Big author, small book

Ever since I published my first novel, I've tried to keep out of the messy business of critisising other novelists. I particularly avoid reviewing fellow South African writers, because the pool is so small and the egos are so big and literary critisism often ends up being nothing more than a case of mutual back-scratching. Or reciprocal nastiness.

But praising other novelists is another matter. That's why I started this blog, to spread the Good Word of Reading, to tell other readers about books I love. When it comes to reading, I have the heart of an enthusiastic missionary rather than a strict judge.

If I don't like a book, why should I waste time writing about it? That's mostly my credo, also when blogging.

When I do agree to write a review for the traditional press, I try to choose an author I've admired in the past or a book I suspect I would like. I prefer being nice to being nasty - maybe it's as simple as that.

But nice doesn't always cut the dice. Recently a Johannesburg newspaper asked me to write a short review of Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's latest novel - latest available in English, that is - The Bad Girl. A task I took on with pleasure because I remember enjoying Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter many years ago (the book, not the movie) and being impressed with some of Vargas Llosa's more serious works.

What a disappointment this turned out to be! Not because The Bad Girl a bad novel; no, it's a quite enjoyable little love story, but it's simply not good enough for the latest laureate of the most prestigeous literary prize on earth. I felt rather presumptious, a small author like me 'attacking' a literary giant like Vargas Llosa, but this time I simply couldn't be 'nice'.

If you read Afrikaans, you could read the original review published in Beeld earlier this week (http://www.beeld.com/Vermaak/Nuus/Boeke-Miskien-kan-nie-elke-boek-groots-wees-20110417). If not, let me sum it up: 'Of a Nobel Prize-winning author you expect more than a good yarn. You expect a deeper insight, a unique style, a personal vision of the world, something bigger than the sum of the story and the person writing the story, so that by the time you reach the last sentence you are not exactly the same person as when you started reading the first page. Great books change the reader. Unfortunately even the greatest authors cannot always produce great books.'

The Bad Girl is a small book - please note, not a thin book, at more than 400 pages - about lifelong obsessive love. Comparisons are odious, yes, yes, we all know that, but I couldn't help comparing this novel rather unfavorably to another Latin-American novel about the same subject written by another Latin-American Nobel Prize winner. I'm referring to the unforgettable Love in the Time of Cholera (the book, once again, not the movie) by Gabriel García Márquez - who used to be Vargas Llosa's friend, although apparently they haven't spoken to each other for more than 30 years. Thirty Years of Solitude? Only in South America...

On radio, writers and wet hair

So here I sit with unbrushed teeth and wet hair dripping on my keyboard - probably permanently damaging my computer - and it's all the fault of writers on the radio.

I was innocently listening to France Inter this morning, as I do every morning while showering, dressing, having breakfast and mentally preparing for the day, when I was jolted into a state of catatonic bliss. The studio guest was so brilliant that I couldn't take the risk of missing a single phrase by opening the tap to brush my teeth or switching on the blowdryer for my hair. It was that old Italian wizard Umberto Eco talking - in fluent French with an occasional English word thrown in when he couldn't find the exact French phrase - about languages and literature and lists, translation and interpretation, 'real' books versus e-books, classic writers versus contemporary writers, and much much more. Eco, a professor of semiotics probably most widely known for his best-selling novel The Name of the Rose, recently published a non-fiction 'dialogue' with a French writer, Jean-Claude Carrière, under the delightful title of N'espérez pas vous débarrasser des livres ('Don't hope to get rid of books').

Don't ever hope to get rid of books - or of wise and witty writers, or of the humble radio. That was my fervent wish as I listened, transfixed, to Umberto Eco. Yes, he admires internet for opening up access to information (the Holocaust, he claims, wouldn't have been possible if there had been internet), but he also fears the false information that could be spread in this democratic way. He compares his relationship to internet with his relationship to his car. The fact that he owns and drives a car doesn't mean he can't complain about his car, does it?

But he is at his brilliant best when he talks about books and reading. He regards himself as 'a young writer' - at the age of nearly eighty! - because he only started publishing at fifty. And since becoming a published author, he has preferred reading classic authors rather than his contemporaries - for fear of being influenced, he says, but then adds rather mischievously: Either he finds contemporary writing bad, worse than his own, which upsets him, or he finds it better, which also upsets him... Much less upsetting to stick to the classics.

I was so inspired that I wanted to rush off, wet hair and all, to write it all down before I forget. But as I left the bathroom, I caught the daily Revue de la Presse on the same radio station - and because the Nobel Prize for Literature had been announced yesterday, the press review was also at least partly devoted to literature.

(I have to confess, my first reaction yesterday, when I heard that Mario Vargas Llosa was the 2010 laureate, was a kind of selfish joy because here was a winner of whom I'd actually read a few books, as opposed to all those worthy Nobel winners whose books I know I should have read...)

So I hung on to listen to the press review - and was rewarded with the most magnificent quote from Vargas Llosa, published in today's edition of the newspaper Liberation. According to our latest Nobel laureate, literature expresses a different truth from historical, political or social truth; literature expresses 'a truth made up of lies'.

Three cheers for the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, the Italian Umberto Eco and a French radio station that gave me a great start to my day. Now let me go and dry my hair and brush my teeth...