Labor Day Rerun: The Role of Place in Literature

In yesterday’s, Bookends (Sunday Times Book Review) Moshin Hamid and Thomas Mallon were asked to comment on the role of where you live in how and what they write.

Both agreed it has considerable influence. Hamid suspects Nadine Gordimer would never have written July’s People if she had not lived in South Africa. And Tolkien’s The Hobbit might have been quite different had he lived in Osaka instead of Oxfordshire.

Mallon says much the same things with two examples. “One wouldn’t take Booth Tarkington out of Indiana any more than one would remove Proust from Paris.” And then he isn’t entire sure. “And yet Joyce wrote the most local novel of all time, not in Dublin but in Trieste and Zurich and Paris.”

I imagine a little of local place and imagination is responsible for the work of most novelists. The issue interests me every time I move from one town to another, although I’ve not noticed any difference in what or how I write.

Currently I’m in Honolulu, where surfing and the military seem to dominate local life. Yet, I’ve not written about either. Then again, I’m not a novelist but I have written about the subject and copied what I said below.

In Florence I begin to wonder about the role of place in literature. So many writers have come to this city--Montaigne, Shelly, Byron, Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Henry James, George Eliot, Goethe, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, and Dostoevsky.

Some settled here for long periods, others stayed for only a short time during their travels, and many have returned time and time again. More often than not they come to Italy and to this city in Tuscany to escape the cold, damp areas of the North and for some hoping that its sun and warmth will cure them of some ailment, primarily tuberculosis. However, once winter arrives in Tuscany they very quickly learn it can be as bitterly cold and damp here as it is in the North

How has living in Florence affected their writing? Would they have written differently had they remained in the city they left? If being here influences their work, does that depend on how long they stay?

Lawrence Durrell wrote, “What makes a “big book” is surely as much to do with their site as their characters and incidents." Eudora Welty agreed that, “fiction depends for its life on place. Location is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of What happened? Who’s here? Who’s coming?”

We know that Florence has been the setting of the many of the writers who have come here. One need only think of Forster’s A Room With a View:

“It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not, with a painted ceiling…It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine, with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.”

Yes, very pleasant!

But what we really want to know is whether or not being here shaped their style or turned them in a new direction or solved a writerly problem they were facing. In general, is being here a source of literary inspiration?

Albeit a single example, I think the clearest answer to this question is provided by Dostoevsky, who came to Florence for the second time in 1868, then to escape the “damp and cold of Milan, where he and his wife [Anna] had been living for two months.”

In her Reminiscences Anna records how thrilled Dostoevsky was to be in Florence and that he was working productively on The Idiot. Yet, it did not take him long to realize there is more to writing than being in this benign place. He soon began to miss his friends or any form of congenial company. Anna writes in Reminiscences:

We did not know a single soul in Florence with whom we could talk, argue, joke, exchange reactions. Around us all were strangers, and sometimes hostile ones; and this total isolation from people was sometimes difficult to bear.

And in a letter to his niece, Dostoevsky wrote: I cannot write here. For that I must be in Russia without fail, must see, hear and take a direct part in Russian life; where’s here I am losing even the possibility of writing, since I lack both the essential material, namely Russian reality…and the Russian people.

Then the summer arrived and he and Anna found it almost unbearable to deal with ever increasing heat of this city. Some people seem to thrive in hot weather. Apparently Dostoevsky was not one of them, for he found it almost impossible to write under such “hellish” conditions.

At other times he felt differently. When the sun shines, it is almost Paradise. Impossible to imagine anywhere more beautiful than this sky, this air, this light.

In A Literary Companion to Florence, a rich source of information for this post, Francis King claims that Dostoevsky not only completed The Idiot in Florence, “but also began the gestation of The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov.”

Let us just say, then, that being here in this Tuscan town can offer some writers a comfortable place to work and sometimes give spark to their work. But that these sparks can occur just about anywhere, regardless of place and climate.

The life that Dostoyevsky led in Russia gave him a subject matter that ultimately led to his masterpieces. However, he did not have to be there to write them, at least, not all of the time. Eventually, he needed to return to the source of his tales. And while he did not write novels about the people or places he knew in Florence, he was able to write well while he was here, but only if it wasn’t too hot.

In answer to the general question about the role of place in literature, let us conclude that, as with all general literary questions, there are no general answers. Place has a role, but its role is highly variable and dependent on so many other factors that it is impossible to disentangle their effects from all the others that influence a writer.

Why Read Novels?

It was the potential for self-recognition that made Collette’s novels so compelling.
Vivian Gornick.

In a recent interview Philip Roth, the author of more than 30 novels and no doubt a prodigious reader of countless others, said he no longer reads fiction. When asked why, he replied, “I don’t know. I wised up…” What did he mean by that enigmatic comment?

In a similar vein the novelist Nicole Krauss recently expressed her concerns about the current state of the novel. “Things seem to be changing for those of us who have staked our lives on literature. The value of the literary mind appears to be in doubt; as Nicholas Carr writes in his book about how the internet is changing our brains, there is a growing suspicion that its worth has been overinflated, that “surfing the Web is a suitable and even superior substitute for deep reading and other forms of calm and attentive thought.” Krauss’s full remarks can be viewed here.

I still read novels, as Krauss does, and I am sure, like countless others, she is always reading at least one or more. Why do we readers continue to read this type of literature? Is it simply because we haven’t “wised up?”

As for me, I cannot conceive of not reading a novel, it is simply a given, a necessity if you will. And while I’ve am certain I haven’t wised up, I am equally certain that will always be true.

I have written many answers to the question the interviewer asked Roth, but Michael Ondaatje recently gave an eloquent one in his magical tale, The Cat’s Table. He was describing one of the passengers on the ship that was taking the young “fictional” Michael from Sri Lanka to England.

He knew passages from all kinds of books he could recite by heart, and he sat at his desk all day wondering about them, thinking what he could say about them….Mr. Fonseka seemed to draw forth an assurance or a calming quality from the books he read…But he had a serenity that came with the choice of the life he wanted to live. And this serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armour of books close by.

The question “Why Do We Read Literature?” was also posed recently at the online magazine “On Fiction.” The magazine discusses the psychology of the reading experience; “Using theoretical and empirical perspectives, we endeavour to understand how fiction is created, and how readers and audience members engage in it.”

The authors describe a laboratory study of the responses of forty-one individuals when asked to read Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” They say that the poem as well as literary works that engage us put into words feelings that “we may not previously have been able consciously to recognize.”

A work of fiction or more precisely a passage or character enables us to see ourselves more clearly, to express a belief that we did not realize we held or an emotion that we were unaware of before seeing it on the page. The act of reading also sets the occasion for looking more closely at our beliefs and viewing them from another point of view. Yes we read for pleasure, both aesthetic and intellectual, but we also read for personal insight and those truths that might otherwise pass us by.

I think we often read ourselves into literature without thinking twice if it is true for others. Instead, the truth of any given passage or character becomes true for a reader because it corresponds to his or her experience or provides a language for it in a way that had not been available before. “Yes,” we say, “that is true for me. This is my story. That’s exactly the way I felt. I had not realized its truth until I saw it on the page.”

A Science of Literature?

I’ve been reading the first issue of the new journal, The Scientific Study of Literature. Is a science of literature possible?

Occasionally we read about a study that claims to be a scientific investigation of literature. For instance there are increasing accounts of the evolutionary origins of stories and story telling, others on what is happening to various areas of the brain as we read a book, and still others that describe computerized research on a large body of textual materials, say an author’s work or a particular historical period.

However, the first issue of the new journal departs from these approaches in emphasizing the experience of reader and the interaction of the reader with the text, rather than the interpretation of texts, the method that currently tends to dominate literary scholarship.

Research on literary processing is carried out in the laboratory with a group of individuals as they read specially designed reading materials. Only rarely are published sections of works of fiction or non-fiction examined, either in the lab or under natural (non-laboratory) conditions.

In discussing the current state of the field Dixon and Bortolussi distinguish between cognitive processing and that focused on emotion and affective reactions. “Personal resonance” is a term that investigators in this area use to contrast a literary text from an expository one. In a representative study it was reported that while both types of text prompted an equal number of recollections, those elicited by a literary text were more personal, evoking scenes in which the reader was involved.

Surely that is one of the reasons for the great appeal of reading works of literature and why individuals become so absorbed in the experience. It reminds us of a similar experience or elicits an association with some personal meaning, sometimes having nothing to do with what is meant in the text.

In his article, “The Individual in the Scientific Study of Literature,” Raymond Gibbs writes: “Yet I am continually struck by an overwhelming sense that reading is so deeply personal, and the content and workings of my mind so individual, that it would be near impossible to describe my literary experiences in any way as something shared with others.”

And then, he poses the central question for this field: How is it possible to use a reader’s unique response to literature as the basis for general scientific principles?

In any study of a group of individuals, a large percentage will vary from the general statistical trend. Gibbs reminds us of the countless ways these individuals differ: gender, age, occupation, education, social status, language, culture, geographic origin, religion, political beliefs, ethnicity, personality, physiological differences, etc. Can a general theory of literary responding be derived when confronted with these differences and the complex ways they interact with one other?

My own view, one expressed occasionally in previous posts, is that other than recognizing this fact, such generalizations are impossible. And that is why I find the entire field rather anomalous and more closely allied with case studies, clinical research, and single subject designs.

Long ago Virginia Woolf said all this much better in her essay, “How Should One Read a Book?” “In the first place, I want to emphasize the not of interrogation at the end of my title. Even if I could answer the question for myself, the answer would apply only to me and not to you. The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions…. After all what laws can be laid down about books?”

"People As They Really Are"

Do you have a favorite book? If not a favorite, one you recall vividly or read again and again? Perhaps one that changed you in some way? In Bound to Last Sean Manning has assembled the accounts of 30 writers on their most cherished book.

Manning begins by launching a salvo against e-readers, that those who love reading will never find an equal pleasure in reading a digital book as they do with the tactile sensation of turning a page with a book in hand or the sight of that odd little bookmark that makes its journey through the tattered pages of a well read book. Some of the contributors also had less than a kind word or two to say about e-readers.

Regardless, the delight in reading Bound to Last comes from the recollections of its contributors. I read the book skipping around from one writer to another depending on my knowledge of the book they wrote about. I started with Danielle Trussoni’s appreciation of Nabokov’s Speak Memory that I was trying to get through at the time.

I love the physicality of the book, and all the markings I’ve made upon it…Rather he writes that he is devoted to the thematic structures of his life, to those events that have the marvelous aspect of the timeless…

Then I skipped over to Anthony Swofford’s account of Camus’ The Stranger.

Books mean different things each time we read them. I go back to The Stranger every year or so, sometimes twice a year if I need a quick fix, a reminder of a youthful angst and hatred that are fashionable when young but that wear out as one ages.

Philipp Meyer wrote about Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, a book I have read more than once.

I also wanted internal struggle. Reading Hemingway, showed me what the best books do: they describe people as they really are—as people—rather than fairy-tale heroes….Books in the end, are such an advanced technology that we have begun to take them for granted…Your books, unlike your laptop, e-Reader, or whatever magic device they think of ten years from now, will always be there.

Perhaps the most moving account in Manning’s volume was that of Shahriar Mandanipur, a highly regarded Iranian writer whose works are banned in Iran and currently lives in Cambridge, MA.

I miss my library at my home in Iran. There are books there about which I could write beautiful memories. Where I bought them, where I read them, and what pleasures and sorrows I experienced from them. But I can’t go home. I’m a writer in involuntary exile.

In commenting on the Viking Portable Dorothy Parker volume Courtney Sullivan wrote,

Books are like family members, like friends. They go with you, and more than a couch or a quilt, they represent home, the familiar. Dorothy Parker is the human expression of wit and spunk and strength and rebellion.

Finally Victoria Patterson wrote appreciatively of William Trevor’s The Collected Stories.

We understand that books—especially a great book like William Trevor: The Collected Stories—have the affirming capability of shrinking anxieties, not by ignoring fears and doubts of making light of death, or even by appeasing uncertainties, but by witnessing and connecting, letting us know that we’re not alone.

Regardless of your preference for a printed or e-book, Bound to Last is a collection of deeply felt personal essays by writers who love their books. Over the years, I’ve collected a great many books I cherish. Perhaps the first was the two volume Dialogues of Plato, translated and annotated by Benjamin Jowett. I was given this classic when I decided to major in philosophy and they have always followed me in my wanderings from one end of the country to the other.

If you have a favorite book or one that means a great deal to you, I would enjoy hearing about it.

Literature and Freedom

Earlier this year Ian McEwan was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for Literature, Israel’s highest honor for a foreign writer. The award is given biennially to writers “whose work deals with themes of individual freedom in society.” Previous winners have included Bertrand Russell, Simone de Beauvoir, and J M Coetzee.

McEwan did not immediately accept the award, fully aware of the long-standing, bitter disputes between Arabs and Jews in this troubled region. After the award was announced, he knew his days would not be peaceful. With “varying degrees of civility,” many individuals urged him to turn down the prize. One group wrote, “that whatever I believed about literature, its nobility and reach, I couldn't escape the politics of my decision.” A fellow writer told him that next time he should get his prize from Denmark.

In the end he went to Jerusalem to accept the prize and delivered what to my mind was an eloquent speech. I feel almost compelled to cite excerpts from it. Throughout he spoke of the thorny relationship between literature and politics.

“I would say as a general principle that when politics enters every corner of existence, then something has gone profoundly wrong. And no one can pretend here that all is well when the freedom of the individual, that is to say, of all individuals sits so awkwardly with the current situation in Jerusalem.”

In this context he spoke of the nihilism, as he put it, on both sides: On the one hand,“…once you’ve instituted a prize for philosophers and creative writers, you have embraced freedom of thought and open discourse, and I take the continued existence of the Jerusalem Prize as a tribute to the precious tradition of a democracy of ideas in Israel.”

And on the other, “… the continued evictions and demolitions, and relentless purchases of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, the process of right of return granted to Jews but not Arabs. These so-called 'facts on the ground' are a hardening concrete poured over the future, over future generations of Palestinian and Israeli children who will inherit the conflict and find it even more difficult to resolve than it is today, more difficult to assert their right to self-realisation.”

With equal conviction and insight he spoke of the long tradition of literature and its relationship to individual freedom. “Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in the works of masters like Charles Dickens, George Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, the literary illusion of character and the representation of consciousness were refined, with the result that the novel has become our best, most sensitive means of exploring the freedom of the individual -- and such explorations often depict what happens when that freedom is denied.”

He acknowledged the many great Jewish writers both past and present—Bruno Schulz, Kafka, Bellow, Primo Levi and he singled out three contemporary figures, Amos Oz, Abrahim Yehoshua and David Grossman. And more generally, “We speak of a Jewish tradition in the novel -- a vast, complex tradition, but still bound by common themes: a sometimes ironical attitude to a god; acceptance of an underlying metaphysical comedy and above all, in a world of suffering and oppression, deep sympathy for the individual as victim; finally, determination to grant to the downtrodden the respect that fiction can confer when it illuminates the inner life.”

In spite of the “great and self-evident injustice [that] hangs in the air,” he concluded by saying, “I gratefully accept this prize in the hope that the authorities in Jerusalem -- a twin capital, one day, I hope -- will look to the future of its children and the conflicts that potentially could engulf them, end the settlements and encroachments and aspire creatively to the open, respectful, plural condition of the novel, the literary form that they honour tonight.”

McEwan is donating the modest amount of the award--$10,000—to Combatants for Peace, an organization that brings together former Israeli and Palestinian soldiers to speak before groups about the impossibility of a military solution to the conflict.

Lost in Translation

In the Times earlier this month Michael Cunningham makes the bold claim that “all literature is a product of translation.” It is far more than simply translating a work from one language to another with all the imperfections and variations that involves. His argument goes like this.

First, the writer makes an effort to translate his ideas or images to the page. There is always a discrepancy between the two. Cunningham claims most writers never write the book they had hoped to write. “It feels, in short, like a rather inept translation of a mythical great work.”

Next is the language translator who makes an effort to capture the writers meaning in another language that may yield only a vague approximation of his intent, subtle ironies, nuances, and sometimes humor that may be the most difficult of all to accurately convey in another language.

Finally, on Cunningham’s account, there is the reader’s translation of the writer’s words. What does the writer mean by saying this? What does the story mean, after all? Do I have even the vaguest idea?

No two readers are going to answer these questions in the same way. Cunningham suggests in a rather elaborate fashion that each reader translates the text into his or her “private imaginary lexicon, according to his or her interests and needs and levels of comprehension.”

Emerson said it better: “You have seen a skillful man reading Plutarch. Well, that author is a thousand things to a thousand persons. Take that book into your own two hands and read your eyes out. You will never find there what the other finds.”

However, I think there is another step in translating a work of literature and that may the longest and the most subject to change. It is the way the story gets recalled and retold again and again as time goes by. You look for a review of the book, you tell your friend about it, you try to write a blog about it and at each step along the way the story is given another translation.

Cunningham concludes: “Here, then, is the full process of translation. At one point we have a writer in a room, struggling to approximate the impossible vision that hovers over his head. He finishes it, with misgivings. Some time later we have a translator struggling to approximate the vision, not to mention the particulars of language and voice, of the text that lies before him. He does the best he can, but is never satisfied. And then, finally we have the reader. The reader is the least tortured of the trio, but the reader too may very well feel that he is missing something in the book, that through sheer ineptitude he is failing to be a proper vessel for the book’s overarching vision.”

I found Cunningham’s notion refreshing and provocative. It has elicited some comment in letters to the Times. One person made reference to a remark Robert Frost made about poetry: “When you translate poetry, poetry is what gets lost in translation.”

Try translating that into Italian. I did and here’s how one translator did it: "Quando si traduce la poesia, la poesia è ciò che si perde nella traduzione." Is that what Frost meant?