The Elegant Variation: MOTEV RETURNS: McEWAN, AUSTER, HAZZARD AND CONTEMPORARY LIT

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March 08, 2005

MOTEV RETURNS: McEWAN, AUSTER, HAZZARD AND CONTEMPORARY LIT

We finally caught back up with MOTEV who's been keeping a full reading list between her two reading groups and was, as always, eager to vent with us. For those of you new to MOTEV (Mother of The Elegant Variation), she's a former professor of German literature. It helps to imagine her pronouncements delivered with a Viennese accent.

TEV: Hey did you ever finish Enduring Love?

MOTEV: (exasperated) No. I just can't.

TEV: Why not?

MOTEV: I just can't get into it … It annoys me and I don't enjoy reading it. And I said, you know what? I don't enjoy this. So I stopped. I got maybe one-third through.

TEV: What did you hate about it?

MOTEV: Everything

TEV: That's specific and helpful.

MOTEV: OK. I don't like the characters. The characters so annoy me. The beginning, this whole balloon .. the whole scene is mondvacsinalt … (TEV Note: A Hungarian expression that eludes translation.)

TEV: Let me see if I can figure that out … "says what's it's doing"?

MOTEV: No. Well, it's pretentious. It's artificial. I just can't get into it. Nothing. Except chapter five where he talks about the narratives of science, that was interesting. For that I had to read 80 pages? (sighs) I'm probably missing something. He's some people's favorite author, the big cheese in contemporary literature, and I can't get friendly with him. He doesn't sound real to me. Everything is cerebral and not real.

TEV: Have you read anything else of his?

MOTEV: I read Amsterdam which I thought was witty in a macabre way. And Atonement.

TEV: What did you think of Atonement?

MOTEV: Too long, too verbose. I didn't think much of that either. Sorry. I can see I'm falling off my pedestal in great leaps and bounds.

TEV: (gasping) Not at all.

MOTEV: Not my writer for sure. Shirley Hazzard on the other hand in Transit of Venus – now that to me is writing.

TEV: You know I like her, too.

MOTEV: Writers where I feel that the word comes from within, not just from the typewriter.

TEV: So what's up next? Who dares mount the scaffold next?

MOTEV: (laughs) What are we doing this weekend? Oracle Night …

TEV: Auster.

MOTEV: Yes. Another I feel he can write but he is, a what is he, a stylistic juggler –

TEV: - which you don't care for.

MOTEV: I don't know. I read all of that book. It didn't annoy me as much as Enduring Love did. And I also read that Dog at Midnight book …

TEV: Oh, The Curious Incident. And?

MOTEV: Charming, I like it. The language retains the mentality of the boy, doesn't want to be clever doesn't want to be, what, fireworks of words and whatnot . .. it is very honest and true sounding from the voice point of view.

TEV: Well I liked that book a lot.

MOTEV: (basta) So that's where it's at.

TEV: Thanks. And I have my next MOTEV column.

MOTEV: (pause) You're writing this down again?

TEV: Of course.

MOTEV: (sighs) Mark I will not be allowed into Barnes and Noble if you go on like this!

TEV: Thank you.

MOTEV: Mark, you are dangerous. I am going to stop talking to you on the phone. I'm putting your alleged father on the phone.

Posted at 12:30 AM in MOTEV | Permalink

Comments

Where can one locate MOTEV, I mean in the blogosphere? (please read this question with a Slavic/New Jersey accent). Not that I don't enjoyt your site, TEV. It's just that MOTEV has all those years of experience (and observation of you), to speak of.

Posted by: DarkoV | March 08, 2005 at 05:50 AM

Well, I disagree with MOTEV as to the merits of Enduring Love, but I respect her critical judgment and honesty. How about interviewing your alleged father?

Posted by: Jimmy Beck | March 08, 2005 at 06:53 AM

I heart MOTEV. Totally ON about Enduring Love. Blaahahah. Unfortunately I didn't stop reading it until the end. I gagged down every word. I wish I had known MOTEV back then. Can we have more of her????

Posted by: Annette | March 08, 2005 at 07:11 AM

She's awesome! I see a cult following in the future.

Posted by: Alex | March 08, 2005 at 08:51 AM

"Alleged father" = inside joke or allusion to Oskar Matzerath/Bronski, protagonist of Gunther Grass' "The Tin Drum"?

Posted by: Laura | March 08, 2005 at 08:51 AM

That was just great.

I'm now filled with the desire to talk about books in a Viennese accent and utter "Mondvacsinalt!" at every given opportunity.

Posted by: Justine | March 08, 2005 at 09:01 AM

I guess you can feel lucky she didn't rag on Banville.

Posted by: Annette | March 08, 2005 at 09:08 AM

Well, I'm a bigfan of Ian McEwan's, but your mother made me laugh out loud -- always a good start for the day.

Posted by: Frances | March 08, 2005 at 09:45 AM

Finallly, somebody who will say McEwan is a pain in the ass, and becoming increasingly so. I could translate mondvacsinait, but it would be wrong.

Posted by: John Shannon | March 08, 2005 at 09:53 AM

I so ♥ the MOTEV.
And tossed Atonement across the room about halfway through.

Posted by: Jessica | March 08, 2005 at 10:25 AM

how about a half-assed attempt at defining "Mondvacsinalt"?

Posted by: Lola | March 08, 2005 at 12:53 PM

More, please! :)

Posted by: amcorrea | March 08, 2005 at 01:11 PM

I love MOTEV! "Transit of Venus--now that to me is writing." More, please. More on big cheeses and the word coming from within, not just from the typewriter. And more often.

Posted by: valerie | March 08, 2005 at 02:33 PM

Your mama is a charmer. But, man, I'm dying of curiosity about "alleged" father. Like, does she call him that when she's mad at him? Or is it a long-standing, hardly-even-noticed-anymore reference to an alternate supplier of the DNA?

Posted by: Karen | March 08, 2005 at 04:18 PM

She sounds like a great woman and is an excellent judge of literature too. Charmante. I doubt very much my kids will ever print my conversations - obviously MOTEV doesn't crave notoriety as much as some of the rest of us!

Posted by: genevieve | March 08, 2005 at 04:58 PM

Love your ma. I thought I was the only who hated Atonement. Can MOTEV write a "Favorite Book" list?Please provide phonetic pronunciation of "Mondvacsinalt!"

Posted by: Janet | March 09, 2005 at 07:59 PM

I love McEwan, and I agree that, after a magnificent beginning, Enduring Love, fails to deliver. Has anyone attempted Saturday yet?

Posted by: AF | March 30, 2005 at 05:51 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

MY NOVEL

HARRY, REVISED - Get all the details here.

TOUR DATES

WORTHY READINGS

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."

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen

This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it.
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

With rave reviews from James Wood, Michiko Kakutani and Dwight Garner, it might not seem like we need to tell you to drop everything and go read Netherland, but we are telling you, and here's why: The way book coverage works these days, everyone talks about the same book for about two or three weeks, and then they move on and the book is more or less forgotten. Whereas a berth here in the Recommended sidebar keeps noteworthy titles in view for a good, long time, which is the sort of sustained attention this marvelous novel deserves. A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.
Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here
Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee

Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

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Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

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The Paris Review Interviews, I by The Paris Review and Philip Gourevitch

Scanning our Recommended selections, one might conclude we're addicted to interviews, and one would be correct. If author interviews are like crack to us, then the Paris Review author interviews must surely be the gold standard of crack (a comparison Plimpton might not have embraced). The newly issued The Paris Review Interviews, Volume I (Picador) rolls out the heavy hitters. Who can possibly turn away from the likes of Saul Bellow, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, Dorothy Parker, Robert Gottlieb and others? The interviews are formal and thoughtful but never dry and can replace any dozen "how-to" books on writing. What can be more comforting than hearing Bellow, answering a question on preparations and conception, admit "Well, I don't know exactly how it's done.” The best part of this collection? The "Volume I" in the title, with its promise of more volumes to come.
The Dead Fish Museum: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio

The best short story collection we've read since ... well, certainly since we've started this blog. And we might even say "ever" if Dubliners didn't cast such a long shadow. The short story is not our preferred form but D'Ambrosio's eight brilliant stories are almost enough to convert us. Defy the conventional wisdom that short story collections don't sell and treat yourself to this marvel. (We're especially partial, naturally, to "Screenwriter".)
The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier
*Now in Paperback*

What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.
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When George Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott was published in 1864, it received rapturous notices, and reviewers were quick to point out that the long-standing friendship between Prescott and Ticknor made the latter an ideal Boswell. Sheila Heti has pulled this obscure leaf from the literary archives and fashioned a mordantly funny anti-history; a pungent and hilarious study of bitterness and promise unfulfilled. As a fretful Ticknor navigates his way through the rain-soaked streets of Boston to Prescott's house ("But I am not a late man. I hate to be late."), he recalls his decidedly one-sided lifelong friendship with his great subject. Unlike the real-life Ticknor, this one is an embittered also-ran, full of plans and intentions never realized, always alive to the fashionable whispers behind his back. Heti seamlessly inhabits Ticknor's fussy 19th-century diction with a feat of virtuoso ventriloquism that puts one in mind of The Remains of the Day. Heti's Ticknor would be insufferable if he weren't so funny, and in the end, the black humor brings a leavening poignancy to this brief tale. But don't let the size fool you — this 109-page first novel is small but scarcely slight; it is as dense and textured as a truffle.
The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers by Vendela Vida

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you and yes, we are recommending a Believer product. Twenty-three interviews (a third presented for the first time) pairing the likes of Zadie Smith with Ian McEwan, Jonathan Lethem with Paul Auster, Edward P. Jones and ZZ Packer, and Adam Thirwell with Tom Stoppard make this collection a must-read. Lifted out of the context of some of the magazine's worst twee excesses, the interviews stand admirably on their own as largely thoughtful dialogues on craft. A handful of interviewers seem more interested in themselves than in their subjects but in the main this collection will prove irresistible to writers of any stripe - struggling or established - and to readers seeking a window into the creative process.
The Sea by John Banville

John Banville's latest novel returns him to the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time since 1989's The Book of Evidence. In The Sea, we find Banville in transition, moving from the icy, restrained narrators of The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud toward warmer climes. Max Morden has returned to the vacation spot of his youth as he grieves the death of his wife. Remembering his first, fatal love, Morden works to reconcile himself to his loss. Banville's trademark linguistic virtuosity is everpresent but some of the chilly control is relinquished and Max mourns and rages in ways that mark a new direction for Banville - and there's at least one great twist which you'll never see coming. Given the politicized nature of the British literary scene, Banville's shot at the prize might be hobbled by his controversial McEwan review but we're rooting for our longtime favorite to go all the way at last. UPDATE: Our man won!
Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.

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SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

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

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."

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

March 08, 2005

MOTEV RETURNS: McEWAN, AUSTER, HAZZARD AND CONTEMPORARY LIT

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

March 08, 2005

MOTEV RETURNS: McEWAN, AUSTER, HAZZARD AND CONTEMPORARY LIT

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism