Good evening!
There was no newsletter last week because last Friday it came to light that Gaza’s internet access was cut off and they endured a night of carpet bombing in the dark. I was too distressed to think about reading, and it did not feel right. So many things do not feel right. Since then, refugee camps, schools and ambulances have been bombed. I cannot believe that this is the third time -- with a break -- that I have made a small allusion to the ongoing crisis in this newsletter, and leaders in the UK and the US have not called for a ceasefire. How many more images and videos of distressed parents searching for their children and other relatives through the rubble will it take? How many more dead bodies indiscriminately thrown through the ghosts of towns will it take? How many more images of body parts and dead children, dead adults? How many times does the video of a mother whispering and rocking her child wrapped in a death shroud need to be shared? How many more journalists in distress or killed will it take? Where are the people who have placed themselves on a pedestal of moral superiority because they are Western, because they have money -- the people who think that their rightful position is ‘in charge’?
I can only really repeat myself from previous weeks and share the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians and also suggest you write to your MP asking them to encourage the PM and shadow cabinet to call a ceasefire.
I don’t have much else to report. I have gone back to work after annual leave and am getting back into a rhythm, and also nearly finished editing the first section of my second PhD chapter on William Morris, which I’ve quite enjoyed doing. I also updated my Etsy shop yesterday (I make book sleeves, because I’m apparently very dedicated to making everything in my life about reading)
If you’d like to buy me a coffee, on Ko-Fi, you can do here 🙂
What I’ve been reading this week and what I think about it
I took my time with Roth’s American Pastoral (1997) and therefore only finished it during the week. I don’t know where to begin talking about my experience with this book, but I’ll obviously have to try because that is the point of this newsletter.
I suppose, first of all, I’d like to talk about its form. It’s split into three sections, the first of which is from the point of view of an established author who recounts his experience in high school, of worshipping an older boy who is extremely good at sports called Swede Levov. He comes into contact with him a couple of times in adulthood, and on learning some shocking information about him, feels compelled to write an account of Swede’s life. The last part of the first section and the remaining sections is made up of what we can assume is the novel he writes on him -- there isn’t much of a break between his initial introduction to the text and what he writes. What I found unusual, but welcome, was how it didn’t end by returning to the writer who then tells us that this was all a story and that he hopes we all enjoyed his novel, but rather with the Swede at an important point in his life. It is easy to forget that this has not been an accurate story, which is part of the point -- much of the novel is concerned with how we perceive others and how inaccurate we often are. Because I am someone who loves thinking about form, narration and perspective, it was in the back of my mind that this was not an authentic narrative, which made the reading experience all the more interesting. When certain, big things happened to Swede, I was asking myself, but is that how it really went? And why would the writer think it did go that way? What was his impression of Swede that made him write that in? And so on.
I’d also like to talk about its sentences. My dear friend Rachel Connolly wrote about the narrative ‘robot voice’ in her excellent substack this week, which is a growing trend in contemporary fiction. What she is referring to is the very stripped back, bald tone in fiction that leads to simple sentences which are often devoid of details. I have had this experience with a lot of texts and as Rachel infers, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. More often than not, however, it doesn’t. I had a long think about this after reading her piece, and I think where much of it has come from is the influence of Japanese lit, which actually uses this device very successfully (at least in its translation). I’ve found that much of the lit I have read from Japanese writers are dealing with taboo subjects and identities: in Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen (1988) the trans community is at its centre; in Kōno Taeko’s Toddler Hunting (1996) themes like childlessness, adultery and BDSM appear; in Kikuko Tsumura’s There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job (2020) the protagonist deals disillusionment with Japanese working norms and in Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman (2016) and Earthlings (2018) a whole host of debauchery and heavy themes are dealt with. (All publication years are the English language translation years). The writing is extremely smooth, as if it is attempting to contain the themes it conveys at the point of communication, while also acting as a very effective juxtaposition. This works in these kinds of novels and short story collections, but it often does not work in British and American writing that is about, say, a workplace affair between two people that are not entirely fleshed out, and so it becomes robotic, an aping of something else.
I also had a long think about this because I was still reading American Pastoral at the time, and at every turn it fights against the robot voice. The sentences are long, detailed and full of distinctive voice, whether that be of a character or Roth as the author. An example:
As the car bounced along the streets paved with bricks, past one poor little frame house after the other, the massive railroad viaduct remained brokenly within view. It would not go away. This was the Swede’s first encounter with the manmade sublime that divides and dwarfs, and in the beginning it was frightening to him, a child susceptible to his environment even then, with a proclivity to be embraced by it and to embrace it in return. Six or seven years old. Maybe five, maybe Jerry hadn’t even been born yet. The dwarfing stones causing the city to be even more gigantic for him than it already was. The manmade horizon, the brutal cut in the body of the giant city -- it felt as though they were entering the shadow world of hell, when all the boy was seeing was the railroad’s answer to the populist crusade to hoist the tracks above the grade crossings so to end the crashes and the pedestrian carnage.
‘Manmade sublime’, ‘the brutal cut in the body of the giant city’ -- now here is writing, here is voice. This is a person who finds writing fun, who wants it to convey something. And he sincerely does want it to convey something, because this is a very successful look at how America changed over the twentieth century, and how those who were used to one way have had to get used to a completely new way. Swede is ultimately a figure of an America that does not exist anymore; a time when prosperity was an achievable dream for everybody, when manufacturing was mostly done on American soil and when a belief in the American dream could go unchallenged. Its setting in Newark is wonderful, as it charts the changes in the landscape of work and race relations against a distinctive backdrop. It is incredibly detailed and rich while only concentrating on a small section of one man’s life also -- the amount of research that must have gone into this is remarkable. The Levovs are wealthy because of glove manufacturing, and I think I could now quite accurately make a good quality glove just by the novel’s instruction. Needless to say, I loved this book and I think it has changed my own approach to writing and practice, which is no mean feat.
I’m now reading Giusseppe Tomasi Lampedusa’s The Leopard, translated by Archibald Colquhoun (1958). Another example of fighting against ‘robot voice’ in that it uses very long, lovely sentences, some of which take up an entire paragraph. I’m having great fun with it. More next week.
Books on my radar
I’m not sure -- it took a while to settle on The Leopard because I couldn’t decide what mood I was in after the experience of American Pastoral. Maybe more Roth!
I attempted American Pastoral and I wasn't in the head space to manage sentences like that. I feel brave enough to give it another go with your insights here.