uma crítica a James Wood

Já comentei várias vezes aqui sobre minha admiração pelos textos de James Wood. Eu acho que ele escreve lindamente. Mais importante que isso, me mostra um tipo de leitura possível que eu não imaginava existir.

Wood consegue me convencer das razões para suas ranzinzices estéticas contra autores contemporâneos e me mostra o que admirar nos clássicos.

Mas eu confesso que não tenho tanta experiência assim com literatura. Alguém como Daniel Green, que é o autor do blog The Reading Experience, do qual eu falei dia desses, acha que James Wood não tem tanto assim a dizer sobre literatura.

Bom, Green também é um escritor convincente e de um estilo tão elegante e claro quanto Wood. De fato, alguns minutos no blog dele logo viram horas e quando você vê está viciado. Ele é muito claro na maneira como coloca seus argumentos (como Wood) e fica difícil não concordar com o que ele diz.

Eles concordam em algumas coisas, mas, de modo geral, Green parece ter mais restrições que elogios ao criticismo de Wood.

Green resenhou o livro de Wood que eu estou lendo “How Fiction Works”.

Um trecho:

But for those of us who think that Wood’s description of “how fiction works” is but one possible (and highly tendentious) description, that despite Wood’s occasional citation of a still-living writer and his lip service to the notion that the novel “always wriggles out of the rules thrown around it,” his account is mostly backward-looking, an examination of what has been done, rather than forward-looking, a discussion of fiction that emphasizes what still might be done. The message that “any kind of common reader” is likely to take from his book is that the art of fiction is now settled, all of the possible aesthetic innovations the form might offer already achieved. If you want to read the best that fiction has to offer, Wood’s book clearly enough implies, stick with the line of Anglo-European fiction extending from Henry James to Henry Green. If you want to be an esteemed writer, do what Dostoevsky does, what D.H. Lawrence does, what Virginia Woolf and Saul Bellow do.

E eu concordo com Green. Wood olha para o passado e praticamente nenhum autor vivo, escrevendo hoje, merece sua aprovação. Ele analisa uma arte “congelada no tempo” e como diz Green, nao admite qualquer espécie de evolução.

Outra passagem:

Ultimately the most disconcerting thing about How Fiction Works, and about James Wood’s criticism in general, is that while Wood on the one hand expresses near-reverence for the virtues of fiction, the terms in which he judges the value of fiction as a literary form implicitly disparages it. He doesn’t want to let fiction be fiction. Instead, he asks that it provide some combination of psychological analysis, metaphysics, and moral instruction, and assumes that novelists are in some way qualified to offer these services. He abjures them to avoid “aestheticism” (too much art) and to instead be respectful of “life.”

Wood está pedindo demais do autor. E boa parte dos escritores não está disposta a seguir “suas” regras, que não admitem qualquer tipo de experimento  com a noção tradicional que ele tem do que vem a ser boa literatura. Por isso, a literatura que ele descreve jamais vai se renovar.

Green resume seu argumento final contra Wood:

There is another view of what fiction can accomplish, one that does not make it subservient to an agenda of fidelity to “the real.” In this view, what continues to elude the novel as a form is the limit of its own potential for innovation. In this view, life is always already conventional, and a novel exists not as a reproduction of reality but as an addition to it, a supplement. And in this view, a work of fiction is measured by the justice it does to the aesthetic possibilities of the form, possibilities that surely exceed the arbitrary boundaries James Wood wants to enforce. Readers of How Fiction Works should keep in mind that, even if it is true that “The house of fiction has many windows, but only two or three doors, the door being opened here is still not the only one available.

Este último ponto, eu vejo como um elogio velado. A crítica é à arrogância de achar que a leitura de Wood é a única possível. Mas no fim de tudo, ela é uma leitura possível. O erro está em vê-la como única.

como escreve Miguel Esteves Cardoso

Quando eu leio um texto bem escrito, tenho a impressão que o autor escreve sem esforço algum. Que as palavras fluem naturalmente e o texto vai tomando forma quase como se a coisa toda independesse da vontade de quem escreveu.

E talvez isso se dê exatamente assim com alguns autores.

Mas não com Miguel Esteves Cardoso.

Quando começas a escrever, tens um plano concreto do que será a crónica?
Tenho. Passo pelo menos um dia inteiro a pensar no que vou dizer, mas a pensar mesmo, entre dicionários e apontamentos. Muitos apontamentos. Um moleskine dá-me só para duas crónicas. E aproveito apenas uma pequeníssima percentagem dessas ideias. Uma vez em cada mil, quando faço menos apontamentos, consigo pôr tudo o que pensei dentro da crónica. Mas essas não são as que ficam melhor.

É óbvio que te preocupas muito com o estilo e essa preocupação pode ser um martírio, como explicava o Flaubert.
É um martírio, sim. Toda a gente que escreve crónicas para jornais aprende a aceitar o facto de que muitas vezes o que se entrega é uma merda.

Tens algum mecanismo de auto-avaliação para dizer “isto não presta”?
Sim, sim. Toda a gente tem. Mesmo no seu auge, uma pessoa entrega, no máximo dos máximos, uma crónica boa, sabendo que a seguinte vai ser uma merda, e a seguinte também, e a seguinte também. Ou seja, uma crónica boa em cada quatro. Estou a falar a sério. Já cheguei a pensar que a sequência média era: crónica boa, merda, crónica boa, merda. Mas não é. E se por acaso fizeres duas crónica boas, intervaladas com uma de merda, logo a seguir tens merda, merda, merda, merda, merda.

Daqui.

podcast com James Wood

Alguém gravou uma palestra de 30 minutos de James Wood na livraria de Harvard, onde ele falou do seu livro “How Fiction Works”, que eu estou lendo e gostando muito — como acontece com quase tudo o que leio dele.

E o site ThoughCast colocou à disposição aqui pra quem quiser ouvir.

ainda não decidi…

se esta é uma boa idéia ou se é uma coisa totalmente idiota.

Estou pendendo pra última. Mas achei irresistível.

Em todo caso, começa hoje. Então se te interessa, corra pra se inscrever.

é matemático

There is a way in which even complex prose is quite simple — because of that mathematical finality by which a perfect sentence cannot admit of an infinite number of variations, cannot be extended without aesthetic blight: its perfection is the solution to its own puzzle; it could not be done better.

James Wood in “How Fiction Works”

meu texto sem alma

Um comentário sobre o que disse Vonnegut, que eu citei no post anterior.

Parece que na frente de uma página em branco, eu incorporo o espírito de jornalista ou professor e começo a escrever de um jeito tão impessoal e sem personalidade que nem eu agüento ler. Que coisa mais aborrecida!

Cada tentativa de pôr idéias no papel é uma briga contra essa tendência – que eu não sei de onde vem. O que eu venho me perguntando há um tempo é se esse tom professoral – não é “didática” a palavra certa porque pode-se ser didático e divertido ao mesmo tempo – não corresponde ao verdadeiro eu. Credo! Espero que não. Será que sou tão chata assim?

Talvez tenha a ver com os quase 30 anos de escola e treinamento em como escrever textos sem alma. Nessas horas, fico feliz de não ter feito jornalismo.

Aliás, tenho encontrado cada vez mais vantagens em ter feito faculdade de música. Ninguém me cobra nada, por exemplo. Pelo contrário, quando digo que sou formada em música, as pessoas me olham com uma cara de dó. “Tocar violão não pode ser tão bom assim…” – devem pensar. Ou “Coitada, não conseguiu entrar em direito”.

Outra vantagem: jamais vou conseguir um emprego numa estatal. Nem que num dia de desânimo diante da perspectiva de uma carreira acadêmica, sem dinheiro, eu me sinta levemente tentada – God forbid – a prestar um concurso num órgão qualquer do governo, meu diploma é inadequado para a maioria dos cargos oferecidos.

Mas estou divagando. Eu acho que sou uma tradutora mais competente exatamente porque nunca estudei tradução numa faculdade. E o amor por literatura e meu vocabulário pra discutir os livros que eu gosto (que não é lá grande coisa, admito) não foi contaminado pelo jargão da faculdade de Letras.

Mas como eu disse lá no início, a briga contra esse tom impessoal é constante porque o que eu mais leio é artigo acadêmico.

Há quem consiga facilmente assumir outras personalidades quando escreve. É como aquele tipo de pessoa que imita todo mundo mudando a voz ou fazendo uns trejeitos. Os textos soam diferentes um do outro, como se tivessem sido escritos por várias pessoas.

Li outro dia, aqui, pra ser mais precisa, que a capacidade de ver as coisas de maneiras diferentes é um aspecto importante da criatividade e da inteligência.
Acho que esse é um critério fundamental de juízo de valor em literatura – a capacidade de incorporar vozes diferentes no seu texto – e fazê-lo de forma convincente.

Faz sentido pois um romance é composto por personagens que diferem entre si,  cada um com um jeito próprio de falar. E é uma só mente que dá vida a todos eles.

Conheço poucas pessoas que conseguem escapar desse tom impessoal. Mesmo gente que sabe escrever bem. E conheço ainda menos pessoas capazes de variar o tom, escrevendo em vários registros diferentes.

mostre, em seu texto, quem você é de verdade

Olha que interessante esse texto de Kurt Vonnegut sobre estilo. Ele diz coisas que você, provavelmente, já sabe, mas o início tem uma grande sacada.

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful– ? And on and on.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

a guide to writing well

um link utilíssimo

sem querer

Eu só amolarei a maioria dos meus semelhantes, quando não der por isso; de propósito, nunca.
(Machado de Assis)

Wood e o romance moderno

Mais James Wood. Trechos de uma entrevista onde ele critica o romance moderno. Pessoalmente, acho que muito do que ele fala se aplica ao romance moderno brasileiro.

What I’m most interested in, as a critic, is what we might nebulously call human truth a true account of the world as we experience it, and of the full difficulty of being in that world. Creating living characters, and writing fiction expressing what Henry James called “the present palpable intimate,” entails, for me at least, some kind of morality. Requiring readers to put themselves into the minds of many different kinds of other people is a moral action on the part of the author. So when I feel that reality is being exaggerated or made cartoonish which is what I mean by hysterical realism seems to me that one crucial issue at stake is morality.

(…)

It might sound strange, since I criticize writers like Don DeLillo so fiercely, but I do like novels set clearly in the present age, novels full of palpabilities. I think that’s what the novel can still do better than any other medium journalism doesn’t provide me with news about the current state of the soul. Part of my anxiety and unease about novels by Foster Wallace, Franzen, and others is that they have swallowed a great deal of journalism, sociology, and cultural studies, which means they are no longer doing something that’s not replaceable that another medium can’t do as well or better.

(…)

If an earlier generation of writers Pynchon and DeLillo, for example took too many drugs, the current crop may have taken too many critical theory seminars. Instead of resisting virulent new forms of inauthenticity, they often settle for satirizing the culture always an easy thing to do. But a novel that doesn’t practice resistance isn’t earning its keep.

realismo e personagens

 Mais sobre realismo em ficção. Desta vez, James Wood fala sobre realismo na caracterização de personagens.

To argue that we can know Jean Brodie just as deeply as we can know George Eliot’s Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch, to argue that lacunae are as deep as solidities, that absence in characterisation can be a form of knowing as profound as presence, that Spark’s and Saramago’s and Nabokov’s characters can move us as much as James’s and Eliot’s, is to concede nothing to Gass’s scepticism. Not all of these characters have the same amount of realised “depth”, but all of them are objects of perception, to use Gass’s words, and things that can be correctly said of persons can also be said of them. They are all “real”, but in different ways. That reality level differs from author to author, and our hunger for the particular depth or reality level of a character is tutored by each writer, and adapts to the internal conventions of each book. This is how we can read WG Sebald one day and Virginia Woolf or Philip Roth the next, and not demand that each resemble the other. It would be an obvious category error to accuse Sebald of not offering us “deep” or “rounded” characters. I think that novels tend to fail not when the characters are not vivid or “deep” enough, but when the novel in question has failed to teach us how to adapt to its conventions, has failed to manage a specific hunger for its own characters, its own reality level. In such cases, our appetite is quickly disappointed, and surges wildly in excess of what we are provided, and we tend to blame the author, unfairly, for not giving us enough – the characters, we complain, are not alive or round or free enough.

realismo em ficção

Uma explicação sobre o que é realismo em ficção. E porque não é o que a maioria pensa. Apareceu nessa resenha do livro “How fiction Works” de James Wood, ainda a ser lançado.

Wood cites American novelist Rick Moody, who says the realistic novel needs “a kick in the ass”, as “it’s politically and philosophically dubious and often dull”. This, argues Wood, is nonsense, and based on a misunderstanding of what realism actually is and what the novel’s relationship to it is. While novels may appear realistic, they are still novels – artifices, whose reality is that which the novelist chooses to present to us.

Great novelists, says Wood, such as Flaubert or Henry James or Saul Bellow, offer their readers a world in which “reality” is not a mirror of the “real” world but of their manufacture. Bad writers do not appreciate this, for “they assume that the world can be described”.

“In America,” Wood adds, “the battle lines are more fiercely drawn up than in Europe because of the tendency on the realist side to be somewhat anti-intellectual and masculinist – that whole sort of post-Hemingway line. A writer I admire, like Richard Ford, say, would probably be thought of by people like writer and academic David Foster Wallace as prehistoric, unintellectual. I don’t think that’s fair. But there has been a tendency in American writing schools to enforce a slightly unthinking realism.

Begley, Nabokov, and the break in one’s own destiny

Louis Begley, no livro The Genius of Language: Fifteen writers reflect on their mother tongues):

Even though I am told that my writing does not show signs of rigor mortis, it is a fact that I write slowly and laboriously, pausing after every word I set down. I change it countless times and repeat the process with each sentence and paragraph before I can move forward. The vision of Trollope composing the Barchester novels in a railroad car, traveling desk balanced on his knees, with hardly an erasure or addition needed before the manuscript went off to the publisher, fills me with admiration, envy, and dull despair. I too can perform on the high wire when I write a legal text or an essay; writing fiction I need to keep my feet on the ground. Perfectionism and perennial dissatisfaction with everything I do are not alone to blame: it seems to me that when I write in English I lack normal spontaneity, let alone the unbeatable self-assurance a writer needs to soar or to be outrageous. I know that I do manage from time to time to be outrageous in my fiction, but the stress falls on the verb “manage.” Nothing about those effects is instant. The truth is that even today, after an immersion of more than fifty-five years in the English language, I am never completely confident that I have gotten right whatever it is that I write down, certainly not on the first try. Knowing objectively that often—perhaps most often—in fact I do, is not a consolation. In that respect only, I am not unlike my great countryman, Joseph Conrad. But Conrad had more of an excuse: he began to learn English only at the age of twenty-one; he was thirty-eight when his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, was published, and he had spent most of the intervening years on the high seas. Vladimir Nabokov’s command of the English language is a different case altogether. English was in effect Nabokov’s first language: he learned to read it before he could read Russian. Becoming thoroughly proficient in a “civilized” tongue, usually the French, and leaving the vernacular for latter, to be absorbed as a part of growing up, was usual in the nineteenth century among Slavic upper-class families. There was a series of English and French governesses who took care of the Nabokov children, and it wasn’t until Vladimir was seven that his father, alarmed by his sons’ backwardness in their native language, engaged the schoolmaster from the village adjoining the family estate to teach them to read and write in Russian.To go back to the torment I experienced revising the manuscript of my most recent novel, its immediate cause was the number of times my editor was in essence questioning my diction, the correctedness of the way I expressed myself in English. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t always right. What hurt was the contrast between his instinctive grasp of how one would normally say whatever it was that I wanted to express and my doubts: my need to grope to find the way, to test each sentence by reading it aloud. He had kept his birthright—the ability to use his mother tongue in his calling—and I had lost mine.

(…)

The Polish language has been a source of undiluted joy for me, and it pains me to make an admission that may make me seem unfaithful to my first love. But the plain truth is that I consider myself also supremely lucky to be an American novelist, using a language of incomparable beauty and access to readers, a language that for all the difficulties I have described is totally my own. In this respect as well, my case is very different from Nabokov’s, as he described it in an afterword to Lolita:

My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody’s concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses—the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions—which the native illusionist, frac-tails, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.

Tragedy, surely, but one that was embedded in triumph. (…) I follow Nabokov’s advice, and take the tragedy seriously only because Nabokov’s intimate wound was surely very real, as is the wound inflicted by every exile, whatever its circumstances and aftermath. The wound is one that never heals, even if one can say with Nabokov, as I do, quite heartlessly: “The break in my own destiny affords me in retrospect a syncopal kick that I would not have missed for worlds.”

o inglês e o italiano

M. J. Fitzgerald fala do inglês e do italiano (The Genius of Language: Fifteen writers reflect on their mother tongues).

Returning to Italian writing after gorging on this diet of English—Leopardi’s L’Infinito was restrained in comparison to Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill—was like returning to milk toast after scones with clotted cream. I loved the accumulation of adjectives that a language so rich in words could indulge in, instead of the nuances in the repetition of the same adjective that gives Italian its power. I loved the exaggeration of English, the curlicues of language, its baroque quality. Many of the churches, much of the painting, and people’s gesturing in Italy are baroque. But the language itself is severe: its beauty lies in elegant simplicity and the hypnotic power of its sound. And when it is distorted by the wrong rhetoric in an attempt to “enrich it,” it becomes impenetrable without gaining in power. English has to work to be elegant and simple, because its sounds are rarely if ever as spellbinding as Italian, and so much of its nature is tortuous. But how fabulous the honed expression of that tortuousness can be for a girl who sees so clearly reflected in this language her fervent and histrionic self: not one word to describe her feelings, but half a dozen variations. At sixteen, there was no contest. English was the language of my sensibility, the language with which I would write poems as full of words as Dylan Thomas’s, novels as rich with emotion as Villette, dramas as powerful as Christopher Fry’s The Boy with a Cart.