One RAF weekend I read four novels between Saturday morning and Sunday evening.
Somerset Maugham's Ten Novels and Their Authors (Stendhal’s Red and Black, Balzac’s Old Goriot, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Austen’s P&P, Dickens’ Copperfield, Melville’s Moby Dick, E. Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Tolstoy’s W&P, Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov) appeared in 1954. I polished off those I hadn't already read in two or three weeks, except Bros. K languishing still at p. 350 after a fourth go.
I have read Ulysses three times, A la recherche... twice, and Musil's A Man Without Qualities once (quite sufficient, thank you very much).
Also fifty novels in French.
On a flight from London Heathrow to Pittsburgh I read the dozen sections of The Sunday Times and the whole (ie, 448 pages) of The Godfather.
None of which matches the voraciousness of my wife, VR. Since retiring in 1998 she has read an average of 220 novels a year.
Now I’m down to three books a month, often re-reads. Writing novels alters your reading perspective; you disassemble fiction rather than embrace it; novels become class-rooms.
Singing, a more instantaneous form of creation than novel-writing, has displaced book reading during the daytime.
Cutting down reading (I never imagined it would happen) has left me ignorant of many modern authors, both popular and “literary”. But there is no sense of loss. Music is another world and carries greater kudos. Substitute snobbism for kudos if you wish.
That said, Evelyn Waugh remains essential.
Just came from the library with Imani Perry's Looking for Lorraine in hand (I've been on tenterhooks waiting for this biography). The last novel I read was a steampunk novella about New Orleans written by a professor (have I shocked you?). It was quite good.
ReplyDeleteRW (zS): Perhaps, but I'm even more shocked that there's a genre labelled "steampunk novella". As I say, I'm right out of the loop these days.
ReplyDeleteIt does not seem right for professors to write steampunk. Or perhaps that just signifies that it is now Very Old Hat.
ReplyDeleteMy latest buys: Chihuly at Biltmore (souvenir book, I'm afraid); collected poems of D. H. Lawrence in two volumes (replacing one lost long ago), a Patrick O'Brian novel (my first); a Knausgaard (also my first, despite his popularity); painter Evelyn Williams, Works and Words; and a few others that I can't conjure right now. Perhaps I should feel guilty for not reading the Musil? And I can admire yet dislike Madame Bovary... What a compliment to Maugham that his book inspired you to rush through all the unread books in his ten.
I don't expect words and music need to compete. You have reveled in both...
Marly: I trust the O'Brian is Master and Commander, first volume in the 20-novel sequence (although theoretically the first ten could be read in any order). I'll not say any more about O'Brian other than add that both Lucy Kempton and VR have read the whole sequence and then either spoken or written to me in the allusive and seemingly random way that characterises deep-felt enthusiasm.
ReplyDeleteIt's the subject matter rather than the style that makes Musil difficult. You would have a considerable edge on me, having been properly educated. Have you noticed - by omission - how rarely Musil crops up compared with references to Joyce and Proust? Could this be a case of verb. sap.?
I'd toyed with tackling Knausgard. The reviews suggest he might be my kind of guy, mining details at impossible depths.
The only comparatively recent publication I could suggest (from personal experience) is Seamus Heaney's Aeneid 6. As you know I struggle with myths, etc, but this is an admirable example of making modern idiom work with a traditional foreign-language narrative. No invasive slang.
"You have reveled in both" you say. Alas the past participle tells the truth. It is music's intensity (or my intense feelings towards it) that is elbowing books out of the way. Intensity and immediacy, perhaps. The nearest analogy is the sheer joy of my annus mirabilis - 1959 - when I moved to London and so many dissatisfactions in my life simply melted away. Making music has a physical component which books lack.