tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post4057997838724423367..comments2023-07-31T01:11:16.619+10:00Comments on Being in Lieu: Some or another glimpse in his mindJAAChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-66851541217500385722010-12-21T11:09:23.249+11:002010-12-21T11:09:23.249+11:00Hi Stephen,
I think I now have a sense of what yo...Hi Stephen,<br /><br />I think I now have a sense of what you mean with the implicit.It sounds like you're dealing with the main issues here - what makes one piece of fiction enduring and another entirely forgettable - enormous issues.<br /><br />Yes, I agree: the writings of Emily Dickinson - and Virginia Woolf too - have often been undervalued because of too much emphasis being placed on peripheral aspects of what they are doing. So many critics (and writers too) rely on <i>idées reçus</i> (ie received, unexamined opinions), as Flaubert would call them, and I've noticed that these received opinions can come from both sides of the usual political divide. The difficulty is to get some authentic sense of existence or of a text without this intrusive emotional fug.<br /><br />Re Rosemary Lloyd - I see from a short Google search that she initially went to the University of Adelaide (2008), but it's not clear where she is now. You could perhaps try contacting her through her publisher - that's what I would do, I think.JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-55391854112508540972010-12-19T02:25:05.562+11:002010-12-19T02:25:05.562+11:00Jen,
I couldn't agree with you more with your...Jen,<br /><br />I couldn't agree with you more with your "keep them guessing" comments. Why anyone would want to be led around by the nose, only to justify the emotional slavery with a "well at least it's entertaining to me" is beyond me. By the way, that's what led me to your blog, your comments elsewhere in a comment thread about how piling cliche upon cliche in tired, conventional forms is not really a worthwhile way pursuing the questions literature raises. <br /><br />Something being implicit to a work. Well that's the big question, isn't it. I like to think of it more like THE work, the implicit in literature that keeps those over the centuries intimately connected (which is what Sebald was doing with his prose, I feel, weaving those threads over historical time into a style all his own, mainly so that the continuities can be made. To me he's a poet first, a historian second, and a novelist much further down the line). Like you point out here with Murnane, the implicit is all there in the paddocks. <br /><br />The reason why I asked about Murnane's representation of women appearing "old-fashioned" is related to this. For instance, what's implicit to Emily Dickinson's poetry feels extraordinarily powerful to me. She was misunderstood during her lifetime and hardly published at all. After her death she was read and considered an eccentric and a spinster. About fifty years after her death there were debates about whether to leave the hyphens in her poetry or not. After the 1960s the hippies were starting to recognize there was something radical at work in her poetry. Critics and poets today whose political instincts are clearly liberal - an instinct which requires anyone holding them to be unrelentingly explicit with their art (such as with Jonathan Franzen, for example, who has followed suit) - continue to have trouble reading her, mainly because the implicit in her work continues to defy them. Elaine Showalter has recently written a book about the history of women's literature, implied in her massive effort is there IS such a thing as "women's literature". But as many women writers such as Susan Sontag have always been arguing, look to the implicit; there's a lot more to the human spirit in us than mere gender politics.<br /><br />Tying these threads up, a good sign there's something terribly cynical at work in a fiction writer is their discomfort talking about their craft, for fear of giving the game away. What's immediately remarkable to me about Murnane is his comfort talking about matters of craft. It sounds like he's giving his secrets away, but only a supremely confident artist wouldn't fear the explicit. And to me that's a form of faith. Mainly because he recognizes the implicit in history, has found a form to express it, and so has left the rest up to fate knowing he's done the best he could. I don't see how this wouldn't inspire the complete admiration of any one of us.<br /><br />Mallarme is simply awe-inspiring. One of his great translators Rosemary Lloyd, apparently, has returned to Australia after a career in Mallarme and Baudelaire scholarship. I'm thinking about writing to her but I wouldn't even know where to begin! <br /><br />Sorry for the long response, but these are enormous questions...Stephen Cahalyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08685010365929686988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-82273238502642152002010-12-18T16:05:41.328+11:002010-12-18T16:05:41.328+11:00Hi Stephen,
Very interesting observations about t...Hi Stephen,<br /><br />Very interesting observations about the experience of reading (I really should read some Mallarmé...). I think that this perspective is often overlooked in discussions about literature, except for certain banalities re the reader 'wanting more' or 'keeping them guessing' - as if reading were some passive collusion in a cynical game. <br /><br />About Murnane's representations of women - or of any character - I would say they are very remote to his interests. In a sense, all of his characters are old fashioned, including his narrators - or at least not at all susceptible to fashions of any kind. This is primarily because what Murnane finds fascinating is what is happening in in the paddocks, as he puts it somewhere, of his mind - especially those glimpses just beyond its limits. It's as if he starts from where he finds himself and then carefully progresses - rejecting and refining - taking responsibility, as so few of us ever do, for each of his thoughts.<br /><br />By the way, I'm curious about what you mean by something being implicit to a work.<br /><br />Thank you too for your incisive comments.JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-64249260799427609142010-12-18T03:14:46.982+11:002010-12-18T03:14:46.982+11:00Hi Jen. Very pleased to read this post on Murnane ...Hi Jen. Very pleased to read this post on Murnane alone. Ever since your last one, I've been thinking about questions regarding "imagination" you raised through him. In fact a bit obsessively, I have, through poets who have long interested me, especially Mallarme. "Paint, not the object, but the effect it produces." A hint is raised in reading. You're not aware it's a hint yet until the hint is made explicit. And then the "music" is made with the connection made. When reading Proust I often had that kind of a reaction, "Wait, did that just happen?" Ordinarily that would be called a plot twist, but in Proust and Murnane, it has already happened. Watching your link to the Glenn Gould piece, I thought, "No false notes", that works for me. <br /><br />I had so many questions from the previous post, but I believe you've answered them all now, especially with what might be particularly local or Australian with Murnane. One that still remains though is, do you feel his representations of women are old-fashioned? I was listening to his ABC Radio interview, and my sense was, like with "plot" and "character" it's all implicit to the work anyway. Am I wrong?<br /><br />Thanks for another great post.Stephen Cahalyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08685010365929686988noreply@blogger.com