Reading Weak, Writing Weak

No, those aren't typos in the title.  Both my reading and my writing seem a little weak this week. (Which clearly doesn't mean that I can resist a word-play when it presents itself.)

Whether this is the result of work burn-out, or the continuing cold weather (not so much of an excuse, perhaps, now that we've had a week of chilly blue sunny skies), or the tasks I try to turn my mind to, I don't know.  More likely it is just one of those times, when your brain is on a forced slowdown and fighting against it is futile and self-defeating. Better to acknowledge it and ignore it till it starts whirring back at full speed.  So, no review from me this weekend; instead some preliminary thoughts on books for review. 

If I were writing a review, what would I be writing about? Probably Kat Banyard's The Equality Illusion, which is out next week. Why that book? Because it is an easier book to write about than the three novels I have queued for review.  It is a book about which I feel equivocal but generally positive; I can thoroughly subscribe to its feminist principles even if I don't think it is a classic of its kind.  The novels are harder because I have more invested in them, emotionally, intellectually.  The first is The War with the Mein, Book 1 of Acacia by David Anthony Durham. You might remember that I originally started this when I went to New Zealand, five months ago now, and it took me nearly as long to read it (in terms of weeks and months) as Don Quixote.  Admittedly I took a two month break in the middle but nevertheless, it is a book I lived with for a long time.  I'm ashamed to confess there were moments when I decided not to finish it.  I have a post half drafted about why this was, and what changed my mind.  It has a lot to do with how and why I read (epic, high) fantasy, I think, and the importance of reading it with a generous heart.  By generous I don't mean forgiving or in any way charitable; I mean open and wide and willing to admit 'big' emotions that are generally alien to our daily experience.  Since I've never felt more cynical and less generous than I did after 36 hours of airline food and transit lounges, it's perhaps no surprise that Acacia and I didn't get along at first.  That and the fact that the first third of the novel is weaker than the rest in my opinion. It gets good though; very good.  After five months of looking at it on my bedside table and living with it under my skin, I almost picked up the second book immediately.  Which is testament enough to my feelings.  I want to be able to marshall all my resources effectively before I write about it though, and the time doesn't seem right at the moment.  I'll have to live with it for a little longer.

The second novel is In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield. This one came to me from fellow Alexandrian Nic (who read it for SFX magazine and re-posted her review of it here a while back) and Niall (who reviewed it at Torque Control).  I think it is safe to say that they liked it, a lot, and so did I.  So much in fact that my first attempt at writing a review, the day I finished it, was gushing rubbish.  I couldn't curb the positive adjectives - 'extraordinary', 'exhilarating', 'inspired', etc - and they ran rampant over any attempt at measuredness.  Isn't it ironic that the books I most want to recommend to people, books like In Great Waters  and Wolf Hall, are the ones I find it most difficult to write about?  Incidentally, I can't help noticing that both these books are just out in paperback: an exhortation to read them will have to stand in place of my review, at least for the time being.

Finally, William Golding's The Spire.  I have read Golding before, twice. The obligatory Lord of the Flies - most recently, when I was in my early 20s - and Rites of Passage, in my first year at St. Andrews.  Of these two Rites of Passage stands out, but this was probably because I was studying it (and even wrote an essay about it, if I remember correctly).  My experience of reading him teaches me two things. First, the kind of novel he wrote is out of fashion; second, immeasurable further damage has been done to his reputation by the teaching of Lord of the Flies in high schools.  I was surprised to discover that not a single one of my colleagues - generally a very well-read and opinionated bunch - had read any Golding other than Lord of the Flies.  Their impressions of him from that book were of a clumsy metaphorist and heavy-handed moralist, which undoubtably comes from the way we teach all literature to schoolchildren as though it were parable.  Everyone wrinkled their nose at The Spire. Which is sad, because it is a really interesting novel.  Interesting form and structure; interesting narrative technique; interesting themes.   'Interesting' might sound a rather faint word when it comes to praise, although it shouldn't.  This comes back to my first point about Golding being out of fashion.  On the whole I think his experimental, oblique style has less currency today than it did when he was writing at his peak in the 1970s and early 1980s.  We seem to like our experiment quirky and playful these days, with a touch of edginess.  We like footnotes, and weird tenses, and unexpected points of view.  We like coming at our fiction from different angles.  Golding doesn't do angles, and he isn't playful.  He is dead serious, and deals in essentials.  This is probably why he seems like such an old-fashioned moralist, and why he is quite a difficult writer to love.  I say 'old fashioned moralist' but maybe I should say 'old fashioned modernist', because he sits very comfortably with that crowd.  I feel as though I need to read more, and think more, before I say more about him. 

~~Victoria~~

Comments

[Jackie (Farm Lane Books)]

You are the second person I've seen rave about In Great Waters. I am going to get a copy now. Thanks for the recomendation!

[Niall]

Man, I feel bad that I didn't really get on with Blackmoor now...