The Gravitational Pull of Decades

It is a critical and theoretical commonplace that our choices of reading materials are not as free as we might initially think. When we choose a new novel to put on our nightstand that decision is more or less consciously informed by a number of personal, socio-political and economic factors. Indeed, even the choice to read a novel at all is one that is conditioned by a variety of things.

In October last year I noticed that my reading had started to follow an interesting trajectory – I had, without really realising it, read a whole sequence of novels in a row that had been set in Paris. These ranged from Alexandre Dumas fils’ melodramatic novel La Dame aux Camélias (1848) to Cara Black’s breathless thriller, Murder in the Marais (1999). Of course, there had been a certain element of chance involved in all this, which I was quick to acknowledge.

When I cast my eye over the texts that I’ve recently been reading I can see a new kind of connection emerging. This is a link not based on space but time.

A few weeks ago I read Amy Fay’s wonderful memoir, Music-Study in Germany (first published in 1880). Fay, an excellent pianist, records the time she spent in Europe studying with the greats of the piano between 1869-1875. Her teachers included both Carl Tausig in Berlin and Franz Liszt in Weimar. It is, quite simply, a wonderful book, full of life, immediacy and music.

I am currently reading Emile Zola’s novel Nana (also 1880), which charts the rise and fall of the eponymous character. I expect to finish this text in the next few days. This novel is set in Paris in those strained moments at the end of the Second Empire, immediately before the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71).

This is a coincidence I know but… both of these texts were originally published in the same year: 1880. They are also both ‘set’ at the same moment in time (the turn of the decade from the 1860s to the 1870s). Yes, one is a memoir and the other a novel but the fact remains. And, interestingly, as both looked backwards they both involved acts of memory.

I had not planned any of this – the dates of publication played no conscious part in my choices. Indeed, I only started to read Zola’s text when I did as I had received a copy for free.

Nevertheless, it makes me wonder whether we might add one more entry to that list of factors governing our choices of novels. I wonder whether specific decades, in fact any given moment in time, might exert a kind of gravitational pull on us.

I’m not sure. It would be interesting to know what you think.

In any case, I will soon be setting off on an altogether different course. After I have completed Nana I intend to read one of Jules Verne’s voyages extraordinaires, Around the World in Eighty Days. Although, now that I think about it, this text was first published in 1873, which was the very year during which Amy Fay studied with Liszt.

Reading Trajectories

My reading is usually fairly wide ranging – both by necessity and by choice. This attitude has not made for a very coherent bookshelf but it has helped me immensely in my work as a literary critical detective.

However, over the last few weeks a certain pattern seems to have emerged from the vagaries of my choices.

The last few texts I have read are:

1.     Alexandre Dumas fils, La Dame aux camellias

2.     Alphonse Daudet, Letters from my Windmill

3. Anatole France, Crainquebille, Putois, Riquet and Other Profitable Tales

4.      Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

5.      Cara Black, Murder in the Marais.

The next book I will be reading will be Jean-Paul Sartre’s classic, Nausea.

I drew up this reading record last night for my own benefit. When I did so it occurred to me that all these volumes have one thing in common. And that one thing, or place, is Paris.

I will limit myself to just two comments about this fact.

Firstly, let me say that I hadn’t really intended to read two books by Anatole France at all. I bought one in a small shop in Oxford, the other on an antique stall in Yorkshire. Strangely enough, they each cost the same amount – £4. They were also in a similarly poor condition: their spines were ripped and their pages slightly damp to the touch.

 They are just the kind of volumes that Françoise chastises me for buying. ‘But why,’ she says, ‘do you insist on filling your study with these musty old books when you could buy pristine new copies of the same texts.’ She is right as always. I am sure that I could have bought modern critical editions of these works.

My interest in old Anatole really only lies in his complicated and somewhat patronising relationship to Proust – he wrote the ‘Preface’ for the younger man’s Pleasures and Days. France’s style is easy going and at times quite lyrical (at least in these translations) but is nothing compared to that of his one time acolyte. It lacks the insight, precision and even the directness of Proust.

The second thing I would wish to say about this unlooked for connection is that my own writing has caused me to think about Paris. So perhaps the coincidence is really no coincidence at all.

Now, however, my focus has shifted. Another text lies in front of me – and it is one that is set in a different city in a different country. St Petersburg. (I am looking at the small globe in my study as I write these words. Leaning the candle towards its surface I can see the dot that represents the city).

The text is Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. This is a text that has, in a sense, always been there ahead of me. It is now almost time to confront it.