Some Other Anita Brookner Facts:
(1) There is sometimes a "meta" quality to her writing. Her first book was called "The Debut." (Sometimes, it's called "A Start in Life.") Brookner seems to be winking at the reader when she observes that a protagonist "ruined her own life by reading too much fiction." (Of course, the reader of Brookner's fiction might also be ruining *her* own life!) There's also loud contrarian thinking on display, on every page. Isn't reading supposed to be an inherently good thing? Something virtuous, something we can brag about? Well, why should that be the case?
(2) One of Brookner's main themes was "the triumph of the dumb and strong over the intelligent and weak," according to Tessa Hadley. Brookner did not feel the need to supply happy endings. She did not feel that careful introspection would lead to conquering-the-world--because when is that actually true, in life? I imagine she would have been inspired to consider the case of Donald Trump. Also, she seems able to write the "dumb/strong" characters without judgment; she doesn't oversimplify matters, or moralize. There's just a cool, strange, godlike sense of understanding--throughout.
(3) Hadley praises Brookner for focusing on an apparently tiny detail (something Brookner does over and over). "It's small--and it's as large as everything." In other words, a writer knows that there can be infinite and fascinating complexity in a very brief interaction. Here, for example, a Brookner hero, Lewis Percy, contemplates his cousin, Andrew, and Andrew's detestable wife, Susan:
Lewis reflected that Andrew's wife's dim personality was entirely matched by her ineffective jewelry. Fixing Susan with a glittering eye, which they thought was occasioned by grief, he saw that today, for the funeral, she had secured the collar of her white blouse with a hand-painted miniature of flowers in a gold frame. On a previous occasion, she had worn a brooch in the form of a tennis racquet, with a very small pearl as the ball. Her necklace, of even smaller pearls, was too modest to be anything but real. Her limp brown hair was held back by a velvet Alice band, and she sat examining her nails....
No one says anything in this passage, but there's so much going on. Lewis is mourning his mother, and one useful way of managing his pain is to direct some anger at his cousin's wife's jewelry. His eyes are glittering from excited malice. But Susan doesn't know this; she assumes the glittering comes from mournfulness (tearfulness). Lewis seems to get real pleasure from his hatred; he notices small things about Susan, the kinds of things you would notice only if you were studying your antagonist, the source of your intense displeasure. It's like "hate-watching": spending time with a TV show you dislike so much that the irritation seems to transform itself into a weird form of satisfaction and fascination. Lewis is fueled by the scorn he feels, a scorn we detect in adjectives: "ineffective" jewelry, pearls "too modest to be anything but real," "limp" brown hair....Whether or not Lewis is correct in his assessment, we do know what it's like to focus our own hatred on minuscule things. And the attention to detail makes a reader want to focus more closely on the small things that happen in her (or his) own life. That's why I like Brookner so much.
(1) There is sometimes a "meta" quality to her writing. Her first book was called "The Debut." (Sometimes, it's called "A Start in Life.") Brookner seems to be winking at the reader when she observes that a protagonist "ruined her own life by reading too much fiction." (Of course, the reader of Brookner's fiction might also be ruining *her* own life!) There's also loud contrarian thinking on display, on every page. Isn't reading supposed to be an inherently good thing? Something virtuous, something we can brag about? Well, why should that be the case?
(2) One of Brookner's main themes was "the triumph of the dumb and strong over the intelligent and weak," according to Tessa Hadley. Brookner did not feel the need to supply happy endings. She did not feel that careful introspection would lead to conquering-the-world--because when is that actually true, in life? I imagine she would have been inspired to consider the case of Donald Trump. Also, she seems able to write the "dumb/strong" characters without judgment; she doesn't oversimplify matters, or moralize. There's just a cool, strange, godlike sense of understanding--throughout.
(3) Hadley praises Brookner for focusing on an apparently tiny detail (something Brookner does over and over). "It's small--and it's as large as everything." In other words, a writer knows that there can be infinite and fascinating complexity in a very brief interaction. Here, for example, a Brookner hero, Lewis Percy, contemplates his cousin, Andrew, and Andrew's detestable wife, Susan:
Lewis reflected that Andrew's wife's dim personality was entirely matched by her ineffective jewelry. Fixing Susan with a glittering eye, which they thought was occasioned by grief, he saw that today, for the funeral, she had secured the collar of her white blouse with a hand-painted miniature of flowers in a gold frame. On a previous occasion, she had worn a brooch in the form of a tennis racquet, with a very small pearl as the ball. Her necklace, of even smaller pearls, was too modest to be anything but real. Her limp brown hair was held back by a velvet Alice band, and she sat examining her nails....
No one says anything in this passage, but there's so much going on. Lewis is mourning his mother, and one useful way of managing his pain is to direct some anger at his cousin's wife's jewelry. His eyes are glittering from excited malice. But Susan doesn't know this; she assumes the glittering comes from mournfulness (tearfulness). Lewis seems to get real pleasure from his hatred; he notices small things about Susan, the kinds of things you would notice only if you were studying your antagonist, the source of your intense displeasure. It's like "hate-watching": spending time with a TV show you dislike so much that the irritation seems to transform itself into a weird form of satisfaction and fascination. Lewis is fueled by the scorn he feels, a scorn we detect in adjectives: "ineffective" jewelry, pearls "too modest to be anything but real," "limp" brown hair....Whether or not Lewis is correct in his assessment, we do know what it's like to focus our own hatred on minuscule things. And the attention to detail makes a reader want to focus more closely on the small things that happen in her (or his) own life. That's why I like Brookner so much.
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