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August 22, 2009

Comments

Niall

"The first third of “Glover’s Mistake” is occasionally marred by a bit too much telling and not quite enough showing."

Can't comment on how apt this is in re Laird's novel, but, as a standard for novel writing, it seems misplaced to me. "Show, don't tell" is of course the axiom for screenwriting. But does it really apply to the novel? I don't think so. To me the novel is all about telling. It's what differentiates it from everything else. Part of the pleasure of reading a novel is becoming lost in the consciousness of its author. In some cases, as in Pynchon's novel, that's the only pleasure left.

I've been having this argument with a screenwriter friend of mine who is writing his first novel (something you can relate to, I'm sure). I keep telling him to tell more and show less, and at first he thought this was heresy. Now he's getting the hang of it.

Cheers.

Bob Anderton

I thoroughly enjoyed your review, which is sending me to the bookstore. But it also sent me to the Internet for more biographical information about Laird.

And, wouldn't you know it, Laird is ... the husband (or ex-husband, depending on the source) of Zadie Smith.

Once again, a lit insider is chosen for the spotlight by the NYTimes. Of course, Laird has a right to do his thing, and I'm sure the novel is as good as you say, but my pleasure in finding a new writer now is diminished because I wonder, 'Why him?'

I guess there is nothing we can do about this ... it's a trap for Laird and a trap for readers. In any case, thanks for the review. I have no answers, only tears.

Niall

Bob -

Judging a writer by his/her biography is kind of beside the point (unless we're talking about Ezra Pound). But if you want to find "new" writers you've never heard of, whose discovery will have no possible connection to the celebrity industrial complex, go to a used bookstore. They are filled with old novels by wriers you've never heard of, some of whom you may quite like. That's my method in any event.

TEV

Bob, thanks for likimg my review. I would add that 600 words in page 18 doesn't really constitute a spotlight; and I'd also ask the inverse of your proposition - should Laird's work be ignored/not covered simply because of whom he is married to? That doesn't seem especially fair, either, does it? Laird is a prize winning writer in his own right, after all.

Anyway, whether or not he is a "lit insider" - whatever that mythical creature is - he was unknown to you at the time of discovery, and so I think your pleasure should remain undimmed. But I've been accused of being Polyanna ...

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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."