Honorable Failure
A friend sent me a wonderful essay by Zadie Smith about why there are so few "great" novels published, and I've been crunching on it for a week now.
The part that struck me the most was the following:
I seemed to have gotten the reviewer to "submit to my vision." So in a way, I accomplished one of the supposed goals of great fiction. The only problem is that the reviewer didn't think much of my vision...
The part that struck me the most was the following:
Great styles represent the interface of "world" and "I", and the very notion of such an interface being different in kind and quality from your own is where the power of fiction resides. Writers fail us when that interface is tailored to our needs, when it panders to the generalities of its day, when it offers us a world it knows we will accept having already seen it on the television. Bad writing does nothing, changes nothing, educates no emotions, rewires no inner circuitry - we close its covers with the same metaphysical confidence in the universality of our own interface as we did when we opened it. But great writing - great writing forces you to submit to its vision. You spend the morning reading Chekhov and in the afternoon, walking through your neighbourhood, the world has turned Chekhovian; the waitress in the cafe offers a non- sequitur, a dog dances in the street.I post this mostly because this is what I attempted to do with World Leader Pretend. I set out to write a book whose reality was a tad bit unreal. My first review was bad (It was very typical New York snark--I won't do it the dignity of a link) but what was strange about it, was that what the reviewer disliked about the book was precisely the thing I was trying to accomplish. The reviewer called the book "messy," to which I say YES! ABSOLUTELY! SO REFRESHINGLY MESSY! The reviewer called the characters "schematic," to which I say YES! A GOOD WORD! THE MAIN CHARACTER SEES THE WORLD IN MATH AND SO THE BOOK'S WORLD IS THAT WAY TOO!
I seemed to have gotten the reviewer to "submit to my vision." So in a way, I accomplished one of the supposed goals of great fiction. The only problem is that the reviewer didn't think much of my vision...
Labels: What They're Saying about my Novel, World Leader Pretend, Writing Process
posted by bigdumbjim at 13:40
6 Comments:
It's really disconcerting when someone appears to have simultaneously gotten one's point, and completely failed to appreciate it. It's crazy-making, really. Piss on the idiot, whomever he or she was.
It's hard to give much credence to this particular publication's reviews. They pay their editors $50 a review, and many of their reviewers do 100+ reviews in a year. They don't read all those books.
I also have it from a good source that there's a certain amount of nepotism involved.
(My word of the week, by the way. Nepotism: Favoritism granted to relatives or close friends, without regard to their merit. I suppose cronyism is a better word, but I like the word nepotism better, it sounds more evil.)
I kind of laughed when I read the review, because the reviewer was obviously frustrated with his/her inability to summarize the plot. I could totally visualize them skimming the book and getting annoyed that the plot was so convoluted. It was as if they were saying: "Damn it, I might have to read this to understand it."
Having said all that, it's a bitch that it will likely hurt sales. The damn thing's plastered everywhere.
Man, I wish I could make $5000 a year by not really reading books.
Did you read my latest post about this? I think it'll crack you up.
Yes, I did, and it totally did. Talk about not being able to take a compliment -- sheesh! :-)
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