It occurs to me, that lately I have been reading a lot more writing about writing or writers on writers than actually reading new fiction. I feel a little frustrated about this. There is a stack of half finished books on my bedside. I feel bad just looking at them!
Anyway, I always wanted to check out Zadie Smith's then new book White Teeth. I had forgotten all about it, until a few days back when I read this delightful essay that she wrote, about the experience of having her book being turned into a movie.
It is not strictly true that I am not reading at all. I am in between 'Decline and Fall' by Evelin Waugh and fat WebMethods manuals. I quite like 'Decline and Fall' so far. I am not sure I can say the same about the WebMethods product line.
So I was quite looking forward to reading this essay on Waugh by Hitchens. It is well written, but ultimately disappointing. I wonder wheather Hitchens realizes that what he said about Waugh is equally(if not more) applicable to Hitchens.
Tantalizing as this may be, in conceding that moral courage may be shown by reactionaries or good prose produced by snobs, it does not make the leap of imagination that is required to state the obvious: that Waugh wrote as brilliantly as he did precisely because he loathed the modern world. Orwell identified "snobbery" and "Catholicism" as Waugh's "driving forces," ....
If you replace "catholicism" with atheism and "snobbery" with a certain kind of social insecurity, we probably reach closer to what are Hitchens' driving forces. I am not sure Hitchen would be as enjoyable a read if he did not specialize in intellectual hatchet jobs.
Incidentally, Sid Blumenthal seems to have finally gotten his revenge in his new book 'The Clinton Wars'. (For those not clued in on this, the linked story should provide the background. Also, for accessing Salon, click on the free one day pass thing. You'll have to view some annoying ads before you can access the rest of the content). The book seems to be doing well. New York Observer joked this week about the poor Clinton staffer whose job must had been to shuttle between Bill Clinton's book editor, Hilary's book editor and Sid's editor trying to make sure that these people don't contradict each others when describing the same events.
Appropos of nothing, this literary quiz in Guardian and this world news quiz in BBC are very good exercises for bruising your ego. I am not gonna tell you how I did!
You are probably right about the intellectual laziness part. But the greater reason is also the lack of leaisure hours (alternately phrased as lack of discipline about how one spends one's time). If you find less and less available time to do stuff.
I don't think I agree with the 'lack of confidence' part (Who? ME??!!). I think most people tend to be curious about their favourite writers and love to read gossip about them (not ncessarily a great charecter attribute, but it is definitely there).
Also criticism itself is a literary form that has its own pleasures. Take for example Thomas Pynchon's new introduction to Orwell's 1984 which was recently published and widely read.
A lot of well written criticism can stand on its own merit. I tend to not like reviews which savage the writers; specially from those critics who dont themselves write fiction. (There are enough good books in the world; why pick one that you dislike so intensely?)
If I may go on a tangent, film reviews/commentary are also quite interesting. Some of the articles in 'Film Comment' are fascinating.
Lastly, that's how mostly we get to know about new books. Don't we?
Posted by: Kaushik on May 21, 2003 11:39 AM>It occurs to me, that lately I have been reading a
>lot more writing about writing or writers on >writers than actually reading new fiction.
This depresses me.
Many people I know for a while who loved reading books are now a days reading reviews and what other people have to say about their favourite authors instead of reading the actual books. I am puzzled by this since I always thought that the idea behind reading a book for amateur like us is to derive pleasure out of the work rather than learning about the opinions of other folks about the work and the creator.
I feel this tendency arises out of two reasons -
1.Intellectual lazyness - Unwillingness to make the effort and spend time to form one's own opinon, but the desire to still have an opinion is strong
2.Lack of confidence on one's own self to form an opinion - seek out someone "better" who will know more.
I remember reading the dedication of one J.D. Salinger book once (Most probably Franny Zoouye - not sure though ) that left a lasting impression -
I don't remember the exact statement but it says something to this effect -
If there is even one amateur reader in the world left, who just picks up a book reads and runs without bothering about erudite reviews from critiques, this book is dedicated to him
I will try posting the original dedication.
Posted by: Buban on May 15, 2003 4:19 AM