I finished three books this week that I’d been working on for some time so don’t get the idea I’m some kind of page-turning wizard here. The point of these Reading Updates is to keep track of what I’ve read and to jot down a few notes of what I can take away from the works I read. I suspect that writers read differently than other readers, just like architects experience diferent things when they enter buildings and seamtresses notice different things when trying on clothes. My in-laws are all ceiling / lathing tradespeople so it’s fun to watch them enter a room and see their eyes drift up to the ceiling to check out the product used and its installation. I digress just a bit:
• A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin — Yes, I’m the last person in North America to get around to reading this. Notably this is the first complete, novel length work I’ve read on my iPhone. (I used to have the complete stories of Anton Chekov and the screenplay to the Big Lebowski on my Palm V way back in the day…) I now can say I *totally* get the idea of e-books. Sure it’s a different experience than reading an ink and paper book but if I had to carry around Martin’s tome, I’d still be reading it. I was able to slip out my iPhone and page through a bit while waiting for an elevator or for a checkout.
The depth of the world — It’s an epic so of course the world needs to have a sense of expanse bobbing just beneath the surface of the text. I usually despise that appendix-y sort of stuff but that probably has to do more with merely clumbsy attempts to integrate backstory into a narrative. I always had the sense that I was reading a narrative and not just a dramatized atlas. There was a great sense of familiarity about the world too while being fantastic. The echoes of the War of the Roses, I thought, added a sense of verisimilitude and plausibility.
Mulitiple character chapters — great strategy for depicting the expanse of the world. There was always a flavor of the writer’s style as a constant beneath each of the different tone and perspectives which helped for coherence. Characters were repeated enough to get a sense of emotional depth, something that I think I missed in, say, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, for instance. Seems important that to avoid telling the tale from some character perspecctives though– my impulse would be to reserve the interiority of the less sympathetic characters for key moments. It would be fun to use the multiple character device to play up misunderstanding, fracturing the sense of an omniverse into a constellation of projections. Robert Coover’s story “The Babysitter” is a watershed proof of concept for that strategy but it succeeds largely on novelty. Susan Sontag’s “The Way we live now” (I think that’s the title) accented the multiplicity of voices in rumo and gossip (as I recall) I wonder if a longer piece could be written with multiple, highly contrasting voices.
Gentle insertion of the magical — The sense of truly fantastical was added in gradually. At the beginning there is a sense that oddities might be accounted for by exageration but piece by piece the fully fantastical elements were factored in. The problem of the re-enchantment of the world is one that a contemporary writer has to deal with in a different way, I think, than the speculative writer of the modernist era.
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman — I checked this hardcover out from the library after being turned on to it by the Sword and Laser reading group on GoodReads. Sword and Laser, as of last night, is also a new media video show on the Geek and Sundry YouTube channel. I am very eager now to read the sequel “The Magician Kings.”
Literate narration — the prose is easy to read, clever and well-turned. The danger in this facility is that sometimes it felt like I was being told more than shown, that the book was a bit clotted in summary. Though it might be a writing textbook no-no, these segments were very enjoyable and I get the sense that it was intentionally a strategy to depict Quentin, the major character who is so obsessed with finding happiness that he almost lives his life stuck on fast forward hoping to get there.
Gritty magic — A snotty dismissal I’ve encountered might be paraphrased “Harry Potter with booze and sex, then more of the same in Narnia.” But that dismissal misses the point. Sure, I get the sense that Grossman’s background is in the literary genre more than in the fantasy genre so his attempts to make magic feel “real” might be a bit clumbsy. However, the world depicted is interesting and fresh. Magician’s aren’t magically happy; in fact, there’s a real sense that magic stunts ones emotional growth and maturation (though I think being a member of the monied elite as these characters are, might also arrest development.) What results however is a book *about* late adolescence / early adulthood that might not really be appropriate for teenagers. File under the “youth wasted on the young” paradox, perhaps?
Character as tone — Another really literary aspect of the book is what I’m taking to be the use of Quentin’s jaundiced perspective as the novel’s tone. In contrast to GRRM’s straightforward use of character perspective for each chapter, Quentin’s character is fully drenched into the book. I think both what is noticed and how it is depicted is fully the view from Quentin’s head, or at least as much as a third person limited narration can accomplish. I keep thinking of Catcher in the Rye (a book I despised as I recall for some snotty reason or another.) This strategy is really “literary” and a lot of the readers on GoodReads didn’t seem to be able to cope with a non-heroic protagonist.
Again, can’t wait to read the sequel.
• The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye by Jonathan Lethem — I picked up this collection of stories at the public library booksale and I am nearly awe-struck. I won’t go through the stories one by one. I don’t know the last time I’ve encountered a writer who seems to be doing alsmot exactly what I am attempting with my writing. The experience is extremely productive; I stand convicted by his example. Where I think I tend to pull my punches and go for a merely literary “feel,” Lethem doggedly builds out his inventions to full, satisfying narratives while not sacrificing their inherent weirdness. I’m reminded of what a writing teacher told me “You’ve got to earn subtlety, kid.” Reading Lethem, I realized that I am way under-writing my ideas, to the detriment of my stories. He’s got a gently Dickian sensibility without the paranoia. His writing is clear an unaffected which allows the reader to focus on the fantastical elements he describes. I will definitely be reading more Lethem.