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{ Sunday, August 3, 2003 }

First Novel Apologetics

You can get away with a lot with your first novel. I read Bonjour Tristesse this weekend, the book that Francoise Sagan wrote when she was 18, and was not only disappointed, I felt like I'd been had*. But she was only 18 when she wrote it say her publicists/apologists. Big deal, I say. I wrote a lousy book when I was 18 too. Reserve your ecstasies for Dubliners (written when Joyce was 21-22). The rest is just marketing. I think it's terrible that these kids are being pushed to publish when their work is half-baked, the public duped into buying this dreck. Consider the trees.

Suicide is another first novel publication justification. See The Stories of Breece D'j Pancake for a book that gets a lot of undeserved hooh-hah. I know I'm going to get flak for this, but I also think that A Confederacy of Dunces is overrated. Pah. I couldn't finish it.

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* Speaking of being had, in the latest issue of Brick, Amos Oz extemporizes on why he is a chauvinist for the Hebrew language, and has this interesting thing to say on how Hebrew creates another reality entirely:

"...there is no Hebrew verb for "to have". If you want to say in Hebrew "I have", you say yesh li, but what they mean is "there is with me" which is totally different than "I have". If I think of the English connotations of "I have a wife" or "I have a child" it sounds to me, as a native Hebrew thinker, extremely rude and possessive. What do you mean, "you have"? You cannot have another person. Whatever it is, it may be with you today; it may be with someone else tomorrow. A very nomadic attitude. Different conception of reality. Different idea and notion of reality."

The interview with Oz has even more interesting things to say about Hebrew, but they're too long to quote here. Go buy Brick!

LINK | 10:07 PM | TB

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{ COMMENTS }

One thing which animates the desire to revisit the early work is the hope that one will find some motif which will arrive fully-fleshed in the later work. In Dubliners you can see the outlines of the characters and scenes of Portrait of the Artist, and in the latter the concern for structure and the preoccupation with wordplay which became Ulysses.

Last week I finished reading Michael Chabon's first novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh which does fine as a piece of light summer fare in the genre of hysterical realism. Sometimes the best thing is just to lower my expectations, the same way I do for summer movies.

Rich | August 4, 2003 4:32 AM

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amen to that! I once overheard this girl, who I had a crush on at the time, state that 'A Confederacy of Dunces' was her favorite book of all time. At once, I ran out and picked it up, second hand, natch. By page 100, I had both dropped the book entirely and patched up the scratches on my arm that bore her name. I see people on the bus reading it and I think to myself, "poor souls, their about to be had". I don't tell them this, of course.

On Bonjour Tristesse. Did you ever take a liking to the film by Otto Preminger, starring the sublime Jean Seberg?

Looking about the house for that Howe book. I know its in there somewhere, I'll let you know when I find it! You'll forgive me cause my house looks like your hallway. ;)

lincoln | August 4, 2003 9:13 AM

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My copy of 'Confederacy of Dunces' is at my fiancee's mom's, waiting for me when I get back to the Midwest. I take it this is not good 3 Day Novel Writing Contest recovery material?

Also, totally off-topic, have you read the latest Paris Review? Spring '03, that is. What did you think of Vollmann's "The Last Field Marshall"?

Chris | August 4, 2003 12:56 PM

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Dunces was funny for a little while, cuz I went to school in the south. I now realize it left me firmly on a diet of non-fiction, ever since... ohjeez... 1996? All l read now is poetry, philosophy, history, biography, criticism. I shouldn't admit it in such gorgeously literate company, but I put down Franzen's Corrections after about three paragraphs, and easily forgot about gifts of Delillo and Houellebecq too. Real life is now so unbelievable and bewildering, I crave facts, logic, cause and effect, exposition and argument... or else a simpler beauty.

tim | August 4, 2003 2:16 PM

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I tried reading A Confederacy of Dunces several times, but could never get past page 100. I kept thinking to myself "am I missing something here or is there nothing here?". I eventually gave up and chucked the book in a garbage bag full of t-shirts for the Big Brothers collection.

andrew | August 5, 2003 7:31 AM

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You've just made my pyloric valve slam shut.

Eeksy-Peeksy | August 5, 2003 10:08 PM

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A Confederacy of Dunces overrated? Please say this is the espresso talking.

And it took me five tries before I got through Catch-22, which is now one of my favorite novels.

Beerzie Boy | August 6, 2003 12:07 PM

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First novels are 'getting-away-with-its', though: that's what they're for. Back then, you could craft your trade in the short story, and get flabby-experimental with your novel. Thus, This Side of Paradise.

(Dubliners not being a novel, of course, and so exemplary by comparison with Portrait.)

Trouble is, the cult of the first novel is insidious these days, turning literary careers into a facsimile of musical ones. I give you Ms Zadie Smith.

nick | August 10, 2003 9:41 AM

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"but I put down Franzen's Corrections after about three paragraphs, and easily forgot about gifts of Delillo and Houellebecq too"

Um, you might want to try expanding your horizons beyond the immediate past? There were many fine books written before AD 2000....

Baloney | August 10, 2003 2:09 PM

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The absence of the verb "to have" in Hebrew notwithstanding, there is really precious little difference between "We have a nuclear arsenal" and "There is a nuclear arsenal with us".

mike | August 12, 2003 12:26 PM

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