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— Roger W. Smith
December 2022
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Category Archives: writing/literature – miscellaneous observations
“Can a great book be badly written?” (Can a great author write badly?)
Re the following comment, from the New York Times Book Review’s “By the Book” feature:
Can a great book be badly written? What other criteria can overcome bad prose?
Reading Theodore Dreiser’s work has been likened to finding a very powerful Russian novel in a really bad translation. Tone-deaf works of fiction rarely achieve lift-off. Nabokov, last century’s master finisher, perfected his every sentence on its separate note card. Exquisite sentences make for wonderful books. In my view, bad sentences can only make bad ones. — Allan Gurganus
— “How the Bible Divided, and United, Allan Gurganus and His Father,” The New York Times Book Review, January 10, 2021
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Perfectionism can suck the juice out of a novel.
I’m sorry, the present writer (yours truly) finds Lolita unenjoyable and unreadable, and too clever by half.
James Joyce was a genius of literature and language. His novels can also leave the reader feeling emotionally empty. His characters are mythological stand-ins, types. We peer into their minds, but they themselves don’t seem fully recognizable as idiosyncratic people the way a Dickens character such as Pip or Mr. Micawber does.
If we are going to relegate writers to inferior status on account of stylistic gaucherie, we have a problem when it comes to novelists such as Defoe, Balzac, and Dickens. (And I don’t deny Dreiser’s atrocious style.) They wrote in haste and often carelessly. It’s easy to find evidence of this. Even Shakespeare did, but then his genius trumps all such pettifoggery.
Note the following comment by a reviewer on Amazon.com:
[Our Mutual Friend] is the last of Dickens’ novels and contains some stylistic quirks. He talks a lot about “dust” which is presumably a metaphor for something, but he never says what. … His prose is also sometimes curiously mannered. He has lists of things which he repeats in numerous consecutive sentences. At other times he writes in a kind of shorthand using incomplete sentences. However, these eccentricities aside, it is as good an example of his work as many others. There are plenty of characters and caricatures to enjoy and many sub-plots to follow. As ever, you can trust Dickens to bring them all to a conclusion by the last page. He is also pleasingly sarcastic about social conventions, politics and money. There is no need to reveal any of the plot except to say that the action takes place in London and is centered around the river Thames. If you like Dickens, you will not be disappointed.
— Martin Grundy, review of Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, Amazon.com, August 16, 2014
In other words, as always, Dickens manages to deliver, sloppiness and haste of composition aside.
Enough said.
— Roger W. Smith
January 11, 2021
“Let it stand.” (an exchange of emails about James Joyce)
Once or twice [Joyce] dictated a bit of Finnegans Wake to [Samuel] Beckett, though dictation did not work very well for him; in the middle of one such session there was a knock at the door which Beckett didn’t hear. Joyce said, ‘Come in,’ and Beckett wrote it down. Afterwards he read back what he had written and Joyce said, ‘What’s that “Come in”?’ ‘Yes, you said that,’ said Beckett. Joyce thought for a moment, then said, ‘Let it stand.’ He was quite willing to accept coincidence as his collaborator. Beckett was fascinated and thwarted by Joyce’s singular method.
— Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (Oxford University Press, 1965), pg. 662
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I had the following exchange of emails with my brother the other day. We were discussing certain aspects of writing.
May 8, 2019
ROGER
Writing shouldn’t amount to an incoherent, rambling screed; a sort of data dump of the brain. But sometimes thoughts creep in and occur that don’t have to be excised.
P.S. There is an interesting passage in Richard Ellman’s biography of Joyce describing how in Paris Joyce was dictating a passage from either Ulysses or Finnegans Wake (I don’t recall which) to his amanuensis, Samuel Becket. There was an interruption such as someone knocking on the door and Joyce said something which Becket wrote down. Then, Becket asked, was that supposed to be included? Joyce mulled it over and said leave it in. It was words such as “Come in.”
PETE SMITH
Agree.
But leaving “come in” in text when it was just a remark that happened while writing and when it has nothing to do with the subject about which is being written is absurd. Joyce’s ego must have been enormous by then.
ROGER
Joyce was a genius. Us mere mortals can’t carp or judge.
Yes, a bit nutty at times.
Dr. Colp [my former psychiatrist] and I talked quite a bit about Joyce from time to time. Dr. Colp once said to me: “What would I do with a genius like Joyce for a patient?”
PETE SMITH
Yes, a genius, but clearly his self-importance was out of control if he had become arrogant enough to leave something in that made no sense.
ROGER
I wouldn’t argue the point. When I read this (years ago), it made me wonder.
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I read Richard Ellmann’s biography of Joyce when I was in my twenties.
I don’t think it will be surpassed.
— Roger W. Smith
May 12, 2019