Please check out the progress of my novel Discovering Belwah under “writing projects” on this blog. It’s great fun, hard work, and I’m beginning to see the end of the story; BUT, I want feedback and will continue to seek it from various readers … and writers.
I can’t stay away from Ian McEwan and put in an order for his latest book, Sweet Tooth, long ago. It was dutifully delivered in mid-November and I am enjoying this example of McEwan in his softer, gentler persona. Ostensibly about spying, it is at heart a book about writing … full of actual and fictional references. I like it when McEwan comments on authors that I have read which, sad to say, is not that often. I do perk up when I think that Discovering Belwah is on the surface about investigative journalism, but perhaps about other things when one moves beneath the surface.
A discussion group in which I participate has been reading What Shall We Tell Them? by Thomas Long. It’s about theodicy … bad things happening to good people and related issues. The group chooses from books that may be generally called religious. We will next look at something about either the evolution or juvenilization of American Christianity.
I just had to read The Mindset Lists of American History by Tom McBride and Ron Nief, two fellow Beloiters. It tells the story of how their “…annual assessments of the event horizons of eighteen-year-olds….” from Beloit College form the basis for saying that “Each generation has its particular set of expectations, and every generation seems, if not disappointed, at least perplexed when things don’t turn out the way they thought they would.” Their conclusion applies to one of my main characters in Discovering Belwah: ”Gov.” I will work it in somehow. Thanks, guys.
I also could not resist pouring through the pages of Emus Loose in Egnar after I heard it described on NPR as a contemporary print journalism success story. Would you believe that small weekly newspapers that have to be purchased are doing very well? How can they succeed midst all the freebies and on-line stuff? Judy Miller tells all about it in Emus, and I’m going to borrow some of it for Belwah.
While I am working on one book, others may affect me gently by their styles or moods. Recently, I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson and Replenishing the Earth by Wangari Maathai. I don’t take notes or write in these margins. They may not influence Belwah at all, but you never know.
I return to my all-time favorites when I want a guaranteed page-by-page learning experience. These include Saturday by Ian McEwan, The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles, and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Angels are in the details of all of them. I don’t take notes or consciously try to apply what my eyes are taking in, but if just a tiny bit of their magic could get through to me, that would be fine.
♦ Saturday follows [what Ian McEwan's publicists call] an ordinary man through a weekend day that begins with anticipated promise and culminates in big trouble. In between the brilliance of McEwan shines. The New York Times Book Review describes Saturday as “…finely wrought and shimmering with intelligence.” I call it one of my best friends who must never be put on the shelf to gather dust. Compared to the day experienced by protagonist Henry Perowne, my own memorable Saturdays now seem so straightforward and safe, even when they include what I think of as adventure and approach-avoidance conflicts.
♦ I consider The French Lieutenant’s Women the high water mark for my favorite British author of the seventies and eighties: John Fowles. A fine film followed that captured the plot while giving it new twists. If you are interested in a glimpse back into Victorian England with the smell of salty south coast air and –Here’s the main point – the yearnings of unrealized ecstasy, I recommend this one. I read it several times way back in that last century of ours, and am rediscovering it these days. I wish it could go on and on and of course it does when one reads it again and again.
♦ When Gilead was published in 2004 the anticipation by Marilynne Robinson’s fans for a follow-up to the 1980′s classic Housekeeping was realized, but would (Could?) the new one match that first book’s powerful appeal? I think the answer is yes. The fly-leaf of Gilead says … it is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of our finest writers, a hymn and lamentation to the God-haunted existence … of a seventy-seven year old Congregational minister writing to his seven-year old son. The book has been praised by people who value and live their lives via various perspectives: Christians, Jews, agnostics, atheists … others. Presently, I am part of a local discussion group that is reading it. It’s my third time through, and the praise for her earlier book makes sense to me in this one: ”Marilynne Robinson uses the language so exquisitely … that this book dances all the way.”
Have you read any of them? Do you have any comments to share? Are there any favorites of yours that you read and reread? RSVP.
