Spontaneous Musings

I've linked the two because I read an essay regarding Proust and the novel by Milan Kundera on the way to the Spainish Guitar Festival and then portions of Swann's Way on the subway ride home. By the by - it is not easy to read Proust when two people are having a heated debate about the ethical conduct of their mathematics teacher right next to you.

The Guitare Festival was basically two hours of classical guitare music performed for free at Julliard to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of its Pre-College Guitare Department. ( Listening to Spainish Guitare )

On the subway ride to and from the concert - I finished an article in this week's New Yorker entitled What is a Novelist? or How Great Writers Are Made. by Milan Kundera Milan Kundera wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality. He's a Czech novelist.

( About Albertine, who apparently appears in the second volumn of In Search of Lost Time and the divine alchemy of the novel )

In case that makes no sense, which it doesn't unless you know who Albertine is - he revists Proust in the next passage of his essay, entitled "Marcel Proust's Verdict" - which he states and I'll transcribe it in full for those on my flist reading Proust at the moment and those who are or attempting to become novelists:

In In Search of Lost Time, Proust is absolutely clear:'In this novel...there is not one incident that is not fictional...not one character a clef.' However tightly bound to the life of its author, Proust's novel stands, without question, at the opposite pole from autiobiography; there is in it no autobiographical intention; he wrote it not in order to talk about his life but to show his readers their own lives. "Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth." Those lines of Proust's define not only the meaing of the Proustian novel; they define the meaning of the very art of the novel."

I think this is true of most art, great art, in that what we see in it is often what it tells us about ourselves. How it reflects much like a magic mirror might an unseen truth. People have told me that reading Proust changed their lives - I think what Kundera states above explains to a degree what they mean by that - how a novel or work of art can in fact change, save, or even affect us on a spiritual level.

There's a passage from Proust's By Way of Swann's or Swann's Way that I'd like to share with you, which in some ways encapsulates this:

[The narrator is describing the experience of reading a book he's recently picked up. It's on page 86 and the narrator has just told us how he's acquired a book recommended by a friend.]

" After this central belief, which moved incessantly during my reading from inside to outside, toward the discovery of the truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I was taking part for those afternoons contained more dramatic events than does often, an entire lifetime. These were the events taking place in the book I was reading; it is true that the people affected by them were not "real", as Francoise said. But all the feelings we are made to experience by the joy or the misfortune of a real person are produced in us only through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist consisted in understanding that in the apparatus of our emotions, the image being the only essential element, the simplification that would consist in purely and simply abolishing real people would be a decisive improvement. A real human being, however profoundly we sympathize with him, is in large part perceived by our senses, that is to say, remains opaque to us, presents a dead weight which our sensibility cannot life. If a calamity should strike him, it is only in small part of the total notion we have of him that we will be able to be moved by this; even more, it is only in part of the total notion he has of himself that he will be able to be moved himself. The novelist's happy discovery was to have the idea of replacing these parts, impenetrable to the soul, by an equal quantity of immaterial parts, that is to say, parts which our soul can assimilate. What does it matter thenceforth if the actions, and the emotions, of this new order of creatures seem to us true, since we have made them ours, since it is within us that they occur, that they hold within their control, as we feverishly turn the pages of the book, the rapidity of our breathing and the intensity of our gaze. And once the novelist has put us in that state, in which, as in all purely internal states, every emotion is multiplied tenfold, in which his book will disturb us as migh a dream but a dream more lucid than those we have while sleeping and whose memory will last longer, then see how he provokes in us within one hour all possible happinesses and all possible unhappinesses just a few of which we would spend years of our lives coming to know and the most intense of which would never be revealed to us because the slowness with which they occur prevents us from perceiving them (thus our heart changes, in life, and it is the worst pain; but we know it only through reading, through our imagination: in reality it changes, as certain nautral phenomena occur, slowly enough so that, if we are able to observe successively each of its different states, in return we are spared the actual sensation of change.) "

In short a novel or piece of art can affect us more than a real experience, for it is an experience lived in the mind, the imagination. It can change you. You can experience a piece of artwork and leave it, different. Because you have spent a moment inside a point of view you may or may not have imagined or looked in the mirror and saw something reflected back that you did not know existed. According to Kundera, that is what a novelist does - creates a work that provides the reader with a window into the reader's own soul.

There's other passages I'd love to share from both the article and Swann's Way - I've only made it to page 140, partly because I feel this overwhelming need to inhale the words on the page and discuss every ten pages in my lj. That would slow anyone down. By the way - pages 137-140 explain the titles of the volumes. He goes into detail about what by way of Swann's is and by way of Germantes. If you skimmed them, go back and re-read. Quite important thematically speaking.
( Description of Way by Swann's literally. )

[Okay watching tv while writing this, so there are typos aplenty and it might sound off in places. Yes, I'm multi-tasking.]

About thirty some pages into Swann's Way, initial impressions? The narrator has an oddly Oedipal relationship with his parents and seems to be "in love" with his mother. That said this passage is beautifully written:
( bits on Proust's Swann's Way )

Reading Marcel Proust's "Swann's Way" at the same time as Francine Prose's "Reading Like A Writer" (*edited to add: Prose not to be confused with Proust. One is dead, French, and male - one is alive, female, American, and living in New York. One of the problems of doing kitchen sink posts is I indavertently end up confusing readers.) is an interesting experience. I find myself paying more attention to the author's style more than usual. And often pausing to re-read a sentence more than once. Marcel Proust's writing style - propells one forward, yet equally asks that you go back, re-read, ruminate on what he has written.

Francine Prose made a few interesting comments in Chapter One of Reading Like A Writer. The first point relates to well reading a masterpiece like Proust. She states how "a work of art can start you thinking about some esthetic or philosphical problem, it can suggest some new method, some fresh approach to fiction." Then, in regards to reading Proust - "It's like watching someone dance and then secretly, in your own room, trying out a few steps." Even though your novel is not Proust.

1. "Not long ago, a friend told me that her students had complained that reading masterpieces made them feel stupid. But I've always found that the better the book I'm reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might someday, become smarter." Would agree with this.

2. "I've also heard fellow writers say that they cannot read while working on a book of their own for fear that Tolstoy or Shakespeare might influence them. I've always hoped they would influence me, and I wonder if I would have taken so happily to being a writer if it had meand I couldn't read for the years it might take to complete a novel."

Yes! Okay, I've had this debate with numerous people online and off, and I've always maintained that the reading while working on a novel can only improve it. Let me explain - the published authors I've run across who avoid reading while working on a novel are not authors whose work I'd want to imitate. Frex - John Jakes and John Maxim. Both interviewed by my father and both went on record stating they fear reading fiction while writing novels since it may interfer with their plot, they may discover their idea has been grabbed by someone else (sigh), or unduly influence them. Now does anyone remember any novels these people have written? Here's a list of writers who read while writing and state that they've learned from reading other's works: Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Joyce, Maria Doria Russell, Elizabeth Bear, Francine Prose, Shakespear (yes, Shakespeare read other plays and freely borrowed from them), Margret Atwood, and Jane Austen (who often made fun of the books she read in her own).

I honestly do not understand people who write fiction but refuse to read it. It's like learning to dance or writing a song without listening to others. Bob Dylan, argueably one of the best songwriters out there, listens to a broad range of music, he borrowed sounds and styles from other artists to create his own interpretation. He did not stop listening to music while writing his songs for fear that he'd steal something from someone else. Same deal with acting, actors will study Brando, Dean, watch hours of others' performances, borrow things - James Marsters mentioned in interviews how he borrowed from people like Brando, Dean, Anthony Stewart Head, and others he worked with. Marlon Brando - a fantastic mimic, mimiced others styles. Boreanze enjoyed playing off of Denisof and Marsters - two actors who helped his own style. Or how about painters? Painters study other painters. You study how they drew, their technique, some students may even apprentice under a painter, copying their style for a while then eventually creating their own. Art, my friends, is not created in a vaccume. At least "good" art isn't. We borrow. We play homage to others. Look at film - Whedon plays homage to John Ford and Howard Hawkes. JJ Abrahms to Joss Whedon. We take an idea, a style, twist it about, play with it, and make it our own.

Prose goes on to state why people fear reading good works, and I've experienced what she describes - who hasn't?
"To be truthful, there are writers who will stop you dead in your tracks by making you see your own work in the most unflattering light. Each of us will meet a different harbinger of personal failure, some innocent genius chosen by us for reasons having to do with what we see as our own inadequacies. The only remedy I have found is to read another writer whose work is entirely different from the first, though not necessarily more like your own - a difference that will remind you of how many rooms there are in the house of art."

Hence the point of following a novel by say George RR Martin or Diana Gabaldan with one by Marcel Proust.

The other point of reading others works is it can help you figure out how to do something. Fix something. Prose suggests Isaak Babel for violent scenes - which ahem, I'm struggling with writing in my own novel at the moment, making me want to go out and grab a book by Isaak Babel, damn Prose. Wasted time on net last night looking for a free short story to read.

3. Prose comments on how much trouble her students have in reading a simple short story, that they were too busy forming critical opinions of the work, as opposed to paying attention to the words the writer uses. "They had been encouraged to form strong, critical and often negative opinions of geniuses who had been read with delight for centuries before they were born. They had been instructed to prosecute or defend these authors, as if in a court of law, on charges having to do with the writers' origins, their racial, cultural, and class backgrounds. They had been encouraged to re-write the classics into the more acceptable forms that the authors might have discovered had they only shared their young critics' level of insight, tolerance, and awareness." While it is great to analyze a work of art, to think about it critically, to do so to the extent that the work disappears and all that remains is the critique in our mind, we lose the art. I saw this a lot with analysis of tv shows, films, and books online. People stopped enjoying it. They were caught up in defending or prosecuting it for being "too white", "racist", "politically incorrect", "misogynistic", etc - and I've done it as well. I think sometimes there is such a thing as being "too critical".

Prose gets around this problem by changing how she teaches her reading course, focusing instead on how the book is written as opposed to what it means or its relevant themes. She focuses on what the writer does brilliantly. How they use a strand of dialogue or a bit of description to get across a point. I did something similar with Joss Whedon's BTVS - analyzing in my head how the writer used dialogue to distinguish characters, to describe who they were yet at the same time propell the plot and action. I'm not saying one should not be a critical reader, just that there is such a thing as going overboard.

Half-watching tv at the moment. Bones was surprisingly good tonight. And reading an article in the newest "New Yorker" on Bill Clinton, who fascinates me. I honestly think he may be the only living US President I'd like to meet and chat with.