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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes & Exposure by Helen Dunmore

27/1/2016

12 Comments

 
In the week which saw the publication of the results into the inquiry into the killing of Alexander Litvinenko, I read two novels with a Russian connection. Both are about living under the shadow of terror, both penned by lauded English novelists and published in the UK tomorrow. Nevertheless, these are two very different novels; read my reflections to see which you prefer.

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Hot on the heels of a Korean novel that considers the impact of censorship on artistic performance, I’ve enjoyed Julian Barnes’ novelisation of the life of Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, a poignant tale of state-controlled creativity. Narrated in three sections set around the “worst time” to date of the Soviet composer’s life, it explores the conflicts and compromises required to stay alive under a totalitarian regime.

The first, set in 1937, finds Shostakovich waiting by the lifts in the Leningrad apartment block where he lives with his wife and baby daughter. After being celebrated throughout the country and beyond, his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk has been condemned following a performance attended by Stalin himself. Barnes shows how the composer’s expectation that he’ll be taken to the Big House and exterminated is not an overreaction. Yet he survives to be sent, in 1948, on a manufactured peace mission to the USA (with echoes of the visit from North Korea in The Orphan Master’s Son) where he delivers ghostwritten speeches in which he condemns himself from his own mouth. Finally, in 1960, when the climate has supposedly thawed under Khrushchev, he’s bullied into joining the Communist Party.

His talent aside, Shostakovich is no hero, but an ordinary man in a nightmare in which heroism often means death, not just for the person themselves, but their entire family and associates, however tenuous the link. Barnes captures perfectly the terror for someone who

would never be loved by Soviet power. He came from the wrong stock … Proletarian purity was as important to the Soviets as Aryan purity was to the Nazis. Further, he had the vanity, or foolishness, to notice and remember that what the Party had said yesterday was often in direct contradiction to what the Party was saying today … They demanded ‘an optimistic Shostakovich’. Even if the world was up to its neck in blood and farm slurry, you were expected to keep a smile on your face. But it was an artist’s nature to be pessimistic and neurotic (p89).

As in the novel Motherland, Barnes highlights the naivety of the supporters of communism in the West, as well as the self-styled supporters of dissidents, who fail to appreciate the consequences of even the tiniest act of rebellion, such as receiving manuscript paper from abroad.

Whatever the author’s intention, it’s hard to read a novel like this without looking for parallels in his own profession. At the opposite pole of the political spectrum, does market-driven publishing and the creative writing industry result in a similar dumbing down in fiction to that experienced by composers under Stalin?

They were determined to break the bourgeois stranglehold on the arts. So workers must be trained to become composers, and all music must be instantly comprehensible and pleasing to the masses … And if the plan to take a worker from the coal face and turn him into a composer of symphonies did not exactly come to pass, something of the reverse happened. A composer was expected to increase his output just as a coal miner was, and his music was expected to warm hearts just as a miner’s coal warmed bodies (p25-26).

While we’re fortunate not to live in a place where a bad review can lead to our extinction, I wondered if the author was taking a dig at book bloggers when he wrote about unqualified critics with the power to extinguish a composer’s career.

The Noise of Time is another short novel that’s well worth your time, whether or not with a soundtrack of music or noise. Thanks to Jonathan Cape for my review copy.

After taking a secret file home from the office, Giles falls downstairs and breaks his leg. From his hospital bed, he phones his old friend and colleague Simon to ask him to collect and return the file to the Admiralty where they both work. Although he’s suspected for some time that his days in London are numbered, Giles is in no fit state to put his plan into action and retreat to Moscow.

When Simon sees what’s in the file, he panics. But he also holds out a glimmer of hope that this could be his chance to sever his ties with Giles, something he’s been struggling with since settling down and starting a family with Lily. Simon hopes he can hide the file at home until he thinks of what to do. But his wife, on a cleaning blitz, discovers it and buries it in the garden. Not long after, the police come knocking on the door.

Set in London during the Cold War, Exposure marries the drama of Tightrope with the innocence of The Long Room, Simon and Lily the unknowing pawns in a much bigger game. Amid the paranoia, both have pasts that render them vulnerable: Lily, as a former refugee from Nazi Germany, well practised in living in fear; Simon because, in 1960, his past relations with Giles were still illegal. The ordinariness of their life with their three children in Muswell Hill is no protection:

Spies aren’t cloak-and-dagger types at all, not in real life. They’re dull as ditchwater. They keep themselves to themselves, leaving notes for the milkman and take the same bus to work as you do.
(p146)

Exposure
is about the drive to protect one’s family and the devastating consequences of abruptly finding oneself on the wrong side. Thanks to Hutchinson for my review copy. In case I’ve undersold it – I’m conscious that this isn’t one of my better reviews – I’d also urge you to peruse Kate Clanchy’s review in the Guardian in which she pinpoints the echoes with The Railway Children and the parallels between Giles’s rotting body and the English class system’s moral decay.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
12 Comments
Charli Mills
28/1/2016 06:01:21 am

You raise some interesting thoughts on book publishing, writing and reviews. Does market-driven publishing + the creative writing industry = a dumbing down in fiction?

Here's another formula to consider: does academia (MFA programs) + small literary presses = creative writing?

I'm not sure if I have the formulas right, but essentially it's about who controls creativity. In market-driven publishing, writers are expected to create what readers want to read. In academic publishing, only writers deemed worthy of ivory tower entrance get read by students who aspire to be the next batch of creative writers.

On one hand, creative writers are stifled by what sells and on the other are shut out if they are not already born with some sort of silver pen in their mouth. This is why self-publishing is so popular. If you want to create without borders, self-publish. However, if you want to write for the academic track or be taken as credible in literary circles, you'll need an MFA with backing. If you want to be a career creative writer, learn your target market and write what sells. With so many options, I hardly think it compares to state-controlled creativity, which is frightening. I wonder if it acted like a constraint and actually pushed creativity?

Not only great reviews, but deep thoughts you extracted from Barnes. I'm also taken with his cover. Simple but compelling design.

Reply
Annecdotist
1/2/2016 02:14:56 pm

Thanks for sharing these reflections, Charli, and of course you're right – we do have the freedom to ignore the market in a way that Shostakovich certainly did not under Stalin. But independent presses are hard pressed (neat pun, eh) to make a profit and/or even to find readers. Now it seems we are moving on from the creative writing master's degree ( I never knew what the F stands for in the US version) to PhD's but, although I can't speak from experience, it seems odd to me to class creative writing as academic although the endeavours have a lot in common in terms of the critical attitude, hard work and attention to detail. But even in traditional academia there's pressure to focus on research with predictable and "useful" outcomes, also influenced by the market.
Regarding constraints and creativity, it's certainly true it works for some things, such as with strict word count of our flash fiction prompts, but I don't think a climate of fear would be terribly inspiring – not for me at least.

Reply
Charli Mills
2/2/2016 12:56:52 am

The F is for fine, as in Masters of Fine Arts (MFA). I wonder, is the trend toward a PhD exclusive to creative writing or indicative of employment in general? When I was connected to the hiring process after 2007, we'd sadly joke about the numbers of PhDs working at Starbucks. So many avoided unemployment with further education but found they remained unemployed after all. I'm not sure it's the demand for degrees or a shifting marketplace. I just interviewed a labor economist for north Idaho and he explained the gap in training and what is needed. I equate that back to publishing and wonder how we bridge the gap between what we create and what people want to read. I understand freedom of expression, power of voice, unchained imagination and I am all for it! However, if you want to publish what you create you do need to find a match among readers and publishers. To be shared, ultimately, there needs to be constraints upon creativity, whether it's a market or a dictatorship. Hopefully the former doesn't become the latter! :-)

Annecdotist
4/2/2016 12:33:07 pm

Thanks for elaborating, Charli. I think in the UK (or it certainly used to be) Fine Arts tends to mean painting etc, which is perhaps why I haven't guessed what probably seems obvious to you all over there.
And yes, it's certainly the case generally that increasingly higher qualifications are requested for jobs that don't require that level of academic skill – no wonder young people are so frustrated.
I agree on the difference between writing for our own entertainment and writing to be published – I suppose I'm not altogether convinced that publishers are best placed to mediate between readers and writers (although not convinced either that self publishing resolves the problem).

Safia Moore link
28/1/2016 09:24:51 pm

Oh, I'd be inclined to go for the Julian Barnes book based on these reviews, Anna, but predominantly because the plot appeals to me more. I like the idea behind exploring how anticipated reception might affect the creative process and the communist backdrop is surely perfect for such an undertaking. Is it just me or did the Helen Dunmore plot feel a little shallow - all the confidential file, falling down the stairs, burying it in the garden business felt slightly lazy to me?

Reply
Annecdotist
1/2/2016 02:17:04 pm

Thanks, Safia, I'd be interested in your views on the Julian Barnes you should read it. I can see what you're saying about the Helen Dunmore, but it didn't seem like that to me as I was reading, I just got engrossed in the story on her terms.

Reply
Safia Moore
28/1/2016 09:35:13 pm

Sorry for that typo on your name, Anne. If it's any consolation, I have a very dear friend called Anna! Just popped over and read the Guardian review you linked too - I think I'd be rather frustrated by the Helen Dunmore book, given the Railway Children vibe. Also, I was warned off starting my novel with a dream sequence (since cut) being told it was a tired and recurring trope that agents are sick of and here we have one in Dunmore's opening. *Sigh*

Reply
Annecdotist
1/2/2016 02:22:47 pm

Well, I mispronounced your name when we met, so we're quits! I'm with you on the frustration at what Names can get away with in their fiction but we Minions are strongly advised against, and more. But, just as I missed the Railway Children connection, I didn't read the opening of this novel as a dream, but more of a reflection – have gone back to check and it does say DREAM on page 1, but it strongly embedded in a childhood memory and doesn't make a big deal of it. Maybe that makes it work as well as the author's reputation?

Reply
Sarah link
28/1/2016 11:35:18 pm

I'd choose Exposure, I think. I like the premise but love the excerpt.

Charli's thoughts on MFA are an interesting tie-in here.

Reply
Annecdotist
1/2/2016 02:26:12 pm

Thanks, Sarah. I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about the MFA programme – even to the extent of knowing what the F stands for – so not quite sure what I think.
I was at an event recently at which a well-known British novelist, Linda Grant, said there were two routes to writing: the old-fashioned way through an unhappy childhood and the modern way through the MA. I know where that puts me!

Reply
Sarah link
7/2/2016 03:40:05 pm

An MFA is a Master of Fine Arts (including creative writing...but could be anything from photography to theatre).
What a bold and fascinating statement by Grant. I'll have to think on that.

Reply
Annecdotist
8/2/2016 03:29:00 pm

Thanks, Sarah, although Charli had filled me in on the F, you’ve helped me make better sense of it in seeing it as applicable to other arts, so distinguishing it from the humanities etc.
It’s a bit of a sweeping statement from Linda Grant but didn’t altogether surprise me when I heard it – might be what I think myself or perhaps I’ve heard it said before.

Reply



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