Ruined by Reading by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Dec
'07
Here is another fine example of a book type that I don’t usually read. Don’t get me wrong - I love books about books, especially books about reading books and what the author got out of them. However, this was more of a biography/memoir with some literary elements to it. Wasn’t quite what I’d expected - a literary biography/memoir with some life elements to it.
The back of the book says things like:
“She nailed me, page after page.” (Stacey D’Erasmo, New York Newsday)
I saw this and thought, wow! This must be a really great book describing a lot of reading habits and things of that nature. The same quote: “The accuracy of Schwartz’s insight made this addicted reader, at least, feel uncomfortably well seen.” Sure we all have different reading habits, so some of mine may not have been in the book, but I was sorely disappointed. It may have been that my expectations were too high, but I wanted a “so many books!” narrative.
Instead what I got was a random assortment of thoughts, including slight few of those “Aha! That’s just like me!” moments, and I still couldn’t tell you why this author feels she was “ruined” by reading. It’s mentioned once, maybe twice, but the second time it’s disputed immediately - that is to say, a certain book supposedly was said to “ruin” females who read it, but it didn’t ruin her, apparently. She continues going back to the philosopher who mentioned something rather about books being ruiners but I couldn’t tell you what, since it wasn’t even mentioned by the end of the book. Perhaps the title would have fit better if it was a theme that carried out through the entire book, not just the beginning few pages.
Despite how boring I found it to be (except, of course, the descriptions of reading habits that she, her sister, and her daughters had, as well as book descriptions and the funny inability to remember what she’s read), there were a few pages that I took particular interest in.
I was surprised to hear a writer once say she wrote the sort of books she wanted to read, since no one else was writing them. Many people, most of them dead, have written the sorts of books I want to read. But not me. What we love to read is not necessarily what we write. The great Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, who in her early years translated Proust, has described her longing to write lush, allusive prose entwining the complexities of soul and universe into every helical sentence. When she set pen to paper, what appeared was terse and straight as a bone. (61)
Another random thought that was probably a tangent off of a similar random thought, but one which I found put my feelings into words rather well. I have always wanted to be able to write like “suchandsuch author,” but succeeded only in mimicing exact sentence structures, style, and word usage. None of it was my own writing. My own writing turns into what my Nanowrimo was - stream-of-conciousness crap that doesn’t describe beautiful landscapes, but merely says what the character is thinking at that particular moment, which may or may not have anything to do with the story itself. I also use a lot of run-on sentences which, in whole, are not necessary at all.
I don’t wish I wrote like this author, but I certainly feel for her plea to write like the authors she admires.
I can vacillate lengthily, and foolishly, over whether to read at random (as I did on my bed in the fading light) or in some programmed way (as we all did in school). I like to cling to the John Cage-ish principle that if randomness determines the universe it might as well determine my reading too; to impose order is to strain against the nature of things. (101)
I mentioned this in my last review of Kurt Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan, and may have mentioned it previous to that. This year has been a year of structure, at least up until the last few months. I followed faithfully the outlines I’d made for myself sometime nearing the end of last year - read these certain of books by this date, and these books by this date, and make sure these books are read one per month, even if you don’t like them. It was that “not liking them” part that destroyed all hope of an outlined future. The appeal of reading randomly is greater than that of the structured “things I should read in the future” idea. I’d like to read my Milan Kundera books, but I’ll plan for them to be completed sometime before my death, rather than by June 18, 2008.
“Text” and “subtext” are more fitting for analyzing dreams than writing. We accept that the dream images and events are not “really” what the dream is about, but the available detritus of the day, slyly adapted to shield the dream’s actual “meaning.” Writing is not dreaming. True, we must write about something. There must be events and images and furniture to occupy the reader and writer while the elusive other thing - the idea, the book’s raison d’etre - snakes its way along. But the beauty of a story, unlike a dream, is that the screen of events and furniture becomes primary. The original, embryonic idea, if there is one, adapts to fit their shape, rather than the reverse. (110)
I’m going to pull from my experience at Nanowrimo once again, and I promise it’s the last time in this entry. My novel fit under the genre of “literary fiction” and I put it there because it didn’t seem to fit anywhere else. It didn’t have a real ending, and it was more about the characters and their experiences as well as what I had to say about a possible afterlife, than it was about the broken plot. In my time hanging out at the Nanowrimo Literary Fiction Forum, I found that a lot of people do write this “subtext” in “text” that is in dreams (according to Schwartz). There is meaning behind the words, and it’s so vast and euphoric that most people probably won’t even be able to understand what it is!
Point being that I don’t entirely agree with the notion that people always write books with no “subtext.” Whether or not it’s something they actively had in mind while writing, I bet you it’s there, and I bet you it’s screaming out to be released but you’re just not listening. Unless, of course, you’re reading mostly the basest form of mainstream fiction, in which case I would totally understand if your books didn’t mean anything at all except what is being literally written.
The idea, in other words, does not adapt. The characters do. The “plot” does. The idea is always there, lurking behind shadowy corners ready to jump out at the reader.
This is a fitting entry in reply to this book. My thoughts are everywhere with no discernable connection, and you as the reader can’t really tell what the point of this post is at all. Is there an argument? What is my main statement? Can you even tell if I liked the book or not? Who knows? I mean, it didn’t appear to be important to Schwartz to write what is advertised by the title, subtitle, and praise quotes, so I find it just as appropriate to leave this entry as is.
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