A longish essay about Lodge's experience of writing Author, Author, and some essays about how the reception of work by other selected authors.

Lodge's non-fiction may not be as enjoyable to read as his novels, but it's always well worth reading. It is fascinating to see how much thought and work goes into his writing.

The sections on other works were also interesting: most of them were books I've not read, but now want to: e.g. Nabokov's Pnin, Eco's The Name of the Rose, Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life, Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, and of course Henry James.

Some quotes I highlighted (I must not have had a pen with me for lots of it, because I don't seem to have highlighted much):

• Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so. [p28, quoting Henry James]
• If all novels were like Tristram Shandy we should soon become bored with them. The human mind demands pattern, order, cohesion and a certain degree of closure in narrative discourse, and can only occasionally be teased into accepting a radical departure from those conventions. [p30]
• But of course you know yourself how immitigably the thing is done - it is of such a brilliancy of true truth. [p162, quoting a letter from Henry James about Kipps to HG Wells]
• It is worth noting that for George Eliot, 'realism' involed not only a positve commitment to the observation of reality, but a negative attitude to false romanticism...we are to be taught to feel. That is because 'the greatest beneft we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies', because 'Art is the nearest thing to life. It is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellowmen beyond the bounds of our personal lot' [p 181, quoting George Eliot]

Completed : 30-Aug-2007