Devenish made himself agreeable to half the people in the room. I do not know how this trick of frank friendliness is managed. It is all I can do to be pleasant, without stiffness, to my own parishioners whom I know well.
George A. Birmingham - Wild Justice (1930)
George A. Birmingham was the pen name of James Owen Hannay an Irish clergyman and novelist. Here he describes a kind of social diffidence which must be familiar to many. It’s a minor social insight which can be one of the fascinations of fiction, even the fiction of minor writers.
I read both fiction and non-fiction, but in recent years I’ve veered quite strongly towards fiction. Too many non-fiction books have turned out to be turgid, biased, long-winded or plausible ideas padded out to 300 pages which could have been 30. Of course the number of non-fiction books which are well worth reading is vast, but fiction has its interests too, often going well beyond the story or plot.
A Dostoyevsky, a Jane Austen, a Stendhal, a Melville, a Tolstoy, a Proust, or a Joyce seem to show a grasp of human behavior which is beyond the methods of science.
B.F. Skinner - Verbal Behavior (1957)
Through fiction it is often possible to experience an imaginative view of the writer’s world, to gaze with them through their window. Busy city streets, country lanes, storms, snow, foggy evenings, the call of an owl, a lighted window in the distance, sunrise, sunset, the growl of a distant car on a distant road, silence, human habits, petty annoyances – the insights are endless.
In addition to the ephemeral details of other lives, there is that intriguing, delightfully mundane poetry of life which cannot be said so concisely within non-fiction. "A picture is worth a thousand words" the old adage says, but a fictional paragraph may say even more and say it better.
As he listened to her, with a full plate in front of him, he was affected, in spite of himself, by the prim comfort of his surroundings. The matting beneath his feet seemed very soft; the gleams of the brass hanging lamp, the soft, yellow tint of the wallpaper, and the bright oak of the furniture filled him with appreciation of a life spent in comfort, which disturbed his notions of right and wrong.
Émile Zola - The Belly of Paris (1873)
His heart, warmed by the wine, was brimming over with good-humour, friendliness, and sadness. He walked along thinking how frequently one met with good people, and what a pity it was that nothing was left of those meetings but memories. At times one catches a glimpse of cranes on the horizon, and a faint gust of wind brings their plaintive, ecstatic cry, and a minute later, however greedily one scans the blue distance, one cannot see a speck nor catch a sound; and like that, people with their faces and their words flit through our lives and are drowned in the past, leaving nothing except faint traces in the memory.
Anton Chekhov - Verochka (1887)
Men of courage, with strong bodies and quick brains, men who have come of a strong race, have taken up what they had thought to be the banner of life and carried it forward. Growing weary they have stopped in a road that climbs a long hill and have leaned the banner against a tree. Tight brains have loosened a little. Strong convictions have become weak. Old gods are dying.
Sherwood Anderson - Windy McPherson's Son (1916)
In addition to the ephemeral details of other lives, there is that intriguing, delightfully mundane poetry of life which cannot be said so concisely within non-fiction. "A picture is worth a thousand words" the old adage says, but a fictional paragraph may say even more and say it better.
As he listened to her, with a full plate in front of him, he was affected, in spite of himself, by the prim comfort of his surroundings. The matting beneath his feet seemed very soft; the gleams of the brass hanging lamp, the soft, yellow tint of the wallpaper, and the bright oak of the furniture filled him with appreciation of a life spent in comfort, which disturbed his notions of right and wrong.
Émile Zola - The Belly of Paris (1873)
His heart, warmed by the wine, was brimming over with good-humour, friendliness, and sadness. He walked along thinking how frequently one met with good people, and what a pity it was that nothing was left of those meetings but memories. At times one catches a glimpse of cranes on the horizon, and a faint gust of wind brings their plaintive, ecstatic cry, and a minute later, however greedily one scans the blue distance, one cannot see a speck nor catch a sound; and like that, people with their faces and their words flit through our lives and are drowned in the past, leaving nothing except faint traces in the memory.
Anton Chekhov - Verochka (1887)
Men of courage, with strong bodies and quick brains, men who have come of a strong race, have taken up what they had thought to be the banner of life and carried it forward. Growing weary they have stopped in a road that climbs a long hill and have leaned the banner against a tree. Tight brains have loosened a little. Strong convictions have become weak. Old gods are dying.
Sherwood Anderson - Windy McPherson's Son (1916)
5 comments:
I used to read a lot of science fiction (old style ray guns and spaceships). This then mutated into fantasy (elves and magic) and latterly into romance/thriller/supernatural fluff.
I realise now that I have used fiction as self medication to even out my internal mental and physical balance. Just as some might drink alcohol or devour cream cakes or chocolate.
We're a sad bunch.
There seems to have been a big increase in non-fiction popular books. I date it from around the time of that "Longitude" book by Dava Sobel, though of course others will have noticed different beginnings (Hawking?). Since then there have been hundreds of books on particular inventions, social histories of objects and commodities, popularisations of little bite-sized chunks of science, philosophy, art, and history. Most are written reasonably well, and they strike me as the efforts of enthusiastic graduates who have a go at making money through popularising something they already know about, because they can't get jobs in academia. And on the demand side, middle class people want something that passes the time, and makes them appear well-read in social gatherings.
You can't really do that with fiction. ("I read this marvellous little novel last week, it's all about...") although I suppose people used to.
And another difference is that with a bit of luck and some research, I could imagine writing a nice little non-fiction book for the popular reader. Construct a human narrative around something I used to know about, do some reading around, and off we go. (Thomas Hobbes as a tutor? Marx impregnating his maid? John Stuart Mill rebelling against his father?....) But fiction - never!
Really excellent, perspective-altering fiction is valuable for the same reason why land was a good buy: because they are not making any more of it!
"You should become a writer" said my schoolteacher.
"But I have nothing to say" said I. "I don't know anything yet."
@Sam Vega
At one time, not so long ago, actually owning a book (and a book case) was a sign of middle class status. As was having a degree.
Now, not so much. Books are cheap and/or digital and degrees are available for most people (if at a deferred cost).
There's also the problem that the big publishing houses appear to have gone woke... so many authors have turned to self publishing. There's some good fiction out there - but there's also some poor stuff too.
DJ - the science fiction I used to read was the ray guns and spaceships type, but not the fantasy. Using fiction to retain a balanced outlook seems sane to me as the modern world is undoubtedly invasive and not particularly sane.
Sam - I find the internet is generally better than a book for those bite-sized chunks. As you say, there are lots of these books around but to many seem to be marketed as gifts rather than books for reading. The advantage of that is that nobody is going to take them too seriously.
You could find a Hobbes, Marx or John Stuart Mill book difficult to write because people would take it seriously and you may never be sufficiently satisfied with it to regard it as done.
dearieme - Samuel Johnson was keen on that. He thought young men should spend many hours a day reading before their knowledge could be considered wide enough to be worth them saying or writing anything.
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