{"id":6868,"date":"2007-01-22T05:02:48","date_gmt":"2007-01-22T05:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrsokana.wordpress.com\/2007\/01\/22\/zadie-and-snoopy\/"},"modified":"2007-01-22T05:02:48","modified_gmt":"2007-01-22T05:02:48","slug":"zadie-and-snoopy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/2007\/01\/22\/zadie-and-snoopy\/","title":{"rendered":"Zadie vs Snoopy"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are three things that Zadie <\/a>overlooked in\u00a0the latest part of her missive for scribblers\u00a0and readers: The miracle, the unpersuaded and Snoopy.<\/p>\n

The miracle.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am\u00a0encouraged at the prospect of Zadie’s proposed thorough reader. There is however a big boulder between her thorough reader’s hands\u00a0and the literature they are to become thorough about. Zadie’s books are reviewed, so are many of the writer’s she\u00a0knows, but surely she’s acquainted with a couple, (if not I can provide\u00a0a list) who\u00a0are blatantly ignored and whose books go away off to the literary chalk pits. It is nothing short of a minor miracle\u00a0if 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\u00a0has value and could find readers.\u00a0 The word count for literary journalism\u00a0is 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Last year I had a devil of a time trying to\u00a0find a newspaper to run an interview with Beckett’s biographer. I kept thinking Beckett, who\u00a0spoke 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)<\/p>\n

Yes Michiko Kakutani fundamentally does not believe the world to be as David Foster Wallace, but as a visual artist once explained to me\u00a0…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\u00a0accomplished gal)\u00a0I find literary criticism even when if it’s\u00a0giving rickets to the knees of some novel I happened to like, can be enlightening none the less. (This could be the\u00a0advantage 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.<\/p>\n

The unpersuaded.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week someone mentioned, adding politely it wasn’t a dis to the review I wrote, that they did not intend to read\u00a0that\u00a0particular novel\u00a0because the subject matter was unappealing.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

I decided to write about books in the first place because I felt the absence of\u00a0so many books\u00a0in 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\u00a0concur that Irish literature doesn’t need to begin and end with him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I must now revise my thinking and make an even bigger commitment to being persuasive in either direction it would seem.\u00a0 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.<\/font><\/p>\n

Snoopy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

All the reviews I read of Jonathan Franzen’s The Discomfort Zone <\/strong>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\u00a0with him and in the canon of literature some of the finest books are written by the grumpiest, most unforgiving of\u00a0creatures.\u00a0One review\u00a0in a much less significant newspaper mentioned Snoopy and it was this the presence of\u00a0Snoopy\u00a0solidified 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\u00a0dedication (for those close to him) to the feathered variety.<\/p>\n

After the usual alarming thoughts that humour is wildly\u00a0absent 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\u00a0help literature: it’s Snoopy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are three things that Zadie overlooked in\u00a0the latest part of her missive for scribblers\u00a0and readers: The miracle, the unpersuaded and Snoopy. The miracle. I am\u00a0encouraged at the prospect of Zadie’s proposed thorough reader. There is however a big boulder between her thorough reader’s hands\u00a0and the literature they are to become thorough about. Zadie’s books […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,53,56,87,90,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ice-skating","category-jonathan-franzen","category-literature","category-snoopy","category-spiders","category-zadie-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}