Most of the time, I rely on critics...or book reviewers...or booky people...for the perfect summation of a book, but in the case of Jane Smiley's Good Faith, which I finished recently, Smiley herself was able to sum up both the novel and novels in general in a recent interview:
"Some novelists are pictorial, some are musical. Pictorial novelists make sure that every word is right. Musical novelists go with the energy of the prose. I'm a musical novelist. The compensation for my imperfections is energy."
6 comments:
I love this!
By the by, I saw Thomas Trofimuk while I was in Alberta (a charming, good-humoured, cool, thoughtful and very talented man...first impressions, you know). He said to say hello. Hello!
Hey Anita,
Thanks - it was actually sort of hard to choose something to excerpt.
I ESPECIALLY liked this "I always presented myself for what I was: a tall, gawky woman without any make-up who wrote novels..." because it reminds me of my early literary crush on Susan Swan, who is at least six foot four.
Has anyone else ever had a literary crush?
Hmm...I think my literary crushes have all been dead. Oh wait...no, there have been a couple of live ones. James Joyce, Timothy Findlay, Tim Wynne-Jones, Jamie Bastedo, CS Lewis. Now that I've started, I could go on and on.
Mmm. We'll agree to share custody of Timothy Findley, then. Alternate weekends?
I was lucky in that I got to interview Findley a few years before he died for Prairie Fire. It has to be one of my better interviewing experiences, aside from John Mann from Spirit of the West (who I was tickled to see as a henchman-with-lines in the recent Underworld: Evolution).
Very, very cool! Sigh.
By the by, Thomas Trofimuk has a weekly emailing to interested parties called Sorbet. Every Friday he'll send a poem, or bit of a story. I've received two mailings, and am blown away so far. Such beautiful thoughts and language choice... It's entirely possible that I may develop a literary crush on him too. Guess I'm just a word sl**
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