On Reading

So first, a heads-up! Fellowette and friends have been blogging their thoughts on the BBC's newest Dickens miniseries, Little Dorrit. Fellowette cordially asked me to guest-blog episode 5 quite a while back, and as that is next week I'm gearing up for it by catching up on the episodes I've missed in my past few weeks of insanity (I'm having a hard time finding somewhere to view it online from Canada, but I'm sure I will find a way by next week...). Lots of fans have been chirping in over at Twitter (see what I did there?), so check that out as well.

Yes, it's been a crazy few weeks with exams and final papers. I'm not completely out of the woods yet, but by Little Dorrit time next week I'll be free! And with freedom comes reading for pleasure. I've missed it so. Actually, the first book I plan to read for fun is Little Dorrit, or maybe Shirley by Charlotte Bronte.

My real reason for posting is to highlight this interesting article from April's Bookslut. Elizabeth Bachner writes of the search for the perfect novel to read:

The real sufferers of Second Novel Syndrome are failed readers, those of us with the literary equivalent of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Disorder, bookish tropical fish who thrive in fragile ecosystems in temperate waters, who die when our reefs are destroyed by ozone or refuse. We hunger for brilliant, exhilarating, awe-inspiring books that are literary and great, or just trashier, juicy books that are entertaining without being condescending. Yet, somehow, successful writers and their entourages seem hell-bent on producing and celebrating resolutely tepid work that falls into neither category.

This is something I think about frequently: the sheer amount of mediocre, but competent, fiction that gets published these days. In my very short review of Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, I noted that I found the book boring and bland, very morally straightforward, even though Gruen's prose was called "darkly beautiful" on the back cover. It's about as darkly beautiful as a glass of milk, to quote myself again. I mean, that's not really anyone's fault. Kudos to Gruen for being published at all! Lord knows I'm not a novelist.

But it just seems to be symptomatic of something weird happening in the publishing world (and I still mean to get to my post on fiction being gendered as "girly," I promise). It just seems like there's a lot of middling stuff that's neither entertaining nor brilliant. Just kind of dull, novel-writing-by-rote. As Bachner notes,

It’s fine when I want to read Great Literature -- I just read something old, or foreign. Sometimes the old or foreign books even hit that perfect edge of juicy readability and brilliant, awe-inspiring, high lit goodness.

So true. But when you want something in between "life-altering classic" and "boring fiction"? When you're hankering for an entertaining but still vaguely literary, unique, exciting read? Whither the next The Secret History or The Virgin Suicides? These are Bachner's examples, and she describes them thusly:

It’s not exactly work that challenges the status quo, explodes the language, generates a haunting change in the timbre of the art world, or radicalizes the reader. But it’s genuinely entertaining, without the insinuating condescension of formula genre fiction. You can put your feet up and read the novel in a couple of escapist hours, hours where you don’t have the urge to flick on the TV, call your ex-boyfriends, think about genocide, or stare into the gaping, thrilling hole of your own life. Such books are pleasant. The problem is finding them.

Actually, she's very quotable, so go read the entire piece. I think she makes an interesting point, although for me there are a lot of levels between "classic," "unpretentious modern fiction" and "formulaic trash." Bachner notes that this is problematic when writers establish themselves with one great novel and don't follow up - again, like Tartt. (She cites Eugenides as well but I loved Middlesex.)

One last quote from the piece:

I remember being nine years old and loving everything I read, loving it earnestly, sopping it up like a little sponge, believing in all of it, hoarding it in the backseat of the car and ignoring the beautiful mountains outside. I loved it even when it was boring, The Hardee [sic] Boys or Les Miserables, anything, just as long as it was a book. It may be that reader’s block is incurable. It may be that it’s not a sign of being a failed reader, but rather an understandable disorder that plagues fragile souls in a disordered society.

Isn't that gorgeous? When I was nine years old I was so eager to fall into the world of a book that I had to be called to every dinner five times and read late into the night with a flashlight. My greatest goal in life was to figure out how to read and walk at the same time without wandering into traffic. And while I still love to read, it's true: right now I always wonder where my next great read is going to come from, instead of feeling sure that every book on the library shelf holds a story worth reading.