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28 July 2009

I Think I'm In Love


I think I'm in love. No, not that way - the woman's been dead for 40 years. No, I have had the great good fortune to once again stumble across an author who has completely enamored me, and for whose works I would gladly pay so that I could set them up on their own book shelf.

Of that august body I would include the following:

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. D. was the first "literary" author who captured my imagination and altered the way I read and judged books. Crime and Punishment was on the list of selections my 11th grade English teacher, Mr. Hartmann, offered the class as a paper topic. My choice was almost at random; I think some of the factors was that D. wasn't an English-speaking author, I didn't want to read the "usual" classic and the subject sounded suitably lurid to my 17-year-old mind.

I'll admit that the full scope and genius of the novel escaped me at the time (and probably still does albeit to a lesser extent) but it was a wonderful experience reading it. The next year, in College Comp (with the same teacher), I moved on to The Brothers Karamazov and beyond.

More briefly, others:

Edgar Pangborn. An unjustly forgotten master of humane SF. Check out Davy and Still I Persist in Wondering, but even his "failures" are worth reading.

Ursula Le Guin. A writer who's grown in skill and power over the years. Fictionwise, I would especially recommend her last two Earthsea volumes - The Other Wind and Tales of Earthsea. Nonfictionally, pick up her several collections of essays and her idiosyncratic translation of the Tao Te Ching.

W. Somerset Maugham. I met Maugham through the chance remark of a friend who compared me to Larry in The Razor's Edge. I found myself closely identifying with author and many of his characters.

Around the same time I discovered Joseph Conrad; and just as serendipitously. I saw "Alien" when it first came out in 1979 and always wondered why the ship was named "Nostromo." Eventually, I bought a used copy of the novel, and it was another case of love. I devoured it while camping on Catalina Island, and went on to feast on all his other works.

Anton Chekhov. OMG! How could I have missed this author for so long? No matter, I did find him.

Iain Banks and Steven Erikson are two authors whose works (Consider Phlebas and The Malazan Book of the Fallen, respectively) galvanized a flagging interest in SF.

But none of these authors are the real subject of this blog. Our real subject is an English writer named Ivy Compton-Burnett. Born in the 19th century, her first successful novel was published in 1925, and she continued to publish right up to her death in 1969. All of her novels focus on families and their relationships, and all are composed nearly entirely in dialog (one commentator I've read compares her to reading a Mamet play). They require an attention span somewhat longer than that fostered in modern culture but they are so worth the effort. Compton-Burnett writes with a mordant, piquant wit but still creates real people whom the reader cares about.

You can open her novels to pretty much any page to get a sample of her wit and style but the opening to Manservant and Maidservant can give you a taste:

"Is that fire smoking?" said Horace Lamb.
"Yes, it appears to be, my dear boy."
"I am not asking what it appears to be doing. I asked if it was smoking."
"Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth," said his cousin. "But we seem to have no other."
Horace advanced into the room as though his attention were withdrawn from his surroundings.
"Good morning," he said in a preoccupied tone, that changed as his eyes resumed their direction. "It does seem that the fire is smoking."
"It is in the stage when smoke is produced. So it is hard to see what it can do."
"Did you really not understand me?"
"Yes, yes, my dear boy. It is giving out some smoke. We must say it is."

If your interest is piqued, check out her website: http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/ivy/index.html

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