Thursday, February 10
Recent reading & learning
I find myself blowing warm and cold on Nicholson Baker, or is it hot and lukewarm? I like his books, he's smart, he's got a great talent of describing how things work, how they're built and designed, an evolution of design and a superb self-awareness/self-consciousness that I enjoy etc etc, but I also find myself wishing a bit for a plot, for something to happen.
I just finished his first novel 'The Mezzanine' this morning, which features DWF-like dense footnotes that are fun to read but not quite laugh-out-loud funny. They're smart, good, and yet somewhat annoying, tiring and it's taking forever to read, it's almost too much work, too much detail, too much thought. In fact, I finally gave up reading them yesterday to just plow through the main story, the primary text. They became a hassle and not a pleasure, which to me is one of the top three reasons of reading a novel (or two, if I think about it; no, three). (And yet I brought the book with me to read the footnotes, or at least skim them, today at lunch.) (I also brought my next thin novel: Siddhartha by Hesse to start if that mood strikes.)
Anyway, reading some of Baker's fiction is more like work, which I'm willing to do for a good payoff, but I'm not sure Baker in fiction has the necessary payoff - at least not for me. This is the fifth book of his I've read in the past month (the others, in order I've read 'em: Counterpoint, Box of Matches, U and I, Vox), and they all have their charms (except 'Counterpoint', which maybe isn't charming) and pros, but they also have some luggage in my mind (well, 'U and I' has the least amount of luggage for me, now that I think about it, and it may have been the easiest to read as well, altho' Vox due to its subject matter was a very fast read, too...). (But then this raises the question of what a 'good payoff' is, Anderson, and what does 'some luggage' mean? What are you looking for? What do you seek? Because Baker is a brilliant writer.)
I agree with my friend Krell that 'U and I' (an '05 MELDAR read) is self conscious and self serving, and perhaps too much of both, cutting too close to home at times, but that's sort of the point too, isn't it? Baker seems a grad-school lit-crit type showing off for his peers (at least in 'U and I'), confessing in a safe yet over the top way about his need to please and at the same time show up his mythical mentor/ literary father figure type (Updike, the U), showing off his skills while trying to downplay them, bragging about his obsession while trying to pretend it isn't as great as it was even though it's greater than he admits or perhaps wants to admit. All that meta-meta-meta gets a bit wearying towards the end. It's all too much of everything. And yet -- it worked for me. Non-fiction. I enjoyed it.
But the style doesn't work for me in his fiction. I need small doses. That might be the answer. So what can we learn from this? Don't write that way. That's what I learn: It comes back to the need to somehow, somewhere, among all the thinking and post-post and psychology and theory and philosophy and meta-whatever, tell some kind of story.
I guess I have the same complaint about 'Old Friends,' the Stephen Dixon novel I picked up at the same time and finished before 'The Mezzanine.' Dixon's book is about two writer friends who grow old and is some sort of retelling of their conversations and letters and phone calls, eventually via the wife of one of them because he ends up in an institution with Alzheimer's like symptoms; it got old for me and I found myself wanting to skim and read only the surface over the final third of the book. It features no chapters, very long (multi-page) paragraphs and a completely out-of-kilter timeline, skipping around and around and around in time over the course of what may be 30 or 40 years (I'm not totally sure….and/or it's not completely clear.) Nothing happens but ordinary everyday life and growing old, and growing old miserably at that, and not much of a story or characters that are compelling -- for me.
Again: Tell a story. Tell some kind of story.
I just finished his first novel 'The Mezzanine' this morning, which features DWF-like dense footnotes that are fun to read but not quite laugh-out-loud funny. They're smart, good, and yet somewhat annoying, tiring and it's taking forever to read, it's almost too much work, too much detail, too much thought. In fact, I finally gave up reading them yesterday to just plow through the main story, the primary text. They became a hassle and not a pleasure, which to me is one of the top three reasons of reading a novel (or two, if I think about it; no, three). (And yet I brought the book with me to read the footnotes, or at least skim them, today at lunch.) (I also brought my next thin novel: Siddhartha by Hesse to start if that mood strikes.)
Anyway, reading some of Baker's fiction is more like work, which I'm willing to do for a good payoff, but I'm not sure Baker in fiction has the necessary payoff - at least not for me. This is the fifth book of his I've read in the past month (the others, in order I've read 'em: Counterpoint, Box of Matches, U and I, Vox), and they all have their charms (except 'Counterpoint', which maybe isn't charming) and pros, but they also have some luggage in my mind (well, 'U and I' has the least amount of luggage for me, now that I think about it, and it may have been the easiest to read as well, altho' Vox due to its subject matter was a very fast read, too...). (But then this raises the question of what a 'good payoff' is, Anderson, and what does 'some luggage' mean? What are you looking for? What do you seek? Because Baker is a brilliant writer.)
I agree with my friend Krell that 'U and I' (an '05 MELDAR read) is self conscious and self serving, and perhaps too much of both, cutting too close to home at times, but that's sort of the point too, isn't it? Baker seems a grad-school lit-crit type showing off for his peers (at least in 'U and I'), confessing in a safe yet over the top way about his need to please and at the same time show up his mythical mentor/ literary father figure type (Updike, the U), showing off his skills while trying to downplay them, bragging about his obsession while trying to pretend it isn't as great as it was even though it's greater than he admits or perhaps wants to admit. All that meta-meta-meta gets a bit wearying towards the end. It's all too much of everything. And yet -- it worked for me. Non-fiction. I enjoyed it.
But the style doesn't work for me in his fiction. I need small doses. That might be the answer. So what can we learn from this? Don't write that way. That's what I learn: It comes back to the need to somehow, somewhere, among all the thinking and post-post and psychology and theory and philosophy and meta-whatever, tell some kind of story.
I guess I have the same complaint about 'Old Friends,' the Stephen Dixon novel I picked up at the same time and finished before 'The Mezzanine.' Dixon's book is about two writer friends who grow old and is some sort of retelling of their conversations and letters and phone calls, eventually via the wife of one of them because he ends up in an institution with Alzheimer's like symptoms; it got old for me and I found myself wanting to skim and read only the surface over the final third of the book. It features no chapters, very long (multi-page) paragraphs and a completely out-of-kilter timeline, skipping around and around and around in time over the course of what may be 30 or 40 years (I'm not totally sure….and/or it's not completely clear.) Nothing happens but ordinary everyday life and growing old, and growing old miserably at that, and not much of a story or characters that are compelling -- for me.
Again: Tell a story. Tell some kind of story.
