… In Search of Authenticity. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In general, when a novel manipulates its material to conform to the pieties of the day, or alternatively to attack those pieties for no other reason than the visibility such an attack will generate, when its literary tropes are all too familiar, its clever prose reminiscent of other clever prose, then the compass needle is slipping away from true north. William Giraldi’s Busy Monsters, Andrés Neuman’s Traveler of the Century, Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries are all recent examples. (James Walton, writing in The New York Review, speaks of the “feeling that The Luminaries is more a careful simulacrum of a great novel than the real thing.”) When, on the other hand, the author renounces some easy twist, some expected payoff, to take us into territory we didn’t expect but that nevertheless fits with the drift of the story, then the novel gains force and conviction. And when he or she does it again, telling quite a different story that is nevertheless driven by the same urgent tensions, then we are likely moving into the zone of authenticity.
These are sound distinctions.
Yet there is something worthwhile about conforming to conventions within genres of literature. After all, many of those conventions exist and persist for some valid aesthetic reasons.
ReplyDeleteIf James Walton is reading THE LUMNARIES to see how it aligns with previous styles, rather than looking out for what's not explicitly stated or observing how the novel's astrological structure locks the characters into fates of their making, then he's a very poor and indolent reader indeed. I agree with R.T. Very often, the apparent repetition of a style or a convention isn't necessarily hackery. By that definition, we'd have to call James Joyce a no talent washout for the "Cyclops" chapter in ULYSSES.
ReplyDeleteWhen Edward Champion agrees with me, I feel somehow relieved and vindicated. And, BTW, it is great to once again "read" your "voice," Edward.
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