I wade through so many crap modern novels -- they get good reviews, and I think I must be an idiot because I can't see what's good about them. But then I read something like this, written in 1900, and it's magnificent, and I feel restored.
This book was so engrossing that I spent time during the work day wondering what was going on with Mr. Hurstwood and Carrie and couldn't wait to get home to continue my travels with them.
Here's one nice passage from the book. Hurstwood is soon to lose all this, though he doesn't know it at the time:
A lovely home atmosphere is one of the flowers of the world...there is nothing more tender, nothing more delicate, nothing more calculated to make strong and just the natures cradled and nurtured in it. Those who have never experienced such a beneficient influence will not understand...the mystic chords which bind and thrill the heart of the nation, they will never know.
Reading great books like this gives me so much pleasure. How come there aren't more of them written these days? Why do I have to read a book from 1900 to discover good fiction?
Here's a pic of Laurence Olivier in the film version. Such a wonderful performance; I rented the movie last week and was amazed at how good it was.
10 comments:
Well, that's a little unjust. There *are* good books written these days (Memoirs of a Geisha?) but these are few and far between, just as back then there were good books which were equally as rare. But only the good books have survived, leaving the impression only good books were written back then.
It's because publishers are all marketing driven. They'd rather publish books that follow trends than focus on good writing. Of course, some gems are still published: I just read "The Girl with the the Dragon Tattoo" series and loved it.
I don't know about the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yet. I'm halfway through it and it reminds me of a less-engrossing Miss Smilla's Sense of Snow.
The Swedish movie of the book was really good. Did you see that Rachella? it was out in the UK earlier in the summer.
Memoirs of a Geisha is a very good read but it's not like it's a great book that changed society like Sister Carrie did. It was a breakthrough book in its day.
Smilla's Sense of Snow was really good.
"Possession" is one of the few works of fiction I've read that I would call great. A.S. Byatt is beyond brilliant. She's one of the few authors who can write magnificently and tell a compelling, memorable story.
E, obviously you were born in the wrong era :)
Yes, Michigan Mom, Possession was wonderful.
Steve, I don't know if I was born in the wrong era -- I do enjoy the benefits of penicillin and Mcdonald's Drive Thru that weren't around then. :)
Katie's right---there were indeed bad pulp-fic novels written long ago (starting, I guess, when Gutenberg first cranked up that press:):)? but only the best, the timeless ones, survive. As K noted, this would give the impression that ONLY excellent books were written back in the old days.
I'd put *Sophie's Choice,* by Wm Styron, *The English Patient* by Michael Ontdaatje,and CERTAINLY *Possession* (A.S. Byatt) in the category of "greats"---all written in the latter half of the 20thc.
Another problem is that that, as Rachella suggested, the publishing world is indeed "market-driven." Do you know that there are no real editors anymore? Look up the letters between Maxwell Perkins (editor) and Ernest Hemingway. Keen, insightful, thoughtful, eminently "literary"---he also edited F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe.
These days, "editors" are probably otherwise-unemployable MBAs whose beady eyes light up not at a brilliant story, but at movie options and appeal to the Great (Intellectually) Unwashed. Maybe that's unfair, and I certainly don't know the industry from the inside.
It does seem that our standards have slipped, but I think that "greats" will prevail, while the chaff will end up in the Great Dumpster of Obscurity. And yes, I'd put the current "hot ticket" *The Help* in that category, and in that Dumpster. If ever a first-time novelist needed a Maxwell Perkins, it was poor Katherine Stockett. "Poor?" hardly, after she gets her Hollywood millions. *Sigh*. Let's just hope they hire a dialect coach, as David Selznick did when he produced "Gone with the Wind"---Susan Myrick fine-tuned the accents of each actor, so that the social stratifications were distinctive---they didn't all sound just alike, as they do in movies today.
Just airing some pet peeves. I'm less worried about global warming than the "dumbing down" of the planet!
I saw Larry Olivier in Spartacus last night and boy he was cute, even though he was almost 50. What a man. (bringing this up because his pic is on this post)
Post a Comment