Great literature, photo (not the books!) by Terry Freedman
It is fairly well-established, I believe, that would-be novelists need to read novels. That seems to me to be an entirely reasonable proposition: how can you write in a particular area if you don’t even read in that area?
By the same token, I read a great deal of non-fiction. I have no ambition to be a great fiction writer, and I don’t think the world’s readers need to feel a sense of deprivation at that revelation. But I do want to become an even better writer of non-fiction. As Montgomery Clift, the actor, said, there is always more to learn, and one should always strive to improve one’s craft.
But what of reading fiction in order to write better non-fiction? Well, that works too. You just have to read Frank Sinatra Has A Cold, by Gay Talese, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, or acquaint yourself with the “new journalism”, espoused by Tom Wolfe, to discover that fiction writers have a range of techniques that may be profitably applied to the writing of non-fiction.
And that rather long introduction brings me onto the main reason I’ve been attending Julian Birkett’s literature courses at the City Lit Institute in London. Each term or half-term is devoted to a particular area of the world. Thus I’ve attended courses on American Gothic, Russian short stories, and the world’s greatest short stories. We are just coming to the end of another course, covering Great European short stories.
Julian’s courses are excellent for several reasons. One is the breadth and depth of his knowledge, combined with a willingness to admit that he hasn’t read something or just doesn’t know. Another is the provision of background reading, links to videos and suggestions for further reading. Then there are the small group discussions and the whole group discussions. I’ve learnt so much from listening to the perspectives of other people on the course, and others I’ve spoken to have said the same. And if this all sounds rather too worthy, there are plenty of laughs too.
I’ve also enjoyed reading work by writers I might otherwise not have found time for, but whom I now wish to explore further. From the European course I am thinking in particular of Nabokov, Calvino and Babel. Their writing is so interesting, fresh and original.
For example, in Spring in Fialta, Nabokov writes:
“… she kissed me thrice with more mouth than meaning, …”
Writing like that really puts into perspective (as if you needed to put it in perspective) the current tendency to rehash cliché after cliché.
One of the things I’ve always tried to do in my writing is to say things in a fresh way. As I said to a blogging class I was teaching yesterday, you have a choice when you write on the web. You can try and please Google in order to improve the number of times your blog comes up in search results, which amounts to writing in order to please an algorithm, or you can try and write in a way that pleases human beings. Unfortunately, the two seem to be incompatible. I choose human beings.
If you decide, as I did a year or so ago, that you’d like to read great literature, whether as a reader or a writer, the next question is: where to start? You could do what I started to do 30 years ago. I decided to learn more about classical music. My local library had an excellent record collection, so I started borrowing works in alphabetical order: Albinoni, Bach, Bizet and so on. Then Marshall Cavendish brought out a part-works series called The Great Composers. Every two weeks, a glossy magazine devoted to one composer would be published, accompanied by a CD or cassette. That was very good, so when the same company embarked on a similar idea, The Great Writers, I invested in that too.
However, in some ways it’s quite easy to sit down and listen to a symphony while reading notes that advise you to listen out for something or other. Far harder is to read a novel while trying to read the accompanying notes. Consequently, some of the books have remained unopened all this time — although several have been taken down from the shelf during these courses, and some others will be soon.
If, like me, you tend to benefit from attending classes, and you happen to live in London, or can travel to London on a regular basis, I definitely recommend Julian’s courses. I know I’m not alone: not only do they become booked up very quickly, but on every course there is a hard core group whose members have almost become old friends.
Next term we’re looking at “Victorian Visions”. Having worked in education all my life, I’m always wary when people start talking about visions. But in this particular case, I can’t wait.