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By: Maryann Yin,
on 8/3/2015
Blog: Galley Cat (Mediabistro) (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Awards, Authors, Anne Tyler, Laila Lalami, Anne Enright, Bill Clegg, Anuradha Roy, Hanya Yanagihara, Anna Smaill, Andrew O’Hagan, Chigozie Obioma, Tom McCarthy, Marilynne Robinson, Marlon James, Sunjeev Sahota, Add a tag
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 10/31/2011
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Michael Ondaatje, Julie Otsuka, Chloe Aridjis, Julian Barnes, Anne Enright, The Sense of an Ending, short novels, Alice McDermott, Add a tag
The pages of my copy of The Sense of an Ending, the gripping new novel by Julian Barnes, had not been cut. I had to slip my finger in between each one as I lay reading at the close of a snowy weekend. This pleased me greatly. The feel of the paper against my skin. The sound of a story unfolding.
I am always confused by critics of the short novel—by those who refer to the shorter novel as something lesser than. I remember a conversation with Alice McDermott (Charming Billy, That Night, At Weddings and Wakes), in which she spoke of writing the kind of stories she herself liked to read—shorter and more compact novels, densified worlds, intimate places, landscapes of measured, studied sentences.
Yes. Me, too. The short novel may or may not be about plot, may or may not be commercial (whatever that is). But when it is handled with the intelligence of an Alice McDermott or a Julian Barnes or a Julia Otsuka or a Kate Chopin or a Michael Ondaatje (Coming Through Slaughter) or a Chloe Aridjis or a Kathryn Davis or an Anne Enright, for example, I personally think there is nothing finer. Brilliant short novels have the impact of poems. They are, most often, shorter precisely because the writer has taken the time to banish the extraneous and diluting, the self-aggrandizing or -indulgent. There is a story to be told. There is its core and there are those things essential to its core. The brilliant writer of shorter novels holds that line, maintains his or her focus, goes blessedly deep, does not skip from this event to that—indeed, does not concentrate on "events" at all. Character and meaning, language and symbol, the ripe stuff. Brilliant short novels concentrate, primarily, on that.
I know many who would disagree, and that's the beauty of this literary community—the possibility of conversation, dissension. (And of course I have many beloved books on my shelf that run past 300 pages, though I will admit that I don't have many favorites that run past 400.) But I hope no one will disagree with me about this new book by Julian Barnes. From the first sentence to the last I hardly exhaled. The entire book was of such a piece that I felt certain that Barnes himself was sitting here, telling this story about a man, Tony Webster, resorting the memories of his youth. Webster had thought himself a regular-enough student with a regular-enough first love affair. He had gotten on with his life and lived it reasonably well. But when he learns that he has been remembered in a will in an odd and oddly disturbing way, and when, over time, he is presented with evidence of who he really was as a young man, he is staggered in the way that we all are staggered when presented with contradictions of our own fine self-opinion.
Barnes, whose Nothing to Be Frightened Of, is a fine and teachable book of nonfiction, puts his philosophical genius on full display in this novel, his great capacity for going deep. One example of many:
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 9/19/2011
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Anne Enright Interview, W.W. Norton, Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz, Add a tag
Readers of this blog know that I have, in the last month or so, twice brought Anne Enright's new novel, The Forgotten Waltz to this virtual page, once to reflect on Enright's bright capacity with first words and once to review the book in total. Readers also know what a huge fan I am of The Gathering, and of writers who write as fiercely and boldly and still beautifully as Enright. Today, and without further ado, I bring you this conversation that Anne Enright graciously agreed to conduct—over email. I asked about that beginning. I asked about criticism and joy. I find her answers to be as astute and smart as her books have always been.
The Forgotten Waltz begins with these words: I met him in my sister’s garden in Enniskerry. That is where I saw him first. There was nothing fated about it, though I add in the summer light and the view. I put him at the bottom of my sister’s garden, in the afternoon, at the moment the day begins to turn. It’s a simple-seeming beginning, but it is not. It is a tempo already firmly established. It is a series of small contradictions, nuance and shadow. Were these the first words that you wrote for this book? Does story take hold of you first, when you are writing, or is something else (the sound of a song, for example) at work?
Every book I write I am asked about beginnings, and I look back at my files and am no closer to an answer. Whatever way I begin, it is not large. I don't sit at the keyboard like a mad pianist about to launch into a Beethoven sonata (neither did Beethoven, for that matter). I pootle along. I rearrange things. I write something small and tuck it away. The 'first words' you read have been written and rewritten many times, as have all the subsequent words in the book. The trick is to keep them fresh. I think I did know what I wanted to write about - I knew a fair amount about Gina and Seán. But, at the beginning of the book, Gina does not know - or not yet. I wanted to catch that sense of 'nearly knowing'. My ideal is a text that that holds a sense of movement and ambiguity. All the fun, for me, comes from finding the right tone.
You are interested, you have indicated in previous interviews, not in the absolute good or bad of your characters, but in the arrangement and consequences of their flaws. What have you gained, as a writer, by keeping your eye trained on personal fault lines?
I think it is a more honest way to proceed.
1 Comments on An Interview with Anne Enright, last added: 9/19/2011
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By: Maryann Yin,
on 8/3/2015
Blog: Galley Cat (Mediabistro) (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Awards, Authors, Anne Tyler, Laila Lalami, Anne Enright, Bill Clegg, Anuradha Roy, Hanya Yanagihara, Anna Smaill, Andrew O’Hagan, Chigozie Obioma, Tom McCarthy, Marilynne Robinson, Marlon James, Sunjeev Sahota, Add a tag
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 10/31/2011
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Michael Ondaatje, Julie Otsuka, Chloe Aridjis, Julian Barnes, Anne Enright, The Sense of an Ending, short novels, Alice McDermott, Add a tag
I am always confused by critics of the short novel—by those who refer to the shorter novel as something lesser than. I remember a conversation with Alice McDermott (Charming Billy, That Night, At Weddings and Wakes), in which she spoke of writing the kind of stories she herself liked to read—shorter and more compact novels, densified worlds, intimate places, landscapes of measured, studied sentences.
Yes. Me, too. The short novel may or may not be about plot, may or may not be commercial (whatever that is). But when it is handled with the intelligence of an Alice McDermott or a Julian Barnes or a Julia Otsuka or a Kate Chopin or a Michael Ondaatje (Coming Through Slaughter) or a Chloe Aridjis or a Kathryn Davis or an Anne Enright, for example, I personally think there is nothing finer. Brilliant short novels have the impact of poems. They are, most often, shorter precisely because the writer has taken the time to banish the extraneous and diluting, the self-aggrandizing or -indulgent. There is a story to be told. There is its core and there are those things essential to its core. The brilliant writer of shorter novels holds that line, maintains his or her focus, goes blessedly deep, does not skip from this event to that—indeed, does not concentrate on "events" at all. Character and meaning, language and symbol, the ripe stuff. Brilliant short novels concentrate, primarily, on that.
I know many who would disagree, and that's the beauty of this literary community—the possibility of conversation, dissension. (And of course I have many beloved books on my shelf that run past 300 pages, though I will admit that I don't have many favorites that run past 400.) But I hope no one will disagree with me about this new book by Julian Barnes. From the first sentence to the last I hardly exhaled. The entire book was of such a piece that I felt certain that Barnes himself was sitting here, telling this story about a man, Tony Webster, resorting the memories of his youth. Webster had thought himself a regular-enough student with a regular-enough first love affair. He had gotten on with his life and lived it reasonably well. But when he learns that he has been remembered in a will in an odd and oddly disturbing way, and when, over time, he is presented with evidence of who he really was as a young man, he is staggered in the way that we all are staggered when presented with contradictions of our own fine self-opinion.
Barnes, whose Nothing to Be Frightened Of, is a fine and teachable book of nonfiction, puts his philosophical genius on full display in this novel, his great capacity for going deep. One example of many:
And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse—a feeling somewhat between self-pity and self-hatred—about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned t5 Comments on On Short Novels, The Sense of an Ending, and Julian Barnes, last added: 11/3/2011Display Comments Add a Comment
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 9/19/2011
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Anne Enright Interview, W.W. Norton, Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz, Add a tag
The Forgotten Waltz begins with these words: I met him in my sister’s garden in Enniskerry. That is where I saw him first. There was nothing fated about it, though I add in the summer light and the view. I put him at the bottom of my sister’s garden, in the afternoon, at the moment the day begins to turn. It’s a simple-seeming beginning, but it is not. It is a tempo already firmly established. It is a series of small contradictions, nuance and shadow. Were these the first words that you wrote for this book? Does story take hold of you first, when you are writing, or is something else (the sound of a song, for example) at work?
Every book I write I am asked about beginnings, and I look back at my files and am no closer to an answer. Whatever way I begin, it is not large. I don't sit at the keyboard like a mad pianist about to launch into a Beethoven sonata (neither did Beethoven, for that matter). I pootle along. I rearrange things. I write something small and tuck it away. The 'first words' you read have been written and rewritten many times, as have all the subsequent words in the book. The trick is to keep them fresh. I think I did know what I wanted to write about - I knew a fair amount about Gina and Seán. But, at the beginning of the book, Gina does not know - or not yet. I wanted to catch that sense of 'nearly knowing'. My ideal is a text that that holds a sense of movement and ambiguity. All the fun, for me, comes from finding the right tone.
You are interested, you have indicated in previous interviews, not in the absolute good or bad of your characters, but in the arrangement and consequences of their flaws. What have you gained, as a writer, by keeping your eye trained on personal fault lines?
I think it is a more honest way to proceed.
1 Comments on An Interview with Anne Enright, last added: 9/19/2011
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 8/25/2011
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: The Forgotten Waltz, W.W. Norton, Anne Enright, Add a tag
Book summaries pain me. I never see that as my job. I limit my responsibilities here to evocations—to letting you know how I felt when I read, and as I read The Forgotten Waltz I felt, from the very first, taken in, absorbed, urgent in my need to know, to read more deeply in. I felt alive to Gina Moynihan, Enright's narrator, who is looking back, in a season of snow, on the mystery and ruin of an adulterous affair. The affair hasn't proceeded well; we know this from the start. It has destroyed two marriages, put houses up for sale, and haunted a child who was not altogether well to begin with. Maybe it was all irresistible. Was it? But who is better off in the end?
This a novel that slides back and forth over time and disclosure, through love and accusation, in and out of jobs and hotel rooms, between Ireland and elsewhere. It is a novel that seems to be about one thing then shifts toward another, a novel that doesn't entirely give up the logic of its title. This is a novel, in other words, that doesn't presume the arrogance of a set-aside, easily cataloged or marketed theme. Enright creates voices. She moves them across the page. They digress, they attack, they submit, they desire, they turn the story on its head, they whisper, they groan. They rail against reason. They want to be reasoned with. And never—never once—do they concede.
Here's Gina speaking:
I feel that the world might be better if it was run by girls who are nearly twelve, the ability they have to be fully moral and fully venal at the same time. Capitalism would certainly thrive.
Here is the passage that I believe explains the workings of this book. The workings, perhaps, of Enright's brilliant and irreducible mind:
When I was twelve or so, I used to practise astral flying—it must have been a fashion then. I lay on my back in bed, and when I was fully heavy, too heavy to move, I got up, in my mind, and left the house. I went down the stairs and out the front door. I walked or I drifted along the street. If I wanted to, I flew. And I imagined, or I saw, every single detail of the passing world; every fact about the hall of the stairs and the street beyond. The next day I would go out to look for things I had noticed, for the first time, the night before. And I found them, too. Or thought I had.
2 Comments on The Forgotten Waltz/Anne Enright: Reflections, last added: 8/25/2011
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 8/23/2011
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: W.W. Norton, Dangerous Neighbors, Anne Enright, NetGalley, The Forgotten Waltz, Add a tag
But two days ago, I downloaded my first NetGalley advanced reading copy—The Forgotten Waltz by the truly brilliant, often disturbing, completely original Anne Enright. I'm only thirty pages in. I'll be doing a full report here (as well as an interview with Ms. Enright, come October). But on this gloriously weathered day, might I just suggest that this, these opening lines, is how books should begin. The voice is true and firm and daring. There is no barrier between writer and reader. Present is past and past is present, and who doesn't want to know what has happened?
i met him in my sister's garden in Enniskerry. That is where I saw him first. There was nothing fated about it, though I add in the late summer light and the view. I put him at the bottom of my sister's garden, in the afternoon, at the moment the day begins to turn. Half five maybe. It is half past five on a Wicklow summer Sunday when I see Sean for the first time. There he is, where the end of my sister's garden becomes uncertain.
You want to know what I like in books? I like this.
3 Comments on Anne Enright and The Forgotten Waltz: this is how books should begin, last added: 8/24/2011
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 8/21/2011
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Anne Enright, NetGalley, YOU ARE MY ONLY review copies, The Forgotten Waltz, Add a tag
On another NetGalley note: Today I officially joined this digital review community by downloading The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright. Look for my review of this W.W. Norton book and my interview with Miss Enright in the early days of October.
1 Comments on Yours truly (and YOU ARE MY ONLY) join the NetGalley community, last added: 8/23/2011
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By: Maryann Yin,
on 2/10/2011
Blog: Galley Cat (Mediabistro) (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Celebrities, Book Fairs, Brian Selznick, Book Expo America, Kevin Henkes, Sarah Dessen, Charlaine Harris, Mindy Kaling, Diane Keaton, Julianne Moore, Erik Larson, Anne Enright, Roger Ebert, breakfast events, Jefferey Eugenides, Jim Lehrer, Add a tag
Oscar-nominated actress Julianne Moore, Emmy-nominated comedian Mindy Kaling, and journalist Jim Lehrer will host breakfast events at this year’s Book Expo America.
Moore, author of picture book Freckleface Strawberry, will preside over the children’s writers’ breakfast. Kaling (a writer at The Office) and Lehrer (author of both fiction and nonfiction) will host two adult writers’ breakfasts.
Here’s more from the press release: “The other speakers who will be joining the hosts for these popular events include Sarah Dessen, Roger Ebert, Anne Enright, Jefferey Eugenides, Charlaine Harris, Kevin Henkes, Diane Keaton, Erik Larson, and Brian Selznick. In addition, Katherine Paterson, who is the current Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, will be saying a few words at the Children’s Breakfast on behalf of the Children’s Book Council.”
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I am with you. I want a powerful economy of words, though I do love a Stephen King tome now and again...Like reading IT for the second time since I was 10...what a difference.
I like short novels. I like stories that get in and out of the heart the matter quickly and with tight language. I also wish that films were no longer than 90 minutes. I don't know what that has to do with anything. Just felt like sharing.
Oh, I agree, Beth - I think some of the best books are the shorter ones. Peirene Press puts out some terrific books (mostly in translation) which are less than 200 pages...two which I really loved were Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius...which spanned only 105 pages, and Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal which was only 126 pages. And Tinkers by Paul Harding (which won the Pulitzer last year) was amazing...and very short. Of course, I also include YOUR books in some of the best short fiction out there :)
This made me feel better, in a way, because my first manuscript is looking like its gonna end up at around 85,000, which is totally fine, but still on the short side. I like the short ones too. I think all lengths have their place, and it matters more to me how well a piece is written then how long it is. That's the point, isn't it?
Sarah Allen
(my creative writing blog)
I love short novels. I'm putting this on my list.