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October 28, 2004

THE POLITICS OF WRITING

Author Gregg Hurwitz on his new blog reprints in full an article by author Andrew Klavan on the liberal bias towards heroes in fiction and film and then has a few comments of his own. Here's a snippet from both:

Klavan says: When I submitted my latest novel, "Shotgun Alley," my editor — seeking only my good — suggested I tone down one character's nasty remarks about feminists. When I demurred, he pointed out that the book buyer for one of the major chains might order far fewer books because of it. I still declined, but I'm established and ornery. If I were just starting out, I would've had to be brave, which is much harder.


Hurwitz says: One of my golden rules: Never explain by conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity or mediocrity. As Jung argued – the MECHANISM for creating archetypes is inherent in man, not the archetypes themselves. So if people have an instinct to choose a symbol for wisdom, within most cultures they will settle on a wise old man (or woman). It makes sense and it’s obvious. Likewise, unless someone is compelled to leap outside the conventional narrative structures (Bowles, Trollope, etc.), they’ll settle on what most easily fits the bill. Brilliant film and books are ALWAYS a leap beyond the prevailing winds (and usually beyond propagandistic fulfillments of contemporary politics of either side) - and therefore are always rare.

Posted at 02:09 AM |

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TEV DEFINED


  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

SECOND LOOK

  • The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

    Bs

    Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
  • The Rider by Tim Krabbe

    Rider_4

    Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

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