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Lately I have been thinking about the different styles (families?) of realistic novels -- it might be subgenres but it is not in the content, it is in the style of the prose. Many of the ones I encounter that are current are what I think of as the MFA-influenced well-made novel, and I often do not like them very much; they have beautiful prose, quite pristine and admirable in itself, but the plot fits together all perfect gears and angles and it all clicks to a clockwork end, there is never any surprise in it and it does not feel human as a whole -- characters, yes, and scenes, yes, but not the entirety of it, it does not feel like a story, whatever it is I mean by that. I do not dislike all of them; Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi was really quite good in many ways, and yet it is just not my favourite way for a novel to be made.
One of my favourite ways, I think, is perhaps a slightly older one -- I find it in Shirley Hazzard (Transit of Venus) and Penelope Lively (Moon Tiger) and I suspect Timothy Findley (although I am not yet done with his Famous Last Words so I might change my mind). I am just now reading another Penelope Lively, According to Mark, and that is what has brought all of this to mind, because it is just so -- good, but not only good, so satisfying, I feel as though I am being fed when I read it, and I wish I could figure out just why and put it into words.
Here is a quote from According to Mark
Now, why is that prose exactly to my taste? Part of it is Jo Walton's spearpoint theory I think -- that is not a big dramatic event spearpoint, but the reader has been seeing Mark, who is a biographer, battling with the self-deception of another character (who is a source for the biography he is writing) for most of the chapter, so it has a weight when he sits there on the train discarding his own. But some of it is that also I feel the story in it, the sense that I am being told this for a reason... hmn, perhaps something I am teasing out here is that the modern novels feel more like the camera view, even when I am inside Selasi's characters it has a coldness to it, an illusion of objectivity, that there is nothing between me and the characters, whereas Lively is telling me something, I feel her choosing and there is something pleasurable in that for itself.
It seems odd that I can only come up with four novelists thus far who group together for me this way; perhaps I will look on my Goodreads and see if I can find any more. But first I should eat something.
One of my favourite ways, I think, is perhaps a slightly older one -- I find it in Shirley Hazzard (Transit of Venus) and Penelope Lively (Moon Tiger) and I suspect Timothy Findley (although I am not yet done with his Famous Last Words so I might change my mind). I am just now reading another Penelope Lively, According to Mark, and that is what has brought all of this to mind, because it is just so -- good, but not only good, so satisfying, I feel as though I am being fed when I read it, and I wish I could figure out just why and put it into words.
Here is a quote from According to Mark
In the tube, these thoughts gave way to others. The others, in fact, had been there all the time, lurking in the background like a toothache. Now, they surfaced with full force and he sat glumly in the Picadilly Line, confronting them. There was no evading it; self-deception got you nowhere; he knew what had happened to him.
Now, why is that prose exactly to my taste? Part of it is Jo Walton's spearpoint theory I think -- that is not a big dramatic event spearpoint, but the reader has been seeing Mark, who is a biographer, battling with the self-deception of another character (who is a source for the biography he is writing) for most of the chapter, so it has a weight when he sits there on the train discarding his own. But some of it is that also I feel the story in it, the sense that I am being told this for a reason... hmn, perhaps something I am teasing out here is that the modern novels feel more like the camera view, even when I am inside Selasi's characters it has a coldness to it, an illusion of objectivity, that there is nothing between me and the characters, whereas Lively is telling me something, I feel her choosing and there is something pleasurable in that for itself.
It seems odd that I can only come up with four novelists thus far who group together for me this way; perhaps I will look on my Goodreads and see if I can find any more. But first I should eat something.
