1936 - Eugene O'Neill

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956)

Often blurbs are not very accurate but I would agree that this play is possibly ‘the finest and most powerful play to have come out of America’ and that O’Neil is ‘one of the twentieth century’s most significant writers’ whose ‘true value to the theatre is still being discovered’.  So powerfully & finely wrought are these characters whose drama not so much jumps but punches it’s way out of the book format.  Like George Bernard Shaw there are long descriptive passages of the scene but thankfully without any of the pretense of teaching lessons, developing theories (with demonstration) or any other baggage that weighs down and overshadows the soul.  Emotion reeks all over from every line of speech going from ‘(thickly humorous)’ to ‘(Then disgustedly)’ to ‘(Then appreciatively)’ within 38 words to create what is the metaphoric equivalent to a roller-coaster combined ghost-train.  It has intensity and tension on every page; introspective neurosis and expressive rage on every other.  I have 14 pages left to find out how it ends and the only reason I’m not reading it now is because I am utterly exhausted, mentally, emotionally, & almost physically, from reading the previous three acts; so although I do wish to wait I will not try to attempt finishing it off for the sake of my health.   

How I could cope watching Long Day’s Journey Into Night on the stage I do not know.      

1953 - Winston Churchill

 Winston Churchill once wrote a novel entitled The Inside of the Cup.  It’s an odd book for him to write, set in America involving discussions of faith, odd that is until you realise that it was not Churchill the Prime Minister but Churchill the American novelist who wrote it.  For a while I wasn’t sure.  I knew he achieved the Prize & so why can’t it have been for novels as well as for the charted document of history/ autobiography?  I had no idea there was another famous, at least somewhat well known, Churchill living around at the same time.  

 There must be an idea for a Borges type short story involving a conversation between the two Winstons who talk about power and publishing before one kills the other.  

 What are the chances?      

1921 - Anatole France

How is it that in a short space of time I have collected enough Anatole France books to rival the amount of books I have by Andre Gide & yet more have heard & have been influenced by Gide?  I collected Gide before I knew about Nobel Prizes but I have somehow collected roughly the same amount of France within a few months & still his influence seems to be invisible.  What is the explanation for the silence about France, compared to Gide, when he is still is very much in circulation?  It is very true to think that one Nobel Prize winner remember is another Nobel Prize winner forgotten; but France hasn’t been forgotten so how can he be so little mentioned?   

1948 - T.S. Eliot

There seems to be a problem with the verse plays of T. S. Eliot but where does the faulty element lie?  Is it the attempt at fitting deep & large themes of humanity within comedy drawing room settings?  Is it the lack of action in favor for dense metres?  Is it the pervading Christian ethic & influence that audiences try to overlook & undermine? 

  I like the appealing idea that even in humdrum conversations people can speak natural poetry.  This is probably the crux of the problem: it may be good poetry but is it good drama?  I want it to be theatrically good but how can I defend it if all the characters are talking impenetrably about an offstage event wrapped in obscure abstract ideas?  He certainly took on this challenge in a formidable fashion but what has been the scale of his success?   

Watching A Family Reunion at the Donmar Warehouse was like participating in hypnosis.  The characters talked at length taking me further & further away from the room, it’s objects & furnishings, into a weird space of cosmic moral action.  Reading over some of the lines years later I found that they were starting to make much more sense than when I had first heard them at the performance.  This is partly down to sheer experience where poetry does tend to resonate.  It is also where the real problem of his plays lie.   
  
It is not in the fact that they are badly written for the stage but more in the fact that constant repeat performances & annual revivals are not a part of our culture.  What I mean is that the place where we get the most out of Eliot is in the re-reading, which is an aspect that makes him a great poet, we can re-read his poetry & be surprised afresh.  With the form of the play, as it is, this element of re-experiencing is decidedly lost.   
  
Audiences cannot expect to see any play more than once (except for Shakespeare’s) so if they cannot grasp the meanings the first time it is unlikely they’ll get another chance to do so.  Christopher Fry seems to me to make better use of both the poetry & the theater in his plays but where are his revival of The Lady’s Not For Burning or A Phoenix Too Frequent?  Coming soon I hope.                  

2003-J.M.Coetzee

Foe (1986)

Are writers like waterskaters who write words on the sand to be washed away?  Written with a strong graceful style that is sensitively economical while being in constant flow.  Coetzee has the sturdy descriptive imitation of Defoe that is strangely complimented by the dreamlike narrative where one setting fades into another (which is impressive in light of the fourth part where what could have been jarring becomes appropriately ghostly).  Coetzee compacts a lot into a short space, that deserves comparison to Henry Green, as the story is thick with themes to be intoxicated by, enveloped in. 

Much like Wild Sagasso Sea by Jean Rhys, in style as well as concept, Foe is an adding on extra episodes to classic stories but Coetzee also furnishes some untold tells about a woman called Susan Barton who was Robin Cruso’s desert island companion.  It lends itself almost exclusively to a post-colonial/ feminist reading of what has been a masculine adventure tale.  Apart from the discussion about what is integral to Cruso’s story it also meditates on the nature of story telling, particularly the ethical dimensions on those telling the stories of others, which is symbolised by Friday’s stumped tongue.  

Mesmic prose that will make me reconsider what Robinson Crusoe is, or could have been, exactly about.  

2006 - Orhan Pamuk

The Black Book (1994)

When the question of culture makes up the thematic basis of a book it puts those outside the culture concerned at a disadvantage.  The question of an author’s audience also looms up.  Is Orhan Pamuk a turkish writer writing for turks or an international writer writing for everyman?  The Black Book is at times too exotic to be understood yet somehow it has gone beyond the writer’s own national boundaries making itself be understood on terms that are foreign to it.  

Writing, it has been said I think by T. S. Eliot, is it’s own country irrespective of lines on a map.  The more accessible parts of for those outside the Turkish culture The Black Book, & even more so for those outside the Eastern culture, are those passages about reading & writing, the author’s relationship with his readership, because those reflections are relevant for all cultures that communicate through a written medium.  The discussion of national identities are more fixed in time & place so that those passages are only more relevant to those closest to that time & place represented.  It’s a strange work that poses problems for those who wish to understand other cultures.  It implies that to understand fully another culture you have to be part of that culture.  No matter how understanding a reader might be their reading of foreign book they will always be outside complete comprehension.  Pamuk has managed to write about national problems specific to Turkey, his time & place is integral to the story & not simply a backdrop, but with enough universal human interest to make him a candidate for a global Prize.  

A difficult balancing act that requires more thinking on how he has managed to apparently do it.        

1998 - José Saramago

 

Seeing (2004)

Is there anything wrong with voting for nobody?  Not abstaining or spoiling but keeping the voting slip blank.  This is the premise for Seeing & the answer seems to be that it is only wrong if enough people do it.

  What is wrong with voting for nobody is that if enough people do it nobody gets elected & government is effectively blanked, which for politicians is a tragedy.  

It raises an interesting scenario about what could happen if politics were voted out of the political system.  The politicians panic warning the public that politics is needed to safeguard the interests of the people even if they are not interested in politics.  A state of seige is called for & the government with various leaders of political parties decamp from the city leaving the citizens to live their lives without the law to protect them.  Uniforms are taken off & life continues no more or less worse.  

Politics, it seems, was an ineffectual & unesscarry element in the ordinary life of people.  Politics was there to protect politians.  

Following on Blindness it continues the theme of political blindness in the form of blank voting the first cause of which, for both cases, were never discovered.  The government needing answers & solutions to this widespread mystery try a range of stratagies for discovery.  The actions of the government become more & more dubious until in an emotional scene the police officer following their orders changes his mind about the goodness of their motives.  

The indicment against the government, which here in Saramago’s fable style implies all democratically elected governments, & beaurcracies in general is continual but his faith in people uninvolved in politics is generous for one so cynical.  It is impossible, or vastly improbable, to imagine a scenario like this to really happen in reality or for large cities to unresverdly reject politicians & to be able to live without politics totally; but to be able to live without red-tape, without forms or insurances is a beautiful idea although I feel certain that it would be much more riskier than the world he has presented here.                

2007 - Doris Lessing

The Good Terrorist(1986)

It feels dated but it is quite difficult to get an idea of what Britian was like as a whole.  Life is only viewed through the group & through Alice, who has her biases.  Lessing does not leave out other people’s views completely, with the notable character of Alice’s mother, but it is hard to tell how objective Alice is being.  Of course this is the point of the story, that the road to terrorism is paved with good intentions.  

After Faye’s death Bert remarks that ‘she was due’.  This may seem untastefully flippant but remembering her suicide attempt, & her insistance of getting the bomb job done, one may wonder how true that may be.  It is possible that she was no revolutionary but simply a person with a death wish.

Alice’s love for Jasper does, as other characters notice, seem inexplicable.  It’s hard to say what Jasper does for Alice & why she puts up with him.  Jasper is like the ancient mariner holding Alice by the arm & controlling her gaze.

At the end Alice seems unconcerned about the lives that had been lost & prehaps her mother’s diagonsis was right: all Alice wants is power for herself.  

Philip’s death does come as a shock & it underlines how unfairly life has treated him.  Philip, who worked so hard on the house, is the least derserving to die; but often, it would seem, that is how it is.

2000 - Gao Xingjian

Soul Mountain (1990) 

Denis Molčanov told me that translating Soul Mountain was ‘A headfuck.  It’s not something to read on holiday’.  Everything about this book is difficult to pin down: plot, story, characters, language, the whole works.  If it belongs to a genre than prehaps intellectual traveling remeniscent of W. G. Sebald would be the most appropriate.  

It is the story of one man’s journey, actions and occurances- among meditations and explorations- trying to find the mysterous place of Lingshan (Soul Mountain).  However it is not the story of one man, it is the story of you and of I and of she.  It is the story of an unnamed individual broken down into parts on the wilderness of the mountain away from human society. The individual frequently debates wheater it is better to be alone and free or to be consricted and with other people. ‘I have long tired of the stuggles of the human world.’ The individual will say but ‘…I am still seduced by the human world, I still haven’t lived enough’ and this dicotomy makes up the core of the book.

Soul Mountain reads like a highly polished notebook with a variety of styles, tones and subjects.  Although it uses chapter numbers these are completely arbitrary, you could cut it up and read it at random.

As much as it is about the individual it is also about the importance of literature and a discussion of what literature is.  Gao believes that literature should be ‘without –isms’, without a prejudged attitude in favour of any particular politics or vision or message.  In this respect he achieves his own belief because the book is both personal and aesthetic without simplifying life in any patronising way. 

Not an easy read as there will be parts any reader will not like.  The catalogue of recounted tales of sexual violence early on may sour the rest of the experience as it pushes distaste with each story.  However for one horrible chapter there is another beautiful one, such as the lyricism of being in the woods at night or joy of talking to a stranger after traveling.

Some may find it inventive and compelling and others, and probably both, will find it aimless and undeveloped.  Whatever people may think of it as a whole there will certainly be one favorite chapter for everyone.

The last chapter happens to be my favorite and in talking to Denis I found out this secret: The last chapter was written first. 

 

1993 - Toni Morrison

What is it about Toni Morrison that puts me off reading her?  Superficial things that shouldn’t irk me, her name, her book covers, her.  Toni Morrison: nothing wrong with that name, it’s no Salvatore Quasimodo or Vicente Aleixandre but then even Nobel Prize winners are allowed a humdrum name.  But no Nobel Prize winner should have a humdrum book & that is what puts me off.  The Vintage covers do not help, as they do not help a lot of women writers, & the blurbs only further the things I expect from a black women writer.  It seems undermindingly sentimental, obvious &, therefore, uninteresting.  I don’t want to buy her books & I put myself off from doing so.  So strong is the feeling that they produce in me I can’t help but to believe it to be unfortunately true.  Maybe it is not true & when I get round to reading one of her books I’ll be happily relieved, but until then my doubts will stay. 

  It is worth to reflect how important a writer’s name is.  A name like Anatole France sticks in my mind more surely & piques my interest in him up unlike Miguel Angel Asturias.  How important is a writer's name, a name like George Orwell, to their success?     

She does give good advice about writing though:
"I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively.  They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?"

1992 - Derek Walcott

Selected Poetry (1981)

From one achiever to another: Walcott’s poem for Joseph Brodsky, who achieved the Nobel five years previously, Forests of Europe is partly about poetry under persecution.  It will seem appropriate for these two poets to be linked regardless of their very different backgrounds due to their similar approaches to writing poetry.  Their poetry invovles dense meanings & evocations of memories applied to the love of literature.      

1987 - Joseph Brodsky

So Forth (1996)

This quote from the poem Fin de Siecle characterises his poetry ‘It so happens I can’t// stand time that moves on.  Time that stand still I still/ can stand.’  There is in his poetry a sense that time stands still in a world of movement & a gesture can recall whole histories of life.  Epochs caught in a single movement, like whole worlds in rain drops. 

1981 - Elias Canetti

"for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power"

Has had a great influence on the writing of Iris Murdoch.

What he has said:  He hated the bank job T. S. Eliot “that terribly famous man” had and hated his fame, disregarding the Nobel Prize thinking that all candiates were undeserving (which makes for interesting speculation on what he must have felt upon receiving it).  On T.S. Eliot winning the Nobel Prize:  “Exaltered by that prize that- with the exception of Yeats- was bestowed upon none of those who would have deserved it and I witnessed the fame of this miserable creature” 

  “Fame wants to hang from the stars because they so far removed”  “Fame is not fastidious about the lips which spread it.  So long as there are mouths to reiterate the one name, it does not matter whose they are…the crowd which the seeker after fame envisages consistes of shadows, that is, of creatures who do not even have to be alive so long as they are capable of one thing, which is to repeat his name”    

1976 - Saul Bellow

Seize The Day (1956)

Singled out by the Nobel Prize committee & on the first reading I wondered why.  The story of a life on the line is a thing that novellas do well at telling, the crux point for a momentous break, shift or pinnacle reflection.  Though Tommy Wilhem’s way of life, if not his life itself, is on the line it does not feel as gigantic an importance as, comparatively say, Merasalt in Camus’ ‘The Outsider’.  But perhaps it is this lack of empathy, this deficient of empathy with Tommy is what it is exactly describing.  He doesn’t get the help he wants from his father nor does he achieve the care he wishes for from his wife & he is even doubtful about the credibility of the enigmatic Dr. Tamkin who seems genuinely wanting to help him.  It’s very well written & not insubstantial but what makes this book one of the ‘great works of the 20^th century’?     

1930 - Sinclair Lewis

I did have a copy of 'Babbit' but it fell out of my bag when I was running, unnecessary, for the train & only realised when I was pulling away from the station.  I felt gutted.

1913 - Rabindranath Tagore

From one achiever to another: Yeats’ introduction to Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Gitanjali’, “I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses & in restaurants, & I have often had to close I lest some stranger would see how much It moved me.  These lyrics- which are in the original, my Indians tell me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention- display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my long life.”