• About
  • Listening
    • Baroque
    • Bluegrass and Country
    • Classical Fusion
    • Classical Period
    • Early Music
    • Film soundtracks
    • Folk Music
    • Jazz
    • Modern Classical
    • Modern Pop Fusion
    • Musicals
    • Romantic Classical
    • Spoken word
    • World Music
  • Reading
    • Fiction
      • Children’s and Young Adult Fiction
      • Classic writers and their works
      • Contemporary Fiction
      • Crime and Detective Fiction
      • Fictionalised Biography
      • Historical Fiction
      • Horror
      • Lighter-hearted reads
      • Literary Fiction
      • Plays and Poetry
      • Romance
      • SF
      • Short stories
      • Western
      • Whimsy and Fantastical
    • Non-Fiction
      • Arts
      • Biography and Autobiography
      • Ethics, reflection, a meditative space
      • Food and Drink
      • Geography and Travel
      • Health and wellbeing
      • History and Social History
      • Philosophy of Mind
      • Science and nature
      • Society; Politics; Economics
  • Reading the 20th Century
  • Watching
    • Documentary
    • Film
    • Staged Production
    • TV
  • Shouting From The Soapbox
    • Arts Soapbox
    • Chitchat
    • Philosophical Soapbox
    • Science and Health Soapbox
  • Interviews / Q + A
  • Indexes
    • Index of Bookieness – Fiction
    • Index of Bookieness – Non-Fiction
    • Index of authors
    • Index of titles
    • 20th Century Index
    • Sound Index
      • Composers Index
      • Performers Index
    • Filmed Index

Lady Fancifull

~ adventures in a mainly literary obsession

Lady Fancifull

Tag Archives: Where I’m Reading From: The Changing World of Books

Tim Parks – Where I’m Reading From: The Changing World of Books

28 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Arts, Non-Fiction, Reading

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Book Review, Books about Books, Literary criticism, Publishing, Tim Parks, Where I'm Reading From: The Changing World of Books, Writing

A selection of walks in literary landscapes – bring your compass

Where I'm Reading FromHaving been totally gathered up and engaged by Tim Parks wonderful The Novel: A Survival Skill, which re-examines an aspect of literary criticism which became heavily frowned on, in academic circles ‘The Biographical Fallacy’, I was keen to proceed further with Parks’ reflections on literature, its practice, its audience, and the community who consume it.

The more recently published ‘The Novel’ takes the central idea of a relationship between the writer, their family dynamics and the kind of characters, relationships and unconscious psychological beliefs the writer and their works will inhabit, The Novel explores this in depth, looking at a body of work by four authors – Dickens, Hardy, Joyce, Lawrence – and assessing them through a systemic psychology lens. Parks is also open enough to explore his own writing through this lens

This earlier book contains shorter essays, some little more than a page or so of reflections, on various other topics, though the systemic psychology approach is one of the topics under discussion, and in some ways, I found the overarching explanation of this further clarified my reading of that more detailed book on this topic :

It’s a central tenet of systemic psychology that each personality develops in the force field of a community of origin, usually a family, seeking his or her own position in a pre-existing group, or ‘system’, most likely made up of mother, father, brothers and sisters, then aunts, uncles, grandparents and so on. The leading Italian psychologist, Valeria Ugazio further suggests that this family ‘system’ also has ‘semantic content’; that is, as conversations in the family establish criteria for praise and criticism of family members and non-members, one particular theme or issue will dominate

Where all this proved an exciting idea for me as a passionate reader of literature, is that of course the playing out of a particular theme in family dynamics can also explain the authors and their writing that we ‘gel’ with, the voices which resonate with authenticity for us (assuming of course that the writer has some mastery of the tools of their trade) Readers themselves come from family systems with semantic content!

English_&_Hebrew_Coke_labels

In “Where I’m Reading From” Pears looks at other considerations around writing. He is particularly interesting in examining how the increased globalisation and world-wide marketing of books, from the off, is leading to a flat-lining, and uniformity of writing and subject matter. Authors, agents, publishers in search of the greatest sales will search (consciously or unconsciously) for what is going to easily translate globally. Writing, in any language, which relies on nuance and local, regional variation will be far less easy to translate with retention of the rhythms and subtlety of the original language than writing which is less subtle and more direct.

What seems doomed to disappear, or at least to risk neglect, is the kind of work that revels in the subtle nuances of its own language and literary culture, the sort of writing that can savage or celebrate the way this or that linguistic group really lives

Obviously there will always be anomalies to disprove any trend (the 2015 Booker prizewinner might be cited)

Pears has lived in Italy since 1981, and is also a translator and teaches translating, so illustrates some of these ideas by reference to the kind of writing which is more, or less, likely to be attractive ‘world-wide’. There is a tendency for books which are deemed to be able to ‘go global’ to have foreign rights and translations already on the table by the time the book is published in its original language. And he is persuasive about the way this influences writers.

There is a tendency (and I know as a reader I also look for it) – to find what is ‘universal’ in a book, a kind of recognition of global common humanity, across place and time. Pears argues around this consideration, and others, debating concepts which we may not have thought about :

what if the quality of some fine works of art lies exactly in their relationship with the local and the contemporary, with the life that it has been given to them to experience here and now?

All this reminded me of those crude ‘marketing ideas’ which had various well known authors attempting different takes on Jane Austen’s well-loved books – which, after all, are about much more than story. Austen famously focused on her ‘little bit of ivory, two inches wide’ and rooted her work in her time, her place. Pears made me think about how translation must always be challenging, as semantic style will have nuances for native speakers of any language which cannot adequately be conveyed :

Style, then, involves a meeting between arrangements inside the prose and expectations outside it. You can’t have a strong style without a community of readers able to recognise and appreciate its departures from the common usages they know

He is pretty scathing about the whole modern writing ‘industry’ and examines the tensions which are inevitable between the writer’s need to make a living (which they might wish to do from their creative craft) and what happens when the whole focus, and the sense of ‘self-worth’ for the writer IS geared to getting published, getting sales, getting world-wide rights. Who is the most successful writer – is it the blockbuster author with film rights, is it someone who has hit the pulse of the whatever-is-on-trend or is it the writer with a drawer full of rejections, but nevertheless working slowly, refining their particular unique voice, improving their craft. And then of course, there is the dreaded ‘writer’s block’ :

One of the problems of seeing creative writing as a career is that careers are things you go on with till retirement. The fact that creativity may not be coextensive with one’s whole working life is not admitted

Unlike “The Novel” which explores the journey of a particular idea deep, broad and wide, “Where I’m Reading From” is like a delicious book of possible literary journeys. The reader can take almost any chapter, embark on the reflections Parks offer us, and find useful rumination for days.Tim Parks from Guardian

I’ve barely scratched at the surface, and it is no doubt a book I shall come back to, picking up certain thought-journeys and running along with the route Parks opens out. He is suggesting possibilities, not closing things down, topic done and dusted. Interestingly offering discussion.

Where I’m Reading From Amazon UK
Where I’m Reading From Amazon USA

Advertisement

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Page Indexes

  • About
    • Index of Bookieness – Fiction
    • Index of Bookieness – Non-Fiction
    • Index of authors
    • Index of titles
    • 20th Century Index
  • Sound Index
    • Composers Index
    • Performers Index
  • Filmed Index

Genres

Archives

February 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728  
« Mar    

Posts Getting Perused

  • William Butler Yeats - Vacillation
    William Butler Yeats - Vacillation
  • Philip Glass - Glassworks
    Philip Glass - Glassworks
  • Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
    Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
  • Mick Herron - Real Tigers
    Mick Herron - Real Tigers
  • Virginia Woolf - The Voyage Out
    Virginia Woolf - The Voyage Out
  • Sarah Moss - Bodies of Light
    Sarah Moss - Bodies of Light
  • Colette - Claudine at School
    Colette - Claudine at School
  • Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road
    Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road

Recent Posts

  • Bart Van Es – The Cut Out Girl
  • Joan Baez – Vol 1
  • J.S.Bach – Goldberg Variations – Zhu Xiao-Mei
  • Zhu Xiao-Mei – The Secret Piano
  • Jane Harper – The Lost Man

NetGalley Badges

Fancifull Stats

  • 162,926 hits
Follow Lady Fancifull on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Follow on Bloglovin

Tags

1930s setting Adult Faerie Tale Andrew Greig Arvo Pärt Autobiography baroque Beryl Bainbridge Biography Biography as Fiction Bits and Bobs Bits and Pieces Book Review Books about Books Cats Children's Book Review Classical music Classical music review Classic Crime Fiction Colm Toibin Cookery Book Crime Fiction David Mitchell Dystopia Espionage Ethics Fantasy Fiction Feminism Film review First World War Folk Music Food Industry France Gay and Lesbian Literature Ghost story Golden-Age Crime Fiction Graham Greene Health and wellbeing Historical Fiction History Humour Humour and Wit Ireland Irish writer Irvin D. Yalom Janice Galloway Japan Literary Fiction Literary pastiche Lynn Shepherd Marcus Sedgwick Meditation Mick Herron Minimalism Music review Myths and Legends Neil Gaiman Ngaio Marsh Novels about America Other Stuff Patrick Flanery Patrick Hamilton Perfumery Philip Glass Philosophy Police Procedural Post-Apocalypse Psychiatry Psychological Thriller Psychology Psychotherapy Publication Day Reading Rebecca Mascull Reflection Robert Harris Rose Tremain Russian Revolution sacred music Sadie Jones Sci-Fi Science and nature Scottish writer Second World War SF Shakespeare Short stories Simon Mawer Soapbox Spy thriller Susan Hill Tana French The Cold War The Natural World TV Drama Victorian set fiction Whimsy and Fantasy Fiction William Boyd World music review Writing Young Adult Fiction

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Lady Fancifull
    • Join 771 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Lady Fancifull
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.

    %d bloggers like this: