Wounded Knife’ and I went to watch to see what it was like.  I was astounded.  The play had such strength and clarity of vision that it swept me up with it’s poetic force, it’s political manipulations and it’s surreal humour, this, I thought, was Theatre.  And so Barker has been with me ever since.  Know I’m in a good position to comment on Barker as I went to Aberystwyth University where he has links with and whose plays are produced frequently.  I was surprised that I had not heard of this dramatist of caliber before and really it seems you have to be either in Aberystwyth or Exeter, where his company is based, to know of him.  This seems to me a great shame as it is worthy drama he writes, but as he said to me when I briefly met him “It shows you what the English will and will not put up with”, and indeed this is fair comment.  After all his works are confrontational, difficult and at times downright unpleasant.  Though one of his plays was recently put on at the National Theatre so things might be changing.

  This complexity and prolific nature, and by God he is prolific putting out plays, poetry and theory almost every year, if not every month, so despite being introduced to quite a few of his plays I have barely scratched the surface, makes him a clear contender for the Nobel Prize.  Certainly he is the strongest contender I have looked at so far as he ticks all the boxes that candidates have normally displayed in the past.

  ‘A Wounded Knife’ is about the death of a King and his subsequent revenge of those responsible for it by grudge bearing individuals.  It has one of my favourite lines: “I was driving with a murderer and a moralist, one said ‘go faster’, the other ‘go slower’”.  He has been described as an anarchistic Shakespeare and the comparison to Shakespeare is not an ideal one and is actually, to an extent, justified.  Barker deals with a wide variety of characters from workmen to nobility, philosophers and plotters, who create a matrix of interconnecting relationships that develop and change over time.  The stories are immaculately plotted and the poetry of the dialogue is at the forefront of the drama.  He investigates different ideologies of the political spectrum as well as meditating on Christian theology.  Heady stuff but with Barker what you get is a full-blooded, full spirited, and full cerebral experience.  It’s what I love about him.

  A criticism I’ve heard about him is that he often lets his obscenities cloud what is otherwise excellent writing, particularly in ‘The Castle’ where the C-word is often employed.  I accept he certainly is obscene in places, perhaps needlessly so, but I do not think it is enough to detract from his overall project.

  A typical utterance of his characters is like this, taken from ‘The Love of a Good Man’:

 

BISHOP:  Why God likes pain. (Pause) Always being asked that one, why God is so very fond of pain. (Pause) Because He is.  Wriggle round it as we might, it’s inescapable He must like pain.  His own and other people’s.  He must approve of it.  And this is as good an occasion to mention pain as any.  Better than most, in fact.  Because we are situated in a sea of it.  An Atlantic of stilled agony. (Pause.  He examines his fingers a moment) Well, I will not apologize for Him.  I am always apologizing for Him.  It’s getting a bit much.

The historical is vital for Barker, having, I think, studied History, ‘The Love of a Good Man’ is set on the gravesite of Passchendaele, ‘The Castle’ in the time of the Crusades and ‘The Power of the Dog’, dramatising a meeting between Churchill and Stalin, at the time of the world wars.  He invigorates history with poetry and is an endless source of inspiration for him.

  Barker is certainly someone who I would happily put money on getting the Nobel Prize but just because I think he deserves does not mean he will get it.  I wholeheartedly hope that he will be awarded with it soon.

Does Howard Barker deserve the Nobel Prize?  Leave a comment with your opinion.

Next week I’ll be looking at Jaques Derrida.

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann: Part One

 

Oh boy.  After reading Herman Hesse’s ‘The Glass Bead Game’ I thought that some more ideas minded German literature would do me some good and so I picked up Thomas Mann’s ‘The Magic Mountain’.  Great, I thought, the mountain as a metaphor for intellectual study and reflection, right up my street.  But I had bitten off more than I could chew.  It’s tough.  It requires first rate concentration and iron stamina to get through and so far I’ve still a long way to go. 

  I was about half-way through before I had to put it down.  It was too much.  The dense complexity of literature has, I think, reached it’s zenith with this book.  It is one of the hardest books I’ve ever had to read and I’m not even done with it yet.

  This is a promise that I will read it and give it a fair outing in Part Two of this post and who knows maybe it might get better.  In any way I need a mental rest before contemplating picking it up again.

  The story is about Hans Castorp who visits his friend in a santorium before becoming ill himself and having to spend the next seven years there.  Hans is an engineer and a young man who has yet to experience the world and in the santorium he experience’s the philosophy of Herr Settembrini and Frau Chauchat.

  It is confusing and generous in it’s expounding humanism and in a certain sense sensually pleasing.  The concept I love but it is beyond me and as sincere in its searching intellect I am unable to follow it.  So why continue reading it?  I do want to be able to say I read one of the most difficult books in literature and also I do want to see if it gets a bit easier to digest.

  This, I believe, is different to what he usually wrote so I will have to read more of him in order to put him into a suitable context.  

Paul Auster- Prediction

 

Paul Auster is easily one of my favourite novelists but is he a contender?

I first started reading Auster’s ‘New York Trilogy’ at college due to a teacher’s offhand recommendation.  I started it but didn’t finish it until later and the plot device certainly intrigued me. 

  The story is about a man who receives a call asking for the ‘Paul Auster Detective Agency’, the man is not Paul Auster and so puts down the phone.  The phone rings again asking for the ‘Paul Auster Detective Agency’ and this time the man accepts the case.  The man is not a detective but is, uncannily, a detective writer.  

The story leads the man to a place of uncertainty and narrative trickiness that is post-modern crime.  In this story narrative authority, word play and the question of identity are all explored in this misguiding three-part novel.  It’s a novel that had a big impact on me.  Never had I encounter a writer so willing to play games with genre and to question the text within the text I was indeed engaged and fascinated.

My first Auster book was ‘Oracle Night’ and what a splendid introduction that was to him.  Sidney Orr comes out of the hospital and buys himself a new notebook, he being, yes, a writer, and begins to write a new story from nowhere as if the book is possessing him.  It’s a ghost story without ghosts and it’s terrifying.  It will make you question the reality you live in and the happiness you have.  Its gut wrenching and emotional while also being clever and manipulative in the best sense.  Auster is also economical with words, being also a writer of poetry shows, for his use of words is exact and weighed for just the right impact.

  
There are other books ‘The Book of Illusion’ about silent film, ‘Leviathan’ about the deconstruction of a man’s identity, ‘In The Country of Last Things’ about a post-apocalyptic New York, just to name a few, all great books in different ways.  His talents as a storyteller are immense and it’s only as I write this post that I really realise just how remarkable he really is.  His done more or less everything: identity politics, literary games, grandfather-father-son relationships, growing up, art, language, sexual exploration and grief. 

  
He’s even written the ultimate post-modern novella with ‘The Scriptorium’ where a writer, seemingly Paul Auster himself, is tormented by the characters he has badly treated in his novels.  Incredibly self-indulgent and goes to the extreme of intertextuality, which is both good and bad in different ways.

  
And he keeps on writing: ‘Invisible’, ‘A Man in the Dark’ and ‘Sunset Park’ have all come out in recent years and I don’t think he’s going to slow down.

  
Is he good enough for the Nobel Prize?  There have been worse candidates and his commitment to writing stories dealing with serious ideas and serious emotions is not in question.  Also he has warmth, for which I hope the committee does not hold against him as I think it is one of his prized characteristics.  So I like to think that he could win it and I would be very happy to see him have it, but something in me says that in some ways he is unsuited for such a prize because of his down-to-earth nature, despite his dealings with abstractions and metafiction.

Does Paul Auster deserve the Nobel Prize?  Leave a comment to say why or why not.

Next week I will be looking at dramatist Howard Barker.

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