Monday, April 02, 2007
A book of beginnings
Against all inclination, I began to read a thriller. The book just happened to be there, offering itself. The packaging is classic: a compact paperback with the starkly-worded title raised in gold lettering against a foreboding image. I had no expectations at all and it began well. The main character was introduced in crisp prose with a wonderful pulse. I learned of his mundanely pleasant life, his mysterious girlfriend and the suggestion of a dark cloud waiting to float over and block out the sunlight. No trouble. I've read many infinitely worse “literary” novels. Yet it was here that I put the book down. Now that a world had opened up, I wanted more. I wanted the whole book to be like this; a book of beginnings, sunlight ahead, and I knew that was not going to happen. That dark cloud scuttled over soon enough. That's why, I think, to take a recent example, I love to re-read Peter Handke's Repetition (seventh time in progress) and have been enjoying his No-man's Bay marathon. These books are full of beginnings, full of fresh air and sunlight. By contrast, the thriller felt like a noose tightening around the neck. Death is also escapism I suppose.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Blogroll, etc.
Blogroll continued
- Flowerville
- Cannon Magazine
- Wittgenstein Jr
- Danny Byrne
- Marooned Off Vesta
- In lieu of a field guide
- Just William's Luck
- Vertigo (WG Sebald blog)
- Tales from the Reading Room
- The Goalie's Anxiety
- Infinite Patience
- Pechorin's Journal
- Time's Flow Stemmed
- 50 Watts
- The Philosophical Worldview Artist
- Known Unknowns
- The Age of Uncertainty
- Being in Lieu
- ads without products
- Rejectamentalist Manifesto
- TLS editors' blog
- Braingrass
- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
- The Bibliophilic Blogger
- Nomadics
- Life Unfurnished
Favoured author sites
Political
Blog Archive
- April 2013 (1)
- March 2013 (2)
- February 2013 (1)
- January 2013 (1)
- November 2012 (2)
- August 2012 (1)
- July 2012 (1)
- June 2012 (1)
- May 2012 (3)
- March 2012 (3)
- February 2012 (1)
- January 2012 (1)
- November 2011 (1)
- October 2011 (2)
- September 2011 (2)
- July 2011 (3)
- June 2011 (1)
- May 2011 (3)
- April 2011 (5)
- March 2011 (3)
- February 2011 (1)
- January 2011 (2)
- December 2010 (7)
- November 2010 (1)
- October 2010 (5)
- September 2010 (2)
- August 2010 (3)
- July 2010 (4)
- June 2010 (2)
- May 2010 (3)
- April 2010 (4)
- March 2010 (11)
- February 2010 (3)
- December 2009 (3)
- November 2009 (5)
- October 2009 (5)
- September 2009 (3)
- August 2009 (6)
- July 2009 (6)
- June 2009 (4)
- May 2009 (8)
- April 2009 (8)
- March 2009 (12)
- February 2009 (11)
- January 2009 (7)
- December 2008 (7)
- November 2008 (7)
- October 2008 (17)
- September 2008 (7)
- August 2008 (8)
- July 2008 (7)
- June 2008 (7)
- May 2008 (7)
- April 2008 (5)
- March 2008 (8)
- February 2008 (2)
- January 2008 (10)
- December 2007 (26)
- November 2007 (28)
- October 2007 (16)
- September 2007 (24)
- August 2007 (15)
- July 2007 (17)
- June 2007 (11)
- May 2007 (23)
- April 2007 (11)
- March 2007 (24)
- February 2007 (27)
- January 2007 (21)
- December 2006 (9)
- November 2006 (23)
- October 2006 (21)
- September 2006 (19)
- August 2006 (15)
- July 2006 (33)
- June 2006 (17)
- May 2006 (24)
- April 2006 (17)
- March 2006 (18)
- February 2006 (15)
- January 2006 (8)
- December 2005 (8)
- November 2005 (10)
- October 2005 (7)
- September 2005 (14)
- August 2005 (14)
- July 2005 (8)
- June 2005 (15)
- May 2005 (11)
- April 2005 (12)
- March 2005 (9)
- February 2005 (7)
- January 2005 (15)
- December 2004 (2)
- November 2004 (4)
- October 2004 (6)
- September 2004 (2)
Followers
Subscribe to This Space
Posts
Comments
Stephen, can I ask what translation of Repetitions you're reading?
ReplyDeleteThere is only one - Ralph Manheim's. (It's singular - Repetition).
ReplyDeleteI think there has to be some balance between these poles that you are talking about, beginnings and endings. Maybe escapism is in that balance.
ReplyDeleteThe Hood Company
I've had that identical feeling so many times. Although I've yet to make it through Repetition, perhaps it's time.
ReplyDeleteTo write in exciting manner, or to do it well at least, rather than just excitably, is I think as difficult as writing profoundly. Certainly the stakes are more dangerous; fail to write profoundly and some people will carry on regardless believing that the profundity is perhaps of a difficult sort; fail to excite in a thriller and the person will put your book down and never return.
ReplyDeleteThe same applies to humour.
They can't be faked*.
Actually I think all that comments above should have come after this one as they are to a certain extent self-justification:
I love thrillers, even crap ones.
Nevertheless, I think a well-written thriller is as good as a well written book of more conventionally 'literary' status.
And there is nothing wrong with escapism, it hardly needs be said.
However, there are of course books that are not thrillers that use the thriller's tempo and precipitous action, which may appeal even to those who don't like thrillers - The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton for example.
Sorry for the rather long comment. If brevity isn't necessarily the soul of wit, it certainly renders lack of it more bearable.
Fitz Psyche
*(I originally wrote 'unfakable' but that looked bad, as if its rearrangement should result in 'can't be facked')
Thanks Fitzroy:
ReplyDelete"a well-written thriller is as good as a well written book of more conventionally 'literary' status."
Can you define "good" here? It's certainly true if well-written is the criterion. But what if Mein Kampf was well-written, would that make it "good"?
"And there is nothing wrong with escapism"
Yes there is! I read to escape escapism.
From Michael Roloff "I would say that THE REPETITION and NO-MANS-BAY are incomparable... The enumeration of matters that make/ our man angry [as a young man] in Essay on Tiredness,for those who care to know, is a symptomatology..."
ReplyDelete