It fascinates me how many different ways there are to think about writing.
Fellow #writers, do any of you resonate with these words by William Gass, in a 1976 interview in The Paris Review?
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3576/the-art-of-fiction-no-65-william-gass
If not (and I suspect it's "not" for most of you), what *would* you say motivates your work? Has it always been this way, or have your motivations changed over time?
Someone asked me a few weeks back what my favourite novels were. Then I had a Bad Time harassed on the street & forgot. 🙃 So many! How to choose?
Brothers K is one I feel too personally to rank; others include The Sea, The Sea; Light in August; Middlemarch; A Cure for Suicide; Golden Notebook; Anathem...
But for exquisite books? Top 3?
The Name of the Rose
The Years of Rice and Salt
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Books that seek wholehearted immersion will always win my heart.
Y tú? 👀
#Books
@MLClark Beautiful list(s). Brothers K and Middlemarch are right up there for me as well. For much of my life I think I *was* Dorothea. Can't believe I've never read The Name of the Rose...
@LiseL Ohhhh I knew we were bosom friends, as Anne would say. :)
Yes, Dorothea is someone I resonated with myself (to my horror!). The worst part is that, as a wee'un, I could ID all the people who would "Exactly right" me in ways I knew weren't genuine - but they aren't easily escaped! So how does one *not* try to lean into something that feels truer to that inner integrity burning for expression?
😅 Ah life. In that and Mill on the Floss, I think Eliot was writing characters true to her too.
@MLClark Agree, agree, agree! They certainly aren't easy to escape: I've also been Emily Brontë (because writers are characters too), since I was 15, sigh and lol. Mill on the Floss is definitely Eliot's most autobiographical novel. Hmmmm, I'd love to know what you think of Daniel Deronda. In fact, if you ever write about Eliot, do please let me know!
@LiseL !!! You've read Deronda too! 💫 ❤️ Oh my 19th-century-lit-scholar heart is all aflutter.
Deronda is such an important book for thinking about identity formation: easily one of the most nuanced attempts to understand the self in relation to ideas of obligation to others. All hugely informed by anxieties of empire at the time, which made her negotiation of Judaism even more striking. (Dickens, in contrast, often leaned into Orientalist anxieties in his portrayals.) What struck you about it?
@MLClark So much. I guess mainly her effort to see into the heart of mystical Judaism and her interest in Zionism. As you say, really extraordinary for the times, even more so given her own fraught relationship with religion. I don't think it was particularly well received at the time. Daniel's mentor/therapist relationship to Gwendolyn also stands out as being extraordinary. Like Middlemarch, so unique, and so unlike anything that came before it.
@LiseL Or after! I didn't mention in my list, but Jude the Obscure holds a painful place in my heart as well; I sorely feel for Hardy giving up on novels for poetry due to the toxic response he received for writing nuanced explorations of how unjust social contexts bind us to life outcomes made crueller by our capacity to imagine other ways things might have been.
In a better world, Daniel Deronda would've inspired a whole wealth of works in dialogue with its ideas. A shame we didn't get that.
@LiseL 💛 Oh, such brilliant lines of inquiry! We have *so* much to return to as literary excuses allow. I want to pick your brain (& heart!) about many related topics!
I'm diving into writing now, but what a joy of a chat, Lise. 😊 Thank you for this gift of a deep dive into how the classics continue to affect us here and now. Whatever reading you've got on the go these days, I only hope it's a tenth as thought-provoking as all the gems above.
Happiest of weekends, beautiful you! 🕊️
@MLClark Thank you for your thoughts (as always) and your excellent book recommendations. And any time you want to time travel to the 19th or 24th centuries, you know where to find me... 😂 Happy writing!
@Notokay I hear you. I Ioved Daniel Deronda, but I do see its flaws. Mirah's a little too saint-like for my taste. Some parts read a little too much like an essay on Judaism, and I see why some readers might feel like it's two novels unsuccessfully woven into one. But I could easily forgive the flaws when there were so many strengths -- imho!
@MLClark
Yes, what happened with Hardy was tragic.
Eliot was highly sensitive to criticism - Lewes tried his best to protect her from it so she would continue to write - but I don't know if her last work, the experimental or pre-modernist Impressions of Theophrastus Such (which I haven't read) was in any way a reaction to any controversy around DD. Hmmm.
And I also wonder what she would have written after that, had she lived?