The Elegant Variation: COE IN THE TIMES

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June 29, 2005

COE IN THE TIMES

Like a Fiery Elephant is nudging insistently at the very top of our TBR pile, but we're hellbent on finishing our novel before undertaking it so it has our full attention. In the interim, we content ourselves with Jonathan Coe's op-ed piece from yesterday's Los Angeles Times.

Naively, I thought the whole thing would take a couple of years. I hadn't taken into account that, even in a relatively short life (Johnson was 40 when he committed suicide), a man can accumulate a vast network of friends and leave behind a labyrinthine trail of stories. Nor that those stories would be so rich in human detail. Nor that my theories of literature would have diverged in subsequent years from Johnson's so radically. Nor that the affinity I would discover with him was temperamental, rather than aesthetic. I hadn't anticipated that the relationship I would forge with him would be so close, intense and prickly; that his dogmatism and refusal to concede ground would begin to irritate me.

Posted at 12:30 AM | Permalink

Comments

I took "Like a Fiery Elephant" on a plane with me and had great difficulty prying myself away from the book. It's a fantastic literary biography, full of fantastic speculation, fine form and pure brio.

Posted by: ed | June 29, 2005 at 09:55 AM

I'm with Ed. Can't tell you how much I've enjoyed Coe's book, for so many reasons -- compelling subject, interesting voice (Coe's), clever form (built around 160 "fragments" from Johnson's writings, etc.), thorough research, fascinating era, etc., etc., etc. I working my way through Johnson's books at the same time, which are also wonderful.

But yes, this is *definitely* not a book to start reading while you're trying to finish your novel.

Posted by: Sam | June 30, 2005 at 02:41 PM

Like A Fiery Elephant is out in Canada next week, on the heels of the very fine Closed Circle. I'm glad to see the Times piece, as Coe is getting virtually no attention up here. By contrast, Nick Hornby seems to be running for office. He's everywhere. Sigh.

Posted by: Dave Worsley | July 01, 2005 at 05:57 AM

Strange, Dave, that the book comes out in Canada two months after it's released in the US. I get the impression that the book's success has caught everyone by surprise, including the publishers.

Posted by: Sam | July 01, 2005 at 08:22 AM

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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

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Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

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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

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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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Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

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Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

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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

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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

June 29, 2005

COE IN THE TIMES

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

June 29, 2005

COE IN THE TIMES

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