Newsgroups: bit.listserv.literary
Date:         Thu, 20 Aug 1992 21:39:41 EDT
From:         Tim Johnson <PH408014@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Byatt

>        I read _Possession_ a year or so ago, and a couple months ago I put a
>request on the list to know what else of hers to read.  I regret to say I've
>forgotten what the reply recommended.  I thought Possession was an excellent
>book.  At times it seemed a little too carefully put together; I thought I
>could see a flow chart in the background, with all the loose connections care-
>fully tied up.  I understand she has an academic background, and perhaps this
>fits with that.  Still, it may be a prejudice, and a foolish one, to want
>untidyness in a novel.  It's interesting that after a year I can still remem-
>ber the plot and the characters clearly - the sign of a good writer - but no
>phrases or examples of her writing style have stuck.  Her writing is so clear,
>completely unlike some other writers.  Is that typical of the rest of her
>writing?
>        Ian

  Having read the Kundera first, I still had "graphomania" on the mind
when I sat down to tackle Byatt.  I was thinking of my own "graphomaniac"
tendencies, and of the book writing aspirations of my friends and
acquaintences.  Having been, till now, never really driven to write, I
was wondering what sort of work went into putting together a novel.
In particular, the part of writing a novel that falls inbetween the
realm of putting words together and putting the ideas together -
that is, writing descriptive passages, dialogue, narrative....
And so, as I read _Possession_, I found myself in the background
keeping notes on Byatt's prose.
  I'll mention _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, for those of you
who have read it, as a bad example.  I suspect that John Fowles
was only out to demonstrate his familiarity with Victorian England
and his own store of obscure lore, but in his use of descriptive
passages was distracting and clumsy.  To many footnotes, too many
unnecessary details too clumsily presented.  (I'm going to take
this moment here to give you what I thought was the most awkward
sentence in the entire novel:

    Visitors to Lyme in the nineteenth century, if they did
  not quite have to undergo the ordeal facing travelers to
  the ancient Greek colonies - Charles did not actually have
  to deliver a Periclean oration plus comprehensive world
  news summary from the steps of the Town Hall - were certainly
  expected to allow themselves to be examined and spoken to.

First of all, how Greek colonies got involved in nineteenth century
England is beyond me, but to make an allusion and then carefully
explain it for the gentle reader is a terrible idea.  If you don't
think your reader is going to get it, don't use it.  If you are
going to use it, don't explain it.  Just like explaining jokes,
you destroy the effect.  Anyhow, back to our regular text in
progress....)  Byatt, however, while she certainly didn't
economize on place descriptions, or character sketches (Cropper
and his gloves - though I did think the allusions to his particular
means of "sublimation" came out awkwardly), provided what I found
to be both clear and evocative descriptions - there were no passages
I felt I wanted to hurry through to get back to the story ("yes,
yes, Yorkshire countryside....hurry up...." ;-)  And some of them
were wonderful - the battle between Leonora's car and Cropper's
black Mercedes, for example.
  I also found myself endlessly impressed by the poetry (which
normally I don't have much use for) and by the correspondence
between the characters, and by the seemingly effortless way
Byatt managed to shift from voice to voice and setting to
setting.  Brittany and tales told on winter nights to Cropper
prowling the streets of England to Beatrice Nest fussing over
her notes to Leonora's whirlwind.
  My only gripe was with the ending - and not because of any
neat resolution of loose ends - but because the ending seemed
too pat, too happy.
  I guess what I am trying to do, in my own long winded way, here,
is too say that I, too, found her writing style to be "clear."
It is perhaps more informative to compare her with prose writers
like Nabokov or Gabriel Garcia Marquez (to pick two at random)
whose writing is so identifiable by its peculiarities of style.
Byatt seems...non-idiomatic.  I'm not sure I have the words
to describe it properly.

                                  -Tim
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU