Nothing much to see here this week, but I do think someone should have stopped Jane Urquhart from inaugurating "a weekly series about books that have been unjustly overlooked, under-praised or just ignored" with a piece on The Blue Flower, which is a pretty damn famous novel. In fact I seem to remember there was a bit of a scandale when it failed to win the Booker.
I think The Blue Flower is one of Penelope Fitzgerald's weaker books anyway. Her great strength is that trademark elliptical style -- very simple, cool, immensely respectful of her characters -- which seems to at once tell you nothing and everything about them. They remain mysterious just as real people are, so you feel as though you're observing them directly -- or perhaps hearing stories about them from a slightly dotty, very generous, but underneath it all rather sharp English aunt. (Aunt Sadie, in fact.) The method works wonderfully with more or less familiar English characters, especially of a sad and loser-ish stripe; but applied to strange 18th century German aristocrats, as in The Blue Flower, it just results in impenetrability.
You want unjustly overlooked? How about Beer in the Snooker Club, a wonderful novel by one Waguih Ghali who (a) never wrote another one, (b) committed suicide, and (c) has no Wikipedia article to link to? Or how about the whole freakin' oeuvre of Colette, one of the great writers of the twentieth century, whose stuff was only ever (partially) available in terrible fifties translations and is now mostly out of print? I could go on...
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Would I like P. Fitzgerald? Should I? I tried one and thought "meh" but it so seems like the sort of think I would like. Which one should I start with?
I think of Colette as being very well known because I read her when I was a teenager. They must have done a paperback reprint in the early eighties. And they made a big Hollywood movie about one of them, which seems the opposite of obscurity. I grant you the Snooker Club book, which I also should read.
I think how you feel about PF will depend on your taste for ... delicate flavours. She's much more original than Barbara Pym, say, but if you find BP tiresome (not much happening, to not terribly interesting people) you might well have the same reaction to PF. I've now read Offshore (my favourite) three times and liked it *much* better on each reread -- it does grow on you. Incidentally she writes riveting children, which is most unusual (eg Offshore or At Freddie's).
I think Colette used to be a lot more in fashion than she is now -- all my parents' generation read her avidly, and it's still easier to find second hand copies than new. I guess what it took to be an important artsy writer back then was primarily dirtiness, which god knows she has, whereas now the criteria are political relevance and formal significance and historical whatever -- stuff you can teach. I can't imagine Colette is on many syllabi -- she's so far from any possible conception of political correctness as to be from outer space....
I'd forgotten about that movie, but I fear Colette is and will remain famous, in the Anglophonie, as a minor celebrity, who had a cool/messy life. And who wrote Gigi. As if she were some kind of sleazy French Kay Thompson.... I gather the French know better, though, and give her her due.
I hasten to add, Miss Lucy, that I do not mean to be confusing your teenage years with my parents' bohemian period in the fifties.... I too remember hearing about Colette in the eighties, but I have a feeling she was already on the wane then and hasn't bounced back since. I have a horrible feeling that it's due to the well-known cheapness and greed of today's publishers: you couldn't start a new Colette boom with those awful old translations, and I reckon they're too cheap to commission new ones.
Given the staggering difficulty the Threadkiller experienced when trying to read Jane Urquhart's deadly yet critically acclaimed Away ... the TK isn't so sure Miss Jane should be put in charge of such things. But it has been snowing for three days and the Threadkiller is grumpy.
However, the Threadkiller would recommend the work of Jane Gardam (snubbed so far by the Booker, but winner of the Whitbread, she believes, being too lazy to google right now). Even her shortest stories are tiny gems and her children's work is superlative.
Also the Threadkiller is a big Colette fan, esp when it comes to the adventures of that naughty schoolgirl Claudine. What that girl gets up to!
Colette has been taken up as something of a feminist cause, because her odious first (or second?) husband made her write under his name. However, that didn't keep her down for long. I too remember reading the Claudine series in high school and wondering "where are the rude parts?". I think much of the subtext went over my head, as subtext tends to do.
In similar literary territory, for the category of underservedly neglected good books, I would nominate Margaret Drabble's earliest stuff, especially Jerusalem the Golden. I know that she's not an obscure writer, but J the G, among others, has been out of print for a while. Nonetheless, it remains the best female bildungsroman I have ever read.
I adored MD's The Radiant Way, but never thought to look at her earlier stuff - will have to see if any of my local suppliers can come up with JG -- though to be honest I feel a bit old for bildungsromanings these days.
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