writerly thoughts
I am currently reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It has passed the "good book test" (simply registered by the amount of time spent consuming it and wanting to do nothing else), which should be no surprise since it won the Nobel Prize and all.
I find the story exhilarating and amazingly well told. So well told that I often turn off my writer's sense and become a true reader, unhindered by what I know about writing, though I still find myself marvelling at different things that Marquez was doing in the novel, I feel remarkably free in reading it.
The only thing I've longed for is character insight or development. I feel like they are merely instruments in Marquez's palm, designed to do or provoke something. In other words, they are slightly flat, two dimensional, but I think that is just the way of latino writers or storytellers. I felt a similar longing while reading Isabelle Allende.
The only stupendous thing to report is a customer at the coffeeshop recently asked me how my book was going...yet she asked for it by title. clark st. union. This tells me two things: one that the title is memorable (hooray!) and two: I really need to start getting my shit together with it.
One of my goals is to have it done within a year. I think that is fair and attainable. I know I will be able to write more when school starts and a pace of writing is forced on me (at least five pages a week). But that seems so meager and disrespectful to the work as a whole. I don't know. I am considering joining a writer's circle... At the very least, it would be nice to have a reader who will ask a lot of questions of the pieces to jog the mind into writing what the reader really needs to know.
stine
posted by stine @ 2:06 PM
16 comments
16 Comments:
i too, think you have hit on a winning idea there, darlin'.
peace, love and happy trails to ya ! with love, dad
Actually, Marquez got the Nobel for his fiction overall, which is what they give it out for. No one really gets the prize for one book. It is often attributed to one book, but never officially. Either way, he got the Nobel in 1982, which is 3 years before Love in the Time of Cholera was published. The Nobel is usually attributed to One Years of Solitude, which is about a hundred times better. Personally, I thought Love in the Time of Cholera was tedious.
I must ask, what is the difference in your approach as a reader vs. reading a book as a "writer". I mean, do you think mechanics drive cars differently than the rest of us? Personally, I read every book as a reader and write as a writer and love as a lover and drink like a fish. I don't think there is a switch one can turn on or off that allows them to experience things differently. We experience art as individuals. Perhaps a director studies different aspects when they watch films, for instance, but I still think their experience as a filmmaker would synthesize into their way of seeing film overall. In the same vein, reading a book as a person who has studied writing might alter your manner of reading a novel or thinking about it, but I am not about this whole switching back and forth thing you mention.
As for the way Latino writers develop or do not develop characters, I think that’s a blanket comment that is impossible to support. Besides, the employment of characters without the traditional, Victorian manner of developing them is something one can see ample evidence of in modernism and beyond, which Marquez could be grandfathered into considering the era in which he wrote. This is not a uniquely Latin American quality.
Psst... there's a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, as well as The General's Labyrinth and a book of his short stories on my bookshelf, if you're interested. :)
beth: I've read the novel and leafed through the short story collection. but thanks anyway lady!
hey, aren't you supposed to be on vacation in Paris?!!
;)
Loki might be eating the cat's food. I think.
vince: thanks for clearing up the nobel thing. I always wondered that. to my defense, the copy on the cover of the book was quite misleading.
one hundred (sprawling) vs. cholera (seamless transitions): i choose cholera. but that's just my choice.
I think what I mean about reading as a writer is being cognizant of what the writer is doing and finding myself unable to fully enjoy the story as a thing separate from the author.
some books that I read feel like exercises in fiction writing. some things that I read take my breath away and then I am truly free to be a reader again. and sometimes those two dynamics wane and wax. the truth is, since being school, I have become a different reader than I once was.
as for the latin american authors comment, I realized later that you might find fault with that, and admittedly, it was a poorly expressed sentiment.
I’m willing to believe what you say about being aware of the writer’s technique and focusing on that when reading a book, but the statement still seems a bit affected and I don’t think it is the sort of thing that ought to cloud your initial appreciation of art. I agree it may have altered it, but what you have written in regard to this reading as a writer vs. reading as a reader issue seems a bit, forgive me, pretentious. I am quite sure your time studying writing has changed the way you approach literature, as anyone’s appreciation of art will continually alter after any life experience, but I thought you were saying you could somehow switch off the writing training and revert back to the pre-educated, unaffected reader you were before college. I mean, who could? That would be like going back to pure childhood after years of being an adult and having to work and pay bills. So that was what I was mentioning. Anyway, I doubt such training has clouded your evaluation of a book, only aided in it. To mention that you read something, “as a writer” does smack of a certain exclusionary insight that only writers possess and I guess I was just asking you to back that up. I mean, I have devoted my life to literature and take my studies very seriously but I could never think for a second that somehow my college training, which has required me to dive into theory and criticism, has allowed me to cultivate any sort of insight that anyone else might not have. Besides, to claim that artists experience art differently immediately calls their art into question. It renders it into a structural evaluation and robs them of the pleasure of beauty. Read Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” for more on this.
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By the way, I like the sprawling vision of the earlier book. I agree those transitions in the later one were seamless, but transitioning from nothing to nothing would be pretty seamless, yes.
In other words, 100 Years of Solitude: Epic. Love in the time of Cholera: Plot less
well, I suppose a degree in writing was probably going to serve up a dose of pretensiousness despite my best efforts not to be that asshole. my apologies if I offended you somehow.
Not offended, no. Just wanted a little more explanation earlier, that's all.
so originally i had this long crawly comment about capping zombies at the mall and good will hunting and other problems with accusing stine of some undesirable pretention...you can't go around referring people to Whitman as stance for your criticism of her critique as an artist observing art. i mean you just observed her observation of art which is an observation in itself created by an observer not only of things but of art as well. this is why i don't read and only write. because then whitman becomes grounds for this and that. i mean i'm happy you've devoted your life to literature...but those people that literatured said literature...they devoted their lives to observation. living. art. and with that omes some semblence of pretention...a lot of it not so harmless yeah sure..but really now. what you're really saying to stine is that she's not better than what she reads. and i think you might be mistaken. whitman can no longer better himself, stine is on the cusp of evolution. you, zombie, you are too busy devoting your life to literature. too busy infact to realize that calling art into question..and forcing the world around you to do so...is what art is. the true responsibility of an artist is to create more artists. but that's something i brought back from a visit to the future. so i don't expect your nurture. romero called, he wants his 20 percent.
Wow, what a poorly thought out and barely literate reply. Thanks.
yeah i typed it on my phone out of anger. i've a more literate reply for you on itz way, love.
Or we could just end this now before it gets sad, like most internet wrestling matches. I mean, I typed a longer response originally and scrapped it in order to avoid a silly debate with a stranger. But if you insist...
i guess my problem was that you asked questions like "do you think mechanics drive cars differently than the rest of us" and honestly they do. and an artist does the same. I mean of course I can navigate my poetics while reading them far better than my audience...and a mechanic can do the same. I just thought your comparisons were unfounded and non-sensical. and i don't mean it as an insult. it just didn't sound thought out. (kinda like my first reply).
I'd say mechanics drive like we non-mechanics do, they just know what certain noises mean and can recognize problems in the car. Pretty much true as far as I know.
Artists do the same, yes, but can they switch back from an artist's mindset to a non-artist's? No, I doubt it. Stine seemed to suggest she could. I asked her to elaborate. I don't think there was anything poorly thought out. Just questions that failed to get answered. If you ever read, as you claim not to in your first response, you'd see that. Maybe you ought to re-apply for a library card.
See, now I'm being a jerk. I ought to sleep more and avoid placing my bile online.
Let's move on.
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