Skip to main content

How I Confront the Novel

I purposely avoid book reviews before picking up a title. Sure, I'll maybe skim the first paragraph and the last sentence of a review of a book I'm interested in to get a general feel of the reviewer's assessment--if there's a scathing cautionary conclusion ("Do not venture into this wasteland of dreck...") I might think twice . But I do not want to know much about the subject or the plot going into my private experience of reading a novel.

My knowledge of a book will start and end with a past experience with the author's other works, or the 'must-read' lists that are the bread & butter of internet newspapers and magazines and blogs, and/or, finally, the tweets of enthusiasts, who might be made up of the book's publisher and friendly publicists. (It's a gorgeous little world, twitterville.) So after the mini-hype but with none of the details, I enter the discrete textual world that an author has crafted seemingly out of thin air.

I give authors a lot of leeway when I am reading and thinking about their books. After having been involved in publishing small novels and poetry collections and memoirs for a brief but verdant period of the terrible 2000s, I know first hand how much work goes into a novel, from conception to completion. It's a hard, hard row for everyone. Think it, write it, convince someone it's worth publishing, then go through the struggle of editing, layout, cover design, marketing, and finally the publisher gets an email from a reader saying she didn't appreciate the cursing in the author's story and wants her money back.

From all angles, the publication of a book is a labor of love and dedication to a niche endeavor. That's why it's difficult for me to dislike a book. And yet, I often am disappointed despite wanting to give it every advantage and benefit of doubt. That must be the price of a reader's greed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mini-rant: Why keep telling the "same" stories?

I recently had occasion to discuss a newish novel about the African slave trade in the 1700s and how that terrible practice affected generations of both African people and the slaves that were brought to America. I liked the book, but not everyone in the group felt the same. In the discussion, it was remarked that we already knew the stories of slavery and what was the purpose of reading about it yet again? I didn't know what to say to that in the moment because who wants to be the know it all in a friendly gathering? But what I thought to say later and will say here is that writing a novel and then finding a company willing to publish and support a novel (or any book, really) is political, and to keep publishing new stories about old topics, especially topics that reverberate in insidious ways and just won't be easily or peacefully resolved is an especially brave act of resistance. We all know that publishers want to make a profit; they choose what to produce with the bottom...
Post a Comment
Read more
The Late Novels of Gene Hackman A Short Story by Rivka Calchen December 9, 2013 The New Yorker J, a young writer with some minor success, is invited to a writer's conference in Key West. She isn't perceptive and she is judgmental; older people, in her eyes, have lost their power and ability to be interesting. She has invited her stepmother to join her (Q) and spends a lot of time worrying and wondering about this Burmese woman. The best parts of the story are the weird conversations, the small details about the other attendees, the confrontation. Also, there is a moment at the end where J feels hopeful.
Post a Comment
Read more

2016 Reading Notes

My reading came to a screeching halt after the election and I've been having trouble resuming it since. But I did have a good reading year before that day. White Noise by Don DeLillo. First read in 1998, re-read in 2016. I remembered that White Noise is about supermarkets and Hitler studies. I remember loving it in 1998, but little else. What I rediscovered is that this novel is full of anxiety, dread, distrust of systems and data, environmental waste, precocious children, familial and romantic loves, and the repression of our fundamental fear of death. It's satirical but also mildly terrifying. I am happy to say that it's still a five-star read. I also read DeLillo's Zero K, which was fine but unexceptional and probably very close to the future as elites hoard all the money and try to preserve themselves past death, waiting out the demise of most of mankind. I was happy to discover three Louise Erdrich novels: Love Medicine; The Round House; and LaRose . Loved the...
2 comments
Read more