A Writer Retreats: or, A Writer’s Retreat.

It is now two days since I decided to largely retreat to my book-lined study.

My intention was simple: to force myself into calm; to find a level of purpose and concentration that would allow me to think and, above all, to write. I wanted to establish a new habit of creativity. And in order to help me achieve that, I promised myself I would update this online journal everyday until the end of the month.

So far, I have spent my time variously reading, thinking and staring out of the window, although not necessarily in that order.

In the last forty-eight hours the weather has turned from a reluctant sunshine to dank and rainy English summer conditions. Today, a persistent drizzle bothers the rooftops across the courtyard. The grey clouds overhead seem to have made themselves at home, as though having made the effort to arrive here they are now reluctant to leave, and consider this place as good as any other to dump their burdensome load.

A springer spaniel barks a regular intervals, a living clock that has taken over time-telling duties from the stopped watches collected in my drawer. I can hear the sound of bins being dragged across potted paving slabs. Yesterday, a horse and carriage made its way, unseen by me, along the main road, its shod feet clattering on the surface as it went.

No artist’s room is ever disconnected from the world around him or her. Life still intrudes. Even Proust was beset by thousands of letters and social callers after he withdrew from the Parisian social whirl. In my study, too, the lines of communication remain open.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I intend to pick up my pen or, what amounts to the same thing, dust off the keyboard, and begin writing.

Until tomorrow…

A Blog Post a Day: A Project for June

It is so hard to think clearly, with subtlety and deftness. It is even harder to articulate one’s thoughts in a nuanced manner.

When I’m working on a new literary critical case it sometimes seems as if the books that line my study walls are leering down at me like so many grotesques, mocking me and my meek efforts. The more I try to think, the more the thoughts form an impenetrable fog in my mind, a fog that gets everywhere, even in this muggy, muddy English summer.

In order to extricate myself from these difficulties I have made a rash decision. Yesterday evening, having posted my review of Agatha Christie’s ‘The Big Four’, I promised myself that I would update this online journal everyday until the end of the month – and possibly even beyond.

I hope that by setting myself the task of writing something new on a regular basis I will disperse the critical and creative torpor that hangs over me and, it would seem, this whole building. Moreover, I hope that I will instigate a new practice of writing.

I bumped into Thistleton yesterday. He expressed some kind thoughts about the project, although he doubted the possibility of engineering creative insight through practice.

I would really appreciate it if you, dear Reader, were able to support me in my endeavour by following this blog (click the button on the right) and by checking in each day to see what I’ve written.

à demain…

Reader, I finished reading it.

It is true that even weary, book-learned literary critical detectives were young once. Many years ago I attended a fine and respectable school in the south of England. I was a diligent and purposeful student, prone to over-seriousness and anxious to achieve good marks. There was always something about the image of the scholar to which I aspired.

My usual diligence forsook me when, aged about 14 years, my fellow pupils and I were asked by our teacher to read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. The fact that I was unsure at first which of the two names on the cover belonged to the author and which to the central protagonist did not augur well. This initial confusion was slowly replaced by apathy. I rarely read the passages we had been set; I contributed little to class discussions. I think that I finally stopped reading the text after about one hundred pages.

My failure to finish this novel had always concerned me. I had been left with a vague sense of having failed to meet the high standards that I set myself. Worse, I felt that I owed something to the text: it deserved better.

Then, a few months ago, I saw a copy of Jane Eyre on the bookshelf in a local charity shop. It was on sale for a mere £1. Seeing the volume there, abandoned and slowly awaiting its fate in stock rotation, my conscience was piqued. I would buy this book and I would finish it.

Two weeks ago I set about reading the novel. And what a wonderful novel it is. It has accompanied me on the many journeys I have since undertaken. As Jane travelled from the fictional Thornfield to Morton I travelled to the very real Nottingham by train; as she arrived at Ferndean to find Rochester I returned home on a dark rainy evening – my experiences as reader neatly mirroring those of the characters in the text.

Then, last night, I finished it. A wonderful piece of writing, without doubt, superbly Romantic and touchingly romantic.

As I finally shut the covers I felt that I had at last repaid my debt to this text. And, I didn’t doubt, with interest – for wasn’t my reading of it now so much more sophisticated than it ever could have been all those years ago? I began to recall the different things we had once been taught to say and think about the book at school. Yes, I was sure that I now disagreed with many of them. However, my mature analysis of the text will have to wait for another day.

The book that had, until last night, been my most embarrassing DNF (‘did not finish’) is now one of my most cherished novels.

The Literary Critical Detective on Trains

My work as the Literary Critical Detective normally requires me to sit patiently and quietly, here, in the study, surrounded by my scribbled notes, the amber glow of my lamp and the smell of old books. However, over the last two weeks I have been forced to leave my room and travel. More specifically, I have had to take the train. I have spent days dashing across concourses to make connections – an act in which I have taken a curious kind of pleasure, and which I have interpreted as simply another version of the Literary Critical Detective’s work.

I made use of the time to read. Despite the purposefulness of my journeys these trips have actually taken me away from my planned reading trajectory. I sat and read Virginia Woolf’s masterful novel Mrs Dalloway, a text that is itself more concerned with planes and omnibuses than trains.

Françoise has insisted that such journeys are pointless. She begrudgingly waved me off one morning whilst muttering about the number of books that I already owned and the impossibility of needing any new materials.

For my part, I have always enjoyed train travel. In an instant I feel like all those literary characters. Remember that Conan Doyle’s Holmes and Watson are always jumping onto trains and heading out of London at a moment’s notice. 

And so I have begun to think about the best ‘train’ scenes in literature. Here are some of my favourites. What are your favourite ‘train’ scenes or novels? (Comments below are welcome).

1. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina – this novel begins and ends with wonderfully moving train scenes.

2. Marcel Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe – in this novel Mme Verdurin’s social circle travel by train to her house for the summer season. Here, the train carriage itself becomes a salon on rails.

3. Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express – a wonderful mystery whose action and detection works its way through private carriages and public cars alike.

On not setting myself ‘reading goals’.

I have never set myself ‘Reading Goals’ – you know the kind of thing: ‘I will read 50 books this year’; or, ‘I will read 25 “classics” this year’.

Many other readers do and I am not criticising them for it. I am glad that those readers are reading so voraciously.

The reason I do not approach my own reading in this manner is that it presupposes I have a certain number of set outcomes that I wish to achieve. It presupposes that I know in advance what I want to find in the chosen texts and that I will, without question, find it there. The novels piled up before me have, as it were, made plain their meaning to me in advance.

At worst, this attitude to reading threatens to turn a careful and attentive approach to meaning into an exercise in which you simply place ticks on a kind of cultural checklist. (Although it doesn’t do this as a matter of course.)

In my work as the Literary Critical Detective my approach to reading is not without purpose. Far from it. In each of my 'cases' I solve literary-critical mysteries that were not even mysteries. I can only do this through a structured response to image and metaphor. However, I am happy to pursue the vicissitudes of study.

An example of my reading: at the beginning of 2011 I reread the first half of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1747-8), a text that I had first read in its entirety 13 years earlier. Once I’d reached the half way stage in this miraculous novel, and Clarissa herself had been firmly established in London, I put the book down and picked up another – namely, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. This in turn caused me to return to Freud and then, in a sharp turn, to read Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf

Those of you who kindly pay attention to my scribbled thoughts will know that I have written of ‘readingtrajectories’. Now that I think about it, I find this term uncomfortable. It lacks the appropriate level of uncertainty. Perhaps I can only know in which direction I am travelling but not exactly where I am.

At the moment I do not know entirely know where I am. I have lost my book mark. However, I do know where I am heading. When I have finished reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment I will read:

Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot quitte la scène (Librairie des Champs-Élysées).

This is the French language translation of Agatha Christie’s Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. I shall read the two texts (original and translation) alongside each other, with a French-English dictionary to hand.

I then expect to read:

Albert Camus, L’étranger.

However, we shall see.

The Literary Critical Detective En Plein Air.

The time I have spent in these same old spaces has lead me to keep thinking the same old thoughts.

My ongoing case presents peculiar challenges that I will not be able to overcome with these worn out ideas. I must admit that even my most radical readings will not serve in this instance.

I knew I had to change something. I knew that, despite the fact that there is no place that I would normally rather be than in my study, where the still air is filled with the smell of those books accumulated over long years, the burning wick of my candle and warm sealing wax, I would have to leave my comfortable environment.

So this morning I packed up my notes, my books, my stationary and my hat and left these cluttered streets behind. I adopted the Romantic pose and headed out into the country. I became the literary critical detective en plein air.

After walking for an hour across fields I eventually reached an old country monument, a stately reminder of time lost. Here, with my back to a stone post, I sat down and re-arranged my notes in front of me. I looked for the meanings. And as the shadows of clouds drifted across the parklands I felt the shadows moving and lifting from the ideas in my mind. New concepts, new solutions drifted into my own sky. I scribbled these down furiously, occasionally consulting the texts at my feet.

After two hours I became aware that the monument behind me had a door on its front. The thought of this closed portal stopped me dead, I had to put my pen down. The sudden realisation of this locked door struck me as being greatly portentous. It became significant; it seemed to suggest something to me, something that may have a bearing on the case at hand.

Now I have returned home to make sense of all this, if there is sense to be found. Françoise has brought me my evening meal, which I have barely touched, and my wine, which I have nearly finished. I must work.

Comments can be left here or sent to my special postal address.

Work In The Field

I am out working in the field again. This is something at which I have always excelled. In a former life I even won an award for it. Of course, my field now is very different. Where, once, I stood on a rainy hillside on the Isle of Arran, auger in hand, I am now working in studies and libraries, unearthing new kinds of sense and non-sense in literature, remarking upon textual auguries of great significance.

I am now better equipped to work in this rough critical terrain. I have my leather bag. I have also now received my new study books. The first of these is a small green pocketbook, to be used for making brief notes and recording ideas as they come to me. For the literary critical detective as much as the fictional detective, there are great flashes of insight, moments when things fall together, when the little grey cells set to work. I will now be sure of saving those moments, confident in the preservation of my vision.

My second book is a larger decorated volume that I intend to use as my case book. Here, bound together in one space, I will be able to make my notes; I will be able to plot the connections and connect the plots; I will be able to order and disorder my thinking. Such a superbly crafted item is a treasure, and one that shall not leave my desk.

Finally, I have received my splendid new business cards. When I call on an associate only to find him or her not in I will now be able to leave one of these at the door. I will also include them in those missives that I send out to my colleagues.

My book-addled brain.

A sample paragraph from 'A Case of Unreliable Memory':

To my weary, book-addled brain the name slippages did not stop there. As I put down my whiskey glass, put on my reading glasses and looked at the book again the names started to slide in front of my eyes. I felt myself to be like that hapless narrator, Mr Lockwood, as he watches the engraved names merge and separate in front of his eyes in Wuthering Heights (1847). As I watched, and read, and dreamed, Christie’s character Molly Preston-Grey got married and became Molly Ravenscroft only to then slide over into that most affirmative of women, James Joyce’s Molly Bloom. Yes, there is nothing to connect them; and yes this was madness, I knew, but I couldn’t stop it, me, sitting there that night, and there was the noise of the wind again, and the neighbour’s dog still howling won’t it ever shut up, like that dog down on the moors terrible and painted. I rubbed my eyes, trying to snap myself out of this overwhelming literary sickness, only I found that I couldn’t. For wasn’t Molly Bloom herself only Homer’s Penelope, that weaver of tapestries and texts? Yes, again yes. The fact that Mrs Oliver’s ‘christian’ name is Ariadne only seemed to support my adoption of this ‘mythical method’. But, I knew, it didn’t lead to anything, this unravelling of threads, this making up of connections, yarns and literary memories – it only lead me back into a literary critical labyrinth.