"Read, read, read..."

“Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the mast. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” --William Faulkner


Right now, I’m re-reading Little, Big, by John Crowley, thumbing through First Draft in 30 Days, by Karen Wiesner, and spicing things up with King Rat, by China Mieville. I try to keep a comfort read going almost all the time, but even though I’m re-reading Little, Big, that doesn’t make it any more comforting-- I had a hard time getting through the book the first time and I’m afraid it’s no easier now. First Draft in 30 Days is a book about outlining novels, which is something I’m thinking a lot about lately, as I’m starting work on a new fiction project and I have to structure those pretty carefully. King Rat was recommended to me by my husband, and I have to say I don’t like it very much; it got taken out of the purse rotation this week because it just wasn’t engaging me. It’s not that it isn’t a good story, but I think Neil Gaiman wrote a better version of a very similar story in Neverwhere. That’s just my opinion, of course. People are so excited about China Mieville as an author that I probably will go back and finish the book, but, ih. It’s not doing much for me.

As for First Draft in 30 Days, it’s not an example of great writing, but it’s a nonfiction book designed to lead readers through a process, and it does that reasonably well-- although I must warn you that the author doesn’t really mean you can turn out the first draft of a novel in 30 days (they just made that the title in order to sell books). What she’s really trying to do is teach you how to write a cohesive outline of a novel in 30 days, which is much more realistic. (Sorry, NaNoWriMo fiends!)

Little, Big was (and is) difficult not because it’s slow (I like slow books) but because I think Crowley’s language sometimes gets in the way of the story Although I understand the writing style, some of those parentheticals seem to go on for pages. I absolutely love the story, though. Now, Little, Big was published in 1981, when it was, according to people who look back at such things, possible to get a quiet, quirky, lyrical book published, but I cannot applaud Crowley enough for managing to avoid that thing that really gets me grumpy about contemporary fiction: the ubiquitous and apparently compulsory vertical takeoff, that thing where you’re supposed to write the first chapter of your book like a television murder mystery that starts with a violent killing and then the whole rest of the film you’re backtracking, trying to figure out what just happened. I often feel assaulted when I read books that begin like this: I scour bookstore shelves and sample pages until I find books that don’t start out with “Boris lay in a pool of his own blood,” or some such nonsense. If I wanted to read a boys’ adventure novel, a Heinlein juvie, I’d go out and get one of those. I almost never want to read books like that, alas. And it sucks to be me, because I haven’t seen a lot of quiet books making it big (or making it at all) lately. Of course, these vertical takeoffs could all just be false fronts, like the fronts of American frontier town stores-- made to look big and impressive and tall, when actually the interior of the place was little more than a shack. Maybe some of those books that start out with a bang get more humble after Chapter One, but I suspect they really just get shabby.

I remember breathing a huge sigh of relief when I first opened Peter S. Beagle’s Tamsin, a lush ghost story that kept me captivated for hours and which I have read again more than once. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman was an equally welcome change: I discovered it long after it was written and was lucky enough to acquire the illustrated novel; the other versions just aren’t the same. Your mileage may vary, standard disclaimers apply.

What does this have to do with Mr. Faulkner’s suggestion to “read, read, read?” Everything. Do it, but recognise what you like and what you don’t like. Know what you want to sound like, and read that (but not exclusively that). Don’t be afraid to say what you don’t like, but careful when you call what you don’t like crap; there are people out there who absolutely love the stuff you hate-- and it’s their right to love it, but you don’t have to read it (you certainly don’t have to finish it!), no matter what Mr. Faulkner says.