Emerging Ideas
14/02/10
15:01
It’s a bright,
still afternoon, and the noise of the birds implies
springtime. I should be working - and indeed will be,
soon, if I can avoid the temptation of the outdoors,
having so far failed to resist the indulgences of
tidying house and dealing with various computer-based
tasks. It is Valentines’ Day, and the riverbank
will be strewn with hand-holding couples, in any
case, so my resolve should hold.
The river is lazy and vodka-thick at the moment, and seems impotent in comparison with the rivers of John Irving’s Last Night in Twisted River. In that work, which I’m currently enjoying in-between other, more work-critical texts, the river is a bringer of death, a threatening force. The novel’s eponymous river lacks any metaphorical depth - as so often in Irving’s work, the meaning is surface, and the complexity is evoked by the characterisation, and the conception of life indicated by the characters. Irving has become lazy, though, and this work drops familiar template characters (the Exeter educated, self-determining, attracted to older women author) into new surroundings. There is madness in his method, though - his approach of reformulating the same characters in each book lends him a sense of authorial eccentricity, and his continued popular success testifies to the validity of his approach. I suppose one just wishes for a little of the unexpected idiosyncrasy, and sheer shocking twists of fate, which were hallmarks of his two finest works, The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany.
The river is lazy and vodka-thick at the moment, and seems impotent in comparison with the rivers of John Irving’s Last Night in Twisted River. In that work, which I’m currently enjoying in-between other, more work-critical texts, the river is a bringer of death, a threatening force. The novel’s eponymous river lacks any metaphorical depth - as so often in Irving’s work, the meaning is surface, and the complexity is evoked by the characterisation, and the conception of life indicated by the characters. Irving has become lazy, though, and this work drops familiar template characters (the Exeter educated, self-determining, attracted to older women author) into new surroundings. There is madness in his method, though - his approach of reformulating the same characters in each book lends him a sense of authorial eccentricity, and his continued popular success testifies to the validity of his approach. I suppose one just wishes for a little of the unexpected idiosyncrasy, and sheer shocking twists of fate, which were hallmarks of his two finest works, The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany.