Novels and Nonsense: The Art of Fiction by David Lodge

This week has been slightly mad with marking, reading chapters for my friend’s dissertation, proofreading my other friend’s book, and starting work on my own novel. It’s overwhelming but also amazing. In any other circumstances I probably wouldn’t be able to dedicate this much time to supporting other writers, and vice versa.

As it’s been so busy, I haven’t managed to read a whole book this week, but I have been dipping in and out of David Lodge’s essay collection The Art of Fiction. Although Lodge isn’t my favourite critic (he gives an eye-roll-worthy account of a time he was stuck at the airport because his taxi driver didn’t know the way out (he says ‘it’s hard to exaggerate this kind of incompetence’ but I just felt sorry for the taxi driver), and about how James Joyce does interior monologues better than Virginia Woolf (Woolf didn’t like Joyce’s work much so I don’t know why she’d want to sound anything like him)), I do actually enjoy reading his analysis of various extracts from different novels. I’ve learned a lot.

This week, my Lodge education has brought me my new favourite word: ‘skaz’. It’s, as Lodge puts it:

‘a rather appealing Russian word (suggesting “jazz” and “scat”, as in “scat-singing”…) used to designate a type of first-person narration that has the characteristics of spoken rather than written word. In this kind of novel or story, the narrator is a character who refers to himself (or herself) as “I” and addresses the reader as “you”. He or she uses vocabulary and syntax characteristic of colloquial speech, and appears to be relating the story spontaneously rather than delivering a carefully constructed and polished written account.‘

Lodge’s example of a novel written in the narrative form of skaz is J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. It does have a great swing to it.

I’ve been dipping in and out of these essays to inspire my own writing, which I’m sure has deeply affected the narrative voice of my novel’s protagonist (as in, it’s probably all over the place). But hey, it’s fun, and there’s always an edit option.

It might be worth getting a copy if you’re a writer yourself and enjoy playing around with various forms and structures. I’ve been giving feedback to my classes such as, ‘Wow, this is a great example of metanarrative’, and, ‘What an interesting use of the epistolary form’. It gives pupils confidence to know they’ve got style. The book has reminded me of all of the brilliant narrative structures we have, and it’s given me a moment to notice how they’ve changed and developed since The Art of Fiction‘s publication in 1992.

I do recommend it. Lodge is a bit of an egotist at times, but he’s got a few interesting things to teach.

Choice and the Unknown: Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

‘I found myself staring at the skull…’

I don’t know whether it is difficult to empathise with Louis, or whether I just don’t want to empathise with him at all. Turned into a vampire, he searches over centuries for a sense of meaning: an understanding of good and evil; querying the existence of God and Satan; attempting to figure out his purpose. A reason why vampires, like him, exist.

To me, it is futile to spend so much time considering these ideas (the same questions materialise in a mortal mind), and yet, Louis’ curiosity is absolutely absorbing. His passions stem from his desire to understand why he is immortal, but once he realises he has no way of understanding, he loses all sense of feeling.

‘You showed me the only thing that I could really hope to become, what depth of evil, what degree of coldness I would have to attain to end my pain. And I accepted that. And so that passion, that love you saw in me, was extinguished.’

Louis’ acceptance of his vampiric nature, this choice, leaves him distant and callous, because his acceptance comes from despair. His inability to accept what is unknown to him means he has lost all hope. He believes he is doomed.

I think, at the moment, this is something many people feel. I have noticed this particularly with pupils, who are desperately upset about what is happening in terms of their exams this year. There is a sense of a loss of control, and it is completely understandable. But I think you can choose how you interpret this feeling.

Either, this loss of control – which many of us feel at the moment in different capacities – sends us into despair and hopelessness, or, we can accept the unknown. We can accept that there is nothing we can do about certain things, things are ‘out of our hands’ and we must put our trust in ourselves, and in others, and try not to dwell on things we have no control over.

Presently, we live in a time of anxiety and dejection; but it can also be a time of hope. Claudia, the vampire child who grows to be a woman psychologically, but is trapped inside the body of a child, comes to terms with her existence, and makes decisions to support her future as much as she can. (I could write about the complexity of her being for days…) She picks a woman to be her vampire ‘mother’, someone who will dote on her and do whatever she asks. But Louis, at first, refuses (selfishly) to turn the mortal woman into a vampire, until Claudia says:

‘Monsters! To give me immortality in this hopeless guise, this helpless form! […] Now, you give her to me!’

It is such a beautiful portrayal of the power of language, and the frustration and pain Claudia feels in her confinement. But in this moment, after so many years, she finds a way to free herself, as much as is possible. She makes a choice: one of hope, instead of despair.

In this historic year of uncertainty, and overwhelming sense of the unknown: which choice will you make? Do you choose hope and acceptance, or their lamentable brother, despair?