«Aspects of the Novel» - introductory

-  reading about reading:

I have had it on my mind for a while to read E. M. Forster’s «Aspects of the Novel». I had an idea that reading it would be heavy going. But to my surprise these essays are very forthcoming and encompassing. And even if they are written almost hundred years ago, they are very up to date. Which actually supports one of Forster’s own ideas; that one should see all great writers as contemporary.

… we cannot consider fiction by periods, we must not contemplate the stream of time. Another image better suits our powers: that of all the novelists writing their novels at once. (31)

Forster’s picture is:

… all the novelists are at work together in a circular room.

And then he goes on to say that we must examine literature in other ways then we do with science or other forms of art. Principles and systems are not applicable:

The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define. (38)

I'm so happy I finally started reading it!

The Anatomy of Melancholy

A very good friend of mine, who know my reading habits (and needs), gave me a version of The Anatomy of Melancholy today. I have read several books on the topic, but never had a chance on Burton's original study. 
Amongst the books on melancholy I would like to recommend (two in Norwegian, and one available in several languages) are:

1. Karin Johannisson: «Melankolske rom. Om angst, lede og sårbarhet gjennom tidene», CappelenDamm (2010)
2. Kjersti Bale: «Om melankoli», Pax (2007)
3. Julia Kristeva:«Black Sun», (1989)

Holy the Firm

Today I'm letting Annie Dillard join my "Walden" reading. She is a great admirer of Thoreau, its visible in most of her writing.

In "Holy the Firm" the writer plays an important role in her own text. She is living on northern Puget Sound, in Washington State, alone. The nature and the elements are her companions:

I came here to study hard things - rock mountains and sea salt - and to temper my spirit on their edges.

...

Here is the fringey edge where elements meet and realms mingle, where time and eternity spatter each other with foam.

Reading Walden

I'm reading Jeffrey S. Cramer's fully annotated edition of "Walden", it's a beautiful book!

Here's some interesting thoughts on the role of the philosopher, and as someone who has left academic circles to live in a closer relationship to contemporary art and literature, I must admit I find these thoughts very-very fascinating.

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers ... to be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. 

Henry D. Thoreau: Walden (1854)

From experience I know there is a difference between the professor and the philosopher. But solving the problems of life ... practically?! This is a strong order - isn't it?

A professor of philosophy I once knew had stopped reading fiction, he found all he needed in philosophical texts and theoretical articles. I have turned the other way, my reading of theory is minimal these days, almost entirely taken over by fiction and literary essays. I do not think it's smart to choose either/or, but I do think there is being written a lot of nonsense, labeled philosophy, as if it was new thinking. As if it was important -

Beside the Sea

Today I read Beside the Sea by Véronique Olmi.

Here’s an outline:

A mother and her two young sons on a trip to the seaside, the rain is pouring, outside … and inside. They stay on the 6th floor of a brown hotel, there is no light anywhere, and their room is hardly larger than the bed inside it. The boys worries about what they will tell their teachers, taking off in mid-season like this - .

I can’t remember any book making me as sad as this, but Beside the Sea is so well written that it actually makes the pain meaningful. In a strange way I identify with this desperate mother, I become her, and I become her hopeless kids. Captured by and in this woman’s madness. It’s heartbreaking!

We see the world through the eyes of the mother; she is giving the nature an almost human quality:

It was still raining outside, the same monotonous rain, this town had no imagination, it could only do rain.

The story is narrated in a seemingly simple way, from a first person perspective. But it’s still, even if it’s simple, very visual. I almost feel I see the tale as much as I read it.

Véronique Olmi was born in 1962. She is a highly acclaimed French dramatist and her twelve plays have won numerous awards. Bord de Mer (Beside the Sea), published in 2001, was her first novel.

Jean Echenoz - Running

Jean Echenoz's literary portrait of Emil Zátopek is a beautiful little book. My Norwegian review can be found here. 

I've only read one of Echenoz's books previously, his Je m'en vais, which I read ten years ago. And until I read Running last week I had totally forgotten how much I appreciate his way of writing. Echenoz is very precise in his language, he is sharp, lucid and clear. A bit sarcastic, and sometimes very funny - in a subtile kind of way. 


Running can be read as a history of Czechoslovakia 1938-1968, even if politics are barely mentioned, its always there, within the story, implicit. And isn't really one of the most important qualities and advantages of art, to tell the history of the world trough single individuals, through people we can relate to, identify with?


Emil Zátopek was no ordinary man when it came to running, but apart from his extreme talent, he seems to have been a common man. So when all the rackets of hot and cold wars emerges on the stage, all Zátopek really wants to do, is to go on with his everyday life. 


But of course we never can ...  



             Echenoz's Ravel and Piano are both on my reading list

within a sea of fog

I've spent some days in the Alps - 

luckily I'm more fond of reading than skiing... 

notes on Roland Barthes

The Preparation of the Novel
(Columbia, N.Y, 2011)
Session of December, 2, 1978

... for someone who writes, who has chosen to  write, that is to say, for someone who has experienced the jouissance, the joy of writing, there can be no other Vita Nova (or so it seems to me) than the discovery of a new writing practice.

(Preparation... p. 5)

stack of books

 I got lots of books in the mail last week, the plan is to get to read some of them during the holidays. From top to bottom:

• César Aira: Ghosts
• César Aira: The Literary Conference
• Phillip Lopate: Notes on Sontag
• Harry Mulisch: The Assault
• John McGahern: Love of the World
• Jenny Erpenbeck: The Old Child & The Book of Words
• Jenny Erpenbeck: Visitation
• Phillip Lopate: Against Joie de Vivre
• Damon Galgut: In a Strange Room (Reading this one on my iPad, so the actuall book will go as a gift...)
• Roland Barthes: The Preparation of the Novel

Last night I had a look in Lopate's Notes on Sontag, and in the introduction he clearly introduce her as a much better essayist than novel writer. Lopate is a reliant expert in the essay genre, and I have no doubt his judgement is right. But Sontag herself would definitely disagree (if she had had a chance - ). To her the novel always came before the essay.

On page 17 Lopate cites a rather harsh comment from Barthes on Sontag's work. Again I believe that it is primarily the fiction writing Sontag that are judged to not be strong enough. 

Isn't it both strange and a bit sad that she can't be satisfied with being an excellent essay writer? 

And isn't it also very interesting that this harsh critique comes from a man who himself was a great essayist wanting to become a novelist?!

I guess this is not the only question waiting for me in this stack of books ...

William Kotzwinkle

This morning, in my totally undisturbed house by the sea, I read Kotzwinkle’s short novella Swimmer in the Secret Sea. It’s a highly recommendable story! 

I discovered the text by accident on a visit to The Mookse and the Gripes, looking for some comments on César Aira’s An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, which I was reading last week. M&G was very convincing on Kotzwinkle, so I just had to give him a try.

Swimmer in the Secret Sea is read in an hour or two; the form is as compact as the content. I believe Norwegian publishers would have called it a short story - not only because of the few pages, but also because the story is centred on only one scene.

A man, a woman, and an unborn child: Life takes a wrong turn, it’s an accident, and there is no one to blame. For the two who were about to become parents life will never be the same.

The drama is told in a very sober way, no big words, no feigned feelings. Snowy roads and a vast forest underline the sadness and emptiness that suddenly arises in the little family. But there is also a stream of comfort and consolation running through the pages, making me believe that the couple might manage, might go on – after all, sharing the sadness of grief in a considerate and respectful way. 


As I read it – there is a kind of warmth in the story, despite the tragedy, the emptiness and the icy snow, maybe it is this combination of sadness and softness that makes this such a great read?

Maile Meloy

I'm in the middle of an unbelievable hectic and chaotic week. 

The only place to seek some relief is in literature. But time is sparse, still - I have managed to spend some minutes now and then with Maile Meloy, and her book Half in Love. Its fantastic! I'll come back with some additional and more meaningful comments on her authorship when time allows... I already know fore sure I'm gonna read all her books. 

Judith Schalansky

I’ve been working on some short stories for a while. They are all set in a very ordinary everyday setting: A day at the beach, a family dinner, a morning walk, etc. 

But then suddenly, to my surprise, one of my stories demanded to take place on an ice raft in the Arctic Ocean somewhere between the North Pole and the Russian tundra.

No wonder then, that I immediately fell in love with Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands. Fifty Islands I have not visited and never will. The title in itself is really enough to make one marvel!

A great review of the book can be found here.

Judith Schalansky’s book is a very fine mix of facts and fiction, as she her self states in the foreword, fact and fiction cannot - if truth be told – ever be separated:

Those who discovered the islands became famous, as if their achievements related to an act of creation, as if they had not merely found new worlds but actually invented them … only that which is written about has really happened.

Of Peter I Island in the Antarctica, she writes:

It was only in 1929 – 108 years after its discovery – that it was landed on, and until the 1990s more people had set foot on the moon than on the island.

 Schalansky’s book truly conveys the world in all its strangeness.

And her drawings -; delicate, precise and mysterious.

Go ahead: read it!

foundation

If I am to make a list of the works that are most important to my own writing just now, it would look approximately like this:

Primary foundation

• Annie Dillard: Teaching a Stone Talk, Living by Fiction
• Helle Helle: Hus og hjem, Ned til hundene
• Thoreau: Walden
• Sara Maitland: A Book of Silence
• Judith Schalansky: Atlas of Remote Islands - Fifty islands I have not visited and never will

Secondary sources

• Bill Bryson: At Home
• Bachelard: The Poetics of Space
• Lopate: The Art of the Personal Essay
• Johnstone: The Everyday
• Carol Shields: Unless

Possibilities - not yet read

Marilynne Robinson: Home, Gilded, Housekeeping
This is why I want to read Robinson:

The small town of Gilead, in which two of Marilynne Robinson's three novels are set, is "a dogged little outpost" in Iowa, where her characters live modestly and scorn themselves for staying put. They don't go anywhere, do anything, see anyone besides their neighbours, and the town itself doesn't change - an odd choice of set-up for a novelist, but one that permits her to make a suggestion: that it is people in their kitchens, devastating each other softly and for the most part without intent, that constitutes life at its most indivisible.

silencing the world

"The writer studies literature, not the world. She lives in the world, she cannot miss it. She is careful of what she reads, for that is what she will write. She is careful of what she learns, because that is what she will know."

Annie Dillard

This morning I heard a very interesting interview on NRK P2 - (radio), a journalist talked to the author Hanne Ørstavik about being disconnected from the media-world and www. As some of you already know, I am out on a quest for silence and solitude, and believe that these qualities are necessary for being abel to listen to oneself - which one must, if one really wants to write. In the interview Ørstavik told us that she listen to P2 in the morning, and then read the newspaper Klassekampen when having her breakfast, these two were her only daily media intake; no facebook, no twitter, no surfing ...

Its a great challenge to silence the twaddle and empty words of the world, actually it is impossible for one who is not a hermit or a nun! But its is important to try minimize the external noises to make some space for oneself. What is the point of living if one cannot hear ones own voice? 

Liu Xiaobo

As readers, writers and human beings in a relatively free world:  - it is important to care!

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 to Liu Xiaobo for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace. Such rights are a prerequisite for the “fraternity between nations” of which Alfred Nobel wrote in his will.

Liu Xiaobo is a renowned literary critic, writer, and political activist based in Beijing. He served as President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center from 2003 to 2007 and currently holds a seat on its board. Liu Xiaobo was a professor at Beijing Normal University and has worked as a visiting scholar at several universities outside of China, including the University of Oslo, the University of Hawaii, and Columbia University in New York City.

Liu Xiaobo - Amnesty

on reading

I'm reading slowly these days, reading Tinker Creek and Walden at the same time, page by page, word by word. Using all kinds of dictionaries and encyclopedias to widen my understanding.

Its like a dream.

"The writer studies literature, not the world. She lives in the world, she cannot miss it. She is careful of what she reads, for that is what she will write. She is careful of what she learns, because that is what she will know."

A.D

But you cant fail to see the close relationship these two both have to nature...

"… I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood."

on writing

Yesterday I had a short comment in a national newspaper called Klassekampen. My text was a critique of some comments made on literature and reality by professor Tjønneland earlier this week. He is afraid that contemporary writers are constructing an informant society because they write about live and living models.

I don't see this as a problem, the art that interest me the most is very often connected very close to the everyday life of the writer or artist. Thats one of the reasons for my engagement with artists like Annie Dillard, Thoreau, Montaign, Helle Helle, Tomas Espedal, Sophie Calle and also Mary Kelly - who I will be "visiting" in Stockholm next week.

I do not believe in the idea that the artist is or should be disconnected from the everyday life.

Here is my text:

Kunstnerens ansvar

En kunstner er et menneske som alle andre, er hun norsk må hun forholde seg til norsk lov. En kunstner er et menneske som få andre, for kunstneren er fri i forhold til sin egen tematikk og metode. En kunstner er ikke hevet over loven, men friheten setter henne i en særstilling som gjør det mulig å utforske og utfordre lovens rammer og begrensinger. Å være maktkonfronterende og å utfordre samfunnets moralske konvensjoner er, og har alltid vært, en av kunstens viktigste oppgaver.

Under overskriften «Går mot Stasi-samfunnet» (Klassekampen torsdag 4. november) bekymrer professor Eivind Tjønneland seg over virkelighetssuget i litteraturen. Han påstår at forfatterne i verdens frieste land mimer et totalitært samfunn fordi de i sine bøker skriver om virkeligheten og om virkelige mennesker. «At man ikke skal kunne gjøre noe uten å risikere å bli publisert i en bok, er ingen tjent med» sier han. Vel – vel. Stasisamfunnet var, så vidt jeg vet, mer kjent for sensur enn for kunstnerisk åpenhet.

Hvis det stemmer at virkeligheten er til stede på en ny måte i samtidslitteraturen kan det være interessant å forske på hvorfor, Tjønnelands moralske indignasjon har imidlertid ingenting med forskning å gjøre. Kunsten kan ikke forholde seg til god takt og tone. Noen ganger er det til og med slik at der er nettopp overtredelsen av loven som gjør et verk kunstnerisk interessant, ikke dermed sagt at man kan gjøre det ustraffet.

Hva er mest stasi-aktig, å gjenskape sin egen subjektive virkelighet på papir, eller å la forskere, redaktører og journalister definere hvilke tema som skal skrives om?

Sigrun Hodne

Litteraturviter, kritiker og skribent

on the shore of vastness

I was loosed on the shore of vastness. There was no continental shelf. I lived on the beach. The brink of the infinite there was too like writing’s solitude. Each sentence hung over an abyssal ocean or sky which held all possibilities – as well as the possibility of nothing. The twilight lingered till dawn. The wide days split life open like an ax.

Annie Dillard

on writing

Writing sentences is difficult whatever their subject. It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick. So you might as well write Moby-Dick.

Annie Dillard: The Writing Life

a connection is not necessarily a connection

Thoreau said that his firewood warmed him twice - because he labored to cut his own. Mine froze me twice, for the same reason.

Dillard: The Writing Life, p 42