Books and Writing

I’ve moved to Naples with Elena Ferrante

February 2, 2021 By graham stewart

In the wake of the recent news about huge job losses in closing retail chain stores I had started a post about guaranteed jobs. But it will take a bit more research and thinking to make it hold as an article worth reading.
So, instead, here’s a post about Elena Ferrante. Or, to be more precise, about how I’m enjoying the first of The Neapolitan Novels.
My Brilliant Friend is wonderful.

It was my elder daughter who read the books first. A few years ago, while she was spending a year at home between university and moving to Malta. Then my wife read them. All four books sit on the shelf above the TV in the living room and I have looked at them from time to time and thought that I ‘should’ read them.

My wife watched the first series of the TV series in a binge last week. She said how good the series was and it reminded her how much she had enjoyed the books. “You really should read them,” she said.

In our house I am the self-appointed recommender of books. (I like to think I may even have recommended the Ferrante books to my daughter on the back of a review in the LRB or something — but that may be stretching my memory into the realms of pure fantasy.) Not that anyone takes much notice most of the time. Fair is fair, though.

I picked up the first of the books and started reading.

Wow.

I’ve been moaning recently that I have not been reading as much as I usually like to. I can see this book causing more problems disrupting my reading. I have had to ration myself for the last three days but I have still ripped through the first part of the book.

Not only is the prose wonderful — and credit must go to translator Ann Goldstein — but the characters of the children who populate the first section are perfectly drawn. It is a difficult task to make young children so interesting when their worlds are narrow and their experiences so limited. Ferrante conjures a narrow world that is somehow more than enough. Part of this, for me, was that it brought back so many memories of my own childhood. (And no, I didn’t grow up in Naples and I wasn’t a girl. Ferrante’s children are marvellously universal.) Unless I’m mistaken, the first mention of a date is in the second part of the book, just as the children are becoming adolescents. This timelessness of the first section only increases its universality.

And I’m going to stop there. I want to finish the book before I rave any more.

Be like Shakespeare: use constraints to free your writing

January 26, 2021 By graham stewart

Your results may vary

Working within certain limits — whether self-imposed or not — can often be liberating. This is especially true when it comes to creativity. A specific material, a defined word count, a time limit.

The most famous among modern writers who embrace limits are the members of Oulipo. And possibly the most well-known of their creations is La Disparition (The Void) by Georges Perec. This is a novel written without a single use of the letter ‘e’. That’s hard enough in English; in French a task only a madman (or genius) would attempt. The purpose, of course, is not only to have fun and solve some sort of puzzle but to create works that, well, work.

Self-imposed limits have been around for as long as writing.

Shakespeare worked well with constraints. He also worked well with others, according to some accounts but that’s neither here nor there. Constraints. The most obvious place to look at those constraints is in the Sonnets. A sonnet is, by definition, a poem written to a particular format and Shakespeare’s Sonnets have a format that he made very much his own. In his own way, Shakespeare is an Elizabethan Oulipoist. Oulipotary? Oulipont?

So, what’s with the sonnet?

The sonnet’s origin lies with Petrarch, an Italian poet of the 14th century who decided to give up the priesthood after gazing upon the beauty of a young woman called Laura. (I like that name but I have yet to write any poetry dedicated to my wife.) The sonnet then came to England through translations of Petrarch by Thomas Wyatt in the 16th century. It quickly found popularity, not just in its original Petrarchan form of two quatrains followed by a sestet in the rhyming pattern of ABBA ABBA CDCDCD but in many variations.

So, basically, what we have is a poem of fourteen lines adhering to a strict rhyming pattern.

Variations are the life-blood of literary games — and development. This was Oulipo before Oulipo. Poets reading sonnets grasped how the constraints of the form could liberate their creativity. As could changing the constraints.

The constraints lie not just in the rhyming pattern but in the length of the poem and even in the line length. By the time Shakespeare started using the sonnet, he had refined the structure. Shakespeare’s self-imposed constraints are a rhyme pattern of ABABCDCDEFEFGG, lines of ten syllables, and the use of iambic pentameter. The iambic pentameter is the sound an actor with a wooden leg makes crossing the stage. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. It is the sound of the great speeches from Shakespeare’s plays, too.

So, Shakespeare gives us three quatrains and a rhyming couplet and it is in the couplet that the magic — the turn — usually happens. This is where the poet resolves the problem posed in the first twelve lines or reveals that the meaning is subtly different to what was first thought. Petrarch set his turn nearer the middle. Shakespeare holds it back for more effect. It becomes the pay-off.

Let’s look at Sonnet 29 — if only because I read that this morning. It’s what got me thinking about sonnets and constraints in the first place.

In Sonnet 29, “the poet” spends lines 1 to 9 describing how he compares his life to others and finds it wanting. Lines 10, 11, and 12 give us a sort of pre-turn, a relief from self-pity. The poet remembers that he is in love and his mood changes. Sonnet 29 is more like Petrarch in this respect because the turn starts earlier in the poem. The full turn in the final couplet is simple reinforcement. His love allows him to realise he would not change a thing:

“For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”

As I said at the top, the work needs to pay its way if it’s not going to be just another throwaway collection of words. With Shakespeare, there’s a good chance that the words will be so good that you even forget the constraints under which he was working.

What better way to wrap up the whole thing by simply laying out the text here?

Sonnet 29 – William Shakespeare
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy counted least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Beautiful. One full stop only in the whole poem. And from first to last line it carries you, in a single breath, from despair to acceptance.

Sentence by sentence

January 23, 2021 By graham stewart

Verlyn Klinkenborg’s secret to successful writing

To write a book about sentences may sound like overkill. Or a symptom of some strange obsession. Anyone reading a book ostensibly about sentences may be forgiven for thinking that the author’s intention was to lure them in with an intriguing idea and then soon enough, disclose his real purpose.

After all, most books, while not exactly about sentences, are at least composed of sentences. Surely, a book about sentences would be like reading a book on the architecture of great buildings and concentrating on the bricks. Or studying great works of art by focusing on the individual brushstrokes.

And, in effect, the close study of the brush stroke is exactly what Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing comes close to being. It’s also true that, while the title promises ‘several short sentences’, there are close to two hundred pages of sentences. Some short and some a little longer than would be traditionally considered short. But the focus never varies; the sentence and how a writer builds sentences is what this book is about.

Klinkenborg makes his purpose clear right at the start:

Here, in short, is what I want to tell you.
Know what each sentence says,
What it doesn’t say,
And what it implies.
Of these, the hardest is knowing what each sentence actually says.
Page 1

Part of the book’s charm is the almost poetry-style layout of the sentences and the way the sentences are grouped into stanzas of aggregated purpose, which gradually impose a hypnotic state of acceptance. Concentrating on the sentence affords a release from the tension of ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’. The paradox is, that with the focus on the individual sentence, meaning accrues by default. It need not be forced by the writer.

James Joyce knew about the importance of sentences. There’s a story that, during the composition — and there’s a word that suggests a more atomised approach to writing — of Ulysses, he met an acquaintance on a Zurich street. The man asked Joyce how his writing was proceeding. Joyce responded with enthusiasm, saying that he had had a very successful day. Expecting to be told that Joyce had turned out hundreds, if not thousands of words, the man asked why the day had gone so well. Klinkenborg would have understood Joyce’s response. Joyce told his acquaintance that he had swapped two words in a sentence that he had been working on for a week.

Ulysses took Joyce seven years to write. Sentence by sentence.

As Klinkenborg says (as if speaking to Joyce),

Your job as a writer is making sentences.
Your other jobs include fixing sentences, killing sentences, and arranging sentences.
If this is the case—making, fixing, killing, arranging—how can your writing possibly flow?
It can’t.
Flow is something the reader experiences, not the writer.
Page 67

The feels counter-intuitive to many writers, who settle into the magic of scenes and beats and story and plot and character arcs. To focus on the sentence may also feel like being unmoored or drifting at sea far from the sight of land. But with each sentence, the promise of landfall is closer.

Trusting to the individual sentence is like finally accepting you can float in the water.

Too many books, too little time…

January 21, 2021 By graham stewart

… too much guilt and not enough space

Not my real shelves: Photo by Jonathan Singer on Unsplash

Two weeks ago to the day I posted about my resolution to cut back on my book buying. No, I haven’t relapsed and ordered a bucket load of new reads. I have, however, been adding books to my basket in Amazon and Verso. That’s a bit like an alcoholic in the early days sitting in the local pub and watching people ordering drinks. So far, so good, though.

But I have decided to make a change to the rules I established on January 7th. Partly, this is because I have cut back on reading. Work and my own writing are now eating into what used to be my reading time. And, for that, I’m almost grateful. For a long time I wanted to change the ratio of writing and reading. This month has seen a dramatic swing away from reading.

At the same time, my wife and I are having increasingly frequent discussions about moving house. Where and when remain unresolved but it will happen, and it will mean moving to a smaller property, which is unlikely to have room for my books. I estimate that at least half of the ones I own now will have to go. Actually, thinking about it, let’s say two thirds.

As I’m unlikely to refrain from buying new books at all, new rules are required. I have a reading list. I’m keeping it at ten books at a time. (I don’t read them one at a time or ‘in order’ but I do stick to books on the list.) Whenever a book on the list is done, it will move to the keep or purge pile. If it moves to ‘keep’, I need to find a book for ‘purge’. That’s straightforward enough.

Then I have the choice to add a book I own to the list or to buy a new book. However, if I want to buy a book, then a total of three books have to find their way to the purge pile.

Putting so many rules around reading and buying books might sound excessive but, truthfully, I’ve got to the point that I find the weight of my collection oppressive. Things I’ve read and enjoyed, I’m happy to see and to think I will read again. There are things I’m happy to see on the shelves that I haven’t read, and I look forward to reading. But there are a lot of books I bought on a whim and which I full intended to read but which now simply sit glowering at me. I feel I ‘should’ read them but there are other books I want to read now and I know I’ll never get back to the volumes casting their passive aggression my way.

So, without getting all Marie Kondo on my shelves, I anticipate the year ahead will be a mix of pain and relief. One positive side-effect, I hope, will be no more impulse buying and no more books that arrive, fall out the box, and are put on a shelf and ignored. I can but hope.

And I’m sure you want to know the ten books on my list at present. Fair enough, but here they are, anyway:
• The Case for a Job Guarantee by Pavlina R. Tcherneva — published by Polity
• Several Short Sentences about Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg — published by Vintage
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott — published by Anchor (definitely a ‘keep’)
• Debt by David Graeber — published by Melville House
• The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton — published by John Murray
• The Lonely City by Olivia Laing — published by Canongate
• Politics and Letters by Raymond Williams — published by Verso
• Fascism by David Renton — published by Pluto
• The Penguin Book of Oulipo edited by Philip Terry — published by Penguin
• Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan — published by Orbit

Sisyphus with cash-flow problems

January 14, 2021 By graham stewart

When the writing life is like eternally rolling a boulder up a hill

I wish I’d thought of the phrase in my headline. It’s Anne Lamott’s description of many a writer’s life. The phrase comes to towards the end of her introduction to Bird by Bird, where she talks about having no regrets for choosing the career she followed.

“I’ve managed to get some work done nearly every day of my adult life, without impressive financial success. Yet I would do it all over again in a hot second, mistakes and doldrums and breakdowns and all. Sometimes I could not tell you exactly why, especially when it feels pointless and pitiful, like Sisyphus with cash-flow problems.” page xxvi

I picked up my copy of Bird by Bird in 1995 in the Kinokuniya bookshop on Orchard Road in Singapore. It was the first book on writing I think I had ever read. I had always been of the “you can’t teach creative writing” school. What I probably meant was I was too pig-headed and arrogant to believe anyone could teach me anything. Understandably, I had written very little by 1995.

Lamott’s voice was warm and encouraging and compassionate. And funny. I’m not sure what the book taught me about the technicalities of writing but it certainly made me feel that doubts and fears and all the things that kept me from the page were perfectly normal.

I’ve had the book on my shelf since then. But it was only as I reached the suggestions for further reading at the end of Vivian Gornick’s book on memoir and essays (The Situation and the Story) that I was inspired to pick it up to read again. Gornick only lists seven books and Bird by Bird is one of them. I had forgotten the long introduction is really a memoir. It tells the story of how her father influenced her, her struggles at school, and then the practicalities of turning up day after day to face the blank page. Hence the Sisyphus reference.

Sisyphus refers to a character from a Greek myth who is damned by Zeus to eternally roll a large boulder up a steep slope — in Hades, of course — and never quite reach the top. The boulder always rolls back to the bottom and Sisyphus has to start again. He was probably on minimum wage, too, but that’s not made clear in the original stories.

Sisyphus never makes it to the top. But writes sometimes finish something — get the boulder over the crest of the hill and watch it hurtle down the slope on the other side. But then what? Back to the bottom of the original slope to look for a new boulder. Writers tend to condemn themselves to the eternal punishment. There’s no blaming Zeus for that.

I talked about my father, so now some words about my mother

January 10, 2021 By graham stewart

I’ve been reading Vivian Gornick’s book on essay and memoir writing. The Situation and the Story is a smart and lovely little book, full of wisdom and insight into what makes for great writing in both essays and memoirs. The book’s subtitle is “The Art of Personal Narrative”.

I have just read a section in which she discusses the life and work of Loren Eiseley and, especially, the memoir he completed shortly before his death in 1977. Eiseley’s book is called All The Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life. Gornick makes the book sound unmissable and it is already on my shortlist for this month’s books to buy.

It is something Gornick picks out in the book that I want to talk about in this post. After my post yesterday about my father it is almost suspicious that it is Eiseley’s relationship with his mother that caught my eye this morning when reading.

Eiseley’s description of his mother as “paranoid, neurotic, and unstable” found me nodding my head in agreement. As I have grown older I have come increasingly to realise the depth of my mother’s mental health issues, how those affected her life, and, of course, affected me as a child.

There is a sort of stigma about criticising your parents too publicly. But whereas when I was younger I would happily criticise my mother and rail at her actions and beliefs, with age has come a certain compassion and it is hard, obviously, to blame her for the things she did because she was unwell. What puzzled me as a child — and later as an adult — was that my father seemed to see no warning signs in my mother’s behaviour. In contrast, past girlfriends — and my wife, most definitely — can attest to behaviour that was not normal by any stretch of the imagination.

In the five years since my mother’s death, my father continues to talk about her as if she was a paragon of common sense, kindness, and fun. She was none of those things, except rarely. My father talks of the strength of their mutual bond and their long years of marriage. I haven’t — and of course I won’t ever — tell him of the hours my mother would spend telling me of my father’s faults. Every day for more years than I want to remember, my mother would greet me as I came in from school and start with stories that showed my father in a poor light. This did nothing, as you can imagine, for my opinion of my father and is one of the root causes for a relationship with my father that has never been more than polite.

Of the three terms for his mother used by Eiseley, it was the “neurotic” and “unstable” that immediately conjured up memories of my own mother. She may also have been paranoid but I suspect that aspect of her was easily hidden beneath her neuroses and instability. And those were the character traits that most defined her, I think. And those were the traits that made her life so small and, in the end, such a bitter thing to live through each day. The strength of her bitterness sucked my father into that same life.

It is hard to escape the lessons of a lonely childhood lived in the shadow of such a woman. Even now, with a family around me that I love and in I which I feel loved, there are times when I must resist the call of a different response to comfort and happiness. It is like a seed of misery that has to be squashed before it sprouts. There have been times in the not-too distant past when I have allowed the seed grow – through a mixture of depression and wilfulness — and it has taken me hard lessons to recover.