![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
my fiction block and what it's made of
Feb. 17th, 2009 11:10 amOne of the things graduate school did to me was annihilate my ability to read. For quite a while, that meant all I did was reread Dorothy Sayers, Georgette Heyer, Emma Lathen, and M. R. James (and there's a bridge foursome you weren't expecting--fivesome, really, but we'll assume that Emma Lathen would play tag-team bridge). Then I started to be able to read nonfiction again (deeply ironic in and of itself, since previously I'd never been very interested in nonfiction, and now I'm addicted). But the ability to read new fiction has been elusive. It comes back occasionally, in fits and spurts, but it never seems to last. Sometimes I can overcome it to do critiques for friends, but frequently, as several of you know to your exasperation and despair, I just can't. It's not that I don't want to read fiction; stories have been my abiding love since I was but a wee precocious sproglet. But it's felt like asking myself to deliberately whack my thumb with a hammer.*
But I think I've figured out at least part of the reason why.
Right now, I'm trying to read Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox. It was sent to me in hopes of a blurb, and I want to give it one, because the writing is just jaw-droppingly beautiful, and I love the central conceit. But I've stalled out halfway through.
( I'm going to try not to be too spoilery, but just in case-- )
I want to emphasize that this problem is not a flaw in the book. Because it isn't. The book isn't doing anything wrong here; it may even be doing something deeply right. But I am failing miserably to force myself to keep reading in order to find out.
The problem is that I seem to have gotten stuck on a mezzanine. On one level the story is a story, and you read about things happening to people. On another level, the story is a set of narrative functions and apparatuses, and you read the operations. And I seem to be stuck reading on one level and investing on the other. That is, I invest in the story as if the characters are people, but I'm reading the operations manual, where they are narrative functions. And it becomes too frustrating and too . . . threatening? discomfiting? I don't quite know the word I want--too uncomfortable to keep reading when the narrative functions indicate that something is going to happen to the characters that I don't want to see.
This is unbelievably schizoid. And I'm not sure there's anything to be done about it. But at least I have at least part of a handle on what's going on.
---
*Yes, that infinitive is split for a reason. Putting "deliberately" anywhere else in the sentence throws the emphasis off.
But I think I've figured out at least part of the reason why.
Right now, I'm trying to read Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox. It was sent to me in hopes of a blurb, and I want to give it one, because the writing is just jaw-droppingly beautiful, and I love the central conceit. But I've stalled out halfway through.
( I'm going to try not to be too spoilery, but just in case-- )
I want to emphasize that this problem is not a flaw in the book. Because it isn't. The book isn't doing anything wrong here; it may even be doing something deeply right. But I am failing miserably to force myself to keep reading in order to find out.
The problem is that I seem to have gotten stuck on a mezzanine. On one level the story is a story, and you read about things happening to people. On another level, the story is a set of narrative functions and apparatuses, and you read the operations. And I seem to be stuck reading on one level and investing on the other. That is, I invest in the story as if the characters are people, but I'm reading the operations manual, where they are narrative functions. And it becomes too frustrating and too . . . threatening? discomfiting? I don't quite know the word I want--too uncomfortable to keep reading when the narrative functions indicate that something is going to happen to the characters that I don't want to see.
This is unbelievably schizoid. And I'm not sure there's anything to be done about it. But at least I have at least part of a handle on what's going on.
---
*Yes, that infinitive is split for a reason. Putting "deliberately" anywhere else in the sentence throws the emphasis off.
