Skip to main content

Trying to Read Novels Again

I used to read novels by the bucketload. From around sixteen to my late twenties. Hesse, Camus, Undset, Hamsun, Boll, Vidal, Vonnegut, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Greene. I lvoed them. They told me ways of seeing life.

But the attraction waned. I don't know why. Maybe my four years of travelling and working my way around the world replaced novels as a way of seeing with seeing sites and meeting people as a way of seeing life. Maybe my subsequent settling down to full-time work, marriage, and parenthood did likewise, though I know many people who devour novels despite or because of these duties.

Anyway, periodically I try to reignite the passion, perceiving that I'm out of touch with contemporary fiction, and that all literature is a "good thing".

As an aside the one writer who managed to break through my disapointment and lethargy about novels was - maybe still is, as I haven't read him in the past five years or more - Somerset Maugham. Not the most fashionable of novelists and short-story writers but generally still held in high esteem by some.

So a week ago I bought, not by design but simply because I saw it there, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. Nobel Prize Winner as recently as 2018. I quite liked it but not enough to continue past page 58. It had interesting moments, speculative writing and views which drew me, but overall my mind weighed up the use of time reading it with the use of time exploring more directly the existential issues we all face, and found it the lesser subject.

Ultimately I couldn't really care what the woman narrator eventually experiences or finds out about Big Foot, the neighbour who was found dead in his house. Or Oddball's life or his son's, the policeman. Not even the narrator's compassion for animals or her non-conformist belief system that so unsettles traditional Catholics in real life - not sure if any similar issue occurs in the novel.

It's not Tokarczuk's fault as a writer. I can hardly claim superior insight into literature than the Nobel Committee who gave her the grandest of literary honours, nor do I doubt their ability to do so, as some more opinionated critics have done.

I'll give the book to a charity and hope someone else really does enjoy it and find something meaningful or challening in it. But for me, after between a fifth and a quarter way through it I ran out of fuel. The fuel being the passion to read out, find out more, glean something special from it.

Novels don't seem to give me that any more. Which is, through nostalgic lenses, a real shame, but through the lens of mindfulness, just how it is, and I move on, using my time in other ways hopefully more productive and useful to me and to those around me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lessons from The Book of Chuang Tzu - Part 5

The wise person does not hold onto life, nor do they fear death. They arrive without expectation and leave without resistance. They came calmly, went calmly, and that was that. They are not interested in what becomes of them. Their kindness enriches generations yet they have no great love for people. They do what they want. They are not judgemental. Cheerfully smiling, they are content. When calm, they appear to be one with the world. Their inner nature seems unknowable. They get on well with society. They follow the natural course of events. Death and birth are fixed. They are beyond the control of humanity. This is just how things are. People praise and criticise leaders and thinkers but it would be so much better if they just follow the Tao. To have a human form is a joyful thing but in a universe full of possible forms there are others just as good. The sage rests contented with all things. They take pleasure in early death, old age, in the origin and in the end, and sees them all ...
Post a Comment
Read more

On The Bible Part 1

Introduction So the chances are high that this won't last; a commentary of The Bible as I read it page by page. My ideas usually fizzle out pretty damn quickly, but I'm hoping The bible is sufficiently important to sustain my attention and stimulate my intellect and emotiojnal intelligence and mindfulness to keep me commenting on it until I've done the whole lot... and educated myself enormously in the process. Why do such a thing? Well, it is probably the most important book in human history as it has been the most influential, at least until thesecond half of the twentieth century. Even now, if you consider the influence of evangelical Christians in the USA, and the State of Israel, you can still see how strong an influence The Bible has in today's world. Yet most people, myself included, have probably only heard children's versions of some of the Bible stories, or those carefully chosen extracts read in church or school in our childhood. The vast majority of The ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Conditioned - Part 1

When I was about ten the local Catholic priest started taking me to Celtic football games, and the occasional international featuring Scotland, at the national stadium, Hampden Park. During Scotland games against England the fans would chant "If you hate the fucking English, clap your hands." All the Scottish fans sang it, and all clapped. and "We hate Jimmy Hill, he's a poof, he's a poof." (Jimmy Hill was one of the foremost football pundits at the tine, and English.) At Celtic games the fans sang "Fuck the Queen and the UDA" Later in my life one of my best friend's brother was a Rangers season ticket holder, but sometimes because of his work he would be away when a home match was on. He'd give his other ticket to my friend. One time my friend asked if I wanted to go, so we went together. This was in the late 1980s or early 90s. I don't remember who Rangers were playing. What I do remember is at one point the fans started singing ...
Post a Comment
Read more