Just finished Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. I’d been meaning to read it ever since I saw him speak last semester, but haven’t gotten around to it till now. It’s a fast read and only took me two days, but it’s fantastic. Not too long ago, my roomie brought up a question his professor asked in class: “what book have you read that you would write?” The prof. said Light in August by Faulkner, a novel amazing and rich in its complexity, but not one that I could really see myself writing (Faulkner’s style, though I love it, is daunting at times. Also I’m none too sure about Faulkner’s awareness of biology and hormones, what with Lena walking all the way across Alabama, barefoot and pregnant, with nary a frown. A minor quibble to an otherwise great novel).
I didn’t have my own answer until reading Haroun – it’s got precisely the right mix of whimsy, smartness, and social allegory. Rushdie said the best children’s novels are written for specific children, a la Lewis Carroll for Alice Liddell, and Rushdie wrote Haroun for his own son. The writer, in the attempt to appeal to a specific child and capture his/her attention, ends up creating something genuinely engaging and unique (Disney movies, which have lately operated on the ‘lowest common denominator’ idea, should take a cue from this). Hopefully that doesn’t mean I have to pop out a baby before I can write my ideal novel. Maybe I can borrow one. Any takers?
Now I’m currently reading another novel that centers on a relationship between a man and a child: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov! Hehe, well, it’s a little different in tone from the other book. I just started it tonight and was a bit offput by the seemingly flowery language at first, but now it’s hard to put down. The pathos of the character is really compelling; also, Nabokov works some clever word plays in the story that I find entertaining (e.g. what he calls the taxi-driver, for those of you who’ve read it).
I guess I’m supposed to be writing a story every day over break, but I honestly think I should be reading more. A lot of my creative writing peers seem to be more well-read (the ones who are actually competitive, that is, not the dorks who haven’t figured out how to properly use quotation marks in dialogue yet). My literary knowledge is just like my knowledge of music, and anything else: bizarrely spotty and mostly self-taught through sources like the Internet and friends. I know of some obscure works/bands but am unfamiliar with obvious canonical ones. For instance, I named my philodendron after Robert Plant (hurr!), but for some reason didn’t associate Jimmy Page with Led Zeppelin (I thought he was just a solo artist until some music nerd gave me a good lashing). Even more sadly, I didn’t know who Ezra Pound was until like a year ago (how embarrassing is that for an English major? :( ).
So for now I’m just going to read as many “should read” things as I can, and do writing exercises for the rest of break. That way, when I do eventually get off my bum and write, it should be totally gold and Nobel Prize worthy. Then I can publish my honors thesis and make millions of dollars to buy more books (and yarn!).
* edit – I sure abuse the parentheses while blogging. I don’t do this in my fiction, honest!
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