My Recent Reading

I've been reading a lot of fiction lately. In recent years, I've read a lot more non-fiction than fiction, so this is unusual for me.

I'll admit that I'd developed a prejudice against fiction, a prejudice that I accept is unreasonable. This prejudice stems from a few different sources.

One is the rather excessive prestige that seems to attach to fiction vis-a-vis non-fiction. When people talk about great books, they always seem to mean novels. Look for any list of the greatest books of all time, or the greatest book of the twentieth century, and it's likely to be dominated by novels.

Another source is the neglect of poetry. Yes, I've written ad nauseum on this subject before. But it really does bother me that people consider themselves cultured and well-read and traditional without ever reading poetry, or reading it once in a blue moon.

There was a time when novels were considered rather trashy; entertaining diversions, at best. And it's certainly the case that the mental and imaginative exertion required for novel-reading is minimal, compared to the that required for poetry. Reading poetry is a vigorous hike. Reading a novel is lying on the couch eating doughnuts-- in comparison.

The fact that we are all plugged into electronic media now makes even novel-reading seem like a cause for self-congratulation. And it is, but that only means our standards have slipped ever further.

Another reason I've developed a prejudice against fiction is because there's so much to learn about the real world. History has been going on for a very long time now, and a man could spend his life studying cocktails or Finnish folklore or typography. Reality is a bottomless buffet. Do we really need to make things up?

I feel this reaction most especially when I come across a book with an interesting title, like A Trek Through the Phoneboxes of Darlington, and it turns out to be a stupid novel whose author thought he was being quirky.

I think there's something to be said for all these reactions, but...well, we still seem to need fiction. Take a book like 1984 by George Orwell. The most exhaustive study of real-world totalitarian regimes wouldn't quite capture the essence of totalitarianism as well as Orwell's masterpiece does.

One way or another, I found myself reading a good few novels recently.

The first was The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. Blatty was a believing Catholic, although he did get married a few more times than a Catholic is supposed to. In any case, the book takes exorcism (and Catholicism) very seriously.

I've never been a huge fan of the film, although it's certainly good. The book is a much more immersive and powerful experience. It does what a film can never do, without the rather corny use of voice-overs; that is, it takes you into the minds of the characters. (Except, interestingly, the little girl who suffers the possession.)

The night I actually finished The Exorcist, I was profoundly moved and inspired. Blatty presents the two priests who perform the rite as heroic and self-sacrificing. Given the culture of misandry we live in today, it was a very welcome change. The novel also makes the reality of supernatural warfare very compelling.

And it's so seventies!

After that I read Catcher in the Rye, one of those iconic books that I'd never got around to reading. One of the reasons I'd avoided it is because I feared Holden Caulfield would be a sixties counter-cultural hero, especially as I'd heard that he lambasts "phonies" all the time. But it didn't turn out like that at all. The book was published in 1951, but society has already started to become more crass and vulgar. Caulfield is actually very disdainful of all this. He doesn't have much time for Hollywood, sexual promiscuity, or consumerism. In fact, one of his happier encounters is with a pair of nuns (although he also makes it clear that he's not a believing Christian, though.)

After that, I read The Shining by Stephen King. King's genius seems as obvious as a hammer on the head to me. He makes you care, not only about the big things that happen to his characters, but even the little things. I especially liked The Shining because it's mostly set in one building, the old and elegant Overlook Hotel. The main character is working as its winter caretaker, since it becomes completely snowed in and inaccessible in the winter months.

I love stories centred on a particular building. I feel we don't pay enough attention to buildings, as entities in their own right. Perhaps it comes from growing up in the Ballymun flats.

After that I read On Writing by Stephen King. Whenever I mention Stephen King to anybody, this is the book they always talk about. I've avoided it, because I avoid books about writing. I read several of them when I was younger. One of them, How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction, had a big influence on me, one that's difficult to put into words. But, even with that book, there was an undertone I hated; a supercilious, well-now-young-feller sort of attitude that makes me feel stupid for even thinking about writing.

King's book isn't the worst when it comes to this, but it's still there. And it wasn't even that relevant to my own efforts at writing, since it's aimed at fiction writers. I have tried writing fiction in the past, but I don't know if I'm ever going to try it again. I might.

After On Fiction, I decided to opt for another classic that I've avoided all my life, and that's War and Peace.

I'm about seven hundred words into War and Peace, and it's a lot more readable than I expected. For a start, I've always been a Russophile, so I enjoy the Russian atmosphere. The sheer breadth of the novel is also enjoyable; it's like a panorama of human society, in all its different moods and atmospheres. Tolstoy writes as respectfully about young women preparing for a ball as he does about soldiers preparing for battle.

There are a lot of characters in War and Peace, but even if you forget the names (which I regularly do), you usually recognize the characters because they have been drawn so vividly. They're also typical of Russian literary character in that they talk a lot and think a lot. "Show don't tell" is a favourite adage of modern fiction writers, but Tolstoy seems to have paid little attention to it. He'll often spend pages telling you exactly what's happening in a character's soul, instead of trying to dramatize it through action or dialogue.

Before I'd actually started reading the book, I thought it was one of those books that everybody is always writing about. Now I'm immersed in it, I've actually found it difficult to find commentary on it-- outside the pages of dull academic journals.

That's been my reading recently. Doubtless I'll have another turn against fiction soon. But I hope I don't neglect it quite as much as I have in recent years.