A few days ago, via the wonderfulness that is Twitter, I came across this article, which lists "The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults in History". It was definitely good for some laughs, and even a few mild shocks. (I say mild only because I know writers, and I know that at heart we all have the power to lash out with the best of them.)
But it got me thinking about the grander idea of author insults. You know, the mudslinging that happens in this gentrified literary culture of ours. Harold Bloom guts Stephen King. Jodi Picoult slams Jonathan Franzen. VS Naipaul slams all female writers. On and on.
We writerly types sure get (and give) our share of zingers, don't we?
Three years ago, when I was living in St. Andrews, one of my colleagues said something that struck me quite deeply, at the time. It's managed to stay with me ever since. "There's not much you can say about a perfect book."
I say this now because I think, on some level, this is what all of the mudslinging is about. This is why the mudslinging happens. You can't say anything about a perfect novel, or even about a novel that's pretty darn close to perfect. (The novel my colleague was speaking of, in that instance, was JM Coetzee's Disgrace. He--the colleague, that is, not Mr. Coetzee himself!--was pretty firmly of the opinion that Disgrace was as close as one could come to a perfect book. I disagreed. I still do.)
But a novel that's imperfect, now -- you can say a lot about that. Which then of course leads to the question: aren't all novels imperfect? Aren't all novels capable of being better, at least on some level? Certainly, there are novels that come close to the aim. But I think it's much more interesting to look at the reactions to "imperfect" books, those love-em-or-hate-em kinds of novels that seem to stir up so much debate.
The list of author quotes, as cited above, ties in perfectly with this. For whatever reason, the authors in question were all of the opinion that the particular writer whose work they were trashing was, on some level, vastly imperfect. And yet you'd be hard pressed to find an author out there, nowadays, who doesn't connect with at least one or two mentions on that list. I adore Nabokov, and don't much like Conrad, so it tickled my funny bone to discover that Nabokov didn't find Mr. Heart of Darkness all that enticing either. But how many people the world over say the exact opposite? How many people, when faced with Conrad's "romanticist clichés", would choose them time and time again when faced with the alternate option of Humbert Humbert? Plenty, I'm sure of it.
Virginia Woolf detested James Joyce. And yet today you'll find an equal amount of people who would pick Joyce over Woolf any day, and have the literary arguments to prove it. There's no middle ground with either Woolf or Joyce. This is how debate happens. This is how people learn, and how reading tastes change and adapt and grow stubborn -- through the "bad publicity" of author zingers such as these. We hear so much more about the books that provoke people, those love-em-or-hate-em kinds of books, than we do about the books that are just quietly, calmly brilliant. (And even the books that are quietly, calmly brilliant are bound to find their own anti-fans, somewhere. Look at Ruth Fowler's scathing response to Tèa Obreht's recent Orange Prize win.)
I guess what I'm saying here is that in being able to elicit such fiery responses from other writers, the authors in the above list did exactly what literature is supposed to do: provoke and sustain debate. I'm leaving the question of style aside for the moment, even though it is of course inextricably bound up in these kinds of controversy. (Harold Bloom is talking about style when he rages against Stephen King, for example.)
Debate gets us reading. The furious rejection of a particular book on the part of critics can very well turn into an excellent publicity tool for both the dissed author AND reading in general. Don't get me wrong -- I'd hate to have an essay like Ruth Fowler's somehow linked to my name. But getting angry about these kinds of things shows that people care, on some level -- about the language, about what books can do, about what authors manage or fail to achieve. And that, on the simplest of levels, is a good thing.
Of course, the question of support is another thing entirely. Even as I'm happy to see the debate that gets going with articles like the above, I'm saddened to see how easy it is for authors to get defensive and sling away at each other. I hope I don't find myself in that situation, sometime in the future. (Though if you're still following my adventures at that point, you have complete permission to get in touch and point out the obvious.) This is a hard life, peeps. It's a wonderful life, and I wouldn't choose any other occupation--except perhaps that of a professional eater, who gets paid just to eat in nice restaurants and may or may not write reviews of her experiences and never gains an ounce of weight--but it's bloody hard sometimes. And the zingers that might come your way from fellow writers don't seem like a particularly nice part of the job. I'd love it if we writers were just warm and cozy and supportive of each other all the time. I'd love it if we could look for constructive ways of helping one another, if we could all acknowledge that writing can improve, we can improve, and there's enough room for all the stories in the world.
That would be my utopia, I think. But I'll be the first to say that the dark and imperfect world is infinitely more interesting. The "cankered world" that causes Thomas such woe is all the more fascinating for its imperfections. And so, writers, I will end with this: try as hard as you can to be supportive. But if you zing, zing so as to welcome the debate. Be the Diana Athills of the world.
And now it's time for some reading! My copy of Annabel just arrived at the library. How excited am I ... ;)
But it got me thinking about the grander idea of author insults. You know, the mudslinging that happens in this gentrified literary culture of ours. Harold Bloom guts Stephen King. Jodi Picoult slams Jonathan Franzen. VS Naipaul slams all female writers. On and on.
We writerly types sure get (and give) our share of zingers, don't we?
Three years ago, when I was living in St. Andrews, one of my colleagues said something that struck me quite deeply, at the time. It's managed to stay with me ever since. "There's not much you can say about a perfect book."
I say this now because I think, on some level, this is what all of the mudslinging is about. This is why the mudslinging happens. You can't say anything about a perfect novel, or even about a novel that's pretty darn close to perfect. (The novel my colleague was speaking of, in that instance, was JM Coetzee's Disgrace. He--the colleague, that is, not Mr. Coetzee himself!--was pretty firmly of the opinion that Disgrace was as close as one could come to a perfect book. I disagreed. I still do.)
But a novel that's imperfect, now -- you can say a lot about that. Which then of course leads to the question: aren't all novels imperfect? Aren't all novels capable of being better, at least on some level? Certainly, there are novels that come close to the aim. But I think it's much more interesting to look at the reactions to "imperfect" books, those love-em-or-hate-em kinds of novels that seem to stir up so much debate.
The list of author quotes, as cited above, ties in perfectly with this. For whatever reason, the authors in question were all of the opinion that the particular writer whose work they were trashing was, on some level, vastly imperfect. And yet you'd be hard pressed to find an author out there, nowadays, who doesn't connect with at least one or two mentions on that list. I adore Nabokov, and don't much like Conrad, so it tickled my funny bone to discover that Nabokov didn't find Mr. Heart of Darkness all that enticing either. But how many people the world over say the exact opposite? How many people, when faced with Conrad's "romanticist clichés", would choose them time and time again when faced with the alternate option of Humbert Humbert? Plenty, I'm sure of it.
Virginia Woolf detested James Joyce. And yet today you'll find an equal amount of people who would pick Joyce over Woolf any day, and have the literary arguments to prove it. There's no middle ground with either Woolf or Joyce. This is how debate happens. This is how people learn, and how reading tastes change and adapt and grow stubborn -- through the "bad publicity" of author zingers such as these. We hear so much more about the books that provoke people, those love-em-or-hate-em kinds of books, than we do about the books that are just quietly, calmly brilliant. (And even the books that are quietly, calmly brilliant are bound to find their own anti-fans, somewhere. Look at Ruth Fowler's scathing response to Tèa Obreht's recent Orange Prize win.)
I guess what I'm saying here is that in being able to elicit such fiery responses from other writers, the authors in the above list did exactly what literature is supposed to do: provoke and sustain debate. I'm leaving the question of style aside for the moment, even though it is of course inextricably bound up in these kinds of controversy. (Harold Bloom is talking about style when he rages against Stephen King, for example.)
Debate gets us reading. The furious rejection of a particular book on the part of critics can very well turn into an excellent publicity tool for both the dissed author AND reading in general. Don't get me wrong -- I'd hate to have an essay like Ruth Fowler's somehow linked to my name. But getting angry about these kinds of things shows that people care, on some level -- about the language, about what books can do, about what authors manage or fail to achieve. And that, on the simplest of levels, is a good thing.
Of course, the question of support is another thing entirely. Even as I'm happy to see the debate that gets going with articles like the above, I'm saddened to see how easy it is for authors to get defensive and sling away at each other. I hope I don't find myself in that situation, sometime in the future. (Though if you're still following my adventures at that point, you have complete permission to get in touch and point out the obvious.) This is a hard life, peeps. It's a wonderful life, and I wouldn't choose any other occupation--except perhaps that of a professional eater, who gets paid just to eat in nice restaurants and may or may not write reviews of her experiences and never gains an ounce of weight--but it's bloody hard sometimes. And the zingers that might come your way from fellow writers don't seem like a particularly nice part of the job. I'd love it if we writers were just warm and cozy and supportive of each other all the time. I'd love it if we could look for constructive ways of helping one another, if we could all acknowledge that writing can improve, we can improve, and there's enough room for all the stories in the world.
That would be my utopia, I think. But I'll be the first to say that the dark and imperfect world is infinitely more interesting. The "cankered world" that causes Thomas such woe is all the more fascinating for its imperfections. And so, writers, I will end with this: try as hard as you can to be supportive. But if you zing, zing so as to welcome the debate. Be the Diana Athills of the world.
And now it's time for some reading! My copy of Annabel just arrived at the library. How excited am I ... ;)
My copy of Annabel came in way sooner than I was expecting and I read it all in a couple of gulps. I am catching up, so I guess I'll find out, but did you do a review? Will you?
ReplyDeleteMy favourite on that hilarious list was: Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger
“I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?”
I have had that exact same thought. How can they let this happen? Why does this book exist? I think most of the time (if not all) it's not anything that has achieved the repute of Salinger, so I can usually answer my own question.
And holy fuck that review by Ruth Fowler (definitely not Flower, as I just mistyped) is scathing. I hate to see someone's appearance mentioned, especially when she's a woman (plump and blonde, oh really, what does that have to do with anything?), but other than that I found the review wonderfully titillating. I think I too might hate the book. But I kind of want to read it and find out. Curious!