It is pretty hard to bluff about being caught up with the class reading when you have to write your reactions on the Internet. I'm on page 16 of Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. I'm supposed to be finished with it. And with a few short stories by Raymond Carver. And I'm supposed to finish another novel by Thursday. It's a good thing that I have ridiculous amounts of free time.
Why I'm stopped on page 16 is that Prose stole all of page 15 from my head. Page 15 talks about how readers need to figure out how authors have endured. She gives some examples of authors that I have never read/don't care about, but I have populated my own list of authors over the years that simply baffle me.
Charles Dickens tops my hit list. I have tried to read David Copperfield three separate times. I have struggled through bad books before, but I haven't been able to choke this behemoth down no matter how strong my willpower. For starters, it's almost 1,000 pages long (768 pages to 1264 pages according to Amazon). 1,000 pages. I haven't been to church in quite awhile, but I think that is Bible territory. There is a book entitled The Complete History of the World that only clocks in at 400 pages. How come Dickens, a prolific writer, couldn't manage to shave that down a tad? I would throw out some specific suggestions for reduction here, but after the third attempt I plied my brain with drugs and liquor to try to purge the memory of that god awful book, only to be constantly reminded by other authors and authorities as to Dickens' greatness. At some point in my life, I made the decision that if you can't get an idea out in fewer than 500 pages, your project is either overambitious, or you are a bad, long-winded, boring writer. I imagine I'll give it a fourth shot someday because I like subjecting myself to torture in the name of pride.
I also wonder about Vladimir Nabokov. I was about halfway through Lolita, considered by many to be Nabokov's best work, when school started. There is likely a twist that I haven't yet encountered, but so far, all I've read is a very beautifully worded account of a pedophile's life. I'm fairly irreverent, but I can't help but feel disturbed each time Humbert Humbert describes his little love.
One thing that both men share is a fantastic grasp of the English language. Nabokov especially makes me despise my comparatively tiny vocabulary and poor grammar because English isn't even his native tongue (showoff). I still wonder why people are fascinated by these men because in my eyes, their grasp of the language isn't enough to suck me in. I would trade some linguistic virtuosity on both accounts for a unique perspective or cutting insight into the human condition.
I'm probably missing something in both works, and welcome arguments in support of Dickens and Nabokov, but for now they will have to show the damp, dimly lit studio apartment in my head reserved for writers in my doghouse. It's going to be crowded on that single bed with Anthony Bourdain...
2 comments:
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins."
I love it.
As you mentioned, Nabokov is even more impressive considering English is not his native tongue. One wouldn't know it. Even more interesting is how he feels about English. I don't know which version of Lolita you have, but at the end of mine, there's an afterword from Nabokov and he says,
"My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses-- the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions-- which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way."
- November 12, 1956
What's sick is that his rant about his "second-rate brand of English" is more eloquent than anything I've ever said in my entire life. Nabokov was an ass...
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