Challenge: "The English Novel"

The English Novel  by Professor Timothy Spurgin
Audiocourse by The Great Courses
Rating: 5
Listened:  November 2011

Borrowed from the library, I had high hopes for this course based on his other course, The Art of Reading.  I listen to the CD's while driving so one requirement is that they are interesting and this did not disappoint. This course begins with what is typically regarded as the first English novel, Pamela (1740) by Samuel Richardson and ends with notable contemporary works by Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith.  18th century books such as Tom Jones (1749) by Henry Fielding, Tristam Shandy (1759-1767) by Laurence Sterne and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe have been added to my TBR pile.  Works by Sir Walter Scott (Waverly 1814) and Henry James (The Portrait of a Lady 1881) join other 19th century "to-be-read" authors: Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot.  In Spurgin's discussion of a particular novel, he not only talks about the work itself, but spends time on the author's biography and the time period in which he/she wrote.  He ties in critical historical and social events that influence the writer and the work.  His love for literature is evident and so each lecture was a pleasure to listen to.  I would highly recommend.

In 2012, I have challenged myself to read half the novels in the course.  The number in parenthesis is the rating given to the book.  I use the GoodReads system. 

1 - didn't like it
2 - it was ok
3 - liked it
4 - really liked it
5 - it was amazing

Here is the list:

• 1719 - 1720 - Love in Excess by Eliza Haywood
• 1740 - Pamela by Samuel Richardson - read January 2011 (5)
• 1747 - 1749 - Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (divided into 9 ibook volumes)
•  Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3,  
• 1749 - Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
• 1759 - 1767 - Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne
• 1778 - Evelina by Frances Burney
• 1794 - The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
• 1813 - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - read a while ago (5)
• 1814 - Waverley by Sir Walter Scott
• 1815 - Emma by Jane Austen - read in Feb 2011 (4)
• 1826 - Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (American)
• 1836 - 1837 - The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
• 1837 - 1843 - Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac (French)
• 1847 - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - read in Nov. 2009 (5) 
• 1847 - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• 1847 - 1848 - Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• 1849 - 1850 - David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• 1851 - Moby Dick by Herman Melville (American)
• 1852 - 1853 - Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• 1857 - Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert - read in May 2011 (3).  My dislike for M. Bovary affected how I felt about the book. I could appreciate the literary style but did not like the story. 
• 1860 - Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
• 1860 - 1861 - Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• 1865 - 1869 - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• 1871 - 1872 - Middlemarch by George Eliot
• 1875 - 1877 - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy- read in Sept 2011 (4)

November 2011 Books and Audiocourse

It is now December 4th and with the addition of the books/course below, I am just eight books away from reaching one hundred in 2011.  I have never come close to reading this many books in one year - ever.  This underscores how vital books have been to my grief journey.  I am in full agreement with Thomas Jefferson's famous quote: I cannot live without books.

The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner
Published: 1983
Rating: 3
Goodreads review
I would like to be a more discerning reader so have collected a number of books such as this one - books that describe how fiction works.  I also have some story ideas percolating in my head, that one day I may try to write.  For the more experienced fiction/creative writers, this may be just what you are looking for.  But for me, the ultra novice, "don't know what I am doing" wanna-be-writer, it was difficult to get through.

Blue Nights by Joan Didon
Published: 2011
Rating: 3
Goodreads review
A short memoir by a well known author who has suffered multiple losses within a short period of time.  On December 30, 2003, while her adult daughter Quintana was in the hospital overcoming a life-threatening infection, her husband died from a sudden heart attack.  Then on August 26, 2005, the proverbial "other shoe" dropped as her daughter, who suffered complications from the initial infection, died.  In October, 2005, she published a moving memoir about her first loss, The Year of Magical Thinking - reviewed in this post.

It is evident that writing Blue Nights helped Didion process her daughter's death.  She asks many unanswerable questions. She thinks of other friends who have died. She reviews specific memories and ponders their significance.  Why does she remember these and not others?  She allows these memories to trigger others and so leads the reader down a meandering path of events that occur in real time, the recent past and the way, way past.  She ponders aging and dying.  A quick and moving read.

On a side note, this is the first book that I read on my new iPad and loved the experience.  I like the large screen and the highlighting and note-taking capability.

My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid
Published: 1997
Rating: 3
Goodreads review
I bought this book from a public library book sale in Charlottesville, VA while visiting my daughter.  Kincaid is another writer who has penned a memoir about loss - her brother who died of AIDS in Antigua on January 19, 1996.  This memoir chronicles a complicated grief because she has a very angry, hateful and unresolved relationship with her mother which gets in the way of her feelings for her brother.  Her thoughts stream together in long sentences which I sometimes found difficult to follow but at other times, were beautiful and brilliant.  She has unique thoughts on death that has made me think.

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
Published: 1981
Rating: 3
Lists: 1,001
Goodreads review
I bought Kincaid's book at The Book Rack, a used bookstore in S. Yarmouth, MA this past summer and decided to read it after finishing her memoir, My Brother.  It is a short book, only 148 pages, which I read in one day.  It is a coming of age story - about an only child, Annie John, born to a beautiful mother whom she first adores and then comes to hate/love - sound familiar?  Telling quote: My mother would kill me if she got the chance.  I would kill my mother if I had the courage."  Yikes!  The consequence of this dysfunctional relationship is severe as Annie suffers from deep depression and what I would call a breakdown.  My unhappiness was something deep inside me, and when I closed my eyes I could even see it....It took the shape of a small black ball, all wrapped in cobwebs."   It was painful to read about a love-hate relationship between mother and daughter again.

Anne of Green Gables (#1) by L.M. Montgomery
Published: 1908
Rating: 5
Goodreads review
This has been sitting on my bookshelf since January 2011 when I bought it at a local library book sale.  I was looking for something light and fun to read after finished some pretty heavy books and this did the trick - I loved it!  For some reason, I was ready to fall in love with Anne Shirley, eleven-year old orphaned girl who went to live with an older spinster couple, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert on their farm, Green Gables located on rural Prince Edward Island, Canada.  At the end of chapter 8, about 20% into the book, I wrote down the following reasons of why Anne was such an engaging character:  innocent, vivid and real imagination, curious, gumption, honest, love of life, she sees beauty in nature that is missed by others, bright and articulate, unpretentious, a reader and a true romantic.  The book follows her many adventures and was so successful with early 20th century readers that Montgomery ended up writing a series, which I happily plan to read.  UPDATE:  I watched the 1985 made-for TV movie starring Megan Follows in the title role.  I loved it so much that I have watched both sequels.

Persuasion by Jane Austen
Published: 1817
Rating: 5
Goodreads review
Jane Austen web site
Jane Austen Society of North America
I decided to read this in keeping with the unplanned "Anne" theme as I've  recently read Anna Karenina, Annie John, Anne of Green Gables - why not another book featuring an Anne?  I initially gave it a 4 (as how could any book match the beloved Pride and Prejudice), but changed it to a 5 because after finishing, I didn't want the story to end.  So I researched what good sequels were out there, found one by Amanda Grange (below), paid full price ($12.99 for the ibook), downloaded and read in one day.  I also rewatched the movie with Rupert Penry-Jones as the handsome and dashing Captain Wentworth and Sally Hawkins as the heroine, Anne Elliot.  I look forward to reading Austen's other three books: Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey.  A Google search shows numerous sites created for Jane Austen fans and a Society called the Jane Austen Society of North America or JASNA - who knew?

Captain Wentworth's Diary by Amanda Grange
Published: 2007
Rating: 4
Goodreads review
Author's web site
Authors's Goodreads blog
Grange has written a number of Austen male protagonist diaries, starting with Mr. Darcy's Diary (2007).  See this interesting online interview on her decision to do so.  I found Grange's version of when Anne and Frederick Wentworth initially fell in love completely believable.  It is a satisfying companion to Austen's original.

The English Novel  by Professor Timothy Spurgin
Audiocourse by The Great Courses
Rating: 5

Borrowed from the library, I had high hopes for this course based on his other course, The Art of Reading.  I listen to the CD's while driving so one requirement is that they are interesting and this did not disappoint. This course begins with what is typically regarded as the first English novel, Pamela (1740) by Samuel Richardson and ends with notable contemporary works by Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith.  18th century books such as Tom Jones (1749) by Henry Fielding, Tristam Shandy (1759-1767) by Laurence Sterne and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe have been added to my TBR pile.  Works by Sir Walter Scott (Waverly 1814) and Henry James (The Portrait of a Lady 1881) join other 19th century "to-be-read" authors: Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot.  In Spurgin's discussion of a particular novel, he not only talks about the work itself, but spends time on the author's biography and the time period in which he/she wrote.  He ties in critical historical and social events that influence the writer and the work.  His love for literature is evident and so each lecture was a pleasure to listen to.  I would highly recommend.

"The Art of Reading": Audiocourse by Dr. Timothy Spurgin

Update - 2/26/2011
Finished the course and would highly recommend.

In a recent post, I talked about an interesting and thought-provking course that I have been listening to in the car called The Art of Reading.   Lots of good information that I will chronicle in this post.

Artful reading

• Take reading more seriously
• Formalist approach - close reading of the words on the page

Authors: Real and Implied

• Think of authors more like a character
• Most authors do not begin with a theme
• T.S Eliot in the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, he promotes the idea that the author's personality has little to do with his/her writing.  There is a difference between the "man who suffers" and the "mind that creates."  It is the creative mind that influences the writing, not the person who suffers everyday life. 
• In Wayne C. Booth's classic study, The Rhetoric of Fiction, he says the real-life author is different than the "implied author."  
• "The implied author is the figure who materializes in the book itself, the man or woman whose personality is implicit in the story and the storytelling. 
• Suggests reading author interviews in the Paris Review.

Narrators

• Remember this: the author is not the narrator
• First person narrator - Eg. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe.
• Third person narrator - Eg. Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Indirect Discourse - Eg. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.  Third person narrators borrows language from characters without quotes or identifying tags. 
• Shift between first and third person - Eg. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Several first person narrators - Eg. The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. 
• Questions to ask after page 10:  Is this first or third person?  Why did the author chose this? 

Characters

• Interesting characters are not often the nicest or most likable
• Interesting characters, even unlikable ones, can grow and change
• An artful reader will monitor their responses to the characters.  
• In E.M Forster's book, Aspects of the Novel, he talks about "round" and "flat" characters.  According to him, "the test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way."
• Other things to look out for:  What is the internal conflict or struggle.  What is the crisis?  Is there a reckoning with the past and/or the self? 
• Short stories by Anton Chekhov

Style

• Minimalist - Ernest Hemingway
• Maximilist - William Faulkner
• Lyricist - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reading for the Plot - Five Simple Words

• Beginning: introduced to characters, setting, etc.  Then a destabilizing event
• Middle: Complications, possibly more destabilizing events, conflicts
• End:  Resolution - either tragically or comically (sad or happy)
• Plot: List of events in order of their presentation to the reader
• Story: Same events in chronological order
• Exercise - while reading, make a list of events as they occur.  Note which ones are in the past.

Master Plots

• Hero takes a journey
• Stranger comes to town
• Rags to Riches
• Love conquers all

Chapters: Pattern and Rhythm

• Pre-read book.
• Talk time to look at organization of the book.  If there are parts, how many?  How many chapters in each part?  Read the first sentences in the beginning chapters to get a sense of narration and style. Eg.  Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and My Antonia by Willa Cather.
• Suggest to take a break after the first part.  List chapter numbers on a page and next to each chapter note the following:  introduction of main character, change in setting, destabilizing event.  Try to get a feel of the pulse, pattern or rhythm of the book. 

Scene and Summary: Showing and Telling

• Scenes: mainly dialogue.  Help the reader observe characters directly.
• Summary: used by narrator to set the scene, bring up to date, generalize, analyze. 
• Eg. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy and Disgrace by J. M Coetzee

Big Scenes: Subtexts, Motives and Secrets

• Eg. Persuasion by Jane Austen
• Look for scenes where the dialogue deepens our insight into the main character, remembering these questions: 

1. Why does a character enter the scene? What is the reason? 
2. Does the character know what he/she wants?  What is the real motive?  Do they even know? 
3. What is the character's main goal?  And is it known to all? Why or why not? 
4. Good scenes usually involve miscommunication, misunderstanding, and disappointment.  Is this going on? 
5. The only tool for character in a good scene is language.  What are they saying?  What words are they using?  Why? 

Dialogue: Good, Bad and Ugly

• Comic dialogue:  character's speech is exaggerated. Eg. Right Ho, Jeeves  by P.G Wodehouse
• Naturalistic dialogue: spontaneity and immediacy.  Leaves many things unsaid. Eg. of both: White Teeth by Zadie Smith.
• Bad dialogue - when character makes speeches or monologues, in place of narrator's summary.  Flat, boring, unrealistic.  Eg. The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.  Prof Langston's speech to the detective upon seeing the dead man sounds like a university lecture.  Unrealistic. 

Picking up the Tools - practical ideas to implement while reading

• Pre-read - eyeball the entire book to get a sense of the design
• 50 page test - give the book at least 50 pages before deciding to continue
• Look out for destabilizing events - usually in the first few pages.
• What is the master plot?  "Hero Takes A Journey" or "Stranger Comes to Town"?
• Once a third of the way through, stop and take stock.  Think about the plot and the characters.  Formulate questions.  Make predictions.  Perhaps re-read the first chapter to see if it is different.
• Close reading - pay attention to the words and language.
• Take note of passages that are striking in terms of summary, dialogue, description, setting, characterization, showing not telling, etc. 

Suggested Bibliography

• How Fiction Works by James Wood
• The Making of A Story by Alice LaPlante
• Writing Fiction by Burroway and Stuckey-French
• 13 Ways of Looking at a Novel by Smiley
• Aspects of the Novel by EM Forster