Some 35 years ago, when I was in college the first time around, I felt obligated to read most of the writers who were then all the rage. Of course, I felt obligated to read almost everything, without discrimination, especially when it was talked up enthusiastically by English professors. They were among the first people I had met who had ever read anything, and they were paid to do so, and I was naïve, provincial and terribly insecure about my literary tastes. So, when a professor spoke reverentially of John Hawkes, and had us read The Lime Twig, and even arranged for Hawkes to visit campus and read from his most recently published book, The Blood Oranges, I assumed that the novels and their author seemed boring and pretentious only because I was not clever and sophisticated enough to read them correctly. Of course, I met Hawkes, drank with him and behaved like a worshipful acolyte, all the while baffled by the cheerleading of the English Department groupies. I already loved Saul Bellow, but I said nothing when Hawkes and my professor badmouthed him. It took another 20 years for me to shed that lickspittle willingness to betray myself in order to please tastemakers without taste. Bad faith and its paltry blessings are no substitute for remaining true to one’s educated instincts.
Among the approved writers in the early 1970s was Doris Lessing, a feminist deity best known as author of The Golden Notebook, which holds the title Novel I Have Most Often Started But Never Had the Fortitude to Finish. This was a source of secret shame for decades until 1994 when I who endured Finnegans Wake resolved to conquer Mount Lessing. I failed again but the experience was different this time. I knew why I could not finish The Golden Notebook: It was crap, and I no longer suffer crap, even crap with good PR and its own lobbyists, with much grace. Turgid, boring, strident, politically correct before PC existed – there was nothing to recommend it, and the experience left me exhilarated and free.
All of this came back to me as I was idling again through Damned to Fame, James Knowlson’s life of Samuel Beckett, and came to this curious passage:
“Clancy Sigal told Beckett one day how Doris Lessing, with whom Sigal was living in the late 1950s, had introduced him as an identifiable character, `Saul Green,’ a macho kind of American, into several of her books [including The Golden Notebook]. He explained to Beckett what a disturbing experience this had been. `Beckett shook his magnificent head. `Identity is so fragile – how did you ever survive?’ He looked at me more closely. `Or did you?’”
Beckett extravagantly admired Bellow, but one can hardly imagine him reading Lessing.
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3 comments:
Oh yikes. That link shows me speaking of John /Fowles/ when of course you said John /Hawkes/. It was a pure slip of the pen (I was /thinking/ Hawkes--I just haven't thought of either of them for some time). I corrected it within minutes but the link never got with the program. Apologies to Patrick and I guess to both Johns.
Unfortunately, these days people are probably willing to agree with you about the merits of Bellows, many of whom don't even know who Hawkes was.
I respect your opinion, but to me this is heartbreaking: that Saul Bellows is more widely read than John Hawkes. It's like hearing that more people enjoyed "Saving Private Ryan" than "Fellini's Roma."
I would, however, tend to agree with you about Lessing.
Amusing - i tried to read The Golden Notebook about 3 times 10 years ago, and kept giving up at different points.
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