How is it possible that even when I know almost nothing about the author's life, after reading his or her novel I get an idea about the writer that is clearly different from the reaction to the work I read? I can enjoy a book and at the same time feel revulsion or even hostility towards the person who wrote the book; or I may feel attracted to both the author and the work, but in different ways. Philip Roth's novels are provocative, sometimes beyond the limits of good taste, but the confrontation with the author has an invigorating effect on the reader. Sometimes I feel sympathy for the man who is forced to write like that and allows himself such outbursts. I see it as an attractive way of showing vulnerability.
Of course, my impressions of the writer may be wrong, but they are still my impressions. It seems to me that it is impossible, at least in my case, to read a text and not get a certain idea about the person who signed it and not place that person in a certain relationship to the text and to the readers. That is why I sometimes wonder, despite the literary-critical tradition that teaches us that the writer's personality is unimportant for evaluating a work, if one of the pleasures of reading a text is not precisely in thinking about the enigma of the person who wrote it. We know nothing about Shakespeare's life, and yet, when we read sonnets or watch plays, we gain an idea of Shakespeare and an awareness of the continuity of the "personality" behind the texts. If one day someone were to discover the story of his life, it seems to us that we would immediately recognize the exact person we had in mind.
"Joyce, a demanding writer, expects the reader to devote an infinite amount of time to deciphering the nuances of his text"
It is difficult to determine where and how the idea of a writer is born. Like many other things that happen when we read, the origin of that play remains uncertain and hidden. However, in the last year or two, I have found that a game helps me to trace its source: as I read, I try to discover a conversation, encounter or event in the novel that seems to me to be characteristic of the author, something that repeats itself; when I find such a place, I try to think about the relationship of the reader to the author in that framework.
For example, recurring encounters or conversations. A good example is the debts in Ulysses. In the book, there are often characters who ask each other for money for a loan or services or help in completing jobs, and each statement of a request is a small power play. People make demands - Stephen demands something from Buck Mulligan, Buck from Stephen, English Hein from both of them and both of them from him. Others are determined by how they react to requests.
In Dickens, there are often strong figures who make friends with weaker characters, or at least pretend to be their friends, offer help, invite them to become part of a group that may or may not be favorable or useful to them. Likewise, the person with whom the friendship is formed may or may not be loyal or worthy of friendship. Such a person may accept protection in order to manipulate others and benefit, like Juraja Hipp.
Rereading Tabuqi, I recently noticed that an important part of his texts is conversational sparring between strangers, conversations in which one character seeks information while the other keeps him in suspense. Often, both participants in the conversation lead each other down the wrong path, in an exchange that tends more toward paradox than resolution.
"What were you doing in Calcutta?"
"I took photos of the poor", answered Kristina....
"Why?"
“That's my job…. Have you been to Calcutta?'
I shook my head. "You don't even have to go," she said, "don't make that mistake... What do you do?"
"Well, let's say I'm writing a book."
"What book?"
"The book."
“A novel?” Kristina asked, looking sly.
"Something similar."
"So a writer," she said, sticking to logic.
"No," I answered, "it's just an experiment, my job is something else, I'm looking for dead mice."
"Please?"
“Just kidding,” I said. "I search the old archives... What I find there I call dead mice."
Most novelists have a favorite mechanism by which they define the relationships between characters. With Muriel Spark, there is always a charlatan or an act of dubious persuasion. In Kuci's books, someone who tries to live life to the fullest and is exposed to the judgments of others rejects the standards by which others judge him. In Natalia Ginzburg's solid novels, there is always a character who plays the helplessness card and thus, more or less, forces others to offer him help, and vice versa, a character who refuses the help he clearly needs. In Simenon's novels, whether in the Magret stories or the more serious romans dures, there is always a merciless battle between two central characters in which one triumphantly perseveres (as Magret always does), stoically bearing every insult, provocation and ambiguity, in order to win in the end or, in the darker books, perished gloriously.
"I can enjoy a book and at the same time feel repulsion or even hostility towards the person who wrote the book, or I can feel attracted to both the author and the work, but in different ways"
The game has a second part. Can I imagine my reaction to the book, to the emotions that the style and the story evoke in me, as something analogous to a recurring event? Does the author establish with the reader the kind of relationship that is used over and over again in novels?
In this respect, Joyce, usually considered a difficult writer, is quite simple. If there is a demanding author, then it is Joyce, because he expects the reader to devote an infinite amount of time to deciphering the nuances of his text, all those rebuses and riddles that will "occupy professors for centuries", as he famously remarked, as if that were the meaning of writing, that turn every reader into an absent-minded professor. In Joyce's case the act of seduction is intrusive, because the violent brilliance of his style and erudition make it clear who is the smartest. Some readers immediately fall to their knees, others try to resist. Jung complained that he felt like a fool after reading Joyce. H. Dz. Wells said it was scandalous to waste so much of other people's time. This opens a gap between admiration for a work of genius and irritation at the way genius is forced upon us. Most readers will give up after a few pages of Finnegan's Wake.
On the other hand, Dickens makes friends out of his readers. This is immediately obvious. He gives us a protective hand. He writes enticing forewords. He talks about characters and readers as if they were family members.
His seductive prose is brilliant but never too heavy, witty but not offensive, always warm. The reader feels an affection for the writer that contributes to the enchantment of the work, and sometimes surpasses it. We want to become part of his world, his club. Dickens loved clubs, his first novel is dedicated to the club. Pickwick's Club. Even today there are Dickens fan clubs around the world. Readers just love to gather around him. For Dickens, happiness is always the happiness of a group of people, a small community, not a passionate couple.
In any case, Dickens's stories point to a friendship that always seems attractive and easy with him. But David Copperfield makes a mistake when he allows the older and more charismatic Steerforth to take him under his wing. Anyone who befriended Mikaber made a mistake. Perhaps it is precisely this fear of making a mistake in choosing friends that is the cause of those unusual outbursts, when Dickens suddenly stops showering the readers with attention and starts behaving as if he wants to get rid of us as soon as possible, finish the story and run away. A typical example is the ending of the novel Dombi i sin. Even David Copperfield ends hurriedly and unconvincingly, as if It struck Dickens that he was wrong to accept us as friends, and we feel disappointed; the friendly relationship we rushed into did not bring us what we had hoped for. Or, by definition, interpersonal relationships cannot endure a Dickensian feast for too long?
This is what I am trying to say: literary creativity, which does not seem to be as impersonal as Eliot and Joyce claimed, involves finding a form, a story, and a style that will allow readers to enter the aura in which the author moves and experience the relationships he enters into. Muriel Spark writes about imposters, hidden identities, people impersonating themselves. At the same time, her style is blindingly flashy, playful, immoderate, so readers often wonder if they too are victims of some kind of literary charlatanism. Is this possible? Is it all just a scam?
Natalia Ginzburg uses a simple, seemingly simple-minded style that entices us to come to her aid. She needs help because so many of her protagonists are incompetent or helpless. During that time, someone we didn't even pay attention to, someone independent who refuses help, gets into trouble; we suddenly learn that that someone is dead, that he died alone with no one around, that he was robbed in a dark alley or succumbed to disease in a poor room. The reader gets the impression that the writer in the novels offers a friendship that can provide comfort to both, but cannot help those who remain outside the intimate circle.
We become friends, mourning others.
In the trilogy Boyhood, Youth, Summertime, Dž. M. Kuci writes about John Kuci, primarily about his transgressions, huge ambitions, claiming goodness. The style is reduced, the facts are presented clearly, even sparingly. It is as if the author invites the reader to make his own judgment about the man. At the same time, the author claims that it is fiction, that it is a novel, not an autobiography, and that Kuci does not care about other people's judgments anyway.
It's a puzzle, and puzzles are seductive. Kuci does not want to reveal the solution. However, while enjoying the book, we strongly feel the author's division, his split between the need to show himself and the desire to remain politely reserved or safely hidden. Perhaps this kind of idea about the author is part of the pleasure of reading in this case.
I remember when, after several years of reading his novels, I met Kuci, I was struck by the impression that I was meeting an old friend; the atmosphere of the conversation, the unusual combination of austerity and warmth, restraint and openness, everything was just like in his books. In fact, it was after that meeting that I thought for the first time that literary genius might be the ability to draw the audience into one's own world of feelings, with all its nuances and details, and to make the readers take a position in relation to the author.
(Peščanik, translated by Đorđe Tomić)
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