Contests, Hornby, and Sunflowers and Fuzzy Bunnies
I am guilty of doing something Murray warned against: I'm afraid I started out reading the fiction entries for the writing contest expecting to find the Great American Novel. It hasn't happened yet. I haven't even found the Great American Short Story. One of my silly preconceived notions about judging the writing contest was the idea that all of the truly brilliant prose would knock me out of my chair.
Nick Hornby (the author of About a Boy) writes a column for the Believer magazine called "Stuff I've Been Reading" in which he lists the books he bought in the course of the month and the books he read in the course of the month. (The two lists rarely ever match and there are many books he has not yet gotten around to reading. This is vastly reassuring to me.) His monthly column, then, is essentially a review of the books he's read. I just finished reading The Polysyllabic Spree -- a collection of fourteen months worth of columns. And if I have learned nothing else from reading these essays, I have learned this: good reading material shows up in some of the places where you least expect to find it. The trick is to stop having such incredibly high expectations. This man appreciates memoirs about autism because they ring true as much he appreciates the style of Charles Dickens in David Copperfield.
I suppose my point is this: this man has become one of my favorite people who write about books because he approaches the novels he reads with few (and often false) expectations about what he is going to read. Once I stopped expecting the extraordinary, the writing in front of me seemed to improve by degrees. Much of the fiction still seems sooooo violent, but I suppose someday I will have to reconcile myself to the idea that the world is not full of sunflowers and fuzzy bunnies.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I am developing the ability to forget about my far-reaching expectations. But please don't make me leave the sunflowers and fuzzy bunnies behind just yet.
Nick Hornby (the author of About a Boy) writes a column for the Believer magazine called "Stuff I've Been Reading" in which he lists the books he bought in the course of the month and the books he read in the course of the month. (The two lists rarely ever match and there are many books he has not yet gotten around to reading. This is vastly reassuring to me.) His monthly column, then, is essentially a review of the books he's read. I just finished reading The Polysyllabic Spree -- a collection of fourteen months worth of columns. And if I have learned nothing else from reading these essays, I have learned this: good reading material shows up in some of the places where you least expect to find it. The trick is to stop having such incredibly high expectations. This man appreciates memoirs about autism because they ring true as much he appreciates the style of Charles Dickens in David Copperfield.
I suppose my point is this: this man has become one of my favorite people who write about books because he approaches the novels he reads with few (and often false) expectations about what he is going to read. Once I stopped expecting the extraordinary, the writing in front of me seemed to improve by degrees. Much of the fiction still seems sooooo violent, but I suppose someday I will have to reconcile myself to the idea that the world is not full of sunflowers and fuzzy bunnies.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I am developing the ability to forget about my far-reaching expectations. But please don't make me leave the sunflowers and fuzzy bunnies behind just yet.
posted by Anonymous at 9:40 PM
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