August 2011
A good story well told
“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.” Mark Twain
I find that asking Laura to remind me of something is a good, if mildly circuitous, way of remembering things.
Perhaps the unsure-of-himself boy in me still needs to impress her, so by putting myself in her debt and then demonstrating that I didn’t ‘need’ her after all makes me appear stronger to her (in my imagination?). Is this not merely a grown-up version of riding a bike past a bunch of girls with your hands off the handle bars or, several years later, on those hot and dusty days, of hooning around gravely mountain roads with your girl a bit too fast – “yeah mate, I made her squeal a bit” – in search of the perfect summer swimming hole?
Interesting thought, though I think a better explanation of the phenomena is that the act of asking Laura is itself an intellectual mnemonic device, i.e.: the verbal act of stating the desire to remember creates a more tangible connection in the old synapses than simply thinking to oneself that one should remember something as one drifts off to sleep….
Anyway…. after a pretty hard day yesterday (eight miles in 85 degree heat in the morning, and an afternoon/evening on the front verandah creating bookcases), I still had not come up with a subject for this month’s essay with which I was happy. Plenty of vague thoughts, but no single germ around which to construct an argument.
So, as is my custom, I read before bed…
… and finished Peter Carey’s most recent novel: Parrot and Olivier in America. This was my second attempt, and the damn thing still took a good six or eight months to finish. I’ve probably read a dozen or so books in the interim, reread Hamlet several times, read The Merchant of Venice for the first time since eleventh grade at Bomaderry High, and have almost polished off a graphic novelisation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
Parrot and Olivier, by comparison, was an arduous slog.
By the time I reached the final page I was weary of it, and had more than a few things to get off my chest. In the morning. “Hey babe – remind me in the morning of the title for this month’s essay: ‘An Open Letter to Peter Carey.’”
She did remind me, but I had already remembered and started developing the idea further, hence the essay’s new title. But asking her helped me remember, and I still have issues with Parrot and Olivier.
It isn’t as if Carey can’t keep my attention. Though Illywhacker, an earlier novel, hardly worked for me, I have loved a number of his short stories (I actually teach American Dreams to my Seniors – and it always provokes interesting discussions), and was so impressed by True History of the Kelly Gang, in all it’s colloquial glory (the whole thing is in the ‘voice’ of Ned Kelly…), that I ordered it for my school and will be teaching it this year.
And it isn’t as if I’m not up to the required reading level that Carey’s fiction demands. Not wanting to sound like a jerk, but working with text is what I do for a living. You can forget that old gem: those who can’t, teach. I’ve not the space here to deal with that one, suffice to say that J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings), James Joyce (Ulysses, The Dubliners), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World), .J.K. Rowling (the Harry Potter series – first billionaire author…), N.D. O’Reilly (Symptoms of Homesickness, A Poofcake’s Progress), Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes), and Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy, Fever Pitch), were all teachers.
It’s just that the latter-career Peter Carey seems to have decided to eschew the vistas of Twain’s “good stories well told” for the narrow and lonely ghetto of literary fiction. His fiction has always been literary, and much of his body of work in fact exemplifies the concept of good stories well told, but it seems as if along the way Carey has become more interested in showing off the craft rather than creating a cohesive finished product.
As in “Look what I can do”.
As in “Time to secure the old legacy”.
As in “Can I have a Nobel, please”?
I’ve at least one friend in academia who agrees (but for reasons of academic propriety he must remain anonymous). That this trend has become amplify after Carey’s move from the University of Queensland Press to the much broader markets available through Random House, and most recently Knopf, seems almost the act of a tall poppy cutting off its own head.
Parrot and Olivier is just a good deal too self-consciously special. It requires too much subject-specific prior reading for the vast majority of readers to appreciate his tale. The resulting text is disjointed enough that the effort of unearthing the plot’s progression erases much of the pleasure that might come from following its development.
It’s worth noting that I’m currently reading and enjoying Joyce’s Ulysses, which I bought in Dublin at Christmas for three euros. It’s magnificent, but that hardly means it needs must be emulated. Not that I’m giving advice here, but I did enjoy Carey’s Jack Maggs, in which he takes on Dickens’ labyrinthine Great Expectations.
That was an engagement with the literary big boys (by a literary big boy, even) that worked.
In contrast to Parrot and Olivier, an example of highly literate and engrossing recent fiction is Diane Setterfields’ The Thirteenth Tale. I’m actually rereading it in the hope that some of her style might rub off on my own fiction. If anyone has read it and has thoughts to share, or if anyone was to read it on my recommendation, I’d love it if you could get back to me at seanopaddy@gmail.com.
Another recent reading pleasure has been young adult fiction, which continues to demonstrate that good stories well told can reference mythologies and legends and ideas beyond the ken of your average reader, yet still be as engaging as crack cocaine. I’m thinking here of Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Rick Riordan’s Lightning Thief series, Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, and Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief, which is one of the single best books I have ever read.
And Zusak is from Sydney, which doesn’t hurt.
Good stories well told. They are why I teach, why I read, and why I should be out on the verandah working on my built-in bookshelves so I can finish (and move into) my library. I love them. They are elemental to our history. There’s a reason that Jesus Christ used them (parables) in his teaching.
They work.
Kookaburra