The Elegant Variation: WHEW

October 15, 2009

WHEW

Now that it's over, I can ask - am I the only who immediately thought of the stomach churning opening of Enduring Love?

(True story. I found a copy of the McEwan novel in a second hand bookstore in London, took it back to my hotel and started reading at 9 p.m. It was nearly 2 a.m. before I finally was able to set it down.)

Posted at 03:16 PM in Hors catégorie | Permalink

Comments

Actually, I thought of The Bad Seed.

Posted by: Niall | October 15, 2009 at 03:43 PM

you are definitely not the only one....thought immediately of my favorite mcewan book and then thought today could be the basis of at least another mcewanesque novella

Posted by: cheryl | October 15, 2009 at 05:16 PM

You're not the only one who thought of it. And I had a similar experience with that novel. I mean picking it up and not being able to put it down until I was finished.

Posted by: F.H. | October 15, 2009 at 08:45 PM

Yes, Enduring Love was my first thought too! But also that this could be the basis of a really magical, old-fashioned children's book in a Roald Dahl vein.

Posted by: Cricket | October 16, 2009 at 06:15 AM

Agreed--I thought of it too. Enduring Love is McEwan's most overlooked, and possibly his best, novel. The opening scene involving the balloon is one of the most riveting pieces of fiction written in my lifetime.

Posted by: Michael O'D | October 16, 2009 at 06:57 AM

Sadly, I have to disagree. Enduring Love is the only McEwan I've read and I thought it woeful. I haven't forsworn him, but that was 5+ years ago, and I've not been compelled to pick him up again. Obviously,the problem is on my end....and I'm OK with that in this instance.

Posted by: Drew | October 16, 2009 at 11:48 AM

Loved the opening of Enduring Love, an extraordinary first chapter. But then was really disappointed with the rest of the book, though I do really enjoy McEwan's prose.

Posted by: Jeff | October 17, 2009 at 07:43 AM

You're not the only one who thought of it. And I had a similar experience with that novel. I mean picking it up and not being able to put it down until I was finished.
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nuoc hoa | nuoc hoa nam | nuoc hoa nu

Posted by: nhattruong | October 19, 2009 at 06:39 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."

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen

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Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

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*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

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

October 15, 2009

WHEW

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

October 15, 2009

WHEW

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