January 22, 2007

Zadie vs Snoopy

There are three things that Zadie overlooked in the latest part of her missive for scribblers and readers: The miracle, the unpersuaded and Snoopy.

The miracle.

I am encouraged at the prospect of Zadie’s proposed thorough reader. There is however a big boulder between her thorough reader’s hands and the literature they are to become thorough about. Zadie’s books are reviewed, so are many of the writer’s she knows, but surely she’s acquainted with a couple, (if not I can provide a list) who are blatantly ignored and whose books go away off to the literary chalk pits. It is nothing short of a minor miracle if your book is reviewed these days, after overcoming the major miracle of persuading publishers that a novel about a fork lift truck driver from Winnipeg has value and could find readers.  The word count for literary journalism is diminishing. We are seeing reviews recycled in newspapers off the wires constantly over here. If you’re unconvinced by this argument open the paper and count the number of fiction (do not include non-fiction) titles reviewed, then look at how many are emerging voices. It’s grim, grim, grimola. The Irish Times has perhaps 3 per week, that’s 12 per month. So the view from the gutter where I sit would have to be if they are saying anything about you whether it be good, bad, slippy or sniffy — there’s a vague hope your tome may make it into a pair of human hands. 

 Last year I had a devil of a time trying to find a newspaper to run an interview with Beckett’s biographer. I kept thinking Beckett, who spoke to no one, spoke to this man: why is it so difficult to convince the newspapers to listen to him? I mean I hadn’t even got to the part, where I admitted to asking the man obscure questions about Duchamp and the chess games. (Duchamp prevailed if you’re wondering)

Yes Michiko Kakutani fundamentally does not believe the world to be as David Foster Wallace, but as a visual artist once explained to me …I look at work for what I don’t know, not what I already know. So could Mr FW himself grasp anything from her exhales? Perhaps those two are not a good example as they’ve probably gone a few rounds by this point. Besides he doesn’t strike me a bloke about to be deflated by getting boxed in the NY Times. There are bigger literary injustices putting pressure on my frontal lobe on a daily basis. (Where are the Iraqi novels? etc.) Perhaps because I have far more to learn than Zadie (she’s an accomplished gal) I find literary criticism even when if it’s giving rickets to the knees of some novel I happened to like, can be enlightening none the less. (This could be the advantage that comes from the liberating matter that if I never write a book no one will notice) If the hammer’s going at your knees it’s likely a different matter.

The unpersuaded.

This week someone mentioned, adding politely it wasn’t a dis to the review I wrote, that they did not intend to read that particular novel because the subject matter was unappealing.  I considered it likely therefore that my review had failed the book concerned, since I tried to impress the value of this particular book in persuasive terms. The reader remained unpersuaded.

I decided to write about books in the first place because I felt the absence of so many books in the pages of the newspapers that I felt mattered and I was tired of people asking me about Frank McCourt on the bus. No disrespect to Frank, who I am sure would concur that Irish literature doesn’t need to begin and end with him.

 I must now revise my thinking and make an even bigger commitment to being persuasive in either direction it would seem.  It’s not enough to be thoughtful and insightful in reviews once must practically move the Yangtze River for a book if it is important that it be opened.

Snoopy.

All the reviews I read of Jonathan Franzen’s The Discomfort Zone drew attention to the likelihood of him being a bit of a tosser. The tosser factor did not necessarily put me off, as I wasn’t needing to go camping with him and in the canon of literature some of the finest books are written by the grumpiest, most unforgiving of creatures. One review in a much less significant newspaper mentioned Snoopy and it was this the presence of Snoopy solidified my intention to seek it out. There was no suggestion in any review of how funny it is. I cackled my way across a bridge at his descriptions of pursuing the wax tailed duck in what can only be verging on a worrying dedication (for those close to him) to the feathered variety.

After the usual alarming thoughts that humour is wildly absent in this earnest continent I was reassured that Snoopy had prevailed over all the status of named and esteemed Literary Critics. Clearly if you place Snoopy somewhere in your novel, salvation will be forthcoming. It’s not criticism without cynicism that will help literature: it’s Snoopy.

November 29, 2006

Rauschenberg, phobia, and Crimestoppers.

Adrian Searle pays tribute to Rauschenberg in the Guardian:During the 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg produced some of the best and most influential art of the decade. Visiting Rome in 1952 with Cy Twombly, he hung small, totemic sculptures called Personal Fetishes from the trees in the Pincio Gardens. Subsequently, he threw all the work he had made and shown in Italy into the Arno River. “It saved a packing problem,” he said. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1958599,00.html

The argument between or about bloggers vs reviewers is still going on interminably over there. I hope someone is close on patenting a decent arthritis pill that doesn’t burn a hole in the tummy, for the degenerating cartilage in the arms of those typing epistles arguing over whether we should be paid very badly to think about books or not be paid at all. Perhaps these folk need to get some phobias …

Jenny Diski admirably managed to overcome her arachnophobia(http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n23/disk01_.html ) in what must surely be akin to the level of surprise or revelation Bernadette experienced when the Virgin Mary turned up in the rosebush beside her (or however that story goes). It offers hope for my rodent and fear of dying anxieties. A hamster moving in helped.  The hamster, a dwarf, has gained weight and is more fluffy golf ball than rodent now. I considered a job as an autopsy attendant, tried looking at autopsy websites, an’ came very close to passing out.  I think phobias reside in the frontal lobe, sharing the couch with writer’s block and other such joys.

 Some medja are suggesting atonement for Ian McEwan. Forget that, his real calling could lie in forming a partnership with Crimestoppers. Since his last novel suggested he may be persuaded of the power of poetry to change the mind of tempestuous criminals. Am surprised the Met police haven’t recorded him reading poetry and then set up some kind of tape deck to blare it on a loop near notorious London crime spots.