Title: Invisible Forms
A friend asked today why I never seemed to read “simply for pleasure”. I said that in fact that�s all I do; I can’t read for any other reason. If pleasure is not forthcoming, the book is abandoned even if I feel obliged to continue. Today, Harry Mulisch’s The Procedure and Sandor Marai’s Embers await their return to the library because pleasure did not happen. One book I am getting pleasure from though is Kevin Jackson’s Invisible Forms, subtitled “A Guide to Literary Curiosities”. At first, I thought it might be too frivolous and, by merely presenting amusing anecdotes, would not address the issues suggested by curiosities like dedications, epigrams and footnotes. However, the anecdotes are stimulating. I’ve just got to the chapter on titles, a subject close to my heart. I’m fascinated by titles and their ramifications. Last Thursday, I mentioned Roth’s novel whose title I admire so much. Jackson mentions one of his own favourite titles that is also one of mine � Marshall Berman’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (a quote from Marx apparently).
It’s a deceptively minor issue. In the preface to London Fields, Martin Amis explains why he chose that title and not the alternatives he’d been pondering: Millennium and The Death of Love. While the latter might have got him more attention, he said it was too melodramatic and programmatic. The former was, and is, simply pants. “London Fields”, on the other hand, runs through the novel like a seam. Yet, I would add, like the novel itself, its oxymoronic quality is also rather tired; a caricature as its main characters are also caricatures.
So, let’s all share our favourite titles, even if the books themselves aren�t that hot. Me first: Gert Hofmann’s Before the Rainy Season. It�s not a bad novel either. One I haven�t read was lent to me today by the same friend I mentioned at the start: Death and the Penguin, by Andrey Kurkov. Pleasure already.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Can you believe this crap?
- Booker titles
- Neenor
- Literary luvvies I recently had the pleasure of…
- Authors - get free publicity for your new titles
