Against Motion
Of Andrew Motion’s nine English novels one “should have read” if one is to take his creative writing course at UEA, I’ve read one third. Waterland because I had time to kill (but I enjoyed it), Ulysses (twice) because it was there (twice), and Middlemarch because it was the first set text on my first course in the first term of university. I learned quickly and, from then on, followed my nose rather than the reading lists. I’d like to read Tristram Shandy � and have tried - but can’t be arsed to try again. And of the others, I wouldn’t read them if you paid me. That rather removes the possibility of going on a course run by the Poet Laureate. Damn!
Anyway, the concept of “should read” is dodgy in the first place. Follow your nose, I would say. I’m so rarely surprised at what I see being read in public. Don�t you have a mind of your own?, I want to ask somebody as they frown into a copy of Man and Boy. It’s as if people are reading to catch up; to join in. I’ve always wanted only to go as far as possible rather than to skim the surface with “Beginner’s Guides” or “prize winning” novels. My definition of a good read - a book for pleasure - is one that demands to be read; one that cannot help but be read and re-read. This might be as fearfully dense as Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory or as effortlessly readable as Henderson the Rain King. To read the books on Motion’s list, for whatever reasons he gives, would be, I suspect, to partake only of dry public discourse; rather like writing stories with a seminar group in mind, or to write poems celebrating a bunch of inbred gravy train passengers.
Oh, and as a post script: Alex Clark says of Motion’s choice: “It would be better to have a Martin Amis - something that was at least a bit more experimental.” Martin Amis: experimental?! I’m speechless. For once.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- The Groom of the Stool speaks out
- Defining experimentation
- Saul Bellow Dies At 89
- Unresolved Anger Inc.
- Weekend miscellany
