The Elegant Variation: DEPT. OF TRIVIA

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July 05, 2005

DEPT. OF TRIVIA

Some mild fallout from John Banville's recent review of Saturday. John Sutherland - he of Booker fame - has written a letter to the New York Review of Books regarding the review, and Banville has responded too deliciously not to reproduce here. Painstakingly retyped as a TEV public service:

SQUASH

To the Editors:

I don't agree with John Banville's judgment that "Saturday is a dismayingly bad book" [NYR, May 26], and I have to wonder if we are reading the same book (has the American edition, perhaps, been modified from that published in the UK in January by Jonathan Cape?).
Banville writes: "Perowne goes on to his squash game, which he manages to win despite the fright he has endured and the punch in the sternum that Baxter delivered." And later, "Having thrashed his squash opponent, Perowne returns to the arts of peace."
In the squash game, as published in the UK, at seventeen pages' length, Perowne loses.

John Sutherland
Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus
Department of English
University College, London

John Banville replies:

Summoned, one shuffles guiltily into the Department of Trivia. I have no knowledge of, and care nothing for, the game of squash. Having read Ian McEwan's description of the match between Perowne and his American friend, all seventeen pages of it, I formed the notion that after a shaky start, and despite his experiences in the morning - traffic accident, encounter with thug, punch in the chest, etc. - Perowne managed to putplay his opponent who, however, deprived him of what he clearly considered a victory by demanding a let or somesuch - as I say, I am ignorant in these matters, and McEwan's account of the game made me no wiser, due no doubt to my sluggish comprehension rather than his powers of description. Perowne seemed to regard his opponent's manuever as not cheating, exactly, but certainly a less than generous broadening of a very fine line, although he did grudgingly consent to go on playing and lost, something which obviously meant more to him than it did to me. One concludes that there are no moral victories in sport, an activity in which, as in a letter to the editor, it is easy to score by a technicality.

Posted at 12:25 AM | Permalink

Comments

John Sutherland is an expert in Victorian fiction, so he's used to novels relying on outrageous coincidences and sentimentalism. No wonder he can't comprehend Banville's (absolutely spot-on) judgement.

Posted by: Steve Mitchelmore | July 05, 2005 at 11:27 AM

"Saturday" appeared in the New Yorker as the short story "The Diagnosis" (12/20/2004)--I had no idea it was part of a novel. At any rate, the short story was mildly enjoyable, and if Banville's review of Saturday is accurate at all, perhaps it should have stayed a short story.

Posted by: K.L. Parr | July 05, 2005 at 05:33 PM

The best review of McEwan's novel remains:

http://barbaricdocument.blogspot.com/2005/02/politics-of-ian-mcewans-saturday_04.html

Posted by: Perry Middlemiss | July 05, 2005 at 09:40 PM

Great sportbook for any evil genius, hero, sidekick, henchman, or innocent bystander. http://www.gosportsbet.com

Posted by: sportbook | June 08, 2006 at 03:10 PM

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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."

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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

July 05, 2005

DEPT. OF TRIVIA

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

July 05, 2005

DEPT. OF TRIVIA

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