Two Great Writers Alike and Not.
Irish novelist Anne Enright and South African J.M. Coetzee Use Poetry to Define Longing
Launching the new year of recommended reading with two seemingly different books, with much in common. The Wren, the Wren, by the Booker Prize winner, Anne Enright, and The Pole, by 2X Booker winner and Nobel Laureate, J. M. Coetzee.In my December posting, I referred to the post-post-modern style of writing that seems to be ever more prevalent, offering wonderfully original, captivating writing, also, sometimes, hyper-abstract or overly styled. These fictions are more about the telling than the tale, and both of these writers too are drawn to high style, but with rich characterization and propulsive prose.
Enright draws on folklore for her thematic, in which a fairy/enchantress/witch lures men on the Isle of Man to serve. For her trespass, she is captured, and transformed into a wren, one of the tiniest of birds, frequently hunted, with a huge voice. In this novel, all the characters might be considered both hunted and hunters.
A revelation is the way things make sense when we are wired for some kind of knowledge, but not yet switched on.
The story moves largely between before and after the funeral of the patriarch, a famed Irish poet whose descendants’ lives reverberate through generations from the trauma of his abandonment. It is his granddaughter, a character defined by an indefinable longing, who sets out to decipher his persona, and his secrets, between the lines of his poetry.
Carmel could not help feeling proud. He made it sound as though Phil had not left his family, so much as gone travelling for his work. Phil was off arguing with Dante or with Ovid because someone had to do all that. If her father stopped writing poetry, then something awful would happen. The veil of reality would be ripped away.
The poet is represented largely by selections from his work. [Read A.S. Byatt’s Possession for a master class in creating a work of fiction belonging to a fictional character!] He also has an opportunity to speak his own truth [or is it Blarney?] The increasingly common technique of alternating voices can make it difficult to find the heart of a story, but Enright uses connections and disconnections as the thread.
The Wren the Wren may not be her best, but it is classic Enright, and worthy of reading, and discussion. Go back to The Gathering for her best, or my favorite, Actress.
Coetzee too uses poetry to bind an aged Polish pianist to a younger Spanish woman, married, whom he meets and pursues during his later years. While she appears to have little interest in him, she is taken with his affection, and he becomes far more important to her than she might have imagined.
Where to they come from, the tall Polish pianist and the elegant woman with the gliding walk, the banker’s wife who occupies her days in good works? All year they have been knocking at the door, wanting to be let in or else dismissed and laid to rest. Now, at last, has their time come?
Although she [largely] resists his charms, the pianist has touched something in her previously untouched, and she finds herself, like the Irish poet’s granddaughter, searching for his secrets in a a collection of poems written for her, and to her, as his legacy.
Abstractedly she examines his travelling kit, neatly laid out on the shelf beneath the mirror. A razor. A hairbrush with an ebony handle. Pomade. Shampoo. An array of pillboxes, each with a label in Polish. A man from another era. Or perhaps all of Poland is like this: stuck in the past. Why is she so incurious about Poland?
This novel is told in a series of numbered short passages, as if to memorialize the passing of time, the way in which our lives are compartmentalized, in effect, and as it is largely linear, and a short novel, it grabs you and holds on, and then it ends, leaving the reader to decide what it means. The best sort of fiction, don’t you think?
Coetzee’s masterpiece is Disgrace, which I highly recommend if you’ve missed it, or great for backlist re-reading, and as his body of work is large, and spans many forms, much to choose from to appreciate his vast talent.
Lots of terrific new fiction launched already this year – stay tuned for the highlights. Cheers.