What are you reading?
I was about to crack open Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel when I saw Richard Price’s bio in the trade paperback of Lush Life. Along with his literary accomplishments it notes his having been “co-writer of HBO’s The Wire”. Thomas Cromwell can wait, I have to read Richard Price.
Price is usually praised for his “wonderful ear for dialogue”. James Wood suggests we praise his wonderful mind for dialogue instead.
Price is particularly good when the flat cynicism of his speakers works against the slight floweriness or literariness of their language. Here, a deputy inspector tells a detective sergeant about the hierarchy, and how the top brass sit on everything:
Berkowitz held up a hand. “Perception, reality, whatever. They’re not happy, and shit rolls downhill. They’re at the peak, I’m like mid-mountain, and you’re in this, this arroyo at the bottom. If I can be any more picturesque than that, let me know.”
“In my father’s house there are many bosses,” Matty said.
“Whatever. Hey, nobody is telling you not to go all out, just do it quietly.”
Fiction has developed in unexpected ways since Elizabeth Bowen commanded, in her Notes on Writing a Novel, that the “functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the novelist’s mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.” Bowen counsels precise selection, following, in this respect, Edith Wharton, who also disliked novelists who “used irrelevant small-talk, in the hope of thus producing a greater air of reality.” Many contemporary novelists use dialogue precisely as small talk: as verismo-filler, giving us a comfy, televisual sense of the already known.
But Price is both a drifter and a selector. His dialogue, partly because there is so much of it in his books, is really a very long ribbon of small talk; but it is highly functional, always pushing on not only the plot (the least interesting aspect of his writing) but our sense of his characters. . .
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November 28th, 2009 at 22:27
I’m reading The Book of Destiny by Carlos Barrios. An interesting book on the Mayan predictions. The world will not end on December 21, 2012. It’s not going to be like that stupid movie.
November 29th, 2009 at 01:54
I’m reading The History of Tom Jones A Foundling, bought for only 150 pesos, Vintage edition. It’s kind of hard to read, kasi iba-iba ang spelling ng mga words nung panahon na yun, tulad ng “chuse” instead of “choose”. Parang gay lingo lang.
November 29th, 2009 at 03:26
Just finished Chuck Klosterman’s Eating The Dinosaur. To replace that piece of nonfiction on the reading list, I’ve cracked open Levitt and Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics. On the fiction reading front, it’s Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress Of Solitude grabbing my time and attention.
November 29th, 2009 at 05:28
Hyperion by Dan Simmons. So far, so good.
November 29th, 2009 at 09:19
the first chapters of kenneth tynan’s diaries, filipino nursery rhymes (a P10 pamphlet from a bilao in quiapo), the kenya chapter of obama’s first book, practical chicken dishes.
November 30th, 2009 at 00:20
Just finished: The Castafiore Emerald by Herge. (Hee! Thanks for the Tintin book, Jessica!)
Still in the process of reading, for some reason: Life of Pi, which to me is the book equivalent of artisanal chocolate: best savored in small bites, bit by bit. (I actually like it; it’s just that I wish the day would come soon enough when I would read it and go, “Ay, tapos na?”) Once I conquer this, it’s a toss-up between Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Gladwell’s Outliers… but knowing me, I’ll probably end up reading something shallow instead. ;)
I *must* pick up a copy of Lush Life soon, though. Sounds like a fascinating book.