When I am fully immersed in writing – and this is perhaps particularly true of writing fiction – I find it hard to read anything with a serious level of attention. Sometimes it’s a case of self-confidence as almost nothing I write seems as good as someone else’s words on a printed page. On other occasions, I worry that their voice will seep into mine and in some strange way, I will be diluted. More often than not, I just don’t have the headspace. It’s a curious form of paranoia for a writer who believes strongly in the interconnectedness of texts, of the rich playfulness of allowing one story to inform another, consciously or subconsciously.
On the flip side, when I am struggling to write and feel empty, convinced that I will never again have anything interesting to say, I can often identify both the origin of my illness and the remedy. A lack of attentive reading.
So in the strange lull that I find often dulls me between publication of one book and the possibility of something else, I have been reading, encouraged, I must say, by the podcast by the brilliant author, Sally Bayley ‘A Reading Life, A Writing Life’ . In it, with mesmerising attention to detail, Sally reminds us these two lives are inseparable; leave one out and we starve the other.
So, here are three books which have recently re-energised me and nourished my writing.
The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion by Kei Miller
This collection won the Forward Prize in 2014. Shortly after that, I heard Kei Miller give a reading at a local bookshop and went home bewildered by his brilliance. Years passed. Then a couple of months ago, I was reading about John Donne (see below) and thinking about maps as metaphors, which in turn led me to the bookcase to hunt out my copy of The Cartographer. (That’s the thing about reading: one thing leads to another if you let it.) There is a very specific and peculiar pleasure in re-reading a text, the second encounter with the lines which struck you so forcefully first time round and now are rich in a different way, and then there are also the new discoveries. The dialogue which frames this collection between The Cartographer and The Rastaman challenges me not only to reflect on how I think I may map my way to Zion, but also, as a writer, how my use of language maps my world. I learn so much from the playfulness of his use of rhythm (teasing the reader and the Cartographer with the elusive iambic pentameter with which the world might be measured and managed). I revel in the short prose poems which explore the meaning of place names, the history made and owned by the local people – not so different from the names of the ancient woodlands which I can see from my window now. And I laugh. I had forgotten how important laughter is in my self-imposed misery of trying to write.
Super -Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
Another re-visiting. My copy of the Collected Works of John Donne has my name in the front and a date so far in the distant past I am embarrassed to record it here. I have probably read some of his poetry since my university days, but not with any attention. This biography, which strikes that balance between being challenging, informative and yet readable, signposted me back to his work, with all its mad, metaphysical musings. How easy it is, once a poet has landed on a syllabus, whether that is school or university, to forget how wild they were in their time, how disruptive and adventurous, how they took language and fired it in the kiln of their minds and experiences to make it their own. I didn’t know that Donne was barely published at all in his lifetime. It is a salutary reminder to put aside the preoccupation with representation, publication and Amazon sales rankings and be brave. Be myself.
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
Here lie the benefits of belonging to a book club. Would I have picked this up had it not been selected by my book club as an antidote to contemporary fiction? Probably not. Did I initially struggle to re-acquaint myself with fiction which sprawls over 720 pages? Yes. There is an ‘accepted wisdom’ that 80,000- 100,000 words is quite long enough for a contemporary novel, the reasons being pinned on to the fact that we are time-poor and have shorter attention spans. Was it worth the hours spent reading it? Absolutely. To my surprise, I was gripped. Although written in 1864 and set before 1832 (The Reform Bill), it offers a piercing, ironic critique of Victorian society, drilling down into the roles of women in particular. Cynthia – the charismatic step-sister – is drawn with such psychological depth that as a portrait of a child who has not known love and therefore does not know how to love, it would stand its ground in any century. Will I take it as a model and happily spend thousands of words in my next work roaming around the parlour and musing on the nature of somatic illness? Probably not. But I will take away from it the importance of a meticulously managed point of view and the power of writing to hold up a light to inequity.
What next?
Metamorphosis: Selected Short Stories by Penelope Lively. Why? Because it’s always worth learning from the best.