Like The Art of Fiction, this is a collection of essays about how literature works. The essays are longer though, so is able to explore his main theme in a bit more depth. What I found quite interesting here were Lodge's comments on his own work. One of the chapters is about Therapy, and another is an interview with him discussing Thinks....

One of the main points of Lodge's argument is that literature has a special ability to to convey feelings, and maybe even qualia in a way that scientific description cannot. He quotes Conrad: My task, which I am trying to achieve, is by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel - it is before all, to make you see. That - and no more, and it is everything. [p15].

Some of the stuff I highlighted:

• He explains the technique of "free indirect speech", which differs from direct ('she said "is that the clock striking twelve?"'), or indirect ('she asked if the clock was striking twelve') speech: "Was that the clock striking twelve? She would be late" is free indirect speech. Cinderella's concern is now a silent, private thought, expressed in her own words, to which we are given access without the overt mediation of a narrator...The effect is to locate the narrative in Cinderella's consciousness [p37]. Lots of later examples of authors using this technique, which Lodge says started to appear around the end of the 18th century
• Quoting Ramachandran, Freud's most valuable contribution was his discovery that your conscious mind is simply a facade and that you are completely unaware of what really goes on in your brain [p61]
• Says that many authors are reluctant to discuss their work: Very often, I believe, the motive for silence is that the writer has tried to give his work the effect of an effortless inevitability, and is understandably reluctant to destroy that illusion by revealing too much about the choices, hesitations, and second thoughts involved in composition [p109]
• On writing "Therapy": Readers of novels often assume that the knowledge of a particular subject displayed in their pages must be the visible tip of a submerged iceberg of information, when in fact there is often no iceberg - the tip is all there is [p268]

Completed : 27-Oct-2006