Here is a piece from Prospect called The democracy of Don Quixote (via Literary Saloon); and, here is the idea:
Novelists have always turned their hands to essays, and the essay-writing novelist remains a literary force to be reckoned with. The two forms share an inherent pluralism and scepticism that makes them natural allies of democracy.
I never thought about it–but, it seems to be true; some of my favourite novelists are also the best essay writers–Margaret Atwood and Somerset Maugham come to my mind immediately (And, since I also enjoyed the essays of Virginia Woolf and Amitav Ghosh, I guess their novels are good too–Yes; I am ashamed to admit not having read any of their fiction, yet).
The piece goes on to discuss Kundera’s The Curtain, Coetzee’s Inner workings, Sontag’s At the same time, Vargas Llosa’s Touchstones in the context.
Take a look!
June 3, 2007 at 9:06 am |
I agree with you. Having just finished reading “The Curtain” by Milan Kundera. There are few more who are good at writing essays and novels, notably Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino , Paulo Coelho etc.
But personally speaking, their essays and novels will have too much of intellectual flair than the fiction. Not that it is a bad thing. But, you feel it is a forced fiction born out of intellect, instead of natuaral fiction as written by some of the latin american greats. They dont seems too much bothered about the intellect while writing fiction and are more enjoyable to read
June 3, 2007 at 9:47 am |
Dear Jayan,
I agree; to be intellectually satisfying as well as enjoyable reading is a truly difficult talk. Few achieve it. However, even seemingly natural fiction might have cost its author lots of intellectual exercise–the success lies in making it look like natural. One only has to read R K Narayan or Raja Rao’s Kanthapura to realise how difficult it is to imitate them.
June 4, 2007 at 4:00 am |
Thats true..
Creating a longer version of fiction writing ( novels , unlike short stories) does take lot of effort and pain and will leave you drained of energy. And it is not a simple effort of “putting in paper” whatever intuition gets into your mind. It does require whole lot of preparation. My opinion was that fiction writers ( and not those who releases one book per year) does tend to go with the naturalness of the emotions and situations. I observe, most of the european writers tend to lean towards the intellectual side while writing fiction.
R K Narayan and Raja Rao are exceptions in the Indian English writing..