heat
It's pushing thirty in Norwich today. Whenever it does this, I find myself in the not overly air conditioned library, forgetting the greater part of my vocabulary and ability to think in an organised manner.
Last night I read Chris Paling's book A Town by the Sea. I really, really wanted to like it so as to make a big noise about the Booker shortlist omitting difficult fiction (James Meek's The People's Act of Love was, annoyingly, a huge disappointment). But I'm not really sure about it as yet. In many respects it does what I've been wanting British fiction to do for a long time, which is jack in the contemporary referent in favour of a more stubborn, abstract chronotope*. It has the same approach to motive and subjectivity as the early nouveau roman and an enterprising approach to mythomania that implies a hostility towards the cod psychology that characterizes most so-called literary novels at the moment. There is, unfortunately, too much of a dependence of Sebaldesque melancholia 'n' memory themes that writers still seem to be employing half-heartedly. There are passages of beautiful writing but it often descends into whimsy of the sort that results in would-be novelists suffering schoolyears of torment. I don't know, it's better than most contemporary stuff I've read lately.
We'll see on that one.
jx
* I recognise that in writing novels that date fast, contemporary writers are critiquing a culture of disposability. This disclaimer doesn't accomodate the fact that it's incredibly frustrating to read the likes of Nick Hornby/ Martin Amis/ Ian McEwan clumsily attempting to deal with a millieu that they seem to be separated from by the very virtue of their critique.
Last night I read Chris Paling's book A Town by the Sea. I really, really wanted to like it so as to make a big noise about the Booker shortlist omitting difficult fiction (James Meek's The People's Act of Love was, annoyingly, a huge disappointment). But I'm not really sure about it as yet. In many respects it does what I've been wanting British fiction to do for a long time, which is jack in the contemporary referent in favour of a more stubborn, abstract chronotope*. It has the same approach to motive and subjectivity as the early nouveau roman and an enterprising approach to mythomania that implies a hostility towards the cod psychology that characterizes most so-called literary novels at the moment. There is, unfortunately, too much of a dependence of Sebaldesque melancholia 'n' memory themes that writers still seem to be employing half-heartedly. There are passages of beautiful writing but it often descends into whimsy of the sort that results in would-be novelists suffering schoolyears of torment. I don't know, it's better than most contemporary stuff I've read lately.
We'll see on that one.
jx
* I recognise that in writing novels that date fast, contemporary writers are critiquing a culture of disposability. This disclaimer doesn't accomodate the fact that it's incredibly frustrating to read the likes of Nick Hornby/ Martin Amis/ Ian McEwan clumsily attempting to deal with a millieu that they seem to be separated from by the very virtue of their critique.
posted by Joe at 4:07 AM
3 Comments:
Compare the temperatures there with Dublin: about 17 degrees here. Paling sounds interesting alright. On a more bourgeois note: have you seen Sideways? I watched it yesterday - there's a Robbe-Grillet reference in it. Sebald's influence seems pretty superficial at the moment: it seems more like writers are employing a vague spooky vibe in order to recreate the atmosphere of reading Sebald rather than bringing any of his historiographical nous to the table.
Yes, I saw "Sideways" on one of my thrice-yearly trips to the UCI (Sin City and Batman were my other Pic 'n' Mix blowouts). It's absolutely hilarious and the photography is some of the lushest I've seen for ages (and indeed most bourgeois, in that it instilled in me a feeling of eating focaccia bread on a balcony in San Gimignano).
The Sebald business- I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's entirely understandable why some of our better writers are trying so hard to double-expose uncanniness back into their work after the last few years. It's neither the time nor the place to launch into a full frontal attack on Toby Litt, Nick Hornby, Martin Amis, Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie and so on but it's not surprising that the likes of McEwen and Sebald should be looked to as an example of writers who offer an ineffable something else-ness. I think that it tends to come across as glib a lot of the time though.
Jx
There's a good article in the New York Review of Books, quite recently, on Sebald. It takes him to task on a couple of things, while still praising his work. I haven't read much Sebald criticism, but I'm guessing at this point people are still overly beguiled by what he's doing, and less willing to take it apart and see what the mechanism looks like - kind of like the novelists and their 'ooh, spooky' take on his work. I could be wrong, though: I haven't read anything really apart from the NYRB piece and a couple of newspaper reviews.
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